This study investigates the developmental pattern and relationships between oral narrative textual skills, spelling, and written narrative textual skills in monolingual and bilingual language-minority children, L1-Chinese and L2-Italian. The aims were to investigate in monolingual and BLM children: the developmental patterns of oral and writing skills across primary school years; the pattern of relationships between oral narrative textual competence, spelling skills, and written narrative textual competence with age and socio-economic status taken under control. In total, 141 primary (...) school children from grades 2 to 5 in Central Italy aged between 7 and 11 years obtained scores for oral and written narrative textual competence, spelling accuracy in dictation, and written texts. One-way ANOVA and ANOVA with robust method analyses and Bonferroni’s correction showed that BLM children had poorer spelling skills in dictation and written narrative textual competence than their monolingual peers. After preliminary correlation analysis, the results of hierarchical regression showed that the relationship between oral and written narrative textual competence is completely mediated by spelling accuracy in BLM children. These results suggest that adequate performance in written narrative textual competence depends on adequate spelling accuracy in writing stories. The Sobel test verified the power of this mediation. In monolinguals, the strongest predictor of written narrative textual competence is oral narrative textual competence. This relation is stronger in older children whose spelling skills are automatized. The identified pattern of relationships shows a complex network of oral and written processes. The scarce spelling skills characterizing BLM children may explain why spelling skills determine a low written narrative textual level. Scarce spelling skills absorb cognitive resources, hindering high-level cognitive processes that regulate narrative production. In monolinguals, the medium of writing does not impact narrative textual competence. Children’s oral narrative textual competence easily transfers into their written narrative productions. These findings have implications for the assessment and instruction of literacy skills in young BLM children and their monolingual peers. (shrink)

This essay considers how current theories of narrative inform how we read the complexities of the relationship among Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar in Gen. 16.4-5. It argues that, while we may no longer have access to the oral counter narrative of Gen. 16.4-5, deconstructive criticism, which–among other things – teaches us that a text can be most revealing in those places in which it is most notably silent, may allow for a possible recovery of the oral, unrecorded narrative (...) of the servant Hagar. (shrink)

Disruptions in theory of mind faculties and the ability to relate to an intersubjective reality are widely thought to be crucial to schizophrenic symptomology. This paper applies a cognitive linguistic framework to analyze spontaneous perspective-taking in two corpora of stories told by people with a schizophrenia diagnosis. We elicited natural narrative language use through life story interviews and a guided storytelling task and analyzed the linguistic construal of viewpoint in these stories. For this analysis, we developed a reliable and widely (...) applicable viewpoint model that allows for the categorization and quantification of speakers’ linguistic presentation and navigation of spatiotemporal domains. We found that our participants skillfully presented, navigated and embedded different narrative viewpoints through a variety of linguistic viewpoint devices. They presented complex viewpoints of other people in both the here-and-now of the interaction and the there-and-then of a narrative, and made use of transition markers to demarcate spatiotemporal discourse domains. We found no differences in viewpoint variables when comparing their guided stories to a control group. If problems with intersubjectivity are indeed an essential part of schizophrenia, an explanation of how this group can take on and navigate complex linguistic viewpoints in natural narrative interaction is called for. (shrink)

O silêncio e a invisibilidade são as palavras que melhor representam a história da mulher no decorrer de muitos séculos. Desde a antiguidade, as mulheres foram impedidas de falar, e até nos dias atuais, infelizmente, pouco se valoriza o discurso feminino. Em diversas sociedades, o direito a expressar-se é severamente combatido, punido com rigor. A essas mulheres, vilipendiadas em seus direitos, resta um único espaço: o da subalternidade. Nesse contexto de subalternidade, habitando o espaço prisional marginal, fazer uso da palavra (...) e apropriar-se do direito à fala é um ato de coragem e de rebeldia. O presente artigo analisa o testemunho de uma mulher em situação de prisão que, até chegar ali, teve quase todos os seus direitos humanos profanados. A narrativa destaca suas experiências e traz à luz suas memórias e a maneira como dialoga com o passado. A partir da cela da prisão, a mulher produz o seu discurso, elabora o seu balbucio, que embora abafado, ultrapassa as grades e os altos muros. É através do poder de sua voz que ela reivindica o direito à fala, o direito de recontar-se, de falar de si. Neste artigo, analisamos, sob a perspectiva dos Estudos Culturais, a história narrada por VB1, uma mulher negra que cumpre pena em regime fechado. A partir desta análise, propomos uma reflexão sobre o espaço prisional, o direito à fala e o papel da memória nesse processo. Teremos como referências teóricas as identidades culturais em tempos de pós-modernidade com Stuart Hall, as reflexões sobre memória individual e coletiva de Maurice Halbwachs, estudos acerca da subalternidade com Hugo Achugar e Gayatri Spivak, espaço fronteiriço e memórias subalternas com Edgar Nolasco, reflexões sobre o papel da mulher propostas por Michele Perrot, entre outros. Palavras-chave: Subalternidade. Memorialística. Prisão. (shrink)

