Connecting L1 and L2 acquisition: From the perspective of macro and micro narrative structure

2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 143-164
Author(s):  
Masahiko Minami
Keyword(s):  
Narrative Analysis ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Personal Narratives ◽  
Narrative Structure ◽  
Narrative Discourse ◽  
Organizational Strategies ◽  
L2 Acquisition ◽  
Related Quality ◽  
L1 And L2

Abstract The studies presented in this paper connect the story-related quality and the language-related quality of narrative discourse. The term “coherence” refers to whether or not a text makes sense at a global level, whereas “cohesion” describes the linguistic relationships among clauses in a narrative, such as how the surface linguistic elements of a text are linked to one another at a local level. Using a content-based narrative analysis, a trilogy – a set of three independent but interrelated studies – introduced in this paper quantitatively analyze oral personal narratives through three lenses. As examples of devices for cohesion, the paper qualitatively examines the use of two linguistic devices, tense (past and non-past) and voice (active and passive), and tries to show how narrators deploy organizational strategies in the use of these linguistic forms. The paper (1) examines varied topics in different narrative contexts (genre, topic, oral or written), (2) reveals how both coherence and cohesion serve as the twin engines of narrative, and (3) emphasizes the significance of paying attention not only to the narrative content/structure but also to the appropriate use of linguistic devices so that we can fully grasp language-specific ways of expressing affective elements in narrative.

Japanese Preschool Children's and Adults' Narrative Discourse Competence and Narrative Structure

1996 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 349-373 ◽  
Author(s):  
Masahiko Minami
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Personal Narratives ◽  
Narrative Structure ◽  
Narrative Discourse ◽  
Narrative Development ◽  
Final Phase ◽  
High Point ◽  
Children's Narratives ◽  
Point Analysis ◽  
Discourse Competence

Abstract This study presents empirical evidence o f Japanese preschool children's (a) narrative discourse competence and narrative structure and (b) rhetorical/expressive flexibility, compared to adults. With data on oral personal narratives told by Japanese preschoolers and adults, and with verse/stanza analysis (Gee, 1985; Hymes, 1981) and high point analysis based on the Labovian approach (Labov, 1972; Peterson & McCabe, 1983), it was discovered that children's and adults' narratives are similar in terms o f structure in that they both tend to have three verses per stanza, and that children and adults tend to tell about multiple experiences. By contrast, there are some clear differences in terms o f content and delivery. Whereas children tend to tell their stories in a sequential style, adults emphasize nonsequential information. Specifically, compared to children's narratives, adults' narratives place considerably more weight on feelings and emotions. The findings of this study strongly suggest that oral personal narratives told by Japanese preschoolers do not represent the final phase o f development. Rather, they still have a long way to go. (Narrative Development; Narrative Structure)

How to Increase the Quality of a Suffering Experience: Lessons Derived From the Diary Narratives of a Dying Adolescent Girl

2017 ◽  
Vol 76 (3) ◽  
pp. 256-295 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mustafa Volkan Kavas
Keyword(s):  
Advanced Cancer ◽  
Narrative Analysis ◽  
Lived Experiences ◽  
Adolescent Girl ◽  
Personal Narratives ◽  
Terminally Ill ◽  
Two Dimensions ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Hermeneutic Phenomenological

Personal narratives are assumed to be primary sources of the essential meaning of lived experiences of dying. In this study, I analyzed the personal diary of Miraç Fidan, a terminally ill adolescent with advanced cancer who kept a diary until her death at the age of 15. Miraç’s Diary, also published as a book, was subjected to hermeneutic phenomenological narrative analysis. Inferences were drawn regarding the following basic elements: (a) The dynamics in which Miraç lived and (2) her perceptions of herself, her immediate environment, and her experiences. Suffering seems to be the main experience dominating Miraç’s life, which I examined with regard to two dimensions: suffering caused by inevitable factors and suffering caused by preventable/changeable factors. The results suggest that if various causes among contextual factors are neutralized, then the quality of the existential experience determined by the inevitable factors would increase.

