Preference Organisation and Peer Disputes

How Young Children Resolve Conflict

Amelia Church

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Topic: Social Sciences
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317076230
• Subtopic: Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

How do children get their own way in arguments? What is the most effective way of pursuing one's own goals in preschool? 'Use your words' is an instruction frequently heard in nurseries and pre-schools encouraging young children to resolve the situation through verbal rather than physical means. Discourse is seen as the solution, yet, what words are the children supposed to use, and how do they go about resolving disputes? This fascinating book offers a conversation analysis of children's arguments, revealing disputing as a highly ordered, rule-governed activity, even amongst very young children. The author provides a rich theoretical discussion of the work in speech acts and conversational analysis, whilst offering a sophisticated review in relation to children's culture. It will be of great interest to conversation analysts within sociology and linguistics, as well as to educationalists and scholars of childhood.

Chapter 1
Introduction

Conflict between children

Lauren and Fran (aged three) are sitting in the back garden having a tea party. As Lauren pours ‘tea’ into chipped cups, she accidentally spills some on Fran’s leg. In response to Fran’s challenge “You poured juice on me”, Lauren replies quickly: “I didn’t”. Fran’s insistence (“You did”), and Lauren’s counter-denial (“I didn’t”) is repeated over a number of turns, until Lauren issues the indirect threat “I’m not your friend anymore”. Fran accompanies a later counter-threat (“Well I’m gonna tell on you”) by poking Lauren in the ear. The subsequent claim (“I was only tickling”) is obviously rejected by Lauren as she kicks Fran, who responds by pulling Lauren’s dress. The physical struggle escalates until Lauren bursts into tears and runs towards the back door of the house in search of her mother.

In this episode,1 the young girls are engrossed in their pretend play and the subsequent collapse of co-operative interaction. As adults, our involvement is usually restricted to the collapse of children’s arguments, where conflict has escalated beyond the point of children’s own sociolinguistic resources. Disputes between children, for the most part, are reconstructed from retrospective reports rather than first hand evidence. In the absence of adult supervision or intervention, then, how do young children manage disputes? What resources do young children employ to persuade, assuage or confront their peers in conflict situations? What do they say? How do they respond? What is the most effective way of pursuing one’s own goals in the preschool playroom? Fundamentally, how do children go about resolving disputes? Addressing these questions is the overriding aim of this book. The purpose of this chapter is to locate the work in the broader fields of conflict and children’s language development, and introduce the research project which informs the work as a whole.

What constitutes conflict?

Intuitively we recognise the episode between the two girls described above as a form of conflict. Given the range of interaction encompassed by this term, however, the type of conflict studied in this book needs to be identified. The generic phrase ‘adversative discourse’ is used to identify stretches of talk (and accompanying nonverbal behaviour) in which children oppose the prior utterance(s) or action(s) of another child or group of children. Opposition is fundamental to this type of discourse. Whilst definitions of verbal conflict are discussed in the next chapter, the terms adversative discourse, conflict, dispute and argument are used throughout to denote mutually articulated disagreement. For the most part, disagreement refers to real (rather than pretend) and serious (rather than joking) opposition which occurs spontaneously in the children’s interaction.

The emphasis in this research rests on verbal disputes as illustrative of young children’s developing communicative competence (see below), rather than on argument per se. This work is not concerned with exploration of reasoning, argumentation theory or studies of negotiation processes in the adult world (e.g. Pruitt, 1981; Diez, 1986; van Eemeren, Grootendorst, Blair and Willard, 1991; Pruitt and Carnevale, 1993; Ehlich and Wagner, 1995; van Eemeren, Grootendorst and Henkemans, 2002) nor with related concepts such as game theory (e.g. Schelling, 1960; Rapoport and Chammah, 1965). Here, the term ‘argument’ refers to opposing interaction between parties; in other words we are concerned with ‘arguing about’ rather than ‘arguing that’ (O’Keefe, 1977).

