Une premiére partie est consacrée à la présentation du cadre dans lequel nous menons nos travaux sur l'argumentation écrite. Nous proposons un certain nombre de distinctions basiques entre ‘text’ et ‘discours’ argumentatif. Nous déclinons ce que nous entendons par ‘argument’. Nous esquissons quelques dimensions d'un modéle psycholinguistique du traitement de l'argumentation écrie (composition, compréhension). Dans une seconde partie, nous apportons quelques données empiriques en relation à la théorie linguistique de l'ascriptivisme soutenue par Ducrot et Anscombre1.

120 students in grades 3 to 7 (aged 8 to 13) heard an argumentative text and were immediately submitted to a free recall task. The results show that before grade 7, the subjects did not view the text as argumentative. The discussion centers on the relevancy of a prototypical argumentative schema in accounting for these findings.

The objective of the present study was to show that the use of adversative and conclusive connectives to mark off the prototypical schema of argumentative text begins to set in at approximately the age of 10 or 11. Based on Adam's (1992) proposals, we constituted an argumentative text with two blocks of arguments separated by an adversative instruction (the connective but or an equivalent) and followed by a conclusion introduced by a conclusive instruction (the connective thus or an equivalent). Four (...) revising tasks (insertion or substitution with or without five connectives) have been used to asses children's knowledge of the argumentative schema and the use of connectives that punctuate them. The study of good and erroneous locations (concerning the placement of but and thus) showed that there was some regularity in the choices made by the children. The main result of this study shows that argumentative connectives are used differently by children aged 9 and children aged 10 or 11. The argumentative schema is used more consciously by 11-year-olds to guide revising tasks than by 10-year-olds. (shrink)