4.2: Naming in Pupil Writings (9 to 14 Years Old)

Christina Romain and Marie-Noëlle Roubaud

Aix-Marseille University

During the analysis of a corpus of interaction, Roubaud and Loufrani (2001, p. 207), in the tradition of Blanche-Benveniste’s works (1984), define the term “naming” as follows: “Ce terme de dénomination nous servira à designer ce qui a trait au fait de nommer, c’est à dire à assigner du lexique.” [The term naming will designate all that concerns the fact of designating, that is to say assigning lexicon]. These naming operations take the two lines of language: the paradigmatic line, which allows the speaker to give or review different properties of the word and the syntagmatic line which gives the opportunity to set syntagms, even approximate, in order to advance in the discourse. These are the naming operations we searched for in 262 papers written by 9- to 14- year-old pupils during writing production. The analysis of the corpus has revealed that the anaphora and the explicitation participate in the naming operation.

Processes such as the anaphora force the reader to return to the reference. The anaphora is a substitution or secondary naming, and it is used to avoid the redundancy effect of repeating the primary naming. Instead, it is a means of repeating by using different forms. In the first example, the syntagm un homme [a man] is named cet homme [this man], Il [He] when used as subject and le [him], D’Artagnan [D’Artagnan], lui [him] when used as object:

(1) Un jour … un homme est venu, cet homme était … tout le monde s’arrêta pour le regarder. Il était grand … Une balle a touché D’Artagnan mais elle n’était pas destinée à lui (A,V,10)¹

(1) One day a man came, this man was … everybody stopped to look at him. He was big … A bullet touched D’Artagnan but it was not intended for him

As to the explicitation, as an extension of the primary naming, it leads the writer to make a word more precise (ex. 2, the case of the syntagm trois planètes [three planets]):

(2) Tout a commencé avec trois planètes : Jupiter, Mars, Pluton. (A,II,5)

(2) It all began with three planets: Jupiter, Mars, Pluto

That stop on the word, at a precise moment, shows that the pupil is the master of the game. As Steuckardt (2003, p. 5) writes: “Ces moments où le locuteur assure le contrôle des mots qu’il emploie, ces arrêts de jeu, permettent [au lecteur] d’entrevoir sa conception du signe, de saisir sa façon d’en jouer, mais aussi de pénétrer dans son univers lexical propre.” [These moments where the speaker has control of the words he uses, these stops, allow the reader to glimpse his conception of the sign, to understand his way of using it but also to enter his own lexical world.] These naming operations clarify a part of the metalinguistic activity of the pupil (Benveniste, 1974; Culioli, 1990; Jakobson, 1963). To enter the lexical world of the pupil was an experience worth attempting, since the corpus allowed a contrastive analysis which takes into account the age of the pupils as well as their socio-cultural background.

Theoretical Questioning

The term “naming” covers different realities depending on the linguist’s approach. In Kleiber’s referential semantic (1984), the naming and the designation are two different ways of representation. However, in the first, the relation between the linguistic expression and the real item corresponds to a lasting referential association, whereas in the designation, this referential association is temporary, and nonconventional. In his discourse analysis, Siblot (2004, 2007), by asking a question about the relation between language and the real, differentiates “nomination” from “naming” as two different designation processes: The first corresponds to the act of naming, designating an object, a reference, while the second corresponds to the lexical word, taken out of context, as it is found in the dictionary. Branca-Rosoff (2007, p. 15) claims that studying nomination means “étudier la manière dont le locuteur contextualise les unités et la manière dont il exprime sa propre situation dans un interdiscours que l’on peut interpréter socialement” [studying the way the speaker grounds the units and the way he expresses his own situation in an intercourse which can be socially interpreted]. Is it necessary to see in these naming operations, as the experts of the gloss do, “reformulations orientées (non réciproques)” [(non reciprocal) oriented reformulations] (Zoppi-Fontana, 1998: 155)? According to Steuckardt (2003, p. 12), the word and its gloss can be defined as follows: “toute séquence discursive où le locuteur opère une explication de sens qu’il donne à un mot” [any discourse sequence where the speaker gives an explanation of the meaning he gives to a word]. For clarity reasons, we retained the term “naming” to describe the linguistic processes used to specify a narrative reality.