Politeness Markers and Psychological Complements

1998 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 351-371 ◽  
Author(s):  
Masahiko Minami
Keyword(s):  
Effective Means ◽  
Personal Narratives ◽  
Narrative Structure ◽  
Discourse Markers ◽  
Narrative Discourse ◽  
Japanese Adult ◽  
General Belief ◽  
Multiple Functions ◽  
Linguistic Markers ◽  
Class Room

Frames are not only universal cognitive categories to explain the narrator's consciousness, they are also a socioculturally determined concept. Using verse/stanza analysis, which is widely accepted as an effective means of analyzing narrative structure, this study examines how narrative discourse markers and linguistic strategies contribute to the culturally specific framing of Japanese oral personal narratives. Japanese adult narrators were found to employ particular linguistic markers: (1) the formal verb-ending patterns that are often pointed out as politeness markers indicating the insider-outsider distinction, and (2) psychological complements that are generally assumed to express a greater degree of hesitation and softness. It was found, however, that in narrative contexts, these two markers are more likely to appear at the end of a stanza than in any other position. In other words, in contrast to the general belief that these markers serve as devices to show politeness, when investigated from the viewpoint of narrative discourse, they have turned out to possess multiple functions, such as a psychologically effective means for cultural and contextual framing. These findings also call for an awareness on the part of Japanese language instructors to emphasize such multiple functions in the class-room, so that they may help prevent learners from making subtle but potentially critical mistakes.

scholarly journals CONCEPT OF NARRATIVE ANALYSIS AND BASIC APPROACHES

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (87) ◽  
Author(s):  
Olena-Maria Huk ◽  
◽  
Ivan Bekhta ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Narrative Analysis ◽  
Narrative Structure ◽  
Literary Work ◽  
Narrative Discourse ◽  
Fictional World ◽  
Work Of Art ◽  
Practical Research ◽  
Inner World ◽  
Basic Approaches ◽  
Narrative Temporality

The article is devoted to a general overview of the concept of narrator, an analysis of its main characteristics and functions as an important subject of the science of storytelling. Considerable attention is paid to the definitions of the category of narrator by domestic and foreign linguists and to the typology of the narrator. The problems of identifying narrative categories have been identified. The concept of a narrative structure according to V.Ya. Propp. The functions of the narrator in the literary text are determined and an attempt is made to classify them. The aim of the article is to theoretically substantiate the concept of narrative analysis. One of the main categories of narratology is the category of the narrator. The article describes in detail the concept of narrative temporality (time), which is one of the most important properties of narrative works. The problem of actualization of narrative discourse in literary studies arises not by chance - the contours of the new methodology are largely determined by the possibility of multiple theoretical modifications of the modern research process.The narrator, as the central essence of the concept, arises as a complexly organized subject with many ways of his own expression, an intermediary between the real world, to which the biographical author belongs, and the fictional world of a work of art; depicted by the symbolically significant world of the literary work and the cognitive competence of the reader. The narrator's phenomenon is diverse and multifaceted. Each new work of art is a new narrator. That is why the problem of grammatical manifestations of the narrator and his typology open a wide space for further theoretical and practical research in the field of narratology and semantics of discourse. Due to the considerable freedom of the text, the narrator has the opportunity to penetrate into the inner world of the characters, to address the readers, to enter into controversy with the author. The problem of the narrator in fiction opens wide opportunities for further theoretical and practical research in the field of narrative science and semantics of discourse.

How do narrative and language skills relate to each other?

2012 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 307-331 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Yusun Kang
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Language Proficiency ◽  
Language Skills ◽  
Narrative Structure ◽  
Efl Learners ◽  
Related Quality ◽  
Cross Language ◽  
Narrative Conventions

Past studies on narratives have identified two main dimensions of narrative production: the story-related narrative quality, which relates to the narrative structure and evaluations, and the language-related quality, which relates to the appropriate use of linguistic devices that contribute to the overall discourse cohesion. Although studies on the language development of monolinguals and bilinguals have demonstrated the developmental nature of the two different narrative dimensions, little attention has been paid to the potential relationship between them. Thus, this study aimed to identify the interrelationship between the two main narrative quality skills and explored the role of cross-language facilitations for performance on each of these narrative dimensions. Oral Frog Story narratives produced by 70 six-year-old Korean English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners were analyzed. The findings indicated that the two narrative sub-dimensions play facilitative roles for each other within English (L2), and that there are cross-language contributions for only the linguistic quality of narratives. The findings are discussed in relation to the bilingual children’s language proficiency and the degree of differences in narrative conventions across the two languages.

scholarly journals (DE)CONSTRUCTING LETTERS TO LEADERS: ANALYSIS OF STUDENTS’ APPEALS TO THE AUTHORITIES IN THE 1920s

2020 ◽  
pp. 163-174
Author(s):  
A. Yu. Rozhkov ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Narrative Analysis ◽  
Narrative Structure ◽  
Narrative Discourse ◽  
Communication Practice ◽  
The Social ◽  
Small Stories ◽  
Structural Parts ◽  
Commit Suicide ◽  
Semantic Parts ◽  
Epistolary Narrative