Negotiation theory falls beyond the scope of this book primarily because it concerns adult interaction. Whilst the overlap between adult and child conversation is acknowledged, I do not support the idea of child language as an imperfect version of adult language. A tradition of identifying children as incomplete, or by their inabilities rather than abilities precludes a comprehensive understanding of children’s social and linguistic competence (Waksler, 1991; Danby, 2002). The social world of young children can be considered an experience distinct from adult perspective (e.g. Corsaro, 2004). Indeed, childhood is attributed with specific social status, a status which exits through contrast with the adult world (Baker and Campbell, 2000).

Not only are arguments between adults outside the immediate area of inquiry, adult-child disputes (e.g. Vuchinich, 1984, 1999; Grootevant and Cooper, 1985; Hess and McDevitt, 1984) are also, for the most part, excluded. Our concern here is the talk-in-interaction, specifically adversative discourse, between children. Examining peer conflict affords an opportunity to see how children of similar ages manage to persuade or attempt to manipulate others of essentially equal status and same stage of language development. To this end, the skill and complexity of young children’s talk is uncovered, moving away from the idea of preschool as pre-competent.

Adversative discourse as productive interaction

Competency is subsumed by the notion of disputing as a complex, rule-governed, constructive, shared activity (Laursen, Hartup and Koplas, 1996: 77; Lein and Brenneis, 1978: 308; Brenneis, 1998). Moving away from viewing children as egocentric, Piaget would propose that ‘argument leads to intellectual co-operation and the increased understanding of self and others’ (Eisenberg, 1987: 114). In accommodating (or rejecting) the intentions of another speaker, children negotiate locally determined roles and rules, co-constructing the outcomes of disputes. Although disagreements require some sort of resolution for the prior content of conversation to resume (Stalpers, 1995: 288), adversative discourse should not be seen as an aberration or sort of non-conversation. Indeed, the data in this book shows children’s disputes to be the site of co-operative and productive talk-in-interaction. Furthermore, the ability to manage conflict ‘is related to other indexes of competence, including sociometric status, aggression, emotional control, and social adjustment’ (Chen and French, 2008: 604).

Oppositional talk provides an opportunity for children to construct and negotiate their own social world, simultaneously reflecting and constructing their particular cultural experiences. Indeed, ‘conflict among children latently functions to develop their sense of social structure and helps reproduce authority, friendship, and other interactional patterns that transcend single episodes of dispute’ (Maynard, 1985b: 220). Conflict fosters the acquisition and refinement of social skills (Hay and Ross, 1982: 112), and is related to social acceptance (Putallaz and Sheppard, 1995: 346). Far from causing permanent rifts or discord, arguments between children tend to be quickly forgotten: “That stupid Mr. Dan gonna come up there and say (0.4) ‘Y’all better (0.2) come on and shake hands’. Don’t mean nothin cuz we be playing together next day anyway” (Goodwin, 1982: 87).

Opposition arising in isolated disputes does not permanently disrupt peer interaction, and, moreover, the co-operative benefits of negotiating social relationships are enduring. As Corsaro and Rizzo (1990: 65) summarise, it is clear that ‘disputes and argumentation serve positive functions in terms of children’s development of communicative competence and social knowledge’. So whilst language remains the focus of this book, analysis of conflict discourse is also demonstrative of children as competent social agents, actively constructing peer culture.

Communicative competence

Children’s acquisition of language and developing abilities in social interaction have been studied in a myriad of ways – beyond traditional cognitive (Piaget, 1959) and socio-cultural (Vygotsky, 1986) theories – from behavioural approaches (Skinner, 1957), structural emphasis on syntax (e.g. Chomsky, 1957, 1965; Brown, 1973), rule-based systems (Bloom, 1970; MacWhinney, 1982), and systemic linguistics (Halliday 1975, 1978; Fine and Freedle, 1983), to an increasing emphasis on social context (e.g. Ochs and Schieffelin, 1979, 1983; Schieffelin and Ochs, 1986; Romaine, 1984). This study of children’s disputes belongs to the domain of developing communicative competence (Hymes, 1972, 1974; cf. Gumperz, 1986) where ability or performance is recognised not only as linguistic but encompassing broader, culturally-situated aspects of language in use. Although it is not designed to address the concept of communicative competence directly, the research contributes to a greater understanding of children’s developing abilities in language in interaction.2