We considered anaphoric processes as forms of naming since any anaphoric expression corresponds to a previously mentioned referent within the discourse (Kleiber, 1988). Some authors tend to avoid limiting the anaphors to coreferential relations (Corblin 1985, 1987a, 1987b, 1989; Kleiber, 1988, 1991; Milner, 1985). Different classifications appear. Thus, Riegel, Pellat and Rioul (2009) differentiate the anaphoric processes (the coreferential anaphors and those for which the reference is not always made explicit in the text) of the anaphoric expressions. The latter are classified in pronominal anaphors—total or partial, in nominal anaphors—direct, indirect, resumptive (Asher, 1993) or conceptual, associative anaphors (Kleiber, 2003) —in adverbial, verbal and adjectival anaphors. Gardes-Tamine (2008, pp. 199-204) distinguishes the nature of the anaphoric units, the lexical links between the antecedent and the anaphoric process (direct, indirect, resumptive and associative anaphors) and the referential links (total, partial and conceptual anaphors). Adam (2008, pp. 84-93) differentiates the pronominal anaphors, the defined anaphors and the demonstrative anaphors.

Regarding the explicitation processes, we relied on the works of BlancheBenveniste, Bilger, Rouget and Van den Eynde (1990, p. 125) who use the term “explicitation lexeme.” In separate publications, Blanche-Benveniste (1986, 1992) shows that nouns (N), both oral and written, such as “rêve” (son rêve c’est d’escalader le Mont-Blanc), “chose” (une chose m’étonne c’est qu’il a pu rentrer) or “”résultat” (Voici le résultat: ils ne comprennent rien) fall into explicitation structures. Indeed, the question: “Quel nom?” (Quel rêve? Quelle chose? Quel résultat?) can always be asked and be answered using “c’est” and choosing an item in a series, in a paradigmatic list. However, as the authors of the français parlé (1990: 125) argue, this explicitation relation may be seen between a lexical item (nominal or verbal) and the nucleus that follows without any linking grammatical item (such as c’est); the reader, himself, builds semantic groups between some lexical units (the case of the word chose: une chose ennuyeuse il est parti). Nouns are good examples of naming. These are the ones the pupils explicitate first. Bassano’s works (1999, 2005) showed that during language acquisition, children speak nouns first. Various factors can explain the late development of verbs compared to nouns: “Un facteur déterminant est probablement la plus grande complexité cognitive des verbes et de leur emballage conceptuel.” [A decisive factor is probably the higher cognitive complexity of verbs and their conceptual package] (Bassano, 1999, p. 34). David (2000, p. 34) mentions this difference in processing nouns and verbs: “Le décalage avec la production des verbes ou adjectifs s’expliquerait alors par une difficulté plus grande à établir des relations d’un autre ordre: notionnelles ou conceptuelles, puis grammaticales; toutes relations qui exigent une autonomie sémantique croissante.” [The discrepancy with the verb or adjective production would be thus explained by the greater difficulty to build relations of another nature: notional or conceptual, then grammatical; all the relations which imply an increasing semantic autonomy.] Martinot (2000) showed besides, in his study on the reformulation process among children aged 5 to 11, that verbs are more subject to variation than nouns during oral reproduction. All these observations probably explain why nouns are related to naming activities.

Experimentation and Methodology

Data Collection

The collected data come from a cross-sectional study carried out in the same year. The experimentation involved six school grades (classes of 9- to 14-yearold pupils) and in each case, the study was conducted under the same conditions in November. The pupils had to produce a narrative text after they were shown the image of a battle scene (a space battle for the primary school pupils and a battle at the time of the French revolution for the secondary school pupils). In order to make all the writing equally readable, before the analysis the texts were computerized and orthographically corrected while keeping the original punctuation (Cappeau & Roubaud, 2005).

