L’utilisation d’arguments d’autorité déontique dans les conversations entre adultes et enfants

The use of deontic authority arguments in adult-children conversations. In this study, we analyze conversations between parents and children (aged 6 to 9) at the family mealtime to investigate the adults’ use of deontic authority arguments. Within a corpus of 15 videorecording of family interactions at the dinner table, we identified the deontic authority arguments put forward by parents and analyzed them by using the Critical Discussion Model (developed by the pragma-dialectical approach to argumentation) and the Argumentum Model of Topics. The results indicate that parents generally refer to an adult as the source of authority during dinnertime conversations with their children. In most cases, this authority is represented by themselves (self-oriented arguments) and, less frequently, by another adult (hetero-oriented arguments). Moreover, the deontic authority arguments put forward by parents seem to be more effective when they clarify and share with the children the implicit premises underlying their arguments.