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Article published In: Language and Dialogue
Vol. 9:3 (2019) ► pp.379–401

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Parental strategies in argumentative dialogues with their children at mealtimes

 | Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore (Italy)
Published online: 29 October 2019
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https://doi.org/10.1075/ld.00048.bov
Abstract
This study focuses on parent-child argumentation to identify the argumentative strategies most frequently used by parents to resolve in their favor the process of negotiation occurring during argumentative dialogues with their children at mealtime. Findings of the analysis of 132 argumentative dialogues indicate that parents mostly use arguments based on the notions of quality and quantity in food-related discussions. The parents use other types of arguments such as the appeal to consistency, the arguments from authority, and the arguments from analogy, in discussions related to the teaching of correct behaviors in social situations within and outside the family context. The results of this study show how parents and children contribute to co-constructing the dialogic process of negotiating their divergent opinions.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Studies on argumentation in the family context
  • 3.Methodology
    • 3.1Data corpus
    • 3.2Transcription procedures
    • 3.3Definition of argumentative situation and selection of the arguments
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1Quality and quantity
    • 4.2Appeal to consistency
    • 4.3Authority
    • 4.4Analogy
  • 5.Discussion and conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
References (50)
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