These textual constitutive draft productions (Schultz-Romain, 1999, 2000) consist of 91 texts written by the pupils aged 9 (CM1) and 10 (CM2) from primary school and 171 narrative texts written by four secondary school pupils (11 years old-6^eme, 12 years old-5^eme, 13 years old-4^eme and 14 years old-3^eme). This data collection allowed us to compare pupils’ performance according to their age.

We also selected several schools in different municipalities of the Bouchesdu-Rhône (southern department of France) according to the distinction made by the French Ministry of Education between advantaged schools (A) and disadvantaged schools (B). This classification is based upon the socio-economical and cultural background of pupils attending schools in a particular area.

Therefore, we conducted a contrastive analysis which took into account both the age of the pupils and their socio-cultural background.

Methodology

Our study deals with the linguistic analysis of the naming processes among the pupils performing the same task (telling) and focuses on the anaphoric processes and the explicitation processes.

Regarding the anaphoric processes, the corpus analysis led to the following classification: pronominal anaphors and nominal anaphors. The other types of anaphors do not appear significantly: these could be found in only one to three texts. The anaphoric processes formed by ellipsis and repetition were not taken into account. Indeed, we were willing to show and study the use of anaphoric processes which on the one hand are linguistically marked (as opposed to the ellipsis) and on the other hand differentiated from their antecedent (as opposed to the repetition).

Among the pronominal anaphors, we have distinguished the cases where the substitution affected the subject (ex.3) or the object (ex.4):

(3) Alors un petit garçon pas plus haut que trois pommes arriva à Belleville. Il dit … (A,VI,2)

(4) Les pirates tombèrent dans la galaxie et jamais personne ne les retrouva. (A,I,17)

Among the nominal anaphors, we have distinguished the direct anaphors from the indirect ones and have called “anaphoric relation marked by a determiner” the case of the direct nominal anaphora (ex.5) and “nominal anaphora” the case of the indirect nominal anaphora (ex.6):

(5) Une guerre éclata dans l’espace. … Cette guerre n’était pas comme les autres … (A,II,8)

(6) Il était une fois un vieux roi. … Il avait une fille … un cavalier arriva il entra dans le château et alla trouver la princesse… (A,VI,15)

Concerning the explicitation processes, we used the progressive specification notion described by Roubaud (2000). This notion is useful for describing the explicitation since for all the encountered events, the movement is in the direction of a lexicon (risque, idée, problème) that specifies the unspecified noun (in italics in examples (7), (8) and (9)). We observed the link uniting the explicitation to the noun: Is it directly linked to the noun with the use of the preposition de (ex.7) or as a formula qui consista à (ex.8)? Or does the explicitation appear in a specification structure such as c’est (ex.9)?

(7) Ils prirent le risque de se rentrer dedans. (A, I,2)

(8) Il trouva une idée géniale qui consista à donner des cadeaux à tous les gens du monde et une petite lettre où il y a écrit: «Nous voulons faire la paix.» (B,V,11)

(9) Mais il y avait un gros problème c’est qu’ils avaient mis le feu à un immeuble. (A,IV,13)

Our study examined also the link between these naming operations and the age of the pupils: Are these used more by the secondary school pupils? Which type are they? The study is also contrastive since the socio-cultural background was taken into consideration. We attempted to compare the means used by the pupils of different backgrounds: Do the pupils from backgrounds A (advantaged group) and B (disadvantaged group) use the same processes? How often?

