Hacia una caracterización del componente experiencial en el discurso narrativo dirigido a ni？os

the present study attempts a characterization of the short story written for children with special attention on discourse itself and its linguistic construction. it is supported on statements of labov and waletzky (1967) and labov (1972), as well as the fundamentals of systemic-functional grammar as developed by martin et al (1997). an exploratory study was designed of a sample of 10 short stories collected from school textbooks for basic education. results indicate that the stories analyzed have a macro-structure which is similar to that of oral narratives of personal experience. the elements orientation, complication, evaluation and resolution became evident in all the stories of the sample. also, we found predominance of material and verbalization processes, which suggests that speech is as relevant as action. finally, an important consistency was found between the types of clausal processes and their grouping in functional sections of the narration.