"Propping Up" the "I": The Discursive Constitution of Subjectivity While Writing in a Kindergarten Classroom

• In Event: The Dynamic Presence and Futures of Writing and Literacies

Abstract

This manuscript presents a signifier-based discourse analysis of a discursive event involving three kindergarten children engaged in informal talk while writing and drawing in a classroom setting. Drawing upon theories of discourse developed by Émile Benveniste and Jacques Lacan, the author mapped uses of the pronouns “I” and “you” as signifiers that came into relation with a discursive object in the constitution of subjectivity through discourse. In this study, the constitution of the focal students’ subjectivity is studied not an internal, pre-existing phenomenon that is brought to discourse, but, rather, as manifest in and realized as a discursive entity that was forged and perpetuated through uses of signifiers that were linked into chains of signifier networks.

Author

• Jason P. Ranker, Portland State University
  Presenting Author