Storied selves: A critical discourse analysis of young children’s literate identifications

Abstract

A wealth of research demonstrates that as young children acquire literacy they also approximate literate roles and relationships. Such literate identifications, or storied selves, are complex, sometimes contradictory and under construction for young people. Less research has focused on how young children’s storied selves are discursively constituted across domains of practice. Given this gap in the literature, we ask: How do young children author themselves as literate in the domains of school and home? What social languages, cultural models, discourses, relationships and situated identities do they enact? To answer these questions, we drew on interviews conducted with first and second grade students who participated in a literacy clinic at an urban school site. The children were asked to report on their literacy lives in different domains of practice. Using the tools of critical discourse analysis, we examined the discursive contours of children’s literate identities in different domains. Through cross-case analyses and ‘telling cases’, our findings suggest that young children call on a hybrid mix of discourse patterns to author themselves as literate beings. The students remain positive and enthusiastic about reading and themselves as readers, despite needing additional literacy support. However, the existence of alignment and conflict between the discourses of the home and school domains creates reasons for attending to students’ literate identities in closer detail.