Results

Analysis of the Anaphoric Processes

We observed the anaphoric processes within the 262 texts. Regarding the antecedents, we noticed that the number of syntagms involved in the anaphoric processes is very similar within both types of schools. Nevertheless, the number decreases by the end of secondary school within the disadvantaged group. In these schools, a significant number of pupils directly use a pronoun as an antecedent, or more exactly, an anaphoric substitute without introducing, previously in the text, an antecedent (10.5% of the pupils aged 11 are involved, 16.6% of the pupils aged 12, 22.2% of the pupils aged 13 and 21% of the pupils aged 14).

The anaphoric processes used were grouped in two parts: the ones corresponding to a non diversified usage (the pupils used one sort of anaphors) and those corresponding to a differentiated usage (usage of several forms).

Non Diversified Use of Anaphors

This group consists of two specific productions using almost exclusively a single form of anaphora:

a) The use of pronominal anaphors to replace a subject and/ or a complement

(10) C’était en 1789 … .. Après ils allèrent à la Bastille c’était le 14 juillet et ils la prennent d’assaut … (B,VI,6)

b) The use of anaphoric relations marked by the determiner

(11) Il était une fois un roi qui s’appelait Rabzoul… Les gens de la ville n’étaient pas contents car le roi était méchant … (A,VI,13)

Diversified Use of Anaphors

We identified another group containing several diverse productions of anaphoric processes, among which we will mention the most significant combinations:

a) The use of pronominal anaphors as subject and/or complement and of anaphoric relations marked by a determiner.

(12) Il était une fois un prince … mais il devra affronter un dragon il faut lui planter l’épée dans le cœur mais le dragon était trop fort pour lui il appelait les habitants de la vallée. … Mélanie et le Prince se marièrent … (B,VI,9)

b) The use of pronominal anaphors to replace a subject and/ or a complement and nominal anaphors

(13) Dans l’espace il y a une bataille entre les extra-terrestres entre les pirates dans la voie spatiale, et la guerre dura des heures et des heures et des années. Mais en fait on savait pas pourquoi ils se battaient peut-être pour une planète ou l’espace pour eux ou un combat parce qu’ils se détestent. (B,II,1)

c) The use of pronominal anaphors to replace a subject and/ or a complement, nominal anaphors and anaphoric relations marked by a determiner

(14) Il était une fois des pirates … Un jour ils décidèrent de faire une bataille dans l’espace. … Des vaisseaux spatiaux essayèrent d’arrêter cette guerre … mais les pirates avec leurs canons les ont explosés. La bataille continuait … (B,I,4)

Assessment

In primary school, the analysis of the results showed that the diversified use of the anaphoric substitution processes increases from one class level (9 years old) to another (10 years old pupils), regardless of the socio-cultural background of the pupils (from 36% to 62.5% for A and from 27% to 48.5% for B).

Nevertheless, at the end of primary school, 48.5% of the pupils from the disadvantaged background use diversified anaphoric processes whereas 62.5% of the pupils from the advantaged background use these processes. Moreover, these results showed that on the one hand, in a disadvantaged background, 4.5% of the 9 years old pupils do not use anaphoric substitution processes; and on the other hand, the nominal substitutions are specific to the advantaged background (4.5% of the 9 years old pupils and 8% of the 10 years old pupils). Indeed, the nominal substitution processes are not part of the processes used by the pupils from the disadvantaged background by the end of primary school.

The results we observed at the starting level of secondary school are similar to those for the elementary school: 60% of the pupils from the advantaged background have recourse to diversified anaphoric processes. Meanwhile the percentage of pupils of the disadvantaged background using diversified processes increases from 48.5% at the end of primary school to 67.5% at the starting level of secondary school.

Throughout secondary school, the anaphoric processes diversify and spread in the textual productions of the various socio-cultural backgrounds. We observed in secondary school as well as in primary school, a primarily quantitative difference between the two groups: at the end of secondary school, 100% of the pupils within the advantaged group have recourse to diversified anaphoric processes while only 79% of pupils from the disadvantaged group do.