This article explores the role that markers play in the pragmatic discourse structure of Catalan and English oral narratives. It is argued that their meaning is directly related to the sort of coherence relation that they establish with preceding and following propositions and discourse segments, centring the discussion on four discourse structures/components: ideational, rhetorical, sequential and inferential. The aim is to show the textual form-pragmatic function relationship by means of specific lexical units placed at specific parts of the (...) narrative. The hypothesis held in this article is that pragmatic markers help in the organization of narrative segments and that their semanticopragmatic traits make them appropriate for their use in specific segments. (shrink)

Say to the Sun, “Don’t Rise,” and to the Moon, “Don’t Set”: Two Oral Narratives from the Country- side of Maharashtra. Edited and translated by Anne Feldhaus, with Ramdas Atkar and Rajaram Zagade. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Pp. xii + 632, 3 illus. $99.

Research QuestionsIn a first research question, we examined whether the relations that are generally observed between the coherence of written autobiographical narratives and outcomes of mental health and social support, can be replicated for the coherence of oral narratives. Second, we studied whether the coherence of oral narratives is related to the coherence of written narratives.MethodsPearson correlations and t-tests were calculated on data of two separate studies to examine the research questions.ResultsFirst, only thematic coherence (...) of oral narratives was significantly, although moderately, negatively associated to symptoms of depression, anxiety and negative social interactions. Second, the coherence of oral narratives was higher than the coherence of written narratives. Only the thematic coherence of oral narratives was positively associated with thematic and total coherence of written narratives. Furthermore, correlations between written and oral narratives were stronger for negative narratives as compared to positive narratives.DiscussionThe ability to elaborate emotionally and make meaning out of important life events in oral narratives is, to a certain extent, related to better mental health and more social support. Furthermore, thematic coherence may be a relatively stable feature of individuals’ narrative styles that is reflected in narratives of different modalities. Nonetheless, these topics need to be further researched to overcome present limitations. (shrink)

Dans cet article, nous présentons et discutons de notre méthodologie pour la constitution d’un « petit corpus » comparatif de narration orale en occitan. Il s’agit d’un « petit corpus » nouveau et unique, dans une langue minorisée, ce qui soulève un certain nombre de défis particuliers : la complexité des rapports entre l’écrit et l’oral dans la pratique du conte d’une part, et d’autre part, de nombreuses difficultés méthodologiques (variations diatopique, diachronique et sociolinguistique ; absence de données numérisées (...) ; outils de traitement automatique des langues en cours de développement). Cet article propose non seulement une méthodologie pour la constitution d’un corpus permettant d’explorer divers degrés d’oralité, mais contribue aussi plus globalement au débat sur la problématique des « petits corpus » pour les langues minorisées. (shrink)

This paper examines evidentiality and epistemic modality in Quechua narrative discourse from the central highlands of Peru. Huamalíes Quechua falls into the broad Quechua ‘I’ dialect grouping established by Alfredo Torero ; evidential usage here can be compared to that of southern Conchucos Quechua as studied by Diane and Daniel Hintz while it differs in interesting ways from the Quechua ‘II’ dialects of southern Peru as studied by Faller. The analysis focuses on an orally performed traditional narrative that deals with (...) the theme of social interaction between a human protagonist and a spirit being of the ‘other world’. It describes the human protagonist’s gradual realization of the nature of the spirit being with whom he has become involved; evidential and epistemic markings grammatically structure this transition from conjecture, to supposition, to direct witness. The aim is to show how the story’s cultural content, and the way in which evidentials and epistemic modality are operationalized, are mutually entailing. Form and content taken together throw light both on how evidentiality and epistemic modality work in social interaction and on how Amerindian understandings of the interface between the ‘natural’ and ‘supernatural’ worlds, and between ‘humans’ and ‘non-humans’, inform grammatical usage. (shrink)

Recognition of the essentially oral character of Marcan composition brings with it the need to reexamine such elements of the Gospel as the role of the disciples and the significance of the open-ended way the narrative concludes.