As children acquire language for multiple purposes, they are learning to argue (Eisenberg, 1987; Maynard, 1986b). Far from being a disordered activity,3 in adversative discourse children are ‘playing with structures of embedding and ellipsis in return actions, providing disclaimers disarming the illocutionary force (Austin, 1962) of a prior speaker’s talk, and formulating logical proofs – all without creating rifts in relationships’ (Goodwin, 1982: 91). Verbal disputes, then, provide children with an opportunity not only to manipulate or persuade their play partners but use increasingly complex language to do so. Viewing verbal conflict as an activity best avoided, one to be ended as quickly as possible (cf. Sackin and Thelen, 1984), fails to acknowledge the opportunity afforded by adversative discourse for children to pay close attention to language. Indeed, dispute contexts provide children with far greater motivation to quickly produce creative structures than could be constructed by the teacher for pedagogic purposes (Goodwin and Goodwin, 1987).

The ubiquitous teacher instruction for children to “use your words” during conflict with peers, prompts consideration of the range of strategies employed by young children. Children are encouraged to pursue verbal rather than physical resolution of conflict, yet there is little specification in the preschool classroom as to what words the children should actually use. We need to consider not only what words children use, but what words they use in response to opposition. Moreover, the words produced by children in serial oppositional utterances will be considered in terms of dispute outcomes. What words do children use to resolve disputes?

Outline of monograph

Existing research in children’s arguments has predominantly focused on types of verbal strategies produced within dispute episodes. As shown throughout Chapter 2, earlier studies in peer conflict have identified speech acts in disputes and, in some cases, attempted to establish patterns of subsequent utterances. Whilst illustrative of types, frequency and social context of disputes, these prior studies do not effectively account for the sequential, turn-by-turn structure of adversative discourse. The primary aim of this research is to understand what leads to conflict resolution, or alternatively, to a breakdown of collaborative play, by investigating children’s responses to opposition and the relationship between oppositional turns.

The limitations of speech act theory in the study of adversative discourse are addressed more directly in Chapter 3, through juxtaposition with the methodological advantages of a conversation analytic approach. Conversation analysis (CA) is particularly well suited to investigation of children’s peer language given the insistence on recording real interaction, analysis driven by the data in favour of a priori hypotheses, and consequent attention to features of the talk-in-interaction which are salient to the participants themselves. The real interaction in this study was recorded (audio and video) in two child care centres in Melbourne, involving children enrolled in the four-year-old preschool program (attending on average 3 days per week), which generated a dataset of the 60 disputes transcribed for analysis (see Appendix A).

Preference organisation, (an ordering principle defined by the asymmetry of second pair parts – described in Chapter 3) was found to be prominent in the preliminary analysis. That is, turns in the children’s disputes were typically produced in one of two ways: (1) as short direct opposition (preferred turn shape) or (2) as delayed (by markers or pauses) and justified opposition (dispreferred turn shape). Chapter 4 presents an analysis of preference features occurring throughout the disputes. In order to determine if preference organisation is an organising principle in adversative discourse, a description of the outcome of disputes is required; so Chapter 5 is devoted to exemplifying three types of dispute endings identified in the data: resolution, abandonment and teacher intervention. The function of threats as ‘atypical’ dispreferred turn shapes is also considered in Chapter 5.

Chapter 6 establishes the relationship between turn shape and outcome. The analysis shows preferred turn shapes to be sustaining – more likely to promote conflict – and dispreferred turn shapes as non-sustaining – resolution is only secured through final utterances where the opposition is justified. The quality of accounts (i.e. the reason given for the speaker’s objection) also proves to be influential in the development of disputes; the more objective the content of the account, the more persuasive the utterance. The micro-analysis afforded by conversation analysis, with particular focus on features of preference organisation, proves effective in uncovering how children go about resolving disputes.

