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How children start arguments*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2008

Douglas W. Maynard
Douglas W. Maynard
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology, University of Wisconsin
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Abstract

Previous research on children's arguments has neglected their initial phases, particularly how they arise out of children's ongoing practical activities. This paper examines how any utterance or activity can be opposed, the concept of opposition being at the center of any definition of argument. However, once opposition has occurred, it can be treated in a variety of ways, and a full-blown argument or dispute is only one possible and contingent outcome. Children analyze others's moves not only verbally, but nonverbally as well. Thus, bodily actions and presupposition are necessary components in the analysis of how arguments are started. Nonverbal oppositional moves may be at the base of semantically constructed disputes. When opposition occurs, it is to be taken to imply the violation of some rule or value. The meaning of that rule or value relative to children's culture is taken to have to do not with its content, but its usage in promoting a local social organization. (Conversational analysis, child language, social organization, presupposition, dispute genres, American English [middle class, Caucasian])

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Articles
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Language in Society , Volume 14 , Issue 1 , March 1985 , pp. 1 - 29
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1985

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