Abstract
The aim of the study is to identify both modes of children’s participation in family disputes and types of argumentative moves adopted, particularly in the act of opposing (problematizing) others or defending oneself. The corpus consists of twenty-seven dinner conversations of ten middle-class families living in Rome and Naples, each with one child between three and six years and at least one older sibling.
Data are shown concerning relative distribution of six different discourse genres (according to temporal focus and presence of problematic events: Ochs & Taylor, 1993) and family members’ role in problematization. A qualitative analysis illustrates ways in which children are involved and act in family disputes. The quantitative results indicate that the problematizing activity occupies about 1/3 of family talk, allowing children peripheral participation in conflict talk; 1/2 of the problematizations are directed to the children. When discourse concerns past events, children show a lower rate of problematizing activity (31.3% vs. 40.9% of the whole of conflict talk) but — when challenged on their past behavior — they appear to have already learned at 4 or 5 years how to justify themselves and to provide rhetorically designed answers, using appropriate temporal markers, authority references, and visual recall devices. Children’s orientation to social and/or family norms and values is also discussed.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Bakhtin, M. M. (1986). Speech genres and other late essays. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Billig, M. (1987). Arguing and thinking: A rhetorical approach to social psychology. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Bruner, J. (1986). Actual minds, possible worlds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Bruner, J. (1990). Acts of meaning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Caron, J. (1990). Le développement de l’argumentation chez l’enfant [The development of argumentation in children]. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
Corsaro, W. A., & Rizzo, T. A. (1990). Disputes in the peer culture of American and Italian nursery school children. In A. D. Grimshaw (Ed.), Conflict Talk (pp. 21–66). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Duranti, A., & Goodwin, C. (Eds.). (1992). Rethinking context: Language as an interactive phenomenon. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Edwards, D. (1991). Categories are for talking. On the cognitive and discursive bases of categorization. Theory & Psychology, 7(4), 515–542.
Edwards, D., & Mercer, N. M. (1987). Common knowledge: The development of understanding in the classroom. London: Routledge.
Edwards, D., & Middleton, D. J. (1988). Conversational remembering and family relationships: How children learn to remember. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 5, 3–25.
Edwards, D., & Potter, J. (1992). Discursive psychology. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
Garvey, C. (1993). Diversity in the conversational repertoire: The case of conflicts in pretending. In C. Pontecorvo (Ed.), Forms of discourse and shared thinking. Cognition and Instruction, 11(3 & 4), 251–264.
Goffman, E. (1964). The neglected situation. American Anthropologist, 66(6), 133–136.
Goffman, E. (1974). Frame analysis: An essay on the organization of experience. New York: Harper and Row.
Goodwin, C. (1994). Professional vision. American Anthropologist, 96(3), 606–633.
Grimshaw, A. D. (Ed.). (1990). Conflict talk: Sociolinguistic investigations of arguments in conversations. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Kaye, K. (1982). The mental and social life of babies. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Labov, W. (1972). Language in the inner city: Studies in the Black English vernacular. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Labov, W., & Fanshel, D. (1977). Therapeutic discourse: Psychotherapy as conversation. New York: Academic Press.
Lave, J, & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated Learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Levinson, S. C. (1983). Pragmatics. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Ochs, E. (1988). Culture and language development: Language acquisition and language socialization in a Samoan village. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Ochs, E. (1994). Stories that step into the future. In D. Biber & E. Flanagan (Eds.) Sociolinguistic perspective on register (pp. 106–135). Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
Ochs, E., Pontecorvo, C., & Fasulo, A. (1996). Socializing taste. Ethnos, 61(1–2). 7–46.
Ochs, E., & Schieffelin, B. (1989). Language has a heart. Text, 9(1), 7–25.
Ochs, E., & Taylor, C. (1992a). Family narrative as political activity. Discourse and Society, 3, 43–57.
Ochs, E., & Taylor, C., (1992b). Mothers’ role in the everyday reconstruction of “Father knows best.” In K. Hall (Ed.), Locating power: Proceedings of the 1992 Women and language conference (pp. 447–462). Berkeley, CA: University of California at Berkeley.
Ochs, E., Taylor, C., Rudolph, D., & Smith, N. (1992). Storytelling as a theory- building activity. Discourse Processes, 15, 37–72.