The ethnographic description of story-telling and narrative transmission of cultural facts is an aspect of Locke & Bogin's (L&B's) article that should be amplified. Innate shared gene patrimony is biased by the kinship structure of particular societies and interacts with the transmission of narratives. Trance experiences are another interesting aspect of verbal and agonistic “performances.”.

In this paper, we seek to explain the power of perspective taking in narrative discourse by turning to research on the oral foundations of storytelling in human communication and language. We argue that narratives function through a central process of alignment between the viewpoints of narrator, hearer/reader, and character and develop an analytical framework that is capable of generating general claims about the processes and outcomes of narrative discourse while flexibly accounting for the great linguistic variability both across (...) and within stories. The central propositions of this viewpoint alignment framework are that the distance between the viewpoints of participants in the narrative construal – narrator, character, reader – is dynamic and regulated by linguistic choices as well as contextual factors. Fundamentally, viewpoint alignment is grounded in oral narrative interaction and, from this conversation, transferred to the written narrative situation, varying between demonstration and invasion of the narrative subjects and guiding readers’ route of processing the narrative (experientialversusreflective). Our claim is that variations in viewpoint alignment are functional to the communicative context and intended outcomes of narratives. This is illustrated with the analysis of a corporate journalistic narrative that comprises both interactional and non-interactional aspects of storytelling. The concept of viewpoint alignment further explains the oral fundaments of narrative discourse in conversational storytelling and poses new questions on the relation between the dynamic processing of stories on the one hand and their static outcomes on the other. (shrink)

This article reflects on the research required in biographical studies. The biographical focus is on the role of three generations of the Schreiner family: W.P. Schreiner (one-time Prime Minister of the Cape Colony), Justice O.D. Schreiner (judge of the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court) and Professor G.D.L. Schreiner (scientist, academic, liberal and early conceptualiser of alternative models to apartheid). All three were involved in developing, defending and sustaining liberal policies and values in South Africa from the late 19th century (...) until the advent of democracy in 1994. The clarifications and contradictions within and between oral and written sources are examined, and individual cases are discussed in which they are highlighted. The research sources include family papers, official archives, publications and, crucially, oral testimony. The oral testimony includes formal and informal interviews. This study is a contribution to the history of a family, a university and a set of values. It covers a long period in South African history during which colonialism tightened into apartheid, resistance developed and the eventual vision of a democratic South Africa came to fruition. Contribution: The primary scientific contribution is the exploration of liberal policies and values in South African political and academic history through the prism of biography. Methodologically, the article discusses possible shortcomings with oral testimony when relied on as a sole source and examines how oral evidence can be utilised in conjunction with research based on archival and published sources to develop a fuller and more nuanced picture in biographical research. (shrink)

Orality, literacy, and an epistemic approach tovisual narrative -- Excavating the oral characteristics of visual narrative -- Mapping the literate characteristics of visual narrative -- Between the oral and literate epistemes -- The future of the orality-literacy paradigm, cinematically speaking -- The politics of (re)presentation -- Digital technology and beyond -- Concluding remarks.

The current study collected orally-delivered autobiographical narratives from a sample of 44 undergraduate students. Participants were asked to produce both deceptive and non-deceptive versions of their narrative to two specific autobiographical question prompts while standing in front of a video camera. Narratives were then analyzed with Coh-Metrix software on 33 indices of linguistic cohesion. Following a Bonferroni correction for the large number of linguistic variables , results indicated that the deceptive narratives contained more explicit action verbs, less (...) linguistic complexity, and less referential coherence . The results support a theory that, in deceptive narratives, there is greater narrative distance between the self that narrates and the self that is narrated about. This suggests that narrative selves are constituted not as autonomous selves, but are subject to processes that are likely operating on a subconscious level. (shrink)

