processes of dispute management among urban black children

This paper investigates the forms and functions of alternative dispute procedures as well as distinctive operating cultures that account for them among urban black working‐class children. It is found that children strategically manage the social organization of a dispute through the selection of particular argument formats. In conducting argumentative exchanges, children display a range of communicative competencies and collaborate in performing highly orderly negotiations of power. [conversation analysis, child language, social organization, legal anthropology, Black English Vernacular]