Constructing fictional worlds. A study with Argentinian young children from different social groups

VIVIANA LEWINSKY

Encuentro; 68th Studentische Tagung Sprachwissenschaft (StuTS); 2020

Studentische Tagung Sprachwissenschaft (StuTS)

Evidence indicates that 4- and 5- years old children create fictional worlds when they participate in symbolic play or produce narratives (Engel, 2005; Garvey, 1985; Migdalek, Rosemberg & Arrúe, 2013; Nicolopoulou, 2015; Pellegrini, 1985; Sawyer, 2002). Some of these works have revealed that, in order to play or to tell a story, children use complex linguistic resources, particularly when they interact and shear these events with other children or adults. However there are few studies that analyse the specific linguistic resources through which children construct fictional worlds in these and other activities. The main aim of the present project is to contribute to a better understanding of the ways in which young spanish-speaking children, from different social groups, create fictional worlds in spontaneous situations at home and quasi-experimental situations at pre-school. The analysis, that combines quantitative and qualitative procedures, will focus on the fictional structure of children?s play and narratives as well as in the linguistic resources used to create fiction and share these events with others. For it, two corpus of data of children living in Buenos Aires (Argentina) will be examined: the first one includes audio recordings of natural interactions collected in the households of 51 4-year-old children from low and middle socio-economic status (SES) and the second corpus includes videos of elicited play situations using puppets and toys in which 30 5-year-old children from low SES participated at pre-school. Each corpus will be studied independently, to later establish similarities and differences between the findings from both analyses.