Argumentative discourse in parent-adolescent conflict episodes

The study analyses oral discourse in conflict situations between parents and adolescents from a transactional and developmental perspective. Eight families were videotaped in a real conflict situation. Following an observational methodology, we computed the frequency of occurrence and duration of regulation, argumentative and emotional categories in the mother, father and adolescent's discourse and age effect. Sequential analyses of the participants' intervention structure in the discussion were undertaken. The results show that both adolescents and parents essentially use argumentative categories in their discourse. Mothers include negotiation elements in late adolescence, while fathers elaborate a confrontation discourse. As they get older, significant changes were observed in adolescents, who evolve toward a more elaborated and confrontational argumentative discourse. The father-mother-adolescent interaction sequence was found to be hierarchical, becoming more democratic towards the end of adolescence.