English Narratives Research Articles

Tense Marking in the English Narrative Retells of Dual Language Preschoolers.

This longitudinal study investigated the emergence of English tense marking in young (Spanish-English) dual language learners (DLLs) over 4 consecutive academic semesters, addressing the need for longitudinal data on typical acquisition trajectories of English in DLL preschoolers. Language sample analysis was conducted on 139 English narrative retells elicited from 39 preschool-age (Spanish-English) DLLs (range = 39-65 months). Growth curve models captured within- and between-individual change in tense-marking accuracy over time. Tense-marking accuracy was indexed by the finite verb morphology composite and by 2 specifically developed adaptations. Individual tense markers were systematically described in terms of overall accuracy and specific error patterns. Tense-marking accuracy exhibited significant growth over time for each composite. Initially, irregular past-tense accuracy was higher than regular past-tense accuracy; over time, however, regular past-tense marking outpaced accuracy on irregular verbs. These findings suggest that young DLLs can achieve high tense-marking accuracy assuming 2 years of immersive exposure to English. Monitoring the growth in tense-marking accuracy over time and considering productive tense-marking errors as partially correct more precisely captured the emergence of English tense marking in this population with highly variable expressive language skills. https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.5176942.

Toward a Typology of Ranking Elements of Narrative Discourse in Languages and Cultures: A Cross-Linguistic Survey

It has been noted (Perkins, 2009; Zwaan, 1999; Zwaan & Radvansky, 1998) that causality, character, location, and time are the four main aspects of narrative discourse, even if not attended to by listeners or readers in equal ways. For example, character is highly ranked, and the locational/spatial components have often been underestimated for English narratives (see Perkins, 2009, for a review). Relative to the ranking, there is no inherent reason why character needs to be highly ranked, and locational/spatial information is in fact important in English narrative discourse (Perkins, 2009). I instead suggest that there are linguistic and cultural factors in the ranking of these aspects of discourse. Specifically, I suggest that causality is (probably) the highest ranked component, in languages that have a ranking, with the other three elements being linked to causality more or less strongly, depending on linguistic and cultural factors; it is possible that some languages do not rank narrative elements or that some elements are ranked as highly as others. In English, the strongest link is between causality and character. However, this is not universal.In a survey of fifty-eight languages from thirty language families, including an in-depth study of Hobongan, an Austronesian language spoken by approximately two thousand people on the island of Borneo that I am in the process of describing, it is found that there is a great deal of cross-linguistic variation, to the extent that it is possible that each logically possible combination of narrative elements is present in the world’s languages.

‘Any one of us could be among that number’: Comparing the Policy Narratives for Individualized Disability Funding in Australia and England

AbstractIn this article we compare the introduction of individualized budget policies for people with disabilities in Australia and England. Data is drawn from semi‐structured interviews undertaken in Australia with politicians, policymakers, providers, disability rights groups and care planners, along with analysis of policy documents. This data is compared to the authors’ earlier research from England on the personalization narrative. We argue that the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) currently being introduced in Australia deploys an insurance storyline, emphasizing risk‐pooling and the minimizing of future liabilities. This contrasts with the dominant storyline in England in which attention has focused on the right to choice and control for a minority of the population. This difference can be explained by the different financial context: the NDIS needed to build public and political support for a large increase in funding for disability services, whereas in England the reforms have been designed as cost‐neutral. Tensions in the English narrative have been about the extent to which personalization reforms empower the individual as a consumer, with purchasing power, or as a citizen with democratic rights. Australia's approach can be characterized as a form of social investment, evoking tensions between the citizenship of people with disabilities now and the future worker‐citizen.

