Article published In:
Journal of Argumentation in ContextVol. 4:2 (2015) ► pp.133–157
“This is the cheese bought by Grandpa”
A study of the arguments from authority used by parents with their children during mealtime conversations
This paper aims to examine how parents use the argument from authority and its effectiveness to persuade their children to accept rules and prescriptions during mealtimes. Using the model of a critical discussion integrated with the Argumentum Model of Topics as analytical approach, a corpus of 31 arguments from authority advanced by parents were analyzed. The results of this study show that parents always refer to an adult as source of authority. This is mostly themselves (self-oriented argument), and, less frequently, a third party (other-oriented argument) such as a grandparent or a child’s teacher. In light of these results, it is reasonable to assume that for the parents the reference to themselves is a more effective argument than the reference to a third party. However, in the corpus the children are more prone to accept their parents’ argumentation when the authority is another adult and not one of their parents.
References
Andone, Corina
2012 “The Reasonableness of Confrontational Strategic Maneuvering in Political Interviews.” In Exploring Argumentative Contexts, ed. by van Eemeren Frans H. and Garssen Bart, 3–22. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 
APA
2009 Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association. (6th edition). New York, NY: American Psychological Association.
Arcidiacono, Francesco, and Antonio Bova
2011 “Argumentative Strategies for Conflict Management and Resolution in Italian and Swiss Families.” Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 301: 1385–1389.
2015 “Activity-bound and activity-unbound arguments in response to parental eat-directives during mealtime conversations: Differences and similarities in children of 3-5 and 6-9 years old.” Learning, Culture and Social Interaction 61:40–55.
Arcidiacono, Francesco, Clotilde Pontecorvo, and Sara Greco Morasso
2009 “Family Conversations: The Relevance of Context in Evaluating Argumentation.” Studies in Communication Sciences 9 (2): 79–92.
Aronsson, Karin
1998 “Identity-in-Interaction and Social Choreography.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 31 (1): 75–89.
Aronsson, Karin, and Asta Cekaite
2011 “Activity Contracts and Directives in Everyday Family politics.” Discourse and Society 22 (2): 1–18.
Aukrust, Vibeke G., and Catherine E. Snow
1998 “Narratives and Explanations during Mealtime Conversations in Norway and the U.S.” Language in Society 27 (2): 221–246.
Bigi, Sarah
2012 “Contextual Constraints on Argumentation. The Case of the Medical Encounter”. In Exploring Argumentative Contexts, ed. by Frans H. van Eemeren and Bart Garssen, 289–303. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Blum-Kulka, Shoshana
1997 Dinner Talk: Cultural Patterns of Sociability and Socialization in Family Discourse. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Bova, Antonio
2015 “Adult as a Source of Expert Opinion in Child’s Argumentation during Family Mealtime Conversations.” Journal of Argumentation in Context 4 (1): 4–20.
Bova, Antonio, and Francesco Arcidiacono
2013a “Investigating Children’s Why-questions. A Study Comparing Argumentative and Explanatory Function.” Discourse Studies 15 (6): 713–734.
2013b.”Invoking the Authority of Feelings as a Strategic Maneuver in Family Mealtime Conversations.” Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology 23 (3): 206–224.
2014 “You must eat the Salad because it is Nutritious. Argumentative Strategies adopted by Parents and Children in Food-related Discussions at Mealtimes.” Appetite 731: 81–94.
Brumark, Åsa
2006 “Argumentation at the Swedish Family Dinner Table.” In Proceedings of the 6th Conference of the International Society for the Study of Argumentation, ed. by Frans H. van Eemeren, Anthony J. Blair, Francisca Snoeck Henkemans, and Charles A. Willards, 513–520. Amsterdam: Rozenberg/Sic Sat.
2008 “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 (2): 251–271.
Dunn, Judy, and Penny Munn
1987 “Developmental of Justification in Disputes with Mother and Sibling.” Developmental Psychology 23 (6): 791–798.
van Eemeren, Frans H
van Eemeren, Frans H., and Rob Grootendorst
1992 Argumentation, Communication, and Fallacies. A Pragma-Dialectical Perspective. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
2004 A Systematic Theory of Argumentation: The Pragma-dialectical Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
van Eemeren, Frans H., Rob Grootendorst, and A. Francisca Snoeck Henkemans
2002 Argumentation: Analysis, Evaluation, Presentation. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
van Eemeren, Frans H., and Peter Houtlosser
2003 “The Development of the Pragma-dialectical Approach to Argumentation.” Argumentation 17 (4): 387–403.
