This study examines some similarities in the discourse organization of episodes of verbal conflict gnd verbal qruestioning that occur during American family dinners. Questioning and conflict both often exhibit a chaining or discourse pattern which involves use of the same kind of interactional move in successive turns at talk. This similarity of discourse structure is used to develop a sequential recycling principle which attenuates the duration of both conflict and questioning sequences. This principle is closely related to Mishler's exponential law of successive questioning. Conflict and questioning sequences collected from field video and audio recordings of family dinners are used to test the attenuation predictions from the recycling principle. The recycling principle is found to hold for conflict and questioning sequences. The influence of generational status and age on attenuation is examined. Some implications of the results for understanding verbal family conflict are developed.
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Samuel Vuchinich (1986) studied this question.