Multimodal character viewpoint in quoted dialogue sequences

We investigate the multimodal production of character viewpoint in spoken American English narratives by performing complementary qualitative and quantitative analyses of two quoted dialogues, focusing on the storyteller’s use of character viewpoint gestures, character intonation, character facial expression, spatial orientation and gaze. A micro-analysis revealed that the extent of multimodal articulation depends on (i) the quoted speaker, with different multimodal articulatory patterns found for quotes by the speaker’s past self vs. a third-person character, and (ii) the position of the quoted utterance within the quoted dialogue, with mid-dialogue utterances garnering less co-articulation than initial or final utterances within the quoted dialogue. We further investigated these observations using a quantitative approach, which was based on generalized additive modeling (GAM). The GAM analysis revealed different multimodal patterns for each quoted character, as indicated by the number of co-produced multimodal articulators. These patterns were found to hold regardless of the quote’s position within the narrative. We discuss these findings with respect to previous work on multimodal quotation.This article is part of the special collection: Perspective Taking

The relation between working memory and language comprehension in signers and speakers

This study investigated the relation between linguistic and spatial working memory (WM) resources and language comprehension for signed compared to spoken language. Sign languages are both linguistic and visual-spatial, and therefore provide a unique window on modality-specific versus modality-independent contributions of WM resources to language processing. Deaf users of American Sign Language (ASL), hearing monolingual English speakers, and hearing ASL-English bilinguals completed several spatial and linguistic serial recall tasks. Additionally, their comprehension of spatial and non-spatial information in ASL and spoken English narratives was assessed. Results from the linguistic serial recall tasks revealed that the often reported advantage for speakers on linguistic short-term memory tasks does not extend to complex WM tasks with a serial recall component. For English, linguistic WM predicted retention of non-spatial information, and both linguistic and spatial WM predicted retention of spatial information. For ASL, spatial WM predicted retention of spatial (but not non-spatial) information, and linguistic WM did not predict retention of either spatial or non-spatial information. Overall, our findings argue against strong assumptions of independent domain-specific subsystems for the storage and processing of linguistic and spatial information and furthermore suggest a less important role for serial encoding in signed than spoken language comprehension.

A Window Into Bilingual Reading: The Bilingual Reading Practices of Fourth-Grade, Mexican American Children Who Are Emergent Bilinguals

A qualitative think-aloud study, informed by social literacies and holistic bilingual perspectives, was conducted to examine how six emergent bilingual, Mexican American, fourth graders approached, interacted with, and comprehended narrative and expository texts in Spanish and English. The children had strong Spanish reading test scores, but differed in their English reading and oral proficiency test scores. All but one of them varied their cognitive and bilingual strategy use according to the demands and genre of the text and their oral English proficiency. The most frequent bilingual strategies demonstrated were translating and code-mixing. Only two children used cognates. The children often employed one language to explain their reading in the other language. They displayed a wider range of strategies across two languages compared with a single language, supporting the use of a holistic bilingual perspective to assess their reading rather than a parallel monolingual perspective. Their reading profiles in the two languages were similar, suggesting cross-linguistic transfer, although the think-aloud procedures could not determine strategy transference. The findings supported a translanguaging interpretation of their bilingual reading practices. Future research on how emergent bilingual children of different ages develop translanguaging and use it to comprehend texts was recommended.

Zombie: An Earlier Usage, Antedating the Oxford English Dictionary Entry

The Oxford English Dictionary dates the earliest recorded use of the term ‘zombie’ (noun, ‘In the West Indies and southern states of America, a soulless corpse said to have been revived by witchcraft; formerly, the name of a snake-deity in voodoo cults of or deriving from West Africa and Haiti’) to Robert Southey’s History of Brazil 1810–1819.1 It may be of interest to note, however, that an earlier appearance of the term can be found in The History of Okano: A Fragment of a Voyage to St. Domingo, a fragmentary piece published in 1788 in The Weekly Entertainer, as well as both the Edinburgh and European Magazines.2 Although most British people had never journeyed to St Domingo (Haiti), travel narratives were, of course, very popular in eighteenth-century England. Much of the information people gleaned about the ever-expanding world derived from travel stories purportedly told by eyewitnesses on their travels. In this vein, The History of Okano describes the experiences of an unnamed English narrator, who, while seeking solace and a holiday on his friend’s estate, explains that he is writing to give his audience an ‘idea of the character of a people’ of St Domingo, when he meets the titular Okano.3 Okano is a native of the island of St Domingo (later called Haiti after the revolution). After this initial meeting, the narrator wants to learn more about Okano’s background and history, but he cannot locate him again. While these initial interactions would have been exotic and interesting enough for many readers, what happens next is more bone-chilling. The narrator is ‘determined to see Okano again, and to prevail upon him, if possible, to gratify my curiosity’.4 After many days of searching, however, the narrator finds that ‘Okano appeared no more. … Some supposed that the Zombies had carried him off.’5