Table \(\PageIndex{1}\): The anaphoric processes used in advantaged primary schools (A)

Table \(\PageIndex{2}\): The anaphoric processes used in disadvantaged primary schools (B)

Nevertheless, we observed a particular use of the nominal substitution. By the end of secondary school, this substitution is used by 52.5% of the pupils from the advantaged background; however, it is used by only 16% of the pupils from the disadvantaged background. In addition, at the beginning of secondary school, the 11- and 12-year-old pupils from the disadvantaged background extensively use nominal substitution processes (42% of the 6^th grade pupils and 55.5% of the 5th grade pupils). Finally, the diversity of the anaphoric processes is centralized for these pupils, at the end of secondary school, on the pronominal substitution processes and on the anaphoric relation marked by a determiner, while for the pupils of the advantaged background, the processes extend to nominal substitutions.

We classified these explicitation processes into three groups: ones that have operator nouns, expressions taken from a model, and ones which in 73.8% of the cases take part in progressive specification structures.

Table \(\PageIndex{3}\): The anaphoric processes used in advantaged secondary schools (A)

Table \(\PageIndex{4}\): The anaphoric processes used in disadvantaged secondary schools (B)

Analysis of the Explicitation Processes

Operator Nouns

Some nouns, which Gross (1975) named “operator nouns,” can directly build a verbal sequence specifying the N by the use of the preposition de:

(15) le duc avait donné l’ordre de faire feu sur le peuple (A,III,4)

(16) et tous ont eu l’idée de faire une guerre (B,I,16)

(17) Mais quand il grandit il lui resta l’envie de jouer avec ses copains (A,VI,10)

These constructions can be seen regardless of the age and the background of the pupils, especially in the cases of some lexemes (such as ordre and idée). The only difference is that the pupils from the disadvantaged background use the operator nouns less often (10.5% for A versus 4.2% for B).

Formulas

We pointed out six occurrences in both backgrounds where the explicitation relation is marked by a syntagm such as qui était de or qui consistait à, a formulaic sequence learned as a unit, most probably from literature,2 which some secondary school pupils have memorized.

(18) Le lendemain le conseiller dit son idée qui était de faire rentrer un cadeau à Louis XVI (A,IV,17)

(19) Il devait passer l’épreuve du feu qui consistait à faire deux guerres pendant trois heures à deux époques différentes. (A,V,25)

Other formulas with the verb dire taken from the discourse represent other ways of marking the explicitation, as early as in CM2 (10- to 11-year-old pupils):

(20) En l’an 4 324 les terriens reçoivent un message des martiens en disant de se laisser conquérir. (B,II,23)

Progressive Explicitation Structures

These are the most used explicitation processes by the corpus. We will study its general syntactic frames.

The syntagm containing the N

This (unspecified) noun can appear:

a) In the valency of the verb as subject (ex.21), non prepositional complement (ex.22) or prepositional complement (ex.23)

(21) une grande bataille arriva les riches contre les pauvres (A,VI,23)

(22) Les pirates ont un projet ils veulent envahir l’espace. (A,I,10)

(23) les habitants se plaignaient à cause d’une grave maladie : la peste (A,V,8)

b) In the valency of the verb but within a system like “il y a … qui/que” which isolates a term of the valency from the others (in this case the non specified N), as well for subjects (ex.24) as for complements (ex.25)

(24) il y avait une seule personne qui régnait, le roi. (A,IV,2)

(25) et dans ces jeunes il y avait un jeune garçon que je connaissais c’était mon voisin d’en face (B,IV,10)

c) In a relative clause

(26) la seule personne qui est intervenue était un monsieur (A,VI,6)

(27) La raison pour laquelle ils se battaient était que les paysans n’avaient pas assez de vivre. (B,III,15)

d) Within a syntagm without verb

It is generally accompanied by a modifier, an adjective, which specifies it in a series:

(28) Alors la meilleure chose le commandant a décidé qu’il faudra se battre contre les pirates. (B,II,14)

