On giving reasons in verbal disputes: the development of justifying.

• Author: Sprott, Richard A.
• Position: Special Issue: Interpersonal Argument

INTRODUCTION

In the past seven years an interest in the discourse structure of children's spontaneous verbal disputes has added new detailed information to the study of children's argumentation (Dunn & Munn, 1987; Eisenberg, 1992; Maynard, 1985; Phinney, 1986; Willbrand & Rieke, 1986). Taking advantage of analytic techniques used in discourse analysis, the purpose of this study is to examine the development of children's argumentation by analyzing the discourse contexts of justifications. By analyzing justifications, the study addresses issues in the development of children's argumentation and interpersonal conflict.

Previous Studies of Children's Disputes

Conflicts between children have been of interest to developmental psychologists as social and cognitive phenomena for many years; one of the first studies conducted in the early 1930s (Dawe, 1934) investigated the relation between conflicts and social adjustment. Piaget stressed the importance of conflict in cognitive and moral development (Piaget, 1932), while Vygotsky stressed internalization of social interaction and the zone of proximal development (Vygotsky, 1978), which would also include interpersonal conflicts, as important to cognitive and communicative development. In recent years, however, technological advancements in recording interaction and theoretical advancements in the study of language have created a new sensitivity to the complexities of children's conflicts. Several studies (Eisenberg, 1992; Hay, 1984; Maynard, 1985; Phinney, 1986; Shantz, 1987) have described the nature of arguments among young children in the following ways: arguments are rare and very short events when compared to the rest of children's interactions during a typical day, lasting less than ten turns 90% of the time; the first moves in an argument have a tremendous effect on the rest of the interaction; similarly, the topic of dispute has a tremendous effect on the interaction, and topics change in the course of development from an initial focus on object control to include issues of behavioral control or ideational opposition (differences in beliefs, likes, rules of interaction, moral or conventional transgressions). Dunn & Munn (1987) provided the first study of children's first uses of justifications in spontaneous verbal disputes. In a longitudinal study of 43 children observed at home at 18, 24, and 36 months, they found that justifications were present but very rare at 18 months, occurring in only 4% of all the disputes with mothers. They noted a significant increase in the use of the justifications between 24 and 36 months. The justifications were most likely to occur in disputes over object rights or control; these same types of disputes were also the ones which elicited the most anger and distress at 18 and 24 months. In a study of 4-year-olds' conflicts with their mothers, Eisenberg (1992) found that the children used justifications in 36% of their disputes, and these disputes concerned plans and intentions and also expressed more anger and distress. The study also found that both children and adults used justifications more when they initiated the conflict, and were more likely to use justifications if the other did so previously.

Communication theorists and argumentation theorists have also investigated children's verbal disputes, both elicited and spontaneous, in order to broaden the concept of argumentation and reason giving by using analytic techniques from discourse analysis and to examine the development of argumentation (Benoit, 1983; Haslett, 1983; O'Keefe & Benoit, 1982, Willbrand & Rieke, 1986). These studies have found both developmental differences in strategies for resolving disputes (Benoit, 1983) and both developmental and stylistic/personality differences in the use of more mature reasoning strategies in verbal disputes (Haslett, 1983; Willbrand & Rieke, 1986). These studies have focused on explicating the relation between argumentation and interpersonal verbal disputes, trying to understand the relation between reason giving (an argument people make) and interpersonal conflict (an argument people have) (O'Keefe, 1982).

Areas of Cognitive Development Affecting Verbal Disputes and Argumentation

Three important lines of investigation in developmental psychology have not been applied directly to the study of children's verbal disputes, but they may have an indirect impact on the developmental patterns found in this investigation. They include domain theory of cognitive and moral development (Turiel, 1983; Turiel & Davidson, 1986), children's developing theory of mind (Astington, 1986; Astington, Harris, & Olson, 1988; Wellman & Estes, 1986), and Vygotsky's zone of proximal development and internalization (Vygotsky, 1978).

Domain theory of cognitive and moral development states that "cognitive structure or organization is a feature of the individual's knowledge systems rather than "the thought" of the individual" (Turiel & Davidson, p. 108); there are distinct domains of knowledge, constructed by the child differently due to differences in interactions, so that critical thinking in the domain of "person" knowledge must be analyzed apart from critical thinking in the domain of "physical" knowledge. Each of these separate systems of knowledge would be reflected differently in children's argumentation and verbal disputes.

Children's "theory of mind" research investigates changes in children's understanding of how the mind works; this indirectly affects how children understand evidence, intention, and justification. Most of this research has found many critical changes occurring between 3 and 5 years of age (Astington, 1986; Astington, Harris, & Olson, 1988) and has also found evidence of systematic domain differences (Wellman & Estes, 1986).

Vygotsky's theoretical work on the zone of proximal development and internalization stresses the importance of experienced others in both cognitive and communicative development; it investigates the connection between interpersonal interaction (i.e., an argument people have) and cognitive development (i.e., an argument people make) in a principled, theoretical way. Studies of children's abilities tested in isolation have been compared with children's abilities when working with an experienced other or others; these studies have found consistent differences in children's abilities between these two types of contexts (Brown & Ferrara, 1985).

Applied to the development of verbal disputes and justifications, these three lines would predict that (1) different types of verbal disputes would reflect different domains of knowledge, and therefore may have different developmental stories (domain theory); (2) children's strategies for justifications may be affected by changes in children's understanding of how the mind works between 3 and 5 (theory of mind); and (3) verbal disputes and justifications with adults may be at a higher developmental stage than verbal disputes and justifications with peers (zone of proximal development).

None of these have been tested directly in the present study, but they have been formative in the creation of the methods of analysis, along with theories of discourse structure (Fraser, 1990; Mann & Thompson, 1988; Redeker, 1990; Schiffrin, 1987; Sweetser, 1990). Insights from each of these areas will be used to discuss the findings.

The goal of this paper is to show (1) how a fine-grained discourse analytic technique can be applied to the questions that communication and argumentation theorists have investigated, and (2) how the resultant patterns reflect the social, cognitive and communicative processes investigated by developmental psychologists.

Discourse Analysis

I have defined justification as giving a reason in an argument or dispute, a specific discourse context or speech event--giving a reason in another discourse activity may be considered a different but related act. Therefore, justifications are a subset of explanations in general, sharing some of the same characteristics, but justifications are different from other explanatory talk by being subordinate to a particular move in conflict talk instead of being the focus of interaction; justifications are also framed by a different purpose in interaction, persuasion, rather than framed by a pedagogic purpose like explanations (see Willbrand & Rieke, 1986, for a similar definition of reason-giving).

The speech act justification implies the notion of discourse frame (Gerhardt, 1990) to a greater degree than other types of speech acts. A discourse frame is a hierarchically structured sequence of utterances "whereby the occurrence of a particular head act establishes the appropriateness of a set of ancillary acts..." (Gerhardt, 1990; p.3). Justifications are a type of act which is subordinate to a head act, making them distinct from explanations or other talk of causality or motivation which are not subordinate; they are identified by reference to other acts in the discourse frame and do not stand by themselves. The notion of discourse frame contains two distinct characteristics; the head act and the relation between the head act and the subordinate act. To analyze the discourse frame of justifications, we must pay attention to the head act of the justification and the relation between the head act and the justification.

While researchers have frequently used speech act analyses in studies of children's disputes (Benoit, 1983; Eisenberg, 1992; Willbrand & Rieke, 1986), few have closely...