Dynamic Assessment of Narratives: Efficient, Accurate Identification of Language Impairment in Bilingual Students.

This study investigated the classification accuracy of a concentrated English narrative dynamic assessment (DA) for identifying language impairment (LI). Forty-two Spanish-English bilingual kindergarten to third-grade children (10 LI and 32 with no LI) were administered two 25-min DA test-teach-test sessions. Pre- and posttest narrative retells were scored in real time. Using a structured intervention approach, examiners taught children missing story grammar elements and subordination. A posttest was administered using a parallel story. Four classification predictors were analyzed: posttest scores, gain scores, modifiability ratings, and teaching duration. Discriminant function analysis indicated that an overall modifiability rating was the best classifier, with 100% sensitivity and 88% specificity after 1 DA session and 100% sensitivity and specificity after 2 sessions. Any 2 combinations of posttest scores, modifiability ratings, and teaching duration for just 1 session resulted in sensitivity and specificity rates over 90%. Receiver operating characteristic analyses were used to identify clinically usable cutoff points. Post hoc exploration indicated that similar results could be obtained after only one 5-10-min teaching cycle, potentially further abbreviating the DA process. Concentrated English narrative DA results in high classification accuracy for bilingual children with and without LI. This efficient version of DA is amenable to clinical use.

Paradise Lost, Poem of the Restoration Period

John Milton's Paradise Lost (1667, 1674) is often classified as a Renaissance epic, along with the great narrative poems of Ariosto, Tasso, and Spenser. However, this generic designation tells us much less about the formal nature of the poem than we learn when we contextualize it among the long English narratives with which it was contemporary: Butler's Hudibras (1663, 1664, 1678), Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress (1678, 1684), Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel (1681), and Behn's Love-Letters between a Noble-Man and His Sister (1984, 1985, 1987). What Paradise Lost shares with these other texts is a parodic approach to literary form, one that combines the imitation of an authoritative form with an adaptive detachment from it. This approach shows the influence of several experimental, mixed forms that flourished during the Restoration period—some of traditional standing, some emergent, and some momentary and occasional.

If Goa is your land, which are your stories? Narrating the Village, Narrating Home

Goa, India, is a multicultural community with a broad archive of literary narratives in Konkani, Marathi, English and Portuguese. While Konkani in its Devanagari version, and not in the Roman script, has been Goa’s official language since 1987, there are many other narratives in Marathi, the neighbor state of Maharashtra, in Portuguese, legacy of the Portuguese presence in Goa since 1510 to 1961, and English, result of the British colonization of India until 1947. This situation already reveals that there is a relationship among these languages and cultures that at times is highly conflictive at a political, cultural and historical level. In turn, they are not separate units but are profoundly interrelated in the sense that histories told in one language are complemented or contested when narrated in the other languages of Goa. One way to relate them in a meaningful dialogue is through a common metaphor that, at one level, will help us expand our knowledge of the points in common and cultural and literary differences among them all. In this article, the common metaphor to better visualize the complex literary tradition from Goa will be that of the village since it is central to the social structure not only of Goa but of India. Therefore, it is always present in the many Goan literary narratives in the different languages though from perspectives that both complement and contradict each other.---Original in English.

