Getting the story across: A discourse analysis approach to evaluative stance in Venezuelan children's narratives

In this study I examined Venezuelan children's developing abilities to use evaluative language in fictional and personal narratives. Narrating involves the construction of a story-world consisting of a sequence of motivated events. Evaluative language motivates reported events by making reference to the characters' stance and its interpersonal nature contributes to getting the story's point across to an audience.;Research suggests that only at school-age do children incorporate into their narratives more complex evaluative devices (e.g. reference to characters' mental states, multiple perspectives and global evaluation, Bamberg & Damrad-Frye, 1991). Studies on English speakers' narrative development across genres (e.g. scripts, anecdotes, and fictional tales) find developmental patterns that vary in the different forms of discourse (Hemphill, et al., 1994). Because appropriate use of evaluative talk is culturally determined, and central to competent story-telling, it is important to examine this ability in children speaking other languages and from varying social classes. A pilot study on Venezuelan preschoolers' Spanish narratives found that evaluative language varied considerably with age and social class (Shiro, 1995).;The questions addressed in this study are: (1) What types of evaluative devices do Venezuelan school-age children use in their personal and fictional narratives and how are they distributed within the narrative structure? (2) How does use of evaluative language vary across age, social class and narrative genre?;The sample consists of 428 narratives produced by 107 Venezuelan school-age children who participated in 4 narrative tasks, which elicited personal and fictional stories. Findings suggest that there are social class and age related differences in the use of evaluative expressions in narratives. Older children tend to use more and different types of evaluative expressions than their younger peers. Furthermore, children follow different developmental paths in fictional and personal story-telling. Age and social class have a greater impact on the use of evaluation in fiction, suggesting that working class children are at a greater disadvantage when performing fictional narratives than when performing personal narratives. As oral narrative abilities are related to academic skills (Snow & Dickinson, 1990), these findings can shed light on oral language skills that support literacy development.