La construcción interaccional de narrativas de ficción entre niños de distintas edades: Un estudio con niños de poblaciones urbano marginadas

Abstract

El estudio realizado se propuso analizar el proceso de construcción interaccional de narrativas de ficción por parte de díadas de niños de distintas edades (4 y 12 años) que viven en poblaciones urbano-marginadas de Argentina. Las narrativas, elicitadas a partir de una secuencia de imágenes, fueron video-filmadas y lue go transcriptas. El corpus incluye 33 relatos producidos por díadas de niños de 4 y 12 años. Se realizó un análisis cualitativo que combina el Método Comparativo Constante (Glaser & Strauss, 1967; Strauss & Corbin, 1990) con herramientas de la Sociolingüística Interaccional (Gumperz, 1982) y el Análisis de la conversación (Goodwin & Heritage, 1990). Dicho análisis permitió generar un sistema de categorías que dio cuenta de los roles narrativos (Goodwin, 2007) asumidos por los participantes y el modo en que esos roles eran negociados en la interacción. Los resultados mostraron que los niños adoptaban diferentes roles narrativos que se configuraban a partir de una yuxtaposición de campos semióticos -verbales, gestuales y proxémicos-. Los niños pequeños adoptaban el rol de narrador o el rol de audiencia, mientras que los niños mayores asumían roles de tutor, narrador o audiencia. Asimismo, el análisis permitió mostrar cambios en los roles adoptados durante la situación de interacción. La relevancia de estudiar las narrativas producidas por niños pequeños en interacción con niños mayores reside justamente en los resultados de investigaciones previas (Stein & Rosemberg, 2012) que señalan que en poblaciones urbanomarginadas las interacciones entre niños de distintas edades pueden dar lugar al aprendizaje y el desarrollo infantil.

This study aims to analyse the interactional construction of fictional accounts that 4-yearold and 12-year-old children from marginalized urban populations in Buenos Aires (Argentina) produced together. Recent research (Gardner & Forrester, 2010; Rosemberg & Menti, in press) suggests the need to link the study of child development and performance with the microanalysis of interaction. As these studies point out, the concepts developed by Conversation analysis (Goodwin & Heritage, 1990; Sacks, Schegloff & Jefferson, 1974) and Interactional Sociolinguistics (Gumperz, 1982) allow to study in detail the processes through which children and their partners construct shared meaning in interaction. The narratives, elicited from a sequence of images, were video recorder and transcribed. The data corpus consist of 33 narratives produced by dyads of 4 and 12 year-old children. A qualitative analysis was performed that combined the Constant Comparative Method (Glaser & Strauss, 1967; Strauss & Corbin, 1990) with tools from Interactional Sociolinguistic (Gumperz, 1982) and Conversation Analysis (Sacks, Schegloff & Jefferson, 1974). This analysis allowed the gener - ation of a system of categories that identified the narrative roles assumed by the participants (Good win, 2007) and how these roles were negotiated in the interaction. Findings showed that children adopted narrative roles that were configured from a juxtaposition of information from different semiotic fields -verbal, gestural and proxemic-. 4-year-old children adopted roles of storyteller or audience, and 12-year-old children assumed roles of tutor, storyteller or audience. The tutor role was characterised by the initiations of the sequence employing elicitations. Also, tutors used different types of interventions -feedback, expansions and repairs- to scaffold the narrative elaborated by the young children. The body position, as well as the gaze of the tutor was directed to the story-teller and/or to the images, and also in some cases to the researcher. The storyteller role was characterised by giving verbal information about the narrative. The body position, as well as the gaze of the storyteller was directed principally to the audience and/or to the images. Finally, the audience role was characterised for showing interest in the narrative through different signals such as gaze direction to the storyteller, and a body position close to him and to the images. These results show the productivity of articulating the psycho linguistic perspective (Nelson, 1996, 2007) with tools of the Conversational Analysis (Good - win & Heritage, 1990) to account for narrative per formance. Results showed that while the 12- year-old children tended to adopt in most cases a tutor role, the 4-year-old assumed a storyteller role. The narrative roles adopted by the children show that children from different ages can negotiate narrative co-construction. However, in some cases both children adopted a storyteller role. In these situations the asymmetric relation between the 12-year-old and the younger child led the older child to impose his narrative not letting the 4-year-old to narrate. The microanalysis of the interactional se - quences showed that the roles adopted could change during the interaction. This role change did not occur randomly, but responding to the se - quence of actions in which each participant analysed the contextualization cues (Gumperz, 1982) provided by the other and acted according to them. The analysis of the exchanges showed the com - plexity of the interactional process with regard to the construction of the stories, in which it is not possible to comprehend the actions of one participant without referring to the actions of the other (Goodwin, 1984). The relevance of studying the narratives produced by young children interacting with older children lies in the results of previous studies (Stein & Rosemberg, 2012) which reported that in urban marginalized populations interactions be - tween children of different ages can lead to learning and child development.