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e creative power of language and discourse (cf. Habermas, 1984, 1987). However, support for this approach is not dependent on requiring the reader to adopt Habermasian critical theory. Justification for this approach to choice is because of the nature of discourse and argument which is a foundational human characteristic. What distinguishes human beings from all other animate and inanimate forms is our sophisticated ability to communicate with one another through the spoken and written word. This is not to say that as human beings we have distinct non-verbal skills and abilities which we use extensively in communication but simply that our ability to talk, discuss and argue with one another is a basic and very important human trait and one which we should, and do, use extensively in making important choices in our lives and justifying them to others. It is this fundamental ability and necessity to use language to make public what we are doing and why we are doing it and, where we need to convince, also to use argumentation in this process, that justifies the use of discursive processes as a criterion for the choice process. The following, therefore, presents an argument for what can be loosely referred to as “middle-range” thinking. It is “middle-range” since it argues a case for taking a mid-point on each of the three continuums (theory, methodology and change). Before embarking on this argument it is important to note the intended distance between the originator of “middle-range” thinking and the one propounded below. Because Robert Merton’s three editions of Social Theory and Social Structure (1949, 1957, 1968) have had such a seminal position infunctionalist thought, and with the increasing dominance of “middle-range” thinking in this work, it is easy to make a one-to-one relationship to the approach being argued below. This is not the case, however. Merton’s “middle- range” thinking was not taking a “medium” approach to theory, methodology and change in the way suggested in this article. Rather he was concerned that the grand, primarily Parsonian, theories of social behaviour were failing to provide the intended generalizations required. His alternative was to undertake more modest theorizing in the first instance in the hope that these limited discoveries would then lead to grand theories that both he and Parsons, to name but two, desired. As Merton (1968, pp. 52-3) makes plain: I believe – and beliefs are notoriously subject to error – that theories of the middle range hold the largest promise, provided thatthe search for them is coupled with a pervasive concern with consolidating special theories into more general sets of concepts and mutually consistent propositions. Even so we must adopt the provisional outlook of our big brothers and of Tennyson: “Our little systems have their day; They have their day and cease to be” (emphasis in the original). Merton’s “middle-range” thinking refers more to an initial limitation of the social focus for the discovery process, notto the nature of theory, methodology and change. It uses “high” levels of theory and methodology with minimal change concern on a limited social concern with the hope that a grand, general theory for all action and activity can be discovered in due course from the insights forthcoming. The “middle range” that is referred to below has no faith in the development of such a general theory. Put simply the “middle range” of this article maintains that there can only ever