Résultat de la recherche
The significance of the adversative connectives aber, mais, ma (‘but’) as indicators in young children’s argumentation
Adversative connectives have been analyzed as articulating explicit and implicit facets of argumentative moves and have been thus recognized as potential argumentative indicators. Here we examine adversative connectives Ger. aber, Fr. mais, It. ma (‘but’) in young children’s speech in the context of the ArgImp project, a research endeavor seeking to understand in which situations children aged between two and six years engage in argumentation and how their contributions are structured. Two multilingual corpora have been collected for the project: (1) everyday family conversations, (2) semi-structured play activities and problem solving in a kindergarten setting. Through the detailed analysis of a small collection of examples, we consider the indicative potential of adversative connectives for identifying argumentative episodes in interactions involving young children and for the reconstruction of the inferential configurations of children’s contributions to these argumentative discussions. The results show that fully fledged argumentative interpretations of adversatives occur as a possibility in children’s speech, and that adversative connectives can be used profitably to identify less apparent argumentative confrontations and implicit standpoints in children’s speech.
The Analysis of Implicit Premises within Children’s Argumentative Inferences
This paper presents preliminary findings of the project [name omitted for anonymity]. This interdisciplinary project builds on Argumentation theory and developmental sociocultural psychology for the study of children’s argumentation. We reconstruct children’s inferences in adult-child and child-child dialogical interaction in conversation in different settings. We focus in particular on implicit premises using the Argumentum Model of Topics (AMT) for the reconstruction of the inferential configuration of arguments. Our findings reveal that sources of misunderstandings are more often than not due to misalignments of implicit premises between adults and children; these misalignments concern material premises rather than the inferential-procedural level.
Analysing implicit premises within children’s argumentative inferences
The significance of the adversative connectives aber, mais, ma (‘but’) as indicators in young children’s argumentation
The significance of the adversative connectives aber, mais, ma (‘but’) as indicators in young children’s argumentation
Analysing Implicit Premises Within Children’s Argumentative Inferences
This paper presents preliminary findings of the project “Analysing children’s implicit argumentation”. We propose to reconstruct implicit premises of children’s arguments within adult-children discussions in different settings, using the Argumentum Model of Topics (AMT) for the reconstruction of the inferential configuration of arguments. We show that sources of misunderstandings are more often than not due to misalignments of implicit premises between adults and children; these misalignments concern material premises rather than the inferential-procedural level.
Shifting from a monological to a dialogical perspective on children’s argumentation. Lessons learned
When two- to six-year-old children contribute to argumentative discussion, how do they reason? Can Argumentation theory, a discipline that up to now has largely focused on adult expert productions, contribute to a psychological understanding of the child? And, in turn, can a close examination of children's argumentative moves contribute to the study of inference in argumentation? Our interdisciplinary research program ArgImp, at the crossroads of psychology, education and argumentation theory, tries to enrich these two lines of enquiry by conducting empirical studies with young children involved in argumentative activities and by analyzing them with models and methods borrowed from Argumentation theory (in particular, Plantin, 1996; van Eemeren & Grootendorst, 2004; Rigotti and Greco, 2010).
Analyses of the efforts to introduce argumentation in learning activities at school reveal the theoretical and practical complexity of such ambition (Rapanta & Macagno, 2016; Schwarz & Baker, 2017). However, little is known about the psychological difficulties met by children in developing such skills, and the existing evidence seems contradictory. This has led us to a theoretical shift from argumentation seen as a "skill" to argumentation seen as a "contribution to a critical discussion". Our results show that a consideration of the dialogical (and not just individual) nature of argumentation and attention to argumentation as a process can help understand young children's reasoning activity and how it is embedded in their larger psychological activity. Adults tend to be centered on specific linguistic or cognitive behaviors expected from kids taking part in argumentative discourse, while our analyses reveal complex symbolic and relational work that children also accomplish in order to produce argumentation. They are active contributors to critical discussions using multiple argumentations and introducing issues. Often the inferences that children make are not the ones that adults expect and the latter then tend to interrupt them.
Children help us to shed a developmental light on argumentation: issues and standpoints are not always fixed but are likely to evolve in time; discussion issues are likely to be transformed as they are talked about; and standpoints are not always present before being co-constructed in the on-going dialogue.