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

Parental strategies in argumentative dialogues with their children at mealtimes

| Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore (Italy)

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.

Keywords: argumentative strategies, family, mealtime, negotiation, parent-child interaction
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
Published online: 29 October 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ld.00048.bov
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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. DOI logo
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2020. The risks of misunderstandings in family discourse. Language and Dialogue 10:3 ► pp. 340 ff. DOI logo

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