Abstract
The aim of the present study was to analyse family dinners as context of argumentation and argumentative development by using a context-sensitive model of basic argumentative structures in every day conversations. The data consisted of 40 argumentative sequences in dinner conversations in twenty Swedish families with children aged 7 to 17 years. The families were divided in two groups depending on the children's ages (10–11 years with younger siblings and 10–12 years with older siblings). The model revealed characteristic structures of argumentation appearing as co-text and suggested differences between family groups depending on contextual factors such as age of the children. The groups of older children produced longer argumentative sequences, more exchanges per sequence and higher rate of turns. The older children also engaged in non-instrumental deliberations and disputations significantly more often and they performed more elaborated expansions (through a higher quantity of backing arguments). The groups of younger children on the other hand were more often involved in negotiations on topics relevant in the immediate context. Less expected was, however, the lack of more complex and varied arguments, even in the groups of older children.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Here, I refrain from discussing the problems entailed in distinguishing between co-text and context.
This circumstance would speak for the choice of speech act or proposition as components of turns but the theoretical framework from which these concepts originate does not suit the design of the present study.
References
Bakhtin, M. 1986. Speech genres and other late essays. In Austin, eds. C. Emerson and M. Holquist. Texas: University of Texas Press.
Benoit, J.P. 1992. The use of argument by preschool children: The emergent production of rules for winning arguments. In Readings in argumentation 11, eds. W.L. Benoit, D. Hample, and P.J. Benoit. Berlin: Studies of argumentation in pragmatics and discourse analysis, Foris Publications.
Blum-Kulka, S. 1997. Dinner talk. Cultural patterns of sociability and socialization in family discourse. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Brumark, Å. 1989. Blindness and the context of language acquisition. MINS 31. Diss. Stockholm University.
Brumark, Å. 2003. Democracy starts at the dinner table. Working Papers, Södertörn University College, Huddinge.
Brumark, Å. 2006. Non-observance of Gricean maxims in family dinner table conversation. Journal of Pragmatics 38: 1206–1238.
Bruner, J.S. 1981. The social context of language acquisition. Language and Communication 1: 155–178.
Corsaro, W.A., and Rizzo, T.A. 1990, Disputes in peer culture of American and Italian nursery-school children. In Conflict talk: Sociolinguistic investigations of arguments in conversations, ed. A.D. Grimshaw, 118–138. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Eisenberg, A., and Garvey, C. 1981. Children’s use of verbal strategies in resolving conflicts. Discourse Processes 4: 149–170.
Englund, T. 2000. Deliberativa samtal som värdegrund – historiska perspektiv och aktuella förutsättningar. Stockholm: Statens skolverk.
Felton, M., and Kuhn, D. 2001. The development of argumentative discourse skill. Discourse Processes, 32 (2&3): 135–153.
Garvey, C. 1979. Contingent queries and their relations in discourse. In Developmental pragmatics, eds. E. Ochs and B. Schieffelin. Academic Press: New York.
Goffman, E. 1974. Frame analysis. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Goodwin, M.H. 1983. Aggravated correction and disagreement in children’s conversation. Journal of Pragmatics VII (6).
Grice, H.P. 1975. Logic and conversation. In Syntax and semantics 3: Speech acts, eds. P. Cole and J. Morgan, 41–58. New York: Academic Press.
Jackson, S., and Jacobs, S. 1992. Structure of conversational argument: Pragmatic bases for the enthymeme. In Readings in argumentation 11, eds. W.L. Benoit, D. Hample, and P.J. Benoit. Berlin: Studies of argumentation in pragmatics and discourse analysis, Foris Publications.
Linell, P. 1998. Approaching dialogue: Talk, interaction and contexts in dialogical perspectives. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Co.
Linell, P., and Gustavsson, L. 1987. Initiativ och respons: Om dialogens dynamic, dominans och coherens, SIC 15. Linköping: Department of Communication Studies.
Mac Whinney. 1991. The CHILDES project: Tools for analyzing talk. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Maynard, D.W. 1985. How children start arguments. Language in Society 14: 1–29.
Öberg, B.-M. 1995. Negotiation processes as talk and interaction. Interaction analyses of informal negotiations, Diss, Linköping University, Linköping.
Pontecorvo, C., Fasulo, A. 1997. Learning to argue in family dinner conversation: The reconstruction of past events. In Discourse tools and reasoning, eds. L. Resnick, R. Saljo, and C. Pontecorvo. Berlin: Springer Verlag.
Sacks, H., Schegloff, E., & Jefferson, G. 1974. A simplest systematics for the organisation of turn-taking in conversation. Language 50: 696–735.
Schegloff, E.A. 1990. On the organisation of sequences as a source of “coherence” in talk-in-interaction. In Conversational organization and its development, ed. B. Dorval. Norwood, NJ: Albex.
Schiffrin, D. 1985. Everyday argument. The organization of diversity in talk. In Handbook of discourse analysis, Vol. 3. London: Academic Press.
Snow, C. 1978. The conversational context of language acquisition. In Recent advances in the psychology of languages, eds. R. Campbell and P. Smith. Plenum Press: New York.
Snow, C.E., and Goldfield, B.A. 1983. Turn the page please: Situation specific language acquisition. Journal of Child Language 10: 551–569.
Trapp, R., 1992. Everyday argumentation from an interpretative perspective. In Readings in argumentation 11, eds. W.L. Benoit, D. Hample, and P.J. Benoit. Berlin: Studies of argumentation in pragmatics and discourse analysis, Foris Publications.
van Eemeren, F.H. 2001. The state of the art in the argumentation theory. In Crucial concepts in argumentation theory, ed. F.H. van Eemeren. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
van Eemeren, F., Grootendorst, R., & Snoeck Henkemans, F. 2002. Argumentation. Analysis, Evaluation, Presentation. London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers.
van Eemeren, F.H., Grootendorst, R., Jackson, S., and Jacobs, S. 1993. Reconstructing argumentative discourse. London: The University of Alabama Press.
van Rees, A. Argument interpretation and reconstruction. In Crucial concepts in argumentation theory, ed. F.H. van Eemeren. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
Vuchinich, S. 1990. The sequential organization of closing in verbal family conflict. In Conflict talk: Sociolinguistic investigations of arguments in conversations, ed. A.D. Grimshaw. New York: Cambridge University Press, 118–138.
Vygotskij, L.S. 1962. Thought and language. MIT Press, Cambridge.
Wagner, J. 1995. What makes discourse a negotiation? In The discourse of business negotiation, eds. K. Ehlich and J. Wagner. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyer.
Wallgren Hemlin, B. 2001. Overall på, Retorikmagasinet.
Walton, D. 2000. Scare tactics: Arguments that appeal to fear and threats. Argumentation 18(2): 261–269.
Weger, H. 2002. Violating pragma-dialectical rules in arguments between intimates. In Advances in pragma-dialectics, ed. F.H. van Eemeren. Amsterdam: Sic Sat.
Wiksten Folkeryd, J. 1998. The acquisition of genres: Some findings from an investigation in Swedish families. RUUL 33: 89–122.
Wirdenäs, K. 2002. Ungdomars argumentation. Om argumentationstekniker i gruppsamta, Nordistica Gothenburgensia. Acta Universitatis Gothenburensis. Göteborgs Universitet.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Brumark, Å. “Eat your Hamburger!”—“No, I don’t Want to!” Argumentation and Argumentative Development in the Context of Dinner Conversation in Twenty Swedish Families. Argumentation 22, 251–271 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10503-007-9061-z
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10503-007-9061-z