The biggest percentage of explicated Ns can be found in structures where the N is within the valency of a verb (21.7% for A and 18.5% for B) and mainly as a non prepositional object (16.8% for A and 15.1% for B). This verb is usually il y a (9 occurrences), avoir (9 occurrences) or faire (6 occurrences):

(29) Mais il y avait un problème, les pirates de l’espace sont venus leur prendre leur trésor. (B,1,14)

(30) et le magicien eut une idée il jeta un sort (A,I,6)

(31) car Louis XVI a fait un privilège à une personne qu’elle n’aurait pas dû avoir : c’est la liberté d’un homme qui aurait du être exécuté pour une trahison du roi. (A,III,1)

If we compare the backgrounds, we can see that all pupils use the explicitation processes but the group A pupils use them more frequently (29.4% for A and 26% for B). We noticed that the pupils from group B use more structures where N appears in a syntagm without a verb than the pupils from group A (5% in B versus 3.5% in A).

Table \(\PageIndex{5}\): Student use of explication processes

Expressing Equivalence

The verb être (see Example 9) is the best candidate for establishing an explicitation relation between an unspecified N and a specified lexical item (10.5% for A versus 7.6% for B). However, most commonly, the equivalence expression is not indicated by any morpheme, regardless of the socio-cultural environment (17.5% for A versus 17.7% for B). In most cases, a graphic sign visualizes this link (12.6% for A versus 11.8% for B): The group A pupils use the colon (:) and the group B pupils, the comma (,).

If we link the syntagm containing the N and the marking of the explicitation relation, we can take stock of the explicitation processes among pupils. When the N is in the valency of a verb (without any system), there is a tendency not to mark the explicitation link except by a graphic sign, which is particularly true for the CM1 and CM2 classes (9- to 11-year-old pupils) for the occurrences of the corpus:

(32) … il y a eu une bataille, les hommes pirates contre les extraterrestres. (B,II,10)

The explicitation morpheme “(c’)est” or “il y a” appears at secondary school as early as sixth grade for the advantaged group and the fourth grade for the disadvantaged group. In all the other cases, even though the occurrences are few (system, relative clause and syntagm without verb), the tendency is to mark the explicitation link using a morpheme, regardless of the age and the background.

Table \(\PageIndex{6}\): Ways of expressing equivalence

Syntagm Made Equivalent

The explicitation lexemes are set equivalent whatever the age and the sociocultural environment, within the verbal lexicon (31.5% of the noted examples) and nominal lexicon (68.5% of the examples).

In the cases where the syntagm made equivalent is verbal, there are 20 occurrences of syntagms with a conjugated verb (ex.33) versus 3 occurrences of infinitive syntagms (ex.34):

(33) Mais un jour les pirates ont eu une idée, ils décidèrent d’aller dans l’espace (A,I,8)

(34) Mais le 14 juillet 1789 le peuple se décida à faire une action qui restera dans l’histoire : se révolter contre la monarchie absolue. (A,III,11)

In the cases where the syntagm made equivalent is nominal, the unspecified N can relate to a single (ex.35) or several appointed items (ex.36) in a list of possibilities on the paradigmatic axis:

(35) La seule passion de la princesse était la musique (B,VI,1)

(36) celui de la moto a eu deux fractures, une du tibia et une du crâne (B,IV,15)

Assessment

The progressive specification structures serve as explicitation among pupils. They allow them to present information in two stages: once as an N (unspecified) creating an expectant effect and once in a lexical form (specified). Placing the specification in the second stage has two advantages.