Orsolini, M. (1993). “Because” in children’s discourse. Applied Psycholinguistics, 14, 89–120.
Orsolini, M., & Pontecorvo, C. (1989). La genesi della spiegazione nella discussione in classe [Genesis of explanation in class discussion]. In M. S. Barbieri (Ed.), La spiegazione nelVinterazione sociale (pp. 161–190). Torino, Italy: Loescher.
Orsolini, M., & Pontecorvo, C. (1992). Children’s talk in classroom discussion. Cognition and Instruction, 9, 113–136.
Pomerantz, A. (1978). Compliment responses: Notes on the co-operation of multiple constraints. In J. Schenkein (Ed.), Studies in the organization of conversational interaction (pp. 79–112). New York: Academic Press.
Pomerantz, A. (1984). Agreeing and disagreeing with assessments: Some features of preferred-dispreferred discourse. In J. M. Atkinson & J. Heritage (Eds.), Structures of social action (pp. 57–101). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Pontecorvo, C. (1987). Discussing for reasoning: The role of argument in knowledge construction. In E. De Corte, J. G. Lodewijks, R. Parmentier, & P. Span (Eds.), Learning and Instruction. European research in international context, 1, pp. 71–82. Oxford/Leuven: Pergamon/Leuven University Press.
Pontecorvo, C. (1993). Forms of discourse and shared thinking. Cognition and Instruction, 11, 293–310.
Pontecorvo, C., Amendola, S., & Fasulo, A. (1994). Storie in famiglia. Lanarrazione come prodotto collettivo [Stories in the family. Narration as a collective product]. Età Evolutiva, 46, 18–34.
Pontecorvo, C., & Girardet, H. (1993). Arguing and reasoning in understanding historical topics. In C. Pontecorvo (Ed.), Forms of discourse and shared thinking. Cognition and Instruction, 11, 365–395.
Pontecorvo, C., & Orsolini, M. (1993). Discussing a story in apre-school setting. In M. A. Pinto & M. Danesi (Eds.), Humanism in language studies: Essays in honor of Renzo Titone (pp. 78–94). Milan: IMFE.
Resnick, L. B. (1991). Shared cognition: Thinking as social practice. In L. B. Resnick, J. M. Le vine, & S. D. Teasley (Eds.), Perspectives on socially shared cognition (pp. 1–20). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Sacks, H. (1987). On the preferences for agreement and contiguity in sequences in conversation. In G. Button & J. R. E. Lee (Eds.), Talk and Social Organization (pp. 54–69). Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters.
Sacks, H. (1992). Lectures on Conversation: Volume 1. (G. Jefferson, Ed.) Oxford, England: Basil Blackwell.
Schegloff, E. A. (1989). Reflections on language, development, and the interactional character of talk-in-interaction. In M. H. Bornstein & J. S. Bruner (Eds.), Interaction in human development (pp. 139–153). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Schegloff, E. A. (1990). On the organization of sequences as a source of “coherence” in talk-in-in ter action. In R. Freedle (Ed.), Advances in discourse processes: Conversational organization and its development (Vol. 38, pp. 51–77). Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
Schiffrin, D. (1985). Everyday argument: The organization of diversity in talk. In T. van Disk (Ed.), Handbook of discourse analysis, Vol 3. Discourse and dialogue (pp. 35–46). London: Academic Press.
Schiffrin, D. (1987). Discourse markers. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Schiffrin, D. (1990). The management of a co-operative self during argument. The role of opinions and stories. In A. D. Grimshaw (Ed.), Conflict Talk (pp. 241–259). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Semin, G., & Fiedler, K. (1988). The cognitive functions of linguistic categories in describing persons: Social cognition and language. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54(4), 558–568.
Vygotsky, L.S. (1990). Pensiero e linguaggio [Thought and language]. Bari, Italy: Laterza. (New Italian critical edition by L. Mecacci, based on the first Russian edition; originally published in 1934).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1997 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Pontecorvo, C., Fasulo, A. (1997). Learning to Argue in Family Shared Discourse: The Reconstruction of Past Events. In: Resnick, L.B., Säljö, R., Pontecorvo, C., Burge, B. (eds) Discourse, Tools and Reasoning. NATO ASI Series, vol 160. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-03362-3_18
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-03362-3_18
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-08337-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-662-03362-3
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive