Once upon a time… Direct speech in children’s writing

Abstract

Based on Authier Revuz’s (2004) reflections on enunciative heterogeneity, this study proposes an exploratory analysis of direct discourse (dd), highlighting the way in which children, in the acquisition of writing, represent different voices in their narratives. The overall objective is to investigate the emergence of DD in children’s writing. This objective was developed into the following specific objectives: (i) to verify whether children use and graphically indicate dd; if so, (ii) to investigate how this marking is performed; and, finally, (iii) to identify possible regularities and variations in the way children register different voices present in their narrative texts. The study, interpretive in nature, adopts a descriptive approach that combines qualitative and quantitative methods. Forty-five texts written by elementary school children are analyzed, based on the proposal: “Narration of a suspense story”. The analysis indicates that children, at this stage of schooling, tend not to register, through DD, the voices that permeate their narratives; when this registration occurs, the child’s writing transitions between the creative use of unconventional marks and adherence to normative/prescriptive conventions.