George Sword an Oglala Lakota (1846–1914) learned to write in order to transcribe and preserve his people’s oral narratives. In her book Delphine Red Shirt, also Oglala Lakota and a native speaker, examines the compositional processes of George Sword and shows how his writings reflect recurring themes and story patterns of the Lakota oral tradition. Her book invites further studies in several areas including literature, translation studies and more. My review of her book suggests some ways it (...) could be used as a primary resource book in developing curricula in Indigenous philosophy . (shrink)

The ways in which given and new information are distributed, and the functions associated with the distribution, are examined here in terms of information content of relative and adverbial clauses in oral and written narratives. The conventional view that subordinate clauses tend to code given rather than new information is shown to be inadequate. Moreover, a comparison of oral and written narratives of the same events reveals both extensive differences in the two modalities, and at the (...) same time striking similarities in terms of the information distribution within relative clauses. Relative clauses are found to be far more frequent in oral narratives than in their written analogues. However, when the differences are examined in terms of the relative frequencies of given and new relative clauses, the oral narratives are shown to have far more given relative clauses than the written versions, whereas the frequencies for the new relative clauses is virtually identical in the two modalities. This result is attributed to memory constraints. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with the use of interviews with scientists by members of two disciplinary communities: oral historians and historians of science. It examines the disparity between the way in which historians of science approach autobiographies and biographies of scientists on the one hand, and the way in which they approach interviews with scientists on the other. It also examines the tension in the work of oral historians between a long-standing ambition to record forms of past experience (...) and more recent concerns with narrative and personal ‘composure’. Drawing on extended life story interviews with scientists, recorded by National Life Stories at the British Library between 2011 and 2016, it points to two ways in which the communities might learn from each other. First, engagement with certain theoretical innovations in the discipline of oral history from the 1980s might encourage historians of science to extend their already well-developed critical analysis of written autobiography and biography to interviews with scientists. Second, the keen interest of historians of science in using interviews to reconstruct details of past events and experience might encourage oral historians to continue to value this use of oral history even after their theoretical turn. (shrink)

The article presents the results of our observations on syntactic, semantic and plot peculiarities of oral language activity, we find it justified to consider the above mentioned parameters as identification criteria for discovering characterological differences of Ukrainian-speaking and Russian-speaking objects of contact profiling. It describes the connection between mechanisms of psychological defenses as the character structural components, and agentive and non-agentive speech constructions, internal and external predicates. Localized and described plots of oral narratives inherent to representatives of (...) different character types. (shrink)

This article examines how cultural schema theory has been employed to explore some aspects of Aboriginal English oral discourse. The merit of this approach lies in the explanatory tools provided by cultural schema theory in accounting for those features of oral discourse in Aboriginal English which are distinctive and which often impair its lucidity to non-Aboriginal speakers. In particular, we have focused on the exploration of recurrent semantic and formal patterning across a large body of narratives, evidence (...) of speakers' use of indigenous schemas in associative responses as well as in processing oral narrative, and schema maintenance in discourse in non-traditional settings and in the context of non-traditional subjects. (shrink)

