Answer:

Argument is a very complex and difficult term. It is frequently used in everyday conversation and in professional discourse, yet remains inadequately defined. The everyday use of the word as a synonym for quarrel or row has a pervading influence over its use in other settings and for other purposes. The word has connotations of conflict and unpleasantness. This appears to be so even for teachers in higher education who are conversant with the two applications of 'argument', so that some of them, when asked about the use of argument in the teaching and learning of their subject, preferred to use the term 'discussion'.

Another problem created by the term is that it can be used to describe both a process and a product. Americans who study 'argument' tend to use the term 'argumentation' to distinguish the process of arguing whereby views are exchanged, challenged, justified, defended, modified or abandoned. Nonetheless we would recognise this as 'having an argument' whether it was about where to go to eat this evening, whether the private ownership of handguns should be banned or how the concept of 'argument' should be defined.