Production of elaborated argumentative discourse: The role of cooperativeness

The analysis of argumentative discourse produced by 68 students aged 10–17 reveals two facets: argumentative discourse involves both dialogal and argumentative operations. When the dialogue goal calls for the speakers to reach a compromise on a debate topic, they are prompted to negotiate the discourse object: negotiation on content of the exchanges (argumentative cooperativeness which presupposes an articulation of each partner’s arguments with the other partner’) and on the level of the formal argumentative markers of negotiation. The key finding is that dialogal and argumentative operations are functionally linked: the percentage of markers of utterance involvement, axiological forms and modalizations is much higher in argumentative cooperative discourse as compared to discourse where cooperativeness is only dialogal (in which the speakers merely regulate turn taking and maintain thematic continuity). Furthermore, the differentiation in frequency of use of negotiation markers as a function of type of cooperativeness increases with age. Argumentative dialogue thus emerges as a complex form of language behavior which brings interconnected language operations into play.