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Cultural Considerations in Children’s Narratives Teresa Roberts, MS, CCC-SLP Jenny Larsen, Ph.D., CCC-SLP Nick Laurich, M.S., CF-SLP

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Learning Objectives • Personal narrative

•  Recount real past experience •  Narrative macrostructure • Cultural differences in narrative patterns

•  European North American •  African American •  Central and South American •  Asian •  Native American

• Narrative intervention •  Choosing culturally responsive storybooks •  Desiging activities

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Why are narratives important?

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Importance of Narratives •  Literacy development

•  Literacy and oral language are related skills (Snow, 1973) •  Academic literacy = decontextualized language tasks

•  Narratives develop decontextualized language •  Predictive of later academic success

•  Kindergarten narrative development correlated with early adolescent language and literacy measures (Dickinson & Tabors, 2001)

• Social and school expectations •  Social development: friendship and interaction skills •  Reporting, tattling, bullying prevention •  Show and Tell, sharing, circle time •  Writing tasks, such as essays

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Importance of Narratives • Self-identity and self-determination

•  (Westby & Culatta, 2016) •  Evaluate own characteristics in determining outcomes

• Version of reality from the point-of-view of narrator •  (Bruner, 1991) •  Conventional form transmitted culturally •  Construct understanding and beliefs about the world

• Health, wellness, and safety •  (Bliss & McCabe, 2008) •  Receive medical care by describing events to doctor

•  Self-advocacy •  Report on danger (crime, natural disaster, etc.)

•  Legal testimony

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Narratives and cultural styles • Narrative universality

•  Storytelling found in all cultures around the world

• Culturally specific social contexts •  (Burns, deVilliers, Pearson, & Champion, 2012) •  Children’s narratives differ based on child’s culture

• Sociolinguistic approach = equal value to all styles

• Variations in cultural styles for United States children •  (Bliss & McCabe, 2008) •  Broad narrative patterns in macrostructure

•  Cultural differences in overall organization of narratives

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Language difference/disorder • Generalizations should not be made for all clients and for

all cultures •  Client physical appearance is not indicative of culture •  Variations of narrative styles exist across individuals and groups

within the same culture

•  Language difference/language disorder •  Increase awareness of cultural diversity of narrative styles •  Prevent misidentification of narrative difference as a sign of a

language disorder

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European North American •  Topic-centered narrative

•  Focus on one topic

• Succinct narrative with chronological ordering of events •  Sufficient information provided

sequentially

• Dominant majority narrative style in United States

Setting

Initiating event

Internal response

Internal plan

Attempt

Direct consequence

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African American narrative patterns •  Topic-centered and topic-associative narratives

•  (Hyter, Rivers, & DeJarnette, 2015) •  Topic-centered are most common

•  Non-verbal (kinesic) and paralinguistic (prosodic) cues •  Part of narrative cohesion

•  Kinesic cues •  Gestures, facial expressions, eye gaze, head movements, etc. •  Indicators of information not provided lexically

•  Paralinguistic cues •  Vowel elongation and rise-fall contour

•  Mark new information •  Non-verbal and paralinguistic cues:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2VB-iLEsIo •  Storyteller: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEoEGr955tw

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African American narrative patterns • Moral themes

•  Lessons

• Style switching •  Children may switch narrative style depending on race and culture

of listener •  Children may use more features of African-American English in

formal situations

• Gender-based differences in narrative socialization •  Daughters socialized in collaborative narrating style •  Sons socialized in a solo narrating style

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Topic-associative narrative patterns • Multiple experiences •  Lengthy descriptions • Semantic and thematic

•  Presentation of events •  Not chronological

• Evaluative elements •  Express narrator’s thoughts

• African-American oral tradition •  (Rivers, 2012)

• Narrator relies on listener •  Infer association between events •  (Bliss, Covington, & McCabe, 1999)

Thematic events

Thematic events

Thematic events

Thematic events

Evaluative element

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Central and South American • Conversationally focused narrative style of family

members and daily activities •  Describe family and extended family connections and their

relationship to the narrator

• Goal of narrative to inform listener about narrator’s family

• Broad topic maintenance •  Possible focus on habitual activities •  Reduced event sequencing •  Omission of past events

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Central and South American •  Language transfer and bilingualism

•  Research client’s dialect/language exposure and use

• Referencing differences •  Spanish: use of previously identified agents of sentences is

optional

•  Fluency •  Hesitations and fillers for word finding across languages

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Conversational and family centered Family

members

Daily activities

Connections Extended

family

Relationships

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Asian narrative patterns •  Japanese, Taiwanese, Chinese, and Korean children • Collection of similar experiences into a single narrative

•  Multiple-event narratives considered more interesting • Minimal information

•  Preference for conciseness and brevity •  Inferred pronouns may be omitted •  Avoid “verbiage” or unnecessary information

