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Rodgers, E., & Fasulo, A. (2022).

Arguments among siblings: Format tying as a resource in conflict talk and


conflict resolution. Learning, Culture and Social Interaction, 35. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lcsi.2022.100647

Arguments among siblings: Format tying as a resource in conflict talk


and conflict resolution

Erin Rodgers, Alessandra Fasulo

University of Portsmouth

Abstract

Sibling interaction is a key socializing arena for language practices due to the variety of age and position of
the siblings; the ever-looming possibility of conflict also equip children with abilities for conflict management
and resolution. Using Conversation Analysis, this study examines data from videorecordings of a family
including two parents and four children under the age of twelve during mealtimes and play. The analysis
focuses on format tying, i.e. a way to produce new turns-at-talk by incorporating parts of a previous turn,
within conflict talk among the siblings. We illustrate two functions of format tying: the first is in lending
structure to argumentative moves, where format tying reveals affordances for escalating conflict. The second
is the transformation of an initial conflict into verbal play, with the repetition triggering language reflexivity.
Finally, we discuss format tying as a readily available resource for engagement within the siblings group,
and its contribution to family politics.

Introduction
1.1 The sibling relationship
In America, 80% of children have at least one sibling (Lyon, 2009), and this relationship will be one of the longest
lasting in their lifetime (Cicirelli, 1994; Furman & Buhrmester, 1985; Howe & Recchia, 2014; Lyon, 2009). In the
United States, children without siblings living with them spend more of their discretionary time engaged exclusively
siblings spend half their time outside school together, and an additional 20 percent of their time with groups of children
in which their siblings are also present (Dunifon, Fomby, & Musick, 2017). Sibling talk is therefore an essential part of
everyday communicative life for a large number of children.

The relationship between siblings can be both volatile and competitive, but it can also be supportive and caring (Lewis
& Feiring, 1998). The connection and history of relationships makes sibling associations complex and rich in terms of
interactional content (Maynard, 2016). Siblings are agents of socialization who help other siblings developing social
skills and navigating different social environments (Dunn, 1989, 2007). A review of observational studies (Dunn, 1993),
focusing on preschool age dyads, found that the sibling relationship is unique in comparison to peer relationships because
of the differences in age, interests, and abilities. These differences drive the understanding of self and others, social roles,
and norms in children. When interacting with a sibling, children play a set of roles depending on the circumstances at
the time: they can be helper, helpee, teacher, learner, manager, or observer ( Stoneman, Brody, MacKinnon, &
MacKinnon, 1985). These roles affect the way they and others look at themselves. Sibling interactions not affect not
only a child's behavior, but also their view of the family and of themselves (Yamamoto, 1972). Siblings are also important
for interactions outside the family, in the wider social world. It has been found that children with no siblings are lower
on social skills such as self-control and interpersonal relationships compared to children with siblings (Downey, 2014).
Siblings are agents of socialization into skilled communication through the experiences with language that those
interactions afford. Participating in different social situations between siblings is important for a child's social
development because, by these experiences, a child learns how to read different interactions and interpret them (Doughty
& Doughty, 1974). However, investigations into sibling interaction have been neglected compared to peer-group or
parent- child studies (Goodwin, 2017).

The sibling relationship is associated with high levels of warmth but also rivalry and conflict (Furman & Buhrmester,
1985). In fact, conflict is said to be a defining feature of a sibling relationship (Schvaneveldt & Ihinger, 1979). Conflict
between siblings is different compared to other peers as conflict does not break the relationship. By its biological and
social nature, the sibling relationship is enduring, almost constant and long-term; aggression and conflict cannot change
that two people are siblings and must ‘get along’ (Hartup & Laursen, 1993), at least until they are old enough to rescind
their ties. Conflict is an important type of interaction between siblings, and thus an influence in their socio-cognitive
development (Maynard, 2016). Siblings have ready access to each other as sources of social assistance alternative to
parents; however, more so than in the interaction with parents, conflict is likely to occur because of the unique
combination of closeness and competition between them (Furman & Buhrmester, 1985). It is then worthwhile to observe
and analyze with a microanalytic approach conflict interactions among siblings.