The article examines students’ appeals to the authorities as a specific type of epistolary narrative discourse. The author focuses on the creation of an epistolary text as a part of socio-discursive communication practice. The aim of the research is to identify the narrative structure of student letters and the ways of their argumentation. The study is (Де)конструируя письма … 173 complicated by the fact that it presents a complex of small disparate narratives that are not related to each other. A structural approach is used for the narrative analysis of student letter texts. The letters of students to the authorities are compositionally divided into two groups – simple, consisting of one or two semantic parts, and complex, consisting of three, four or more semantic parts. The studied letters help identify both general patterns of the narrative structure of appeals to the authorities and particular cases of plotting. The compositional structure of the students’ narrative was determined by the problem of treatment, the genre of writing, social origin, gender, and level of "language personality" of the authors. The texts of selected letters are analyzed separately according to the structural parts of the composition: the initial part, the main part, and the final part. The applicants’ arguments were both rational and emotional, including threats to commit suicide in case of default request. The narratives are presented as “small” stories of “small” people who constructed their stories in accordance with the social norms of the period. The story of each author of the letter was individual, but the experiences of difficulties were collective. Students could not share their stories with each other, which, along with generational habitus, probably determined semantic similarities in the epistolary narrative.

scholarly journals A study on speech rate as a prosodic feature in spontaneous narrative

2012 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 623-651
Author(s):  
Miguel Oliveira Júnior
Keyword(s):  
Narrative Analysis ◽  
Speech Rate ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Narrative Structure ◽  
Global Level ◽  
Narrative Texts ◽  
Prosodic Feature ◽  
Cyclical Pattern ◽  
Linear Sections ◽  
The Individual

Speech rate is examined in this paper as a prosodic feature employed in the signaling of spontaneous narrative structure. Assuming that narratives have a structural system in itself, and that interactants mark their moves and their more global activities in order to make them unambiguous (JEFFERSON, 1978; SACKS, 1972), the present paper examines speech rate phenomena, from an acoustic-experimental approach, in 17 spontaneous narratives, using one of the most influential models for narrative analysis - the Labovian Evaluative Model (LABOV, 1972) - as framework for the analysis. The prosodic variable under investigation is analyzed on two different levels: at specific points in the narratives corresponding to section boundaries (local level), and within different sections in the narratives as a whole (global level). The results indicate that speech rate operates exclusively on the global level, by generating a cyclical pattern of varying rates corresponding to the individual, linear sections that make up narrative texts. Speech rate does not characterize narrative sections and is not manipulated on the local level in order to mark narrative boundaries.

A View of the Lexical–Grammatical Link in Young Latinos With Specific Language Impairment Using Language-Specific and Conceptual Measures

2019 ◽  
Vol 62 (6) ◽  
pp. 1775-1786 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucía I. Méndez ◽  
Gabriela Simon-Cereijido
Keyword(s):  
Low Income ◽  
Language Impairment ◽  
Specific Language Impairment ◽  
L2 Acquisition ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Specific Language ◽  
Vocabulary Skills ◽  
In The Beginning ◽  
Study Participants ◽  
L1 And L2

Purpose This study investigated the nature of the association of lexical–grammatical abilities within and across languages in Latino dual language learners (DLLs) with specific language impairment (SLI) using language-specific and bilingual measures. Method Seventy-four Spanish/English–speaking preschoolers with SLI from preschools serving low-income households participated in the study. Participants had stronger skills in Spanish (first language [L1]) and were in the initial stages of learning English (second language [L2]). The children's lexical, semantic, and grammar abilities were assessed using normative and researcher-developed tools in English and Spanish. Hierarchical linear regressions of cross-sectional data were conducted using measures of sentence repetition tasks, language-specific vocabulary, and conceptual bilingual lexical and semantic abilities in Spanish and English. Results Results indicate that language-specific vocabulary abilities support the development of grammar in L1 and L2 in this population. L1 vocabulary also contributes to L2 grammar above and beyond the contribution of L2 vocabulary skills. However, the cross-linguistic association between vocabulary in L2 and grammar skills in the stronger or more proficient language (L1) is not observed. In addition, conceptual vocabulary significantly supported grammar in L2, whereas bilingual semantic skills supported L1 grammar. Conclusions Our findings reveal that the same language-specific vocabulary abilities drive grammar development in L1 and L2 in DLLs with SLI. In the early stages of L2 acquisition, vocabulary skills in L1 also seem to contribute to grammar skills in L2 in this population. Thus, it is critical to support vocabulary development in both L1 and L2 in DLLs with SLI, particularly in the beginning stages of L2 acquisition. Clinical and educational implications are discussed.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document