Erickson, Frederick
1988 “Discourse Coherence, Participation Structure and Personal Display in a Family Dinner Table Conversation.” Working Papers in Educational Linguistics 4 (1): 1–26.
1990 “The Social Construction of Discourse Coherence in a Family Dinner Table Conversation.” In Conversational Organization and its Development, ed. by Bruce Dorval, 207–238. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
Felton, Mark, and Deanna Kuhn
2001 “The Development of Argumentative Discourse Skills.” Discourse Processes 32 (2&3): 135–153.
Fiese, Barbara H., Kimberly P. Foley, and Mary Spagnola
2006 “Routine and Ritual Elements in Family Mealtimes: Contexts for Child Well-being and Family Identity.” New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development 1111: 67–89.
Goodman, L.A
1961 “Snowball Sampling.” Annals of Mathematical Statistics 32 (1): 148–170.
Greco Morasso, Sara
2011 Argumentation in Dispute Mediation: A Reasonable Way to Handle Conflict. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
2012 “Contextual Frames and their Argumentative Implications: A Case-study in Media Argumentation.” Discourse Studies 14 (2): 197–216.
Heckathorn, Douglas D
1997 “Respondent-driven Sampling: A New Approach to the Study of Hidden Populations.” Social Problems 44 (2): 174–199.
2002 “Respondent-driven Sampling II: Deriving Valid Estimates from Chain-referral Samples of Hidden Populations.” Social Problems 49 (1): 11–34.
Hester, Stephen, and Sally Hester
2010. “Conversational Actions and Category Relations: An Analysis of a Children’s Argument.” Discourse Studies 12 (1): 33-48.
Laforest, Marty
2002 “Scenes of Family Life: Complaining in Everyday conversation.” Journal of Pragmatics 34 (10–11): 1595–1620.
Laurier, E., and Sally Wiggins
2011 “Finishing the Family Meal. The Interactional Organisation of Satiety.” Appetite 56 (1): 53–64.
Ochs, Elinor, and Merav Shohet
2006 “The Cultural Structuring of Mealtime Socialization.” In Family Mealtime as a Context of Development and Socialization, ed. by Reed W. Larson, Angela R. Wiley, and Kathryn R. Branscomb, 35–50. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Ochs, Elinor, Ruth Smith, and Carolyn Taylor
1989 “Detective Stories at Dinnertime: Problem-Solving through Co-narration.” Cultural Dynamics 2 (2): 238–257.
Palmieri, Rudi
2012 “The Diversifying of Contextual Constraints and Argumentative Strategies in Friendly and Hostile Takeover Bids.” In Exploring Argumentative Contexts, ed. by Frans H. van Eemeren and Bart Garssen, 343–375. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Pan, Barbara. A., Rivka Y. Perlmann, and Catherine E. Snow
2000 “Food for thought: Dinner Table as a Context for Observing Parent-Child Discourse.” In Methods for Studying Language Production, ed. by Lise Menn and Nan B. Ratner, 205–224. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Patterson, Gerald R., and Marion S. Forgatch
1995 “Predicting Future Clinical Adjustment from Treatment Outcome and Process Variables.” Psychological Assessment 7 (3): 275–285.
Pontecorvo, Clotilde, and Francesco Arcidiacono
2007 Famiglie all’italiana: parlare a tavola. Milan: Cortina.
Pontecorvo, Clotilde, and Alessandra Fasulo
1997 “Learning to Argue in Family Shared Discourse: The Reconstruction of Past Events.” In Discourse, Tools and Reasoning: Essays on Situated Cognition, ed. by Lauren B. Resnick, Roger Saljo, Clotilde Pontecorvo, and Barbara Burge, 406–442. New York, NY: Springer.
1999 “Planning a Typical Italian Meal: A Family Reflection on Culture.” Culture Psychology 5 (3): 313–335.