1.2 Conflict in child interaction

Many studies on conflict focus on dyadic communication, for example doctor-patient (Mehan, 1990), parent-child (
Goodwin & Cekaite, 2012) or children with only one sibling (Friedland & Mahon, 2018; McIntosh & Punch, 2009).
However, dyadic interactions are not prevalent in children or adults' worlds. We spend most of our time in interactions
with more than one individual, which produces a richer texture of communication than two-way dyadic communication
(Haviland, 1986). Haviland argues that language is designed to accommodate multiparty conversation, including
bystanders who can at any point get involved in on ongoing exchange. Such composite audiences are seen to be active,
not passive; they can actively ignore but also contribute to social interactions both directly or in mediated, indirect forms
(Haviland, 1986; Goodwin, 1990). However, research on children's multi-party interactions has mostly focused on
particular groups, like nursery or school groups (Corsaro & Rizzo, 1990; Merten, 1997) and peer groups (Goodwin,
2002; Kyratzis, 2004; Lloyd, 2012); where, unlike for siblings, participants are typically of the same age. In his study
on children's arguments in multiparty interactions, Maynard (1985) found that children in disputes act as political actors,
creating alliances, defending their practical interests, and positioning themselves in relation to the group. Conflictual
interaction among children develops their sense of social structure and makes them deal with authority, alliances and
other interactional patterns that are relevant to disputes (Maynard, 1985; Norrick & Spitz, 2008). From a communicative
point of view, positions can shift very quickly in disputes (Goffman, 1981) so children practice the discourse of both
alignment and disaffiliation, and learn ways for distancing oneself from a conflictual situation and creating boundaries
(Nguyen, 2011).

Among tactics observed in children when marking their position in conflicts, repetition appears as a central one ( Corsaro
& Maynard, 1996). Goodwin and Goodwin (1990) observed a group of urban Afro-American children who
played together on the street, and found that they would use exact or elaborated repetitions to ‘piggyback’ onto another
participants' utterance and support, at least momentarily, their position. On the other hand, partial or full repetition of an
antagonist's utterance can convey criticism, mocking, or other oppositional stances; in these cases, talk is often marked
by prosodic misalignments between speakers, for example higher vocal pitch levels and faster speech rate of talk (Roth
& Tobin, 2010). In Conversation Analysis, repetition is considered part of a broader phenomenon called format tying (
Sacks, 1992). Format tying (amidst other types of tying techniques that display the connection of a turn to a previous
one) is the recycling of surface structures from a prior speakers' utterance for building one's own turn, going from an
exact or elaborate repetition to borrowing only a segment and giving it a new context (Goodwin, 1990). A speaker can
connect to a previous turn by repeating parts of it, or creating a turn with a parallel structure. This interrelationship
achieved by formal means has been referred to as ‘dialogic syntax’ (Du Bois, 2014), because it can index different types
and levels of engagement between speakers. Format tying has been observed in conflict talk in children (Corsaro &
Maynard, 1996; Goodwin, 1990; Köymen & Kyratzis, 2009) and adults (Muntigl & Turnbull, 1998, among others).

In this paper we use Conversation Analysis to examine the use of format tying in oppositional talk in interaction of four
siblings, among themselves and in talk with their parents. A family of two parents and four children is a relatively rare
group within the literature. The siblings we observed are two boys and two girls, with ages ranging from 5 to 11 years
at the time of recording. Format tying instances were numerous, and could unfold over from two-turn sequences or
much longer series of turns. In the analysis we illustrate two ways in which format tying appears in the context of
conflict talk: in the first, it provides the material to build argumentative and oppositional turns, and, in the second, it
operates the transformation from conflict talk to verbal play. Our discussion focuses on format tying in relation to sibling
socialization and opportunities for participation in the highly competitive arena of a multi-sibling family. This study
contributes to the study of conflict as an arena of socialization, and to the understanding of inter-siblings and multi-party
interaction in general.

2 Data and method


The corpus includes video-recordings of meals and play time sessions of a family composed of two girls, that we called
Emily and Bella, aged 5 and 7, and two boys, Liam and Oliver, aged 9 and 11, and their mother and father. The
observations took place over a three-week period at the family home in the south of England. The setting remained the
same throughout the observations, as both mealtimes and play times took place around the dining table. A parent was
present in each interaction either as a participant in the activity or an overseer of the children's behavior, as per their usual
everyday routines. Recordings totalled approximately to 1 hour 30 minutes of mealtime interaction and 45 minutes of
play time interaction involving card games.

