Earlier research shows that mothers, interacting with their language-learning children, often justify their refusals, denials and protests. In the second half of the second year also children start justifying their oppositional moves, albeit in a very primitive way
The aim of this paper is threefold: 1. to consider whether mothers' justifications of their oppositional moves is a consistent pragmatic communicative feature across ages and individual dyads; 2. to analyse whether the justifying behavior of children follows a developmental trend by which justifications of their oppositional moves become an increasingly necessary pragmatic move; 3. to assess the extent to which justifications of oppositional moves have the interpersonal effect of leading the partner, be it the adult or the child, to accept more promptly the point of view of the opposing partner. Earlier studies suggest that justifications have a persuasive effect and help preventing open conflicts. Our study aims to look more closely into this phenomenon developmentally, to verify the degree of generality of this finding and to characterize the eventual differences in dyadic communicative profiles in this domain.
To this effect, 16 dyads were observed in everyday ineractions in their familiar environment. For 8 of these dyads, the children were aged 1;8 to 1;10; for the remaining 8 dyads, children were aged 2;0 to 2;3. Four hours of videorecordings were analyzed for each of the 16 dyads, for a total of 64 hours of naturally occurring interaction.
Results confirm that middle-class mothers justify at a high rate their oppositions and show a developmental increment in this ability by the children. Moreover, justifications of first oppositional moves generally help preventing open conflicts, a finding that holds for both partners. Individual differences in the communicative profiles of the dyads will be focused and discussed through the analysis of the dynamics of the oppositional episodes.