Acknowledgements

This research was conducted between 2015 and 2018 within the multi-university ArgImp project. That project focused on the implicit components of children’s reasoning in discussions with adults. It thereby applied a novel interdisciplinary approach to the study of children’s argumentation. Several theoretical reflections based on the analysis of empirical data have already been published (e.g. Greco, Perret-Clermont et al., 2018; Schär & Greco, 2018; Schär, 2018a). My doctoral dissertation, which focused on the issue in adult-children discussions (Schär, R. G., 2018b) and was written at the Università della Svizzera italiana in Lugano, constitutes the basis of this book.

I am indebted to a number of people with whom I’ve had the opportunity to work and learn from during my research as a doctoral student and beyond. First of all, I would like to express my gratitude to the members of the ArgImp project as well as my colleagues at the Institute of Argumentation, Linguistics and Semiotics in Lugano. A special thank you goes to my PhD supervisor Sara Greco for her advice during the PhD and beyond as well as for writing the Preface to this book. I am also especially grateful to Anne-Nelly Perret-Clermont and Charis Psaltis for their time and discussions on sociocultural and developmental psychology.

A big thank you to all the families who allowed me to accompany them during moments of their everyday life and gave me the opportunity to collect the data.

Furthermore, I would like to thank the editors of the book series ‘Argumentation in Context’, Frans van Eemeren and Bart Garssen, the staff of John Benjamins, as well as the anonymous reviewers whose comments have helped me to further develop my manuscript. I sincerely thank my proof-reader Michael Baumtrog for his precious help with the English language.

Finally, my biggest gratitude goes to my family, Felipe, and my close friends for their unconditional and constant support. My achievements are also their merits!