Sequences of interest for building the initial collection (Rodgers, 2019) were episodes of conflict talk that we defined as a
speech activity where a speaker challenges, criticizes, or disciplines another. Subsequently, a sub-collection of sequences
involving format tying, i.e., partial or full repetition of each other's talk, was created for this study.

The data were transcribed in their entirety including verbal behavior, gestures, and other movements for the preliminary
identification of sequences of interest. Chosen extracts were transcribed in further detail according to Jefferson's
transcription notation (Jefferson, 2004; see Appendix). Additionally, we adopted a slightly simplified version 1 of
Mondada's (2018) system for multimodal transcription. Following this system, we have marked the onset of each
participant's non-verbal conduct with different symbol for each participant, in a separate line; when a multimodal act
belongs to speaker of the immediately previous turn, it is not initialed, as in the example below:

OLI: *[Such a spoi↑:l↓ spor::t↓]


* looks at EMI

If however the multimodal act belongs to a different participant or there are multiple ones, the participant abbreviated
name is indicated in low case lettering, as in the example below:
OLI: $˚Hh:::↓˚
mum $ raises eyebrows while looking at cards

To save space, in some cases we have resorted to double parentheses for embodied actions happening during silence, as
in the following:

(1.5) ((LIA smiles, all siblings look at him))

Finally we have indicated in bold the turns containing format tying.

2.1 Format tying as a resource in children's arguments

The next two sections illustrate the role of format tying in two sequential environments, and with different interactional
outcomes, as mentioned before. In the first section, we focus on sequences in which format tying supplies the structure
for moves that introduce or exacerbate conflict, after a speaker has expressed a stance or a claim. In the second section
we will examine sequence in which format tying works as a vehicle that makes potentially or openly conflictual
interactions transition into verbal play.

2.2 Format tying as argument structure

At the beginning of Extract 1, the family has just finished playing a round of UNO (a card game where players take
turns matching their cards to those at the top of the deck, with the additional use of special feature cards). The winner of
the game is the first to have played all their cards. Before they started playing the first round (not shown), Bella had told
her mother she did not want to play and wanted to do coloring instead, but the mother had insisted and she had joined
in. Now Liam is collecting the cards to play another round, and Bella is standing on her chair (Fig. 1).

Figure 1
Family seating arrangement at the beginning of Extract 1. From left to right, Liam (LIA), Emily (EMI), Mother (MOT), Oliver (OLI)
and Bella (BEL).
The mother in line 1 asks the children to play another round of UNO; (she overlaps with Oliver's comment directed to
the youngest sister Emily, who is in tears for having lost at the previous round of the game). Bella responds to the
mother's proposal with ‘No↑::::::::::h’. Oliver then looks at her and issues a directive, introduced by a reproachful initial
reaction with emphasis and a raised voice ‘OH BELLA. Just do: it’ (lines 7–8). Bella continues to resist a second game by
stating the alternative activity she wants to carry out ‘~I↑ wa↓]nna↑ do↓ co↑lour↑ing↑~’. Oliver’s response includes the
format tying (line 10); he caricaturises Bella by embedding in his subsequent prohibition the sister ’s words ‘do coloring’,
imitating and distorting the prosody and voice quality, and adding a facial expression of disgust. Oliver ’s reaction
generates a sensible gap in the conversation (line 11); the mother raises her eyebrow while shuffling the cards and Liam
throws a quick gaze at Bella. After this Bella reminds Oliver of the camera ‘You do know that’s on’ to which Oliver
deflects ‘°I don’t care°’ simultaneously with Liam’s ‘Yes we do’.

The issue here is that the family agreed to record a session of joint play for the researcher, so they are cajoling the sister
into participating. Oliver thus can be seen as collaborating with their mother in managing the group activity and trying
to convince Bella to play again. After his prompt at lines 7–8, however Emily is still recalcitrant, and Oliver’s turn with
format tying appears to escalate the action: by using the resource, he foregrounds in a critical way some features of
Emily talk (whiney, dragged on) and makes them available to the rest of the participants as an object of disapproval.
This intervention leads to Bella’s compliance, but there are indications that the turn was perceived as transgressive of
the family ethics: the two seconds silence (rather conspicuous in conversational terms; Jefferson, 1988), the mother's
frown, and Bella’s reminding Oliver of the camera, seemingly implying an unruly aspect in his behavior. Both brothers
however reply to Bella’s remark to Oliver, in overlap, displaying a united front and hinting that Bella ’s own behavior
had caused Oliver’s intervention.

