Linguistic-discursive variations in written narratives by elementary school children in Northern Patagonia

In this paper we study the written narratives used by 54 third- and seventh graders in elementary schools with different socio-educational characteristics in Northern Patagonia, Argentina, when writing individually, on paper, and during class, a text of their choice. We aim to capture the various ways in which these students solve the narrative production, considering the adjustment to specific prescriptions for written language and to conventional features of narrative structure, as of the lexicogrammatical choices according to grammar and genre. We categorized the 54 texts according to three linguistic levels: textual (unit of analysis: text), lexicogrammatical, and morpho-orthographic (unit of analysis: word). We applied diverse techniques of Multivariate Descriptive Statistics, in order to capture associations between categories in each linguistic level and children?s grade/school. Results showed socio-educational trends at the textual and morpho-orthographic levels, and stilistic patterns at the lexicogrammatical level, related to socio-cultural traits. In sum, these results account for a variety of degrees and ways of appropriating narrative writing, which emerge from the double perspective of adjustment to prescriptions, as well as exploration and exploitation of a range of options.