Argumentative Strategies Adopted by Parents and Children in Shopping Discussions

Abstract

In this article, the authors focused on argumentation that occurs between parents and children during shopping. Our findings showed that during shopping discussion, children are proactive in advocating and defending their standpoints. Children’s argumentative strategies vary from their cognitive ability. The arguments utilized by children can be classified into three categories: breaking the record of zero, fairness doctrine, and principle of beneficence. While the frequently used strategies by parents are: causal explanation, consequentialism explanation and utilitarian explanation.