In a second game play scenario (Extract 2), the children are playing a card game called ‘Ants’ at their dining table (Fig.
2), without their parents. In the sequence of interest, Liam and Oliver are arguing over who takes the next turn to roll
the dice. Previously, the children have played by their own rule, i.e. that when a player rolls a color on the dice, and
there is no corresponding colored card left to pick, they can roll the dice again for up to three times. When the extract
starts, Liam already had three rolls of the dice, but is claiming a further round for himself.
Figure 2.
Family seating arrangement at the beginning of Extract 2. From left to right, Liam (LIA), Oliver (OLI), Emily (EMI) and Bella (BEL).
In line 1 Liam announces his intention to have another throw of the dice, and quickly rolls it a fourth time, against the
siblings’ own amended rule; to this, the elder brother Oliver reacts by grabbing the dice. At Liam’s resistance, and taking
hold of the dice again, Oliver reminds him of the rule (line 4). The uncertainty in the pronoun ( ‘You’ then corrected in
‘We said’) is used by Liam as an escape route (line 5); using format tying, he appropriates the basis of Oliver’s argument
(‘We said…’) and undermines it (‘I didn’t say’). Liam’s is a weak rebuttal, however, in that it is not the rule that is being
contested, but the fact that Liam had himself pronounced the words. His brother therefore maintains the point and
continues the physical struggle over the dice that Liam is still holding. Once he gets it, Oliver restarts the game by rolling
it, but Liam reaches over as the dice ends its course and covers it with his hand. This escalates the confrontation. Oliver
utters a series of loud imperatives (lines 9–14) and engages in a physical fight to open Liam’s hand. Liam argues his
side with ‘I deserve the dice’ (line 10); again Oliver rejects his statement and recalls the rule about the number of rounds
they could play in a row ‘No you do::n’t. you’ve already had three:::’. Liam keeps holding the dice away from Oliver,
who is reaching across, and appeals to the manual for a last defense of his rights to play another round: (‘It doesn’t say
in the book’).

The next turn also displays format tying, this time by Oliver: he repeats part of Liam’s turn in apparent agreement (“No it
doesn’t…’) but as a prelude to rejecting the brother’s attempt with the rest of the turn ‘IT DOESN’T SAY YOU GET
ANOTHER ONE. Let alone another three:::’; line 19). Liam continues with both the physical and the verbal contest;
like he had done in line 5, he uses format tying to turn his brother’s sentence on its head (OLI: ‘It doesn’t say you get
another one….’ LIA: ‘exactly you don’t get another one’, lines 18–20). Like before, Liam’s move hinges onto the
pronominal part of the turn it ties onto, in this case turning the generic you of Oliver’s turn (‘It doesn’t say you get…’) into
a ‘you’ that refers specifically to his opponent (‘You don’t get’). However, Liam cuts off his own utterance at this point,
abruptly returns the pitch to normal and concedes the round to Oliver. It is not clear whether this is due to finally accepting
to play by the rule or complying to and silent intervention from the father, who is now off camera.

The different use of format tying by the two brothers is illustrative of different affordances of the practice, both related
to its formal properties. On the one hand, reusing a previous turn can be a means for sheer opposition, a way of sending
back an utterance without engaging with its content (this was done by Liam by discounting a pronoun or playing with a
pronoun’s meanings). Defying logic, this strategy is uncooperative and borders with mockery; the brothers went into a
physical fight after Oliver’s reminder of the rule had been sent back in this way. On the other hand, Oliver’s tied turns
oppose his brother’s claims by adding new content to the part that is repeated. In this sense, his moves are properly
argumentative, and therefore cooperative, engaging with the matter of the dispute and defending the speaker’s position
with reasons.

The format tying turns are also interesting in terms of features of turn delivery. In line 5, Liam ’s rebuttal was quieter
than Oliver’ protest; Liam’s first appeal to the book in line 16 is also uttered in a normal tone of voice, while Oliver’s
response displays much higher loudness and affect display. However, this upped the fight for Liam, so he then becomes
louder too on his next response (line 20–1), before dropping the voice again when he finally lets Oliver play. The
repeated parts contribute to highlight the contrasting delivery features of the tied turns, so that, for example, going down
the scale of affect can make a previous turn appear exaggerated or wrong, and going up with more loudness and emphasis
can contribute to challenge the validity of a previous statement.