Pontecorvo, Clotilde, and Sabine Pirchio
2000.“A Developmental View on Children’s Arguing: The Need of the other.” Human Development 43 (6): 361–363.
Rigotti, Eddo
2009 “Whether and How Classical Topics can be Revived within Contemporary Argumentation Theory.” In Pondering on Problems of Argumentation, ed. by Frans H. van Eemeren and Bart Garssen, 157–178. Dordrecht: Springer.
Rigotti, Eddo, and Sara Greco Morasso
2010. “Comparing the Argumentum Model of Topics to other Contemporary Approaches to Argument Schemes: The Procedural and Material Components.” Argumentation 24 (4): 489-512.
Rundquist, Suellen
1992 “Indirectness: A Gender Study of Flouting Grice’s Maxims.” Journal of Pragmatics 18 (5): 431–449.
Slomkowski, Cheryl L., and Judy Dunn
1992 “Arguments and Relationships within the Family: Differences in Young Children’s Disputes with Mother and Sibling.” Developmental Psychology 28 (5): 919–924.
Stein, Nancy L., and Elizabeth R. Albro
2001 “The Origins and Nature of Arguments: Studies in Conflict Understanding, Emotion and Negotiation.” Discourse Processes 32 (2–3): 113–133.
Stein, Nancy L., and Christopher A. Miller
1993 “The Development of Memory and Reasoning Skill in Argumentative Contexts: Evaluating, Explaining, and Generating Evidence.” In Advances in Instructional Psychology, ed. by Robert Glaser, 285–335. Hillsdale NJ: Erlbaum.
Sterponi, Laura
(2003) “Account Episodes in Family Discourse: The Making of Morality in Everyday Interaction.” Discourse Studies 5 (1): 79–100.
(2009) “Accountability in Family Discourse: Socialization into Norms and Standards and Negotiation of Responsibility in Italian Dinner Conversations.” Childhood 16 (4): 441–459.
Walton, Douglas N
1997 Appeal to Expert Opinion. Arguments from Authority. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press.
Wiggins, Sally
2002 “Talking with Your Mouth Full: Gustatory mmms and the Embodiment of Pleasure.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 35 (3): 311–336.
2013 “The Social Life of ‘eugh’: Disgust as Assessment in Family Mealtimes.” British Journal of Social Psychology 52 (3): 489–509.
Cited by
Cited by 9 other publications
Bova, Antonio
2019. A Qualitative Methodology for Studying Parent–Child Argumentation. In The Functions of Parent-Child Argumentation, ► pp. 19 ff. 
Bova, Antonio
2019. Prevailing Arguments and Types of Conclusions of Parent–Child Argumentation. In The Functions of Parent-Child Argumentation, ► pp. 65 ff.
Bova, Antonio
2019. Parental strategies in argumentative dialogues with their children at mealtimes. Language and Dialogue 9:3 ► pp. 379 ff.
Bova, Antonio
2021. Dialogical construction of parental feeding strategies during family mealtimes. Journal of Health Psychology 26:10 ► pp. 1684 ff.
Bova, Antonio
2021. Co-construction of argumentative discussions between parents and children during mealtime conversations. A pragma-dialectical analysis. Learning, Culture and Social Interaction 29 ► pp. 100519 ff.
Bova, Antonio & Francesco Arcidiacono
2016. The argument from expert opinion as other-oriented reference in disciplinary discussions. Studies in Communication Sciences 16:2 ► pp. 114 ff.
Bova, Antonio & Francesco Arcidiacono
2020. Analyser les échanges discursifs entre parents et enfants par la reconstruction argumentative. Revue internationale de l'éducation familiale n° 46:2 ► pp. 123 ff.
Bova, Antonio, Francesco Arcidiacono & Fabrice Clément
2017. Chapter 11. The transmission of what is taken for granted in children’s socialization. In Argumentation across Communities of Practice [Argumentation in Context, 10], ► pp. 259 ff.
Bubikova-Moan, Jarmila & Margareth Sandvik
2022. Argumentation in Early Childhood: A Systematic Review. Human Development 66:6 ► pp. 397 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 1 april 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.