Topoi in Argumentative Sequences of Child-Child Interactions

Linguistic Reconstructions of Childhood Cultural Plausibility

Bibliographic Data

ID19554527
AuthorsTamara Koch (University of Basel), Birte Arendt (0000-0002-3427-5382, Universität Greifswald)
Year2026
Volume9
Issue2
Pages260-283
Publication date2026-02-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueResearch on Children and Social Interaction (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2057-5807 • E-ISSN: 2057-5815
PublisherUniversity of Toronto Press Inc. (UTPress) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.3138/rcsi-2025-0010
OpenAlexW7148549196
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited15

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

Argumentation theory · Argumentative · Topos theory · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition · Linguistic research and analysis

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