2.3 Format tying leading from conflict talk to verbal play

The extracts in this section illustrate how oppositional format tying can develop into verbal play and lose both conflictual
and argumentative valence.

Word play, or metapragmatic play (Cekaite & Aronsson, 2004), can be triggered in any conversational environment by
the linguistic properties of what participants say (Wood, 2009). Turns can be inflected so that the frame changes from
serious to playful (Bateson, 1976), but for a play frame to be established in talk, conversational participants must
recognize and maintain it (Coates, 2007). Interpersonal alignment can result from co-constructing a play
frame, as those who collaborate in humorous talk, ‘necessarily display how finely tuned they are to each other’ (Davies,
2003, p. 1362). Contextual cues (Gumperz, 1992; Heller, 2018) that can be used to shift toward a playful frame are
prosodic features (e.g. stress and intonation), voice quality, rhythm, laughing or a smiling voice (Gumperz, 1992;
Holmes & Hay, 1997). Younger children are seen to use these multi-modal features to lead a group to agreement
without the need to use more complex argumentative strategies (Mundwiler & Kreuz, 2018).

Speech play is an area that shares many features with conflict talk, but is also a way to manage conflict, and this relation,
that is still rather unexplored, is what we will focus on in the next sections. We observe in Extracts 3 and 4 format tying
used for ‘oppositional verbal play’, with two speakers holding on to their position and challenging the others with no
argumentative development.

In Extract 3 all four children are at their dining table, filling tortilla wraps with various foods from plates in the middle
of the table. The children’s seating arrangements are shown in Fig. 3. The father stands behind Emily, helping her to
build her wrap.

Figure 3.
Family Seating arrangement at the beginning of Extract 3. From left to right, Liam (LIA), Oliver (OLI), Emily (EMI), Father (FAT), who

is behind Emily, and Bella (BEL).


Oliver begins listing the ingredients he has filled his wrap with. Bella then initiates the sequence of interest with a
question related to Oliver’s list (‘Ha:::m?’, line 6). Oliver replies with the dismissal ‘Yeah I said ham’. Bella continues
countering Oliver’s dismissal (‘No you didn’t’ line 8), to which Oliver opposes ‘Yes I did’. In this first phase, both turns
begins with oppositional expressions of polarity (Yes and No: Halliday & Hasan, 1976, p. 178; Goodwin, 2017); at line
13, Bella drops the ‘No’, and Oliver does the same in his following turn; Liam overlaps here to affiliate with Oliver ( ‘He
did’, line 15). Bella keeps going, now smiling and further reducing turn size by dropping the pronoun as well (‘Didn’t,
line 16); Oliver will also drop it after a further turn (line 19). As turns become more compact, shrinking down to the
minimal grammatical content for expressing the two positions, they also alternate faster (lines 17-20). Oliver then goes
into a series of quick repetition of ‘did’ (line 21), and now is the sister who will imitate the brother, starting a homologous
series and ending up in overlap with Oliver’s streak; thus, the two find themselves in synchronic turn production (lines
21–23). Their exchange is eventually stopped when the father gives Oliver some direction on wrap construction.

Correcting or otherwise challenging an older sibling is a resource often observed throughout this dataset, as a way for a
younger sibling to engage with them. In fact, both brothers turned toward Bella after she added the supposedly missing
item from Oliver’s list. After his rebuttal, Bella keeps the opposition with format tying, however, adopting a Batesonian
perspective, we can see how the two siblings frame their respective contributions to the verbal duel as non- conflictual.
Their voices are kept low and even, and a few lines into the sequence, at a further downsizing of her turn, Bella also
smiles (line 16), inviting the brother’s collaboration in the verbal game. There is no argumentative content or development,
but format tying allows for interactional engagement despite the thinning out of the informational value of utterances; by
making form salient, it can trigger poetic play and the exploration of the dynamic properties of grammar in turns at talk.
Within the same recorded observation, a second form of word play emerges between the children (Extract 4). Here the
conflict stems from Bella taking credit for the idea to get wraps for lunch, whereas Liam and Oliver claim that Liam was
the sibling who suggested it. Similarly to the previous extract, the opposition is created with format tying between Bella
and the brothers, and continues as verbal play, still with format tying, mainly among the two brothers (Fig. 4).