Формы репрезентации внутренних состояний персонажа в англоязычной художественной прозе

The paper shows that the author of English language narrative discourse can discuss with his/her readers such topics as inner state of fiction characters. It presents forms of representation of inner state of fiction characters. Firstly, the inner state of a character is described in contexts without metaphor. In this case, the main markers are verbs of mental state, names of emotions, physical representation of emotions, taste perception. Secondly, the inner state of fiction characters is represented via another situation. In this case, the comparison can be either direct or literal. Desperation is compared with a nightmare, beating into the wall, with the sense that the walls are closing in on a hero. Unreality of events is compared with the theatre where everything is make-belief. Thirdly, the inner state of a character is represented via comparison with a person who is experiencing similar feelings: The character can feel like a condemned prisoner, or like a captain of a sinking ship. Finally the inner state of heroes is represented via conceptual metaphor.

The Home Literacy Environment and the English Narrative Development of Spanish-English Bilingual Children.

The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of the home literacy environment (HLE) on the English narrative development of Spanish-English bilingual children from low-income backgrounds. Longitudinal data were collected on 81 bilingual children from preschool through 1st grade. English narrative skills were assessed in the fall and spring of each year. Microstructure measures included mean length of utterance in morphemes and number of different words. The Narrative Scoring Scheme (Heilmann, Miller, Nockerts, & Dunaway, 2010) measured macrostructure. Each fall, the children's mothers reported the frequency of literacy activities and number of children's books in the home. Growth curve modeling was used to describe the children's narrative development and the impact of the HLE over time. Significant growth occurred for all narrative measures. The HLE did not affect microstructure growth. The frequency with which mothers read to their children had a positive impact on the growth of the children's total Narrative Scoring Scheme scores. Other aspects of the HLE, such as the frequency with which the mothers told stories, did not affect macrostructure development. These results provide information about the development of English narrative abilities and demonstrate the importance of frequent book reading for the overall narrative quality of children from Spanish-speaking homes who are learning English.

Les Voix du marronnage dans la littérature française du xviiiesiècle. Par Rachel Danon.

Although there are slave narratives in English, there are none in French. Thus, treatment of marronnage in eighteenth-century writings in French is by European authors, giving voice to the voiceless. Rachel Danon’s investigation is underpinned by studies published in French by historians, literary critics, and postcolonial theorists; her debts are copiously acknowledged, particularly to Youmna Charara. Her corpus (1735–92) includes fiction, poetry, theatre, and texts in periodicals. Danon identifies varying types of resistance, not just the grand marronnage , but the culture of dancing, story-telling, and singing originating in Africa. Danon’s initial examples of texts with anti-slavery resonances are adaptations from English. Her first example, Prévost’s 1735 Discours du chef des nègres révoltés de la Jamaïque , has been pronounced the first anti-slavery text in French. The protagonist, Moses, delivers ‘un réquisitoire contre l’esclavage en justifiant la légitimité de la révolte des marrons’ (p. 100). Her second example is Oronooko (1688) by Aphra Behn. However, it was Laplace’s adaptation of 1745 that was known by the French public: Laplace’s changes were significant, including a ‘happy end’ (p. 157), weakening the original’s impact though giving ‘plus d’initiative à la narratrice’ (p. 173). A tale of French origin, Makandal, histoire véritable was printed in the Mercure de France in 1787 and in four other versions. Based on a real person, albeit one surrounded by legend, Makandal is presented ambivalently. He is ferocious, a womanizer, and pushed to marronnage by a sexual rivalry with a slave-owner. Saint-Lambert’s Ziméo (1769) provides an ambiguous picture of slaves being prepared to protect a good master, and also a family atmosphere evoked in a good ‘plantation esclavagiste’ (p. 201). Nevertheless, violence is caused by the grand marronnage , as Ziméo is noble yet bloodthirsty. An interesting aspect is evidence of physiocratic thought: the economic benefits of treating slaves well. A poem of 1775, the Discours d’un nègre à un Européen , describes slaves as merchandise in a language reminiscent of classical tragedy. Butini’s Lettres africaines (1771), with its powerful heroine Phédima, suggest physiocratic influence in advocating the freeing of slaves: ‘c’est régler du même coup le problème de la révolte et […] assurer la quiétude des maîtres’ (p. 257). Olympe de Gouges’s final text, L’Esclavage des nègres , flopped at the Comédie-Française in 1789 as a murderous marron was deemed unsympathetic. One finds no mention of the mutilated slave in Chapter 19 of Voltaire’s Candide (1759), nor references to marronnage in letter 12 of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre’s Voyage à l’île de France (1773) or the runaway slave in Paul et Virginie (1788), nor discussion of Aza, ou, Le nègre (1792), which portrays marronnage (recently republished in MHRA Critical Texts, London: MHRA, 2011). The monograph concludes with a lengthy survey of marronnage in postcolonial fiction. Danon’s study would have benefited from some pruning from the original thesis but draws useful attention to marronnage while showing that there was no groundswell in literary evocations as the century advanced, nor an unambiguous condemnation of slavery.

