GENDER AND NARRATIVE STRUCTURES IN PRESEEA-MEDELLÍN

Abstract

This text is part of a doctoral research on narrative structures and evaluative strategies used by Medellin speakers. The methodology is mixed, working with a subcorpus of narratives constructed for the research from the extraction of narratives found in the Corpus Sociolingüístico de Medellín, which is part of the PRESEEA project. The unit of analysis is the clause, and the main reference for analysis is Labovian sociolinguistics. The results obtained so far indicate the existence of narrative patterns different from the classical pattern, and the influence of variables such as sex, age, level of education, and social class in the construction of narratives. In this text, only the differences are presented, according to the sex variable, between the structures of the narratives extracted from the Family and Friendship section of the interviews. Four narrative patterns were identified in the studied texts: chronological pattern, classic pattern, chronological pattern with scattered orientation, and chronological pattern with scattered evaluation. It is concluded that the sex variable affects the structuring of narratives in terms of the number of clauses, as men present a higher average than women, and in narrative patterns, as the chronological pattern with scattered orientation is only used by female speakers.