of the speaker (I). This means that when engaging in communication the speaker and hearer are inescapably oriented to the validity of what is said. A speech act can be understood as an offering, the success or failure of which depends upon the hearer's response of either accepting or rejecting the validity claims it raises. The three dimensions of validity pointed out above are implicated in any attempt at communication. Thus, communication relies on its being embedded within relations to various dimensions of validity. Any and every speech act is infused with inter-subjectively recognized claims to be valid. This implicitly ties communication to argumentation and various discursive procedures for the redemption of validity claims. This is true because to raise a validity claim in communication is to simultaneously imply that one is able to show, if challenged, that one's claim is justified. Communication is possible because speakers are accountable for the validity of what they say. This assumption of responsibility on the part of the speaker is described by Habermas as a "warranty", because in most cases the validity claims raised during communication are taken as justified, and communication proceeds on that basis. Similarly, hearers are accountable for their stance taken up in relation to the validity claims raised by the speaker. Both speaker and hearer are bound to the validity claims raised by the utterances they share during communication. They are bound by the weak obligations inherent in pursuing actions oriented towards reaching an understanding. Habermas would claim that this obligation is a rational one: "With every speech act, by virtue of the validity claims it raises, the speaker enters into an interpersonal relationship of mutual obligation with the hearer: The speaker is obliged to support her claims with reasons, if challenged, and the hearer is obliged to accept a claim unless he has good reason not to do so. The obligation in question is, in the first instance, not a moral one but a rational one -- the penalty of failure to fulfill it is the charge not of immorality but of irrationality -- although clearly the two will often overlap" (Cooke, 1994). This begins to point towards the idea of communicative rationality, which is the potential for rationality that is implicit in the validity basis of everyday communication, the shape of reason that can be extracted from Habermas's formal-pragmatic analyses. "The modern -- decentered -- understanding of