The Effect of Native Model Writing on the Vocabulary Richness of Iranian EFL Learners’ Written Text in a Four-stage Writing Task

Vocabulary is a main part of English language teaching because without sufficient vocabulary students cannot understand others or express their own thoughts. “A repeating inquiry in the historical backdrop of language teaching research has been that of how vocabulary can be best organized for learning “(see McArthur 1998; Howatt and Widdowson 2004 for historical reviews). The present study investigated a group of Iranian EFL students’ knowledge for vocabulary learning and their vocabulary size. This study aimed at investigating the role of native-like writing in enhancing learners' writing ability by sensitizing them to select more native-like terms and expressions through improving their vocabulary knowledge. For this purpose the researcher used native models in two revisions of story in four-stage writing task that consisted of output, comparison, and two revisions. The question that researchers asked was whether giving native models later turns into better performance. At the end it is concluded that the 4-satge native model of writing helps L2 learners to write a well-formed English narrative and make use of better terms and expressions as well as helping teachers understand the formulation problems of EFL writers and what the students notice. That is, the gap between the way that they write and the native models to which they compare themselves.

Conversion in Early Modern Western Mediterranean Accounts of Captivity: Identity, Audience, and Narrative Conventions

In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries captivity narratives written by Spanish and English captives abounded. There is a smaller corpus of such texts by Muslim captives in Spain and England, and by some travelers from the Ottoman Empire who observed their fellow Muslims in captivity. A comparative analysis illuminatingly reveals similar usage of narrative conventions, especially of hagiography and pious romances, as well as the theoretical stance of “resistance literature” taken on by many writers. I consider accounts written as truthful, historical texts alongside fictional ones, such as Miguel de Cervantes’ “The Captive’s Tale,” from Don Quixote, Part I. Writers both celebrated monolithic categories such as Protestant, Catholic, Spanish, English, and Muslim, and challenged them for differing ideological reasons. Writers constructed heroic narratives of their own travails and endurance. In the case of English narratives, didacticism plays an important role. In one case, that of John Rawlins, the account reads like Christian theology: to keep in mind, no matter how grim the situation of captivity may be, one’s identity as an Englishman. Raḍwān al-Janawī used his letters about Muslims in captivity in Portuguese-occupied Africa, in which he points out the vigorous efforts of Christian rulers to secure the liberty of their own people, to criticize Muslim rulers who, in his opinion, exerted far too little energy in rescuing their brothers and sisters from captivity. Ultimately, this essay explores the fictionality of truthful narratives and the truth in fictional ones, and the ways in which people from different cultures identified their own identities, especially against those of “the enemy.”

Linguistic, gestural, and cinematographic viewpoint: An analysis of ASL and English narrative

Abstract Multimodal narrative can help us understand how conceptualizers schematize information when they create mental representations of films and may shed light on why some cinematic conventions are easier or harder for viewers to integrate. This study compares descriptions of a shot/reverse shot sequence (a sequence of camera shots from the viewpoints of different characters) across users of English and American Sign Language (ASL). We ask which gestural and linguistic resources participants use to narrate this event. Speakers and signers tended to represent the same characters via the same point of view and to show a single perspective rather than combining multiple perspectives simultaneously. Neither group explicitly mentioned the shift in cinematographic perspective. We argue that encoding multiple points of view might be a more accurate visual description, but is avoided because it does not create a better narrative.

