"Dwarfs Do Not Shoot": An Analysis of Children's Justifications

Abstract

In disputes and other conflict talk, speakers adopt two conversational roles: rejecting the addressee's position and providing some ground for their own position. Arguments used as grounds commonly show that the speaker's position is based on underlying norms and rules that are supposed to be shared by the participants. Thus, providing justifications in disputes means producing arguments that can make the speaker's position less questionable by the recipient. Several studies have analyzed children's social and verbal behavior in conflict interaction (Brenneis & Lein, 1977; Eisenberg & Garvey, 1981; Goodwin, 1983; Maynard, 1985) and have shown that children can produce justifications at an early age. For instance, toddlers frequently justify struggles over toys by claiming possession. In mother-child conflicts over the right to perform certain actions, 3-year-olds have justified their own position by arguing about the consequences of the actions (Dunn & Munn, 1987). When the morality of an action is questioned, preschool children seem to use justifications consisting of redefinitions of the action itself. In discussions with their teacher, 5-year-olds have produced justifications consisting of causal explanations (Orsolini & Pontecorvo,