A sociolinguistic analysis of gender diffe rences in narrative patterns used in the oral recounting of personal experience in the speech of young speakers from Santiago, Chile

Authors

  • Silvana Guerrero González Universidad de Chile

Abstract

This research study aims at accounting for gender differences in the use of narrative patterns (Reyes 1996) by young adult subjects from Santiago of Chile when narrating their personal experiences. The main objective was to identify such differences and establish their frequency of occurrence in the development of the narrations. After analyzing 64 narratives, we concluded that there were practically no differences in the subjects’ use of narrative patterns. However, an unexpected preference was found for the use of the standard narrative pattern by the subjects representing the lower levels of the social scale: the frequency of occurrence of such pattern in their narratives was higher than that found the other levels. On the basis of these results, we propose an initial explanation of such difference through the concept of “primary orality”.

Keywords:

narratives of personal experience, chilean youths’ speech, narrative patterns, primary orality