provides a descriptive analysis of social actors' conceptions of argument as a discrete interactional episode and an examination of the face-threatening and repairing speech acts characteristic of these episodes. A recurrent theme in this work is that arguments have relational consequences. Social actors report that relationships are often damaged by an argument, that efforts are made through particular acts to minimize the negative consequences, and that the nature of acts provoking arguments are often threatening to the other's face while acts that terminate an argument typically attend explicitly to the other's face. But, this research describes only a partial connection between arguments and relationships and has not been focused on explaining a recurrent form of argument in the empirical instances. This form does not simply provoke relational consequences as an outcome, but is an argument about the very nature of the relationship between the interactants. The purpose of this paper is to account for arguments that emerge when interactants dispute relational definitions. While an elucidation of this form of argument serves as the impetus for this paper, it is clear that to do so requires an elaboration of speech act theory that addresses the function of acts in communicating relational definitions and the nature of argument as a complex of acts that display discord in relational definitions. The first section of this paper sketches additional interactionist assumptions that elaborate speech act theory. This section considers (1) the importance of goals and the types of goals that direct acts, (2) the bases for drawing inferences about goals including a discussion of form, situation, and relationship and (3) the orchestration of individual goals to produce harmonious or inharmonious interaction. The second section of the paper utilizes this elaboration to explain relational arguments. It assesses prior findings and reports new data that validate the utility of this approach.