Referenciation and hyperstructure in scientific popularization texts for children

Abstract

The article deals with the construction of discourse objects in scientific popularization reports for children and aims to examine the production of meanings about science themes in the anaphoric registrations which start from daily themes to culminate in specialized expressions. Semantic-pragmatic aspects of the anaphora operated by the text producer in order to inform/explain and captivate the child reader are observed. The corpus is composed by seven reports published in the magazine Ciência Hoje das Crianças, which were selected by being a hyperstructure. The principles relative to the communication contract of science médiatisation postulated by Charaudeau (2008b), the notions of schematization and cultural pre-constructs (GRIZE, 1990, 1996), the notion of hyperstructure (ADAM & LUGRIN, 2000; 2006) and the studies about discursive referenciation (MONDADA, 2002) are the theoretical bases of this study. The recurrence in the engendering of intelligible schemes for the child reader, via co-construction of the anaphora - which, categorized in the hyperestructure instances, reveal mise en scène strategies -, was verified.