Shaping Learning for Young Audiences: A Comparative Case Study of Children’s Texts from Two Parisian Museums

Abstract

With numerous museums currently targeting children and families, museum texts aimed at a young public are becoming increasingly frequent. There is little literature however concerning the ways in which those texts strive to shape children’s experience and understanding. Using children’s texts collected from two French museums, Paris’s Musée d’Orsay and Musée en Herbe, and drawing on Systemic Functional Linguistics theory, this study first seeks to explore the linguistic features of children’s texts. Using Legitimation Code Theory, the study also highlights and contrasts the ways in which the two museums’ practices and beliefs concerning their roles as learning institutions influence the texts they produce, in terms of both learning potential and interaction with their young audience.

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Notes on contributors

Caroline Lipovsky

Caroline Lipovsky is a Senior Lecturer in French and Francophone Studies at the University of Sydney. Her research interests are varied and have focused on the language of the workplace, the language of the law, the linguistic landscape, and, more recently, museum texts.