Marta Morgade

The After School Routines of Literature-Devoted Urban Children

Abstract This paper discusses the out of school routines of a group of ‘literature-devoted’ children of the city of Madrid (Spain). The children and families were recruited for the study at a library, a childrens bookstore and a puppet show in a park. Participants provided information on their weekly routines through several procedures: surveys, photographs of their daily lives, interviews based on the photographs and interviews with parents. We develop a spatially based model that allows us to identify four styles of activity in childrens out of school lives: homebound children, non-scheduled children, outdoor and scheduled children, and fully scheduled children. Our results suggest that there is significant diversity in the ways in which childrens after-school time is organized, even within a middle-class and socially homogeneous sample as the one in this study. Also, the range of activities our participants engage in seems to contradict current portraits of Western urban childrens lives as constrained.

Storytelling with Sign Language Interpretation as a Multimodal Literacy Event: Implications for Deaf and Hearing Children.

This article examines storytelling events for children in a library and a childrens bookstore in which storytellers are accompanied by sign language interpreters. The result is that both hearing and Deaf children participate in a literacy event in which storyteller and interpreter produce a multilingual, multimodal and multimedial narrative. Using tools derived from the ethnography of communication, social semiotics and multimodal interactional analysis we build a model to examine that this discursive interrelationship between storyteller and interpreter has for hearing and Deaf childrens literary experience in the event. We postulate a continuum of six configurations (three for hearing children and three for Deaf children) in which the interpreter-storyteller relationship may add little to enhance or even disturb childrens narrative experience. In the conclusions we discuss possible alternative designs that would reduce Deaf childrens asymmetrical standing in the event.

Multimodalidad y participación de la infancia sorda en contextos de socialización literaria informales

En este articulo realizamos un analisis del discurso y la interaccion multimodal de una sesion de cuentacuentos realizada en una biblioteca en la que el narrador esta acompanado por una interprete de lengua de signos espanola (LSE). El caso forma parte de una investigacion mas amplia que examina sesiones de cuentacuentos en bibliotecas, librerias infantiles y parques como espacios de socializacion literaria en contextos de aprendizaje informal. Analizamos, por una parte, la relacion cambiante entre los medios/modos desplegados en el relato y las dificultades que esto genera para los espectadores sordos y, por otra parte, la propia participacion de los ninos sordos en esta sesion. El analisis hace explicita la complejidad del acto de interpretacion en LSE y la situacion asimetrica en la que se encuentra la infancia sorda en estas sesiones de cuentacuentos. Igualmente, el episodio analizado invita a plantear el desarrollo de una conciencia multimodal como parte de las competencias literarias y discursivas que potencialmente favorecen la clase de eventos narrativos analizados.

Concepciones del texto e intersubjetividad en cuentacuentos infantiles

Resumen En el contexto de la antropología lingüística y el folklore encontramos distintas propuestas analíticas sobre el texto, convergentes en dos dimensiones de la actividad narrativa (Bauman, 1986; Young, 1984 y Butler, 1992) que plantean categorías analíticas y permiten identificar diferentes planos, elementos y estructuras del discurso. Estas orientaciones pueden formar parte de los repertorios de los hablantes, ser estratégicamente manipuladas y ser producto de diferentes condiciones e ideologías sociales sobre el discurso (Briggs y Bauman, 1992). Un elemento teóricamente relevante, en este contexto, tiene que ver con desentrañar qué concepciones sobre la intersubjetividad (Crossley, 1996) se constituyen en la interrelación de los dos planos del discurso narrativo. En este trabajo realizamos un análisis de las ideologías y actuaciones de los cuentacuentos a través de la relación entre las concepciones del texto y las estructuras intersubjetivas que se presentan en el discurso que los cuentacuentos organizan sobre su actividad narrativa. El objetivo de este análisis es explorar el papel que otorgan a la audiencia en esa práctica de socialización literaria (Poveda, 2003).

Changing Digital Media Environments and Youth Audiovisual Productions: A Comparison of Two Collaborative Research Experiences with South Madrid Adolescents

This article compares two studies conducted in Madrid in a seven–eight years span in which secondary school students (14–15 years of age) were asked to collaboratively create digital audiovisual narratives. In the first project, adolescents seemed to consider their audiovisual materials as transparent and with self-evident meanings. In the second project, adolescents problematized meaning and reflexively examined the design of audiovisual media. We explore two distinct but complementary factors that might help interpret the differences: (a) rapid historical changes in the digital narratives adolescents are exposed to and engage with and (b) methodological differences in the way adolescents were supported and guided during the creation of their audiovisual narratives. Through this analysis, we draw on an ethnographically grounded notion of ‘mediatization’ that helps unpack both rapid transformations in adolescent’s digital mediascape and how digital practices are socially co-constructed in collaborative projects with youth.