Stories, descriptions and essays as categories for talking and writing

In this paper, we explore the meaning of the main textual modes (narration, description and exposition) in a writing task performed at school. These modes are thought as typical discursive genres in school that are constituted as participants’ categories in this arena. From this point of view, we analyze conversations between student pairs planning a text about a photograph. Each pair planned a text in a different discursive mode depending on the condition they were assigned. Results show that these discursive modes appear in conversations as procedures and resources designed by participants in the conversational process, in order to construct knowledge about the picture, rather than as static schemas.