Examining Metadiscourse as a Critical Tool in Eighth-Grade Student Storytelling

• In Event: 64.086 - MTCC Roundtable Session 27
  In Roundtable Session: 64.086-10 - Play as a Discursive Resource for Examining Membership, Power, and Friendship

Abstract

This paper analyzes the work of one student, Damien, in a middle school superhero storytelling project. In ethnographic data collected during the semester-long project, Damien frequently used metadiscursive markers to comment on, contest, and interpretatively regulate the group’s emerging story. This paper argues that the novelistic playframe of storytelling opened space for Damien to metadiscursively interrupt power imbalances and re-mediate his semiotic and narratives resources. In illuminating how storytelling and play may function as serious critical work, it additionally suggests that we must consider the role of students’ metadiscourse when examining how they are always already contesting and reconceptualizing the discursive circumstances of their worlds.

Author

• Beth Krone, The Ohio State University - Columbus