3. Narrating and transmission of culture
Parent-child narratives are an
instrument for transmitting cultural
values.
“Children’s narratives are ... a product of their
interactions with the adults around them, who
provide the framework not just for the
narrative, but for children’s construction of the
world”
(Berko-Gleason & Melzi 1997:217)
4. Narrating in immigrant communities
Generational language shift.
Stories reflect transitioning values.
Immigrant families try to balance:
- sociability
- socialization
Parent-child storytelling is a socio-cultural
tool for this process.
5. From supported to independent
narrating
Older speakers
- guide the story organization.
- provide the basic elements of narrative they
expect to hear.
What are parents’ goals/agendas in this process?
- social / interactional?
- educational / instructional?
6. Berko-Gleason & Melzi (1997)
Parents’ interpretation of the narrative task
reflects more general values in the culture: -
- Latino mothers (Central America)
social behaviour & relationships
- Anglo-American mothers
independence and structure
- Hungarian Romani mothers
“blueprint of expectations”
7. Blum-Kulka & Snow 1992: Family dinner-table
conversation as narrative socialization context
• American families:
- ritual of ‘telling one’s day’
- focus on self: individualism & self-accomplishment
• Israeli families:
- collaborative stories
- shared family events in past
- collective ‘us’ as protagonists: group/family focus
8. Child’s role
Learning to produce a well-structured, coherent
text, in accordance with cultural norms.
9. In narrating our experiences, we construct simultaneously two
landscapes:
landscape of action
landscape of consciousness
(Bruner 1986)
Actions/events
Background/context
Perspective
10. European North American
• Temporally-sequenced (linear) plot.
• Factual, event-centred.
• Single experience.
• May begin with Abstract
Background (who, what, when, ongoing events)
Action sequence, culminating in Main Event
Resolution of problem
End statements- return to conversational present
11. African-American
Combines similar experiences into one thematically
unified story.
Regularity in number of lines per stanza : + 4
a ‘good story’ = facts embellished with metaphors, jokes,
slang, exaggeration.
Poetic devices: repetition & parallelism.
Thematic coherence, rather than unity based on strict
chronology of events.
12. Japanese
• Concise, succinct.
• Combine several experiences into one story.
• Regularity in number of lines per stanza: + 3
• Value the implicit over the explicit: elliptical style.
• Reflects parental input.
• Linked to aspects of culture.
• Similarity of narrative form to haiku
13. Hispanic
May be very few events.
Emphasis on descriptive info – esp. family/ social
relationships.
Point of story: to connect with listeners by talking of these
relationships; events merely backdrop.
Reflects parental input.
Links with aspects of culture, incl. literature.
14. Heath: Ethnographic study of language
socialization
• Language & literacy behaviours in 2 rural communities:
- white working-class
- black working-class
• Norms for language socialization w.r.t.
- conversational interaction
- narrating stories
- consequences for schooling
15. Children in White, WC community
• Socialized to tell factual stories with a moral lesson.
• Relate events in sequence,
• stick to the facts,
• no elaborations.
Consequences for schooling:
• Non-fictive story
• Fictive story
16. Children in Black, WC community
Socialized to tell stories with a basis in fact,
but spiced with exaggeration (“junk”),
in which narrator overcomes the odds
through being clever, tough,
& ignoring conventional rules of behaviour.
Consequences for schooling