Instruction in text-structure as a determinant of senior secondary school students’ achievement in English narrative text in Ido Local Government Area, Oyo State

The study determined the effectiveness of instruction in text-structure on achievement of students in English narrative text. The pretest-posttest control group quasi experimental design was adopted for the study. The participants were 120 students in intact classes from four purposively selected senior secondary schools in Ido Local Government Area of Oyo State. Data were collected using English Narrative Text Achievement Test (r=0.86) and instructional guides. Three null hypotheses were tested at .05 level of significance. Data were analysed using Analysis of Covariance and Estimated Marginal Means. Findings revealed that treatment had significant main effect on students’ achievement in English narrative text((F(2,117)=15.725; P<.05; η2 =.107). Students exposed to instruction in text structure obtained higher posttest mean score ( X̄ =10.68) than their counterparts in the conventional strategy group ( X̄ 2.70) groups. It is therefore recommended that the strategy should be adopted in teaching English narrative texts for better results.

Narratives in Two Languages: Storytelling of Bilingual Cantonese-English Preschoolers.

The aim of this study was to compare narratives generated by 4-year-old and 5-year-old children who were bilingual in English and Cantonese. The sample included 47 children (23 who were 4 years old and 24 who were 5 years old) living in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, who spoke both Cantonese and English. The participants spoke and heard predominantly Cantonese in the home. Participants generated a story in English and Cantonese by using a wordless picture book; language order was counterbalanced. Data were transcribed and coded for story grammar, morphosyntactic quality, mean length of utterance in words, and the number of different words. Repeated measures analysis of variance revealed higher story grammar scores in English than in Cantonese, but no other significant main effects of language were observed. Analyses also revealed that older children had higher story grammar, mean length of utterance in words, and morphosyntactic quality scores than younger children in both languages. Hierarchical regressions indicated that Cantonese story grammar predicted English story grammar and Cantonese microstructure predicted English microstructure. However, no correlation was observed between Cantonese and English morphosyntactic quality. The results of this study have implications for speech-language pathologists who collect narratives in Cantonese and English from bilingual preschoolers. The results suggest that there is a possible transfer in narrative abilities between the two languages.

Non-native English Varieties: Thainess in English Narratives

<p>This study aims at examining Thainess as a writing strategy used in non-literary texts written by non-professional bilingual writers. These writers are advanced language learners who are pursuing their Master’s degree in English. Seven English narratives of their language learning experiences were analyzed based on Kachruvian’s framework of bilingual’s creativity and contact literatures. The findings showed that four out of six contextualization processes - transfer, translation, code-mixing, and reduplication - were utilized when conveying the writers’ experiences in acquiring their first and second languages. Unlike the findings in previous studies of Thainess in literary genre, lexical borrowing and shift process were not found in narratives. Although Thai English as a new variety in World Englishes has been debated for years and remains in an obscure status, it cannot be denied that the research findings in this study show the uniqueness of Thai English writing strategies.</p>

Switching codes and registers: An analysis of heritage Arabic speakers’ sociolinguistic competence

Aims:This study focuses on heritage speakers’ ability to use their Arabic varieties and English in the construction of narratives of personal experience. This is critical because English, Colloquial Arabic (CA), and Standard Arabic (SA) are part of the sociolinguistic reality of the families and communities in which many heritage Arabic speakers live.Design:The study compares and contrastes heritage speakers’ Arabic and English narratives with respect to codes, registers, and functions in the narratives.Data and analysis:Fifteen Arabic and 15 English narratives from five participants, fluent in Arabic and English, were analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively.Findings:The results reveal that, despite their fluency in their heritage language, respondents lack the sociolinguistic competence to socially and pragmatically deploy CA and SA appropriately in their narratives. In the Arabic narratives, respondents alternated frequently between CA and SA, but they were not always able to maintain the asymmetrical...