•  May be viewed as insulting to the listener •  Child encouraged to consider social needs of listener

• Korean •  Fewer explicit evaluations to describe perspective of narrator

Brevity

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Japanese stanza analysis • Stanza analysis of narratives

•  Treated similarly to haiku and poems •  Stanza groupings of closely related utterances •  Example: typically developing, 8-year-old female, narrative

translated from Japanese (Bliss & McCabe, 2008)

“When (I was) in kindergarten, got leg caught in a bicycle, got a cut here, here, and…wore a cast for about a month, took a rest for about a month, and went back again, had a cut here,

fell off an iron bar, had two mouths” (“mouths” as metaphor for gaping wound)

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Japanese stanza analysis

Thematic event

• Concise and brief

Thematic event

• Grouping of related utterances

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Native American narrative patterns • Colonization and captors

•  (Westby, Moore, & Roman, 2002) •  School historically viewed as colonizing •  Teachers as captors

•  Children taught to defect from home culture to mainstream culture •  Mistrust of government and reluctance to participate in research •  Home language viewed as private language of the tribe •  American Indian, Native Peoples, Indigenous Cmmunities

• Keres-speaking pueblo community in Southwest •  Language endangerment •  Keres language preservation (2 mins):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udA25isgxdA

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Native American narrative patterns • Navajo, Apache, Pueblo groups in Southwest

•  Often only adults participate in public storytelling •  Stories told seasonally

•  First frost in the fall and last frost in the spring

• Moral lessons •  Stories told to teach and warn of dangers

• Spatial-causal episodic organization •  Combine and recombine story chunks to form a story •  Nonlinear structure and de-emphasis on plot

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Native American narrative patterns •  Focus on details of describing events and landscape • Assumption of shared knowledge

•  Listener responsible for inferring meaning •  Limited background information provided •  Participatory speaker-listener engagement

• May be culturally inappropriate to predict future, speak of one’s plans, or assume knowledge of another person’s thoughts or feelings •  May have increased use of direct quotes to avoid inferences of

other’s thoughts and feelings

•  Focus on community instead of individual

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Native American narrative patterns

Spatial and

causal

Nonlinear

Story chunks

Describe events and landscape

Recombine

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Review • Narratives are important

•  Academic, social, personal, and medical reasons

• Narrative macrostructure differs across cultures •  Equal value to all cultural styles

• Cultural differences in narrative patterns

•  Language difference/disorder

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Review • European North American

•  Topic-centered and chronological • African American

•  Topic association and non-linguistic and paralinguistic cues • Central and South American

•  Conversational and family connections • Asian

•  Multiple-event, concise, and poetic • Native American

•  Non-linear, describe events and landscape

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Key Aspects of Narrative Intervention • Represent narrative structure

•  Use a graphic representation consistent with culturally specific structure

•  Stickwriting is another option (Ukrainetz, 1998) •  Include a retelling activity

•  Use the visual/graphic to support retelling • Explicit focus on causal or other connections between

narrative elements (Gillam & Gillam, 2016) •  Ex. Attempts and consequences

• Support vocabulary & syntax •  These may also be separate targets using a narrative as context

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Selecting Storybooks (Ebe, 2011; Gay, 2002; Landt, 2013; Ouimet, 2011)

Is the book authentic? •  Is information accurate?

•  Are vocabulary and images accurate to culture? •  To what extent is your student or his/her family like characters in book? •  Note author’s qualifications to write about culture.

•  Language use •  Is dialect used accurately? •  Is character dialogue correct? •  Does student or family talk like the character(s) in the book?

•  Experience within storyline •  From whose perspective is story told? •  Does theme of text come from a cultural perspective, or character? •  Has student read or heard stories like this one?

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Is the book realistic? •  Images/Events

•  Scan for stereotyping, tokenism, romanticization. •  Are physical features/colors of characters realistic or cartoons? •  Does culture/color of characters matter to story? •  Could events happen to or have happened to student(s)/someone

in real life? • Realistic Connection(s) for students

•  Are characters portrayed individually and not generic representations?

•  Do characters identify themselves as apart of culture represented? •  Are characters part of society or depicted as outsiders?

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Is the book culturally conscious? • Book ending

•  Are characters’ primary culture retained? Characters should not assimilate.

•  Are similarities and differences between mainstream culture discussed?

• Does the author convey cultural consciousness? •  Are cultural identities and values validated? •  Are cultures represented and illustrated respectfully with no

suggestions of superiority? •  Are problems solved by individuals from the culture?

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Examples •  Juan Bobo Goes to Work: A Puerto Rican Folktale • Coyote Places the Stars

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QUESTIONS? THANK YOU!

Contacts: robertst@pdx.edu larsenj@pdx.edu nlaurich@pps.net

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