A pragma-dialectical analysis of the types of arguments used by children aged 3-6 years in response to parental directives during family mealtimes

Previous works have investigated the argumentative skills of young children by referring to the number of arguments and counterarguments as the sole indicator to assess their capacities. Besides, so far, the study of preschool children's argumentation has only been partially addressed compared to the study of argumentation of school age children. This study aims to investigate the types of arguments used by children between 3 and 6 years to support their refusal to parental directives during family mealtime conversations. The data corpus is composed of 132 argumentative discussions selected from 30 video-recorded meals of 10 Swiss and Italian families. To analyze the sequences in which children advance different types of arguments to support their refusal to parental directives, we employed the pragma-dialectical ideal model of critical discussion. The findings of this study show that, in discussions related to food, children mostly put forward arguments based on the notions of quality and quantity. Less frequently, children put forward other types of arguments such as the expert's opinion or consistency's argument. Overall, the results of this study indicate that the types of children's responses are strictly connected to the type of argument previously advanced by their parents. This aspect is particularly relevant in terms of children's capacities to engage in argumentative exchanges.