This paper examines the discursive means by which authors of scientific texts in the humanities and social sciences take a critical stance on the theses of their colleagues. Focusing on controversy rather than polemics, and using a corpus in French and English borrowed from Language Science, translation and didactics, the paper presents rhetorical figures and linguistic structures that maintain conversational propriety despite the emotionality of disagreement.

The possibility of construction disputes can be reduced, but they cannot be avoided due to the uncertain and risky nature of the building industry. Conflicts between construction parties often have very unfavourable effects, such as cost increases, poor construction quality and time extension in the schedule. Lots of studies have been carried out in order to try and avoid these disagreements. However, there are no common resolution tools or techniques due to the improving conditions and scope of contracted works. Advanced methods and dispute reasons should be fully monitored and updated for the applicable solutions. This paper discusses the current major constructional dispute reasons in Turkey. The questionnaire method was applied within the scope of this study. The questionnaire documents were randomly distributed to 80 contractors to analyse major dispute reasons in Turkey. Analysis of the questionnaire results indicates that the major current dispute causes are poor quality of performed works, delays in progress payments, inefficient site management, poorly written contracts and design mistakes.

In his book Mortal Questions (1979) Thomas Nagel discusses four practical moral issues: (1) fear of death, (2) the absurdity of human life, (3) sexual perversion and (4) military massacre. His primary concern is neither to justify moral opprobrium nor to find an appropriate punishment for the culprits. Instead, he wants to clarify motives of those individuals who are not afraid of death, who can deal resolutely with the pointlessness of human life, who are not deeply dismayed by the crudity of some forms of sexual behavior or who refuse to justify whatever forms of military atrocities with higher purposes. He reviews various cases of excessive or deficient moral sensitivity and offers specific, case‑oriented advice on how to deal with them. Nagel favors self‑persuasion in cases of fear of death and argues that the sense of absurd is not much different from skepticism. He proposes to draw a line between private and public aspects of sexual behavior and supports dual evaluation of military activities by distinguishing between the moral value of an act and the moral value of the motives of the actor. He condones no atrocities. These arguments do not add up to constitute a form of moral relativism but, instead, seem to restore intellectual respectability of casuistry.