Topoi in Argumentative Sequences of Child-Child Interactions: Linguistic Reconstructions of Childhood Cultural Plausibility

Abstract: In this article, we look at context-dependency of argumentation, captured as specific reasoning language (“Begründungssprache”), and focus on argumentation in children's conversations as an expression of childhood cultural context. We analyze how children establish plausibility in peer discussions with the help of topoi. So far, little is known about plausibility among children ( Arendt, 2019 ). The category of topos can be used to reconstruct the basis of the arguments’ plausibility and, at the same time, typologize the argumentative statements in order to reconstruct reasoning language. We show which topoi are used by the children, how they can be typologized, and how they are interactively developed within argumentative sequences in peer discussions. For this purpose, we adopt a conversation-analytical approach combined with concepts from argumentation theory and use authentic audio and video data of child-child interactions of 33 German-speaking children 3 to 6 years of age in informal play situations and of 120 Swiss German-speaking children 7 to 12 years of age in a school setting.