Figure 4.

The assessment-implicative question of the father (‘whose idea was it..’;2 lines 1–2, Hoey & Kendrick, 2017) is met by the
response of all siblings at once. Liam, the sibling seemingly behind the wrap idea, was the first to start but then trailed off
(line 3), noticing that Oliver and Bella are loudly motioning to claim the merit; the youngest sister Emily instead
acknowledge it had been Liam’s idea by pointing to him. Oliver, after his first jocular claim (line 4), also passes the merit
onto Liam (line 5) (to his initial claim, the father had countered that he was not even in the shop). The elder sister Bella
instead insists it had ben her, with a loud ‘No’ at the first mention of Liam, and then pointing and tapping her finger to her
chest (lines 4 and 10).

After that, the two brothers engage in verbal play between themselves, with Oliver saying ‘It was Liam’ or simply ‘Liam’
in repeated series, and Liam alternating the words ‘mine’ and ‘meemee’; Liam meanwhile is also playing with the rolled-up
wrap used in a spyglass-like manner (lines 9 and 26). The brothers also start overlapping their turns (between lines 15 and
19), breaking the alternation pattern, and heading toward synchronicity with a fugue effect. The father intervenes with his
positive assessment after a few of these iterations (line 21). Almost at the same point, Bella intervened again with a claim
‘It wa:s me::!’. This time they all attend to her, the father explicitly discrediting her attempt. Oliver then picks up again the
repetition of Liam’s name (line 21), echoed by the younger sister, who taps on Bella’s shoulder while saying ‘Liam Liam
Liam’, met by a curt reaction. Finally, Liam frames Bella in the line of his spyglass-wrap and says he can ‘sense lying’. The
repetition at this point is continued only by Oliver, and Liam with his ‘Hello’ seems to try to shake his brother off his
soliloquy; Oliver is eventually stopped by the father who, noticing Oliver’s generous serving of strawberries, asks him to
leave some to the others (not shown).

Extract 4 opened on a common topic of children’s disputes, that of possession. Claims of possession, of both objects and
ideas, have been observed in school settings between dyads (Theobald, 2013); with four siblings, who occupy different
positions in the family, the dispute for the possession of an idea gives rise to a complex choreography of participation (
Aronsson, 1998). At the beginning the father is the main recipient of each sibling’s utterance, but multiple participation
frameworks (Goodwin & Goodwin, 2005) open in the course of the sequence: the two brothers engage in a poetic duet,
aligning on Liam ownership of the wrap idea; the younger sister Emily picks up on the name repetition but uses it for
opposing her elder sister’s Bella, and is promptly rebuffed by her; Liam’s teases Bella embedding the tease in his solo play
with the spyglass-wrap. Multiple participation frameworks are facilitated by both format-tying and monosyllabic grammar
(it was me, it was mine, it was Liam ); the siblings keep the interaction going with those short repetitive turns, intervening
with embodied resources (pointing at others or themselves) when eating impedes speech. The redundancy supports the
multiplicity of participation frameworks because there is no content lost due to simultaneous speech. With format tying,
moreover, sound come to the foreground, progressively blurring semantics and introducing poetic sequential ties; turn
alternation can slip into full or partial simultaneity, with effects on the relative positioning of the speakers.

Our last example in this section, Extract 5, starts with a conflictual move, i.e. a reproachful reminder of a table manner’s
norm from the elder to the younger sister. Bella’s uncertainty in the verbal formulation of the norm operates a shift into
metalinguistic awareness, which will quickly spread across all participants (Fig. 5).

Figure 5.

