As they grow, children get little by little independent. The MOBIKIDS research aims to study how children’s mobility and spatial experiences evolve during the transition from elementary school to secondary school.The first objective was to understand the social, psychological and spatial conditions for the evolution of urban practices by describing forms of urban educational culture (UEC) and the role of routines and informality in these practices.A part of the methodology was based on the “commented city walk”developed by J.P. Thibaud and revised here with children. Thus, with children who consented it consisted in collecting their voices and photos(video-recordings in the second year) taken during the commented walk made in a familiar context (school-home journey). More precisely,along their return journey from school, kids were asked to describe their perceptions, sensations and other observations along the way. This walk &comments were recorded in situ, then transcribed to help with the various forms of later analysis.In principle the transcriptions only preserve the wording of speech in the children’s expression during their journey, but this expression is much richer and more subtle than the simple words they use. It manifests through voice, its intonations, its rhythms, hesitations or silences sometimes,it is expressed through the relationships that we hear between the child walking and the sounds of the environment, or with the investigator who accompanies and questions them.It is therefore an analysis “by ear” that I will try to explain and share with you, with a few examples of how to recompose those recordings. To this purpose I have constructed seven main categories: relationship to the environment, interactions with the interviewer, melodic voice expressions,monosyllabic expressions, hesitations, speech adjustments, and verbal expressions.
Between kids’ words, an audio analysis
Jul Mcoisans
