Orthographic insertions as evidence of the heterogeneous constitution of children's writing

• Grant number: 25/03333-8
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Start date: August 01, 2025
• End date: April 30, 2027
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Linguistics - Linguistic Theory and Analysis
• Principal Investigator: Lourenço Chacon Jurado Filho
• Grantee: Maria Eduarda Gomes Vitti
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia e Ciências (FFC). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Marília. Marília , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Children's writing, especially its orthographic component, often arouses interest in analysis in the fields of health and education. However, research in these fields tends, to be largely based on quantitative data and to disregard the nature of what its authors consider a misspelling. This research project proposes a linguistic perspective for analyzing the unconventional occurrences of grapheme additions not prescribed by orthographic conventions - the orthographic insertions. The general objective is to investigate how the orthographic insertions in the writing of elementary school children indicate the heterogeneous constitution of children's writing. The specific objectives are: (1) to describe how orthographic insertions result from the writer's passing through the representation of the genesis of writing; (2) to describe how the orthographic insertions result from the writer's passing through the representation of the institutionalized code; (3) to show how, based on the elements retrieved from this passing through, orthographic insertions can present different modes of heterogeneity in their constitution. This is a quantitative-qualitative study that will analyze 508 textual productions written by 106 elementary-school children, collected in 2016 from a database that supports research by the Language Studies Research Group (GPEL/CNPq). The analysis will identify the trends to which the results point and will seek explanatory hypotheses for these trends - based on the literature already consulted for the preparation of the project and the literature to be consulted during its development. Studies from phonological theory, as well as those focusing on orthographic complexity, should support those hypotheses.