Family seating arrangement at the beginning of Extract 5. From left to right, Liam (LIA), Oliver (OLI), Emily (EMI), and Bella (BEL).
After a comment by Oliver about the mango in the wrap tasting good (not shown), Emily asks for the mango plate to be
passed to her; her words sound muffled because of the food in her mouth (lines 1, 3). Hearing that, older sister Bella turns
to her and begins formulating a norm related to speaking while eating; however, she self- repairs her utterance twice
(Schegloff, Jefferson, & Sacks, 1977), settling in the end for ‘Don’t eat with your mouth open’ (lines 4–8). Mid way through
her second attempt, she turns toward her brother Liam and smiles, offering her troubles with formulating the rule as a
‘laughable’ (Jefferson, 1979). At that, father chuckles, and both Liam and Bella briefly laugh after him (lines 10–12). The
father then, picking up on the incongruity of Bella’s sentence (i.e. eating without opening one’s mouth), invites Liam to
demonstrate. Liam first checks with him what he needs to do with the first format tying turn, in which he repeats in
interrogative form the norm as it had been uttered by the sister (line 14); he then proceeds to apply the norm by pushing the
wrap against his serrated mouth. Bella offers a variant of the norm in the next tied turn by changing the order of the actions
and making it about talking and eating (line 18). Meanwhile Liam has finished his demonstration and concludes ‘It’s
impossible’, looking at the father (line 21), then reverts to eating normally. The joke could finish here but it is rekindled by
Oliver, who comments with mock surprise at his brother now fully opening his mouth to bite into the wrap, so not obliging
to Bella’s interdiction. In replying, Liam recalls the sister’s incorrect expression with ‘She said etc.’ (line 28 and foll.), and
the three siblings go on pronouncing more variants of the norm. Eventually the father, after hearing Oliver’s last version,
corrects him and specifies that the rule is not about eating and talking, but about talking with a ‘full mouth’, which Oliver
demonstrates by performing loud unarticulated sounds. We end the extract and the analysis here, but the siblings will return
to the norm and its variations at various points throughout the duration of the dinner.

In the extract, format tying emerged as different members of the family recycled parts of the initial imperative sentence by
Bella, adding on or amending it. The formulaic nature of the norm (De León, 2007) and the attempts at self-repair had the
effect of triggering metalinguistic awareness in Bella (observable in her shift of addressee from the sister to the brother), as
well as in her brothers and father; when the father challenges Liam to ‘do it’, the sibling is able to repeat Bella’s sentence in
full (meanwhile the initial opposition between Bella and Emily falls off focus). There is a readiness for language reflexivity
that the multi-age setting seems to sensitize to, with format tying supporting opportunities for verbal play.

In the family, politics and language are never too far apart: the way different siblings draw on interactional resources or are
allocated conversational roles most likely contributes to their position within the siblings group. The sequence starts with
the elder sister imparting knowledge to the younger one by reminding her of a social norm, but, as soon as the possibility of
verbal play crops up, Bella turns to Liam; the father also asks Liam to be the actor in the little scene based on the incorrect
formulation of the norm. Such selections identify the second brother as a favorite interlocutor for amusement; on the other
hand, there is a sense that the older brother Oliver is carrying on the joke after it had been dropped by the rest of the family.
Finally, the role of the parent as a socializing agent also emerges here, as he exploited for humor the ripples appearing on
the surface of his children’s discourse, but also prompted language reflexivity by making the children ‘see’, with the help
of Liam’s sketch, why the formulation of the norm was wrong.

3 Discussion

Sacks (1992) observed that tying techniques “comprise an ordering technique which is at least as important as are the
sequencing pairs for ordering the parts of conversation, and which has a variety of extended consequences for the
organization of conversation” (Sacks, 1992, p. 716). Tying techniques thus represent a core ability for children to master in
talk in interaction. Format tying specifically relies on repetition and, as Moore argues (2012: 221) it is important for language
socialization research to pay more attention to the way practices of repetition “shift over time as individuals develops and
communities change”. In this paper we have proposed that the group of siblings offers opportunities to explore format tying
across ages in the environment of opposition, and as part of a communal way of dealing with everyday issues.

We have first discussed examples in which format tying exacerbated conflict (Corsaro & Rizzo, 1990). Köymen and Kyratzis
(2009) show that repeating and modifying turns through format tying helps children elaborate their argumentation, however,
in our examples format tying was not accompanied by elaboration, but instead returned an almost intact utterance to the first
speaker, manifesting full rejection of their communication. In both Extracts 1 and 2 an embedded partial repetition was
oriented toward the repositioning of the first speaker within a normative horizon; in the first case it was with the family’s
compliance of playing games for the researcher, and, in the second, the respect of the card game rules that the siblings
themselves had established.. The use of format tying was in both cases escalating the conflict; both siblings who were
addressed with the seriously framed format tying utterance ended up complying; this is not a guaranteed outcome, of course,
but it may indicate the perception of a more irrevocable position than differently shaped argumentative moves. The
‘winning’ format tying in both examples was used by an older sibling, suggesting that the hyper-correction implicated by
these returns might be sensitive to the social status of the speaker (Cekaite & Aronsson, 2004).