Intervention strategies for children to manage relationships with their peers tend to be adult-centric. Children, however, do not necessarily negotiate social relationships as adults would. Empirical evidence, such as provided in the research reported here, is essential to improve understanding of the highly ordered activity of young children’s social interaction. The findings contribute to a greater understanding of how children function in their own social worlds. Importantly, these social worlds are constructed and maintained by increasingly complex language use, that is, by developing communicative competence.

1 This footage appears in the documentary Woodbine Place (McEvoy, 1989), which explores children’s friendships and play activities in a neighbourhood of urban Northumberland, UK.

2 For exemplary work in the area of children’s developing communicative competence see Susan Ervin-Tripp (e.g. 1977, 1978, 1982).

3 Preschool-aged children’s ability to manage conversations with peers is well documented (e.g. Dore, 1979, 1985; Corsaro, 1979; Garvey and Berninger, 1981; Garvey, 1974, 1984; Ochs, 1983; McTear, 1985; Wood, 1989; Foster, 1990; Ninio and Snow, 1996; Thompson, 1997).

Chapter 2
Defining Child Conflict

Introduction

To position the research reported in this monograph, it is important to identify its departure from prior studies. Throughout this book, the method of conversation analysis (CA) is framed as a novel perspective on this type of children’s discourse – although there is increasing interest in CA in children’s interactions more broadly (see Chapter 3). The analytic account presented in this book responds immediately to the unexplored ground in existing research in children’s conflict. As such the existing ground requires some account.

Chapter 1 was concerned with identifying our interest in peer disputes and articulating why children’s adversative discourse should be studied. This chapter presents a summary of what has already been studied in child conflict. Each of the sections in the chapter represents a theme identified in studies in child conflict. First, definitions of conflict are discussed, followed by the interdependent classification of types and frequencies of conflict, and interpretation of how disputes begin. Identifying verbal strategies produced during arguments is a prominent concern in existing research, and some attempts have been made to investigate sequences of these strategies (where disputes may escalate or, conversely, be resolved). Few of these attempts have satisfactorily captured the properties of dispute closings. Lastly, the wide interest in gender differences in children’s arguments is discussed.

This review is deliberately restricted to studies of conflict between children of the same age. Discussion of arguments between children and their parents (e.g. Maccoby, 1996; Crockenberg and Lourie, 1996), siblings (e.g. Ross, 1995), or children of significantly different ages are, for the most part (with the exception of e.g. Vuchinich, 1990) beyond the scope of immediate relevance. Similarly, research in conflict resolution strategies in atypical populations – for example children with specific language impairment (e.g. Horowitz, Jansson, Ljungberg and Hedenbro, 2005) do not feature here. Furthermore, whilst work in developmental psychology extends to examining why children argue and determining the influence of such interaction on developing social cognition, this research is concerned with features of the language used by children to manage conflict with peers. Before the existing work on children’s language in disputes is reported, however, what actually constitutes adversative discourse needs to be established.

Definitions of conflict

Argument can be considered a ‘fuzzy’ concept (O’Keefe and Benoit, 1982: 157). As disputes arise in ongoing interaction, identifying adversative sequences is not a straightforward task (Corsaro and Rizzo, 1990: 26). Yet despite the breadth of discourse denoted by the nominal ‘argument’ and debate about confining episode boundaries, core features of conflict can be identified. Essential properties of disputes are: the central notion of opposition, boundaries of episodes, and mutuality. These properties carry across registers of disputes.

The adversative episode is defined as the interaction which grows out of an opposition to a request for action, an assertion, or an action. It is a social task whose objective is the resolution of that conflict or contradiction. The negating responses include refusals, disagreements, denials and objections. Thus, an adversative episode is a sequence which begins with an opposition and ends with a resolution or dissipation of conflict. Its apparent goal is to work out the initial opposing positions of the participants (Eisenberg and Garvey, 1981: 150).

‘Opp...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Defining Child Conflict
• 3 Conversation Analysis
• 4 Peer Disputes
• 5 Dispute Outcomes
• 6 Preference and Dispute Outcomes
• 7 How to Resolve Disputes
• Appendix A
• References
• Index