https://www.mdu.se/

Highlights

• Uses a Bakhtinian analysis of dialogism in early school writing.
• Shows how student make use of dialogic experiences when writing.
• Suggests the term ‘associative intertextuality’ for analysis of early writing.
• Shows the presence of interplay of centrifugal and centripetal forces.
• Theoretical and empiric argumentation for didactic attention to heteroglossia.

Recently, Sweden has seen a rise in research concerning content and functional aspects of early school writing and has a tradition of form-orientated research. While this provides important insights, few studies still focus on dialogism in early school writing and on how students draw on experiences in writing. This study aims to shed light on the interplay between student experiences and their written texts in primary school writing instruction. Using intertextual and interdiscursive analysis, this study examines 38 student texts divided into two corpora and written concerning two different prompts. The prompts generated very different texts that showed a complex dialogism through the inner speech of the students. The intertextual and interdiscursive dialogues in the respective corpora draw on different conventions of writing and on different experiential worlds. The study further shows how heteroglossic centrifugal forces can work alongside monoglossic centripetal forces in the social practices of early school writing.