In the second part of the paper we have observed format tying turns evolving into verbal play. Whereas in the first section
format tying was a means to an end, i.e., pursuing a conflictual move trying to override the argumentative proposition of the
opponent, here the formal, iconic aspects of the words take over and become the focus of interest in themselves. The three
extracts in this section show the affordances of format tying for different conversational actions. In Extracts 3 and 4, the
sequences involving repetition tend to become shorter, faster and more rhythmic. Echoic turns are not only pronounced in
alternation but also synchronically, indexing alignment and shared positioning: we see a chorus moment at the end of Extract
3 and a ‘fugue’ effect in Extract 4, with staggered repetitions between Oliver and Liam (Duranti, 1997). In these extracts
the children became engaged mostly as a dyad, although with incursions or comments by the others. Extract 5 is different
in that the play is not limited to repeating long series of very similar utterances but involves creating variants of a norm with
paradoxical effects; this is a more sophisticated type of verbal play that saw the participation of three of the siblings and the
father.

The three sequences in the second section were either initiated or sustained by Bella, the third child in order of birth. Her
position among the siblings is a complicated one, with sex and age boundaries dividing her from the subset of the brothers,
toward whom she appears constantly tuned in; on the contrary, she addresses her younger sister with "tutorial" or dismissive
communications. One of the ways she has of engaging the brothers is challenging them by picking up on something they
say and questioning or opposing parts of it. This implies an attention to words and an orientation to normative aspects of
language, be it in terms of correspondence to the truth, correctness of the language, or the expression of norms themselves.
In general, the family setting, with different ages and genders (including that of parents), and issues of family politics always
in the background, might induce a heightened language reflexivity, a readiness for the shape and sound of words to be
foregrounded, offering a chance for teasing and entertainment. This is especially visible in Extract 5, in which Bella switches
addressee from her sister to her older brother, within the same turn, as soon as the opportunity for verbal play arises through
her own self-repairs. The ensuing interaction, which also includes theatrical performances from both brothers, is a bubble
of family culture in the making, also because of the way different roles in the unfolding and performing of the joke are
allocated. As noted by Reddy (2019), humor and culture are both dialogic, in need of the collaboration of others to create
something new on the spur of the moment, but also always carrying the potential for excluding some of the co-present
members.

Considering our overall analysis in terms of language socialization and argumentation, format tying did not support
complexity of arguments, but rather appeared as a readily available resource for either straightforward opposition or for
playful engagement. If this practice may seem simple, or even slightly regressive, it is worth highlighting that the redundancy
makes it possible for various people to take part at different times, opening side interactions within the flow of closely knit
utterances, and allowing for everyone to keep track. Furthermore, format tying is not only about the sound of phonemes but
also about grammar and its permutations (Arendt & Ehrlich, 2020); these are revealed to the children as turns change in
pronominal forms, exploit the ambiguity of the second person, or alternate between affirmative and negative grammar.

The study is based on a small data set covering only two types of activity, mealtime and card games, from a single middle
class family; therefore, some aspects of what we have shown might have been part of this family culture and way of
functioning. However, the unusual size of the sibling group for the contemporary Western society and the range of format
tying observed has allowed insights into the way discursive means can contribute to constructing brotherhood and sisterhood,
and indicated possible developments in the study on multi-party child sibling interaction.

4 Conclusion

Due to the nature of the sibling relationship and wide interactional goals they can have, conflictual or oppositional
interactions are frequent. We have explored format tying as a resource to carry out social actions in conversation, manage
multiple participation frameworks, and explore language and norms’ boundaries.

Using format tying in interactions with siblings is aiding children’s learning in the social world by exposing them to the
members’ resources of other siblings, thus providing them with practice for acting in multiple and complex environments.
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[1] Differently from Mondada (2018),we have not distinguished different types of multimodal acts (e.g. gaze versus hand
movements), have not indicated the end of the acts and instead of marking them with grayed fonts we have used italics.

[2] The projected positive assessment will arrive in line 21.

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