The first advantage is that, when the syntactic construction with an unspecified N is placed, the pupil can explain this N in a long rewording (ex.37):

(37) « Venez voir, il y a quelque chose de bizarre il y a un monsieur qui vient tous les soirs poser ses poubelles sur mon chat et part en courant. » (A,VI,1)

The second advantage is that the explicit relationship can be taken in its entirety. This applies to the following example, where even though the lexicon is a nominal syntagm, it is the relationship between the name “Mongolians” and the relative clause “qui donnaient l’assaut” that explicates the earthquake. It would be impossible to reduce the explicitation to the noun:

(38) Un mois plus tard à une heure du matin ils entendirent un tremblement de terre c’était les Mongoliens qui donnaient l’assaut. (A,VI,30)

* Un mois plus tard à une heure du matin ils entendirent un tremblement de terre c’était les Mongoliens

Indeed, “les Mongoliens” forms with the relative clause “qui donnaient l’assaut” a verbo-nominal group, and it is in the link between the two elements that the explicitation of the earthquake should be read.

Conclusion

The naming processes, whether they are anaphoric or explicitation, are present in the pupils’ writings, regardless of their age and environment. Naming is a fundamental phenomenon found in any language exercise. As already mentioned, the noun is a familiar linguistic reality to young children because it is linked to the activities of naming.

The analysis of the anaphoric processes showed that they diversify progressively throughout schooling, regardless of the type of socio-cultural environment. Nevertheless, the percentage of diversified anaphoric uses by pupils from the disadvantaged background is inferior, although clearly significant for the disadvantaged background

In addition, pupils from the disadvantaged background use significantly less often nominal anaphors relative to other anaphoric processes, except for the sixth and fifth grades (11- to 13-year-old pupils) where the use is clearly significant compared to all other grades studied. The reason for this imbalance between the classes at the beginning of secondary school and the others is likely to be found in school curricula and textbooks which abide by the ministerial decisions. Indeed, the official French curriculum recalls the importance of teaching narrative texts, especially anaphora in the sixth and fifth grades (11- to 13-yearold pupils) in the continuation of the work started on the nominal substitutes in the CM1 and CM2 classes (9- to 11-year-old pupils). This suggests that this focus on alternatives at the beginning of secondary school has an impact on pupils’ skills in this area. Since the learning curve of these tools is significantly longer for pupils from disadvantaged socio-cultural background, one can see the interest to revise the anaphors throughout secondary school.

The analysis of the explicitation processes showed that all pupils from the CM1 classes to the third grade (9- to 14-year-old pupils) employ them, but they are used less frequently by pupils in disadvantaged socio-cultural environments, and when used, appear predominantly in progressive specification structures. It is especially in the valency of a verb that the unspecified noun is built, and it is the pupils from the disadvantaged background who produce them more in a syntagm without a verb. The trend is not to mark the explicitation link by a morpheme in primary school but in secondary school; it appears from the sixth for the advantaged pupils (11- to 12-year-old pupils) and only in fourth grade for those in disadvantaged areas (13- to 14-year-old pupils). When this link is not morphologically marked, the disadvantaged pupils tend to use comma while advantaged pupils employ mainly the colon.

It seems that when the disadvantaged environment pupils have the same linguistic means to mark the explicitation, they use it less often, and they use fewer grammatical markers—and when they do use markers, it is later than the pupils of the advantaged environment. What is noteworthy is that in the case of explicitation, no formal teaching is introduced in class; however, pupils use various processes that they draw from both oral and written language. It would be interesting to teach those naming processes, as such literature is a good way to get pupils of all backgrounds to learn naming methods.

Even though we know that these namings are only temporary because they are concomitant to the time of writing, their study leads us to identify formal procedures that seem to structure all the writing in both the advantaged and disadvantaged groups. The differences in the use of naming processes appear in terms of frequency and grammatical or lexical choices. The fact that all pupils use naming operations leads us to reconsider our a priori judgments on the relationship between pupils’ writings and their socio-cultural background.

Notes

1. We coded the texts as follows: The letter specifies whether the pupils belong to an advantaged school (A) or a disadvantaged school (B), the Roman character refers to the level of education: I (CM1), II (CM2), VI (6eme), V (5eme), IV (4eme), III (3eme) and the number corresponds to a pupil, that is to say the number of the copy in the class.
2. For example “Once upon a time” is a well-known literary formula

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