Children’s use of causal connectors in interactively produced narratives. A study in poor urban communities of Argentina.

ROSEMBERG, C. R., SILVA, M.L Y STEIN, A.

University of Brighton. England.

Congreso; Communication and Cognition. International Conference.; 2008

Society of Cognitive Linguistic

The study analyzes the narratives of personal experiences that young children from marginalized urban communities in Buenos Aires, Argentina, produce while interacting at home. The object of the study is to explore the relationship between the use of the connector “because” (porque) in the textualization process of children’s narratives and the way in which their narratives fit functionally into the context of social interaction. The data consists of 196 interactively produced narratives of past events produced by 15 children (ages 4:2 to 4:11). The analysis showed that the frequency of use of “because” varied depending on the way in which the narrative fit functionally into the context of interaction. An overwhelming majority of the uses occurred in auto-regulated narratives.  More than half of the appearances of the connector occurred in narratives produced in polemic discussions in which the child needs to specify and justify his/her cognitive and/or emotional position.