At the crossroads: A study on the discourse of children's literature.

Abstract

This literary study offers an alternative approach to children's literature. Focusing on the works of two prominent Israeli authors--Efraim Sidon and Meir Shalev--the study analyzes the textual perspectives of the child and adult addresses in the discursive system designated children's literature (CL). The study suggests and explores three hypotheses: The first hypothesis is based on the theoretical writing of Roman Jakobson, maintains that unlike adult's literature which is dominated by the poetic function. CL is a literary system that embraces six textual groups differing in their predominant function: the emotive, the conative, the referential, the poetic, the meta-linguistic and the phatic. While pedagogical and psychological studies tend to stress the primary role of the conative and referential text, this study argues for the significance of the phatic, emotive, meta-linguistic and poetic ones. The second hypothesis argues for the simultaneous existence of two diverse addresses in the literary discourse: the child and the adult, differing in their psychological and emotional development as well as their literary norms. The third hypothesis exposes the potential functions of the adult and child addressees in the discourse. These perspectives are varied depending on the dominant function controlling the discourse. When the conative, referential, or phatic function controls the discourse, the primary perspective is that of the child. The readability level matches the child's stage of development, his competencies, and his needs, enabling him to be an active participant negotiating its meaning. The adult addressee can be considered as a pseudo-reader engaging in four potential perspectives: as a critic or a story-teller, as a secondary reader, as an educand receptive to the text's didactic content. The addresses' perspectives are more complex in texts dominated by the poetic, emotive or meta-linguistic function. These texts, based on competencies and elements unfamiliar to the child, do not consider him as their formal addressee. He does not own the exclusivity of the text. The very least he has to share the text with the adult and at times he is even regulated to the margin.