Anuta is a small Polynesian community in the eastern Solomon Islands that has had minimal contact with outside cultural forces. Even at the end of the twentieth century, it remains one of the most traditional and isolated islands in the insular Pacific. In Oral Traditions of Anuta, Richard Feinberg offers a telling collection of Anutan historical narratives, including indigenous texts and English translations. This rich, thorough assemblage is the result of a collaborative project between Feinberg and a large (...) cross-section of the Anutan community that developed over a period of twenty-five years.The volume's emphasis is ethnographic, consisting of a number of texts as related by the island's most respected experts in matters of traditional history. Feinberg's annotations, which arm the reader with essential ethnographic and historical contexts, clarify important linguistic and cultural issues that arise from the stories. The texts themselves have important implications for the relationship of oral tradition to history and symbolic structures, and afford new evidence pertinent to Polynesian language sub-grouping. Further, they provide insight into a number of Anutan customs and preoccupations, while also suggesting certain widespread Polynesian practices dating back to the pre-contact and early contact periods. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 25.2 (2001) 233-250 [Access article in PDF] Narrative Theory and Function: Why Evolution Matters Michelle Scalise Sugiyama I It may seem a strange proposition that the study of human evolution is integral to the study of literature, yet that is exactly what this paper proposes. The reasons for this are twofold. Firstly, the practice of storytelling is ancient, pre-dating not only the advent of writing, but (...) of agriculture and permanent settlement as well. Secondly, narrative is ultimately a product of the mind, which in turn is the product of a long history of evolution by natural selection. Thus, an understanding of why and how humans create and consume narrative requires an understanding of (1) features of ancestral environments and (2) features of the mind that made the emergence of this phenomenon possible.There can be little doubt that narrative emerged in human prehistory. Language, an obvious prerequisite for storytelling, is likely to have emerged by at least 50,000 and possibly 250,000 years ago, depending upon whether one places one's trust in archaeological or anatomical evidence. 1 The most reasonable estimate is offered by Geoffrey Miller, who points out that, given its universality, the language faculty must have emerged by the time ancestral Homo sapiens began migrating out of Africa approximately 100,000 years ago. 2 Although the oldest known written narrative (The Epic of Gilgamesh) dates back only 5,000 years, the written literary traditions of many ancient cultures are known to be rooted in longstanding oral traditions. 3 The fact that many modern foraging peoples have rich and complex oral traditions further suggests that the emergence of narrative is not linked to the development of agriculture 10,000 years ago. Moreover, other forms of symbolic expression, such as the cave paintings, Venus figurines, and engraved bone [End Page 233] and antler that have been found at various sites throughout Europe, date back approximately 30,000 years, and rock paintings in Australia may date back even farther. 4 Since humans were physiologically capable of speech long before they began producing these artifacts, storytelling is likely to be at least as ancient as these other representational forms. Indeed, one scholar situates the "dawn of the oral tradition" within this period (Pfeiffer, p. 189). Given, then, that modern humans (Homo sapiens sapiens) have been in existence for approximately 100,000 years 5 and are the only hominid species or subspecies known for certain to exhibit storytelling behavior, we can safely say that oral narrative is a product of our hunting-and-gathering past, likely to have emerged between 30,000 and 100,000 years ago.The universality of narrative is further testimony to its being an ancient cognitive phenomenon. Literate or not, all known cultures, past and present, practice storytelling. 6 Moreover, all normally developing humans acquire the ability to process and generate stories: studies of Western children indicate that the ability to tell stories emerges spontaneously between the ages of two-and-a-half and three, and children as young as thirty months can distinguish between narrative and non-narrative uses of language. 7 In contrast to reading, writing, and arithmetic, no special education is required for narrative competence to develop, nor is there any evidence that oral literacy is acquired through contact with other cultures; although subject matter is often exchanged between groups, the practice of storytelling itself arises independently among even the most isolated peoples. Nor does any type of culture have a monopoly on narrative sophistication: the stories of hunter-horticulturalist societies are no less observant, insightful, or artful than those of agrarian or industrial societies.As with language, narrative takes the same basic form across cultures, which David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson define as "a chain of events in cause-effect relationship occurring in time." Given the preponderance of human agents in narrative, most narrative theorists would probably modify this barebones description to include character (usually understood to have a human psychology), goal-oriented action, and resolution. Frank Kermode, for example, defines the "proprieties" of narrative as "connexity, closure, and character," and John... (shrink)

Society's understanding of “suffering” and disaster determines how it will be encountered. In the present study, we apply a constructivist approach and study the understanding of November 12, 2017 earthquake in Zahab at the context of the traumatic history of the region. Applying critical ethnography, oral history, field research and in-depth interviews, we found out that the event is understood in the continuation of a history of irrationality and injustice. Narrators share a common fear among marginalized groups: fear of (...) betrayal, to be forgotten and to be ignored. There exists a vital need for creating collective narratives and identities, hearing them, recognizing them and establishing a meaningful relationship between them. (shrink)

This article presents material from my ethnographic study in Śringēri, south India, the site of a powerful 1200yearold Advaitic monastery that has been historically an interpreter of ancient Hindu moral treatises. A vibrant diverse local culture that provides plural sources of moral authority makes Sringeri a rich site for studying moral discourse. Through a study of two conversational narratives, this essay illustrates how the moral self is not an ossified product of written texts and codes, but is dynamic, gen (...) dered, and emergent, endowed with historical and political agency and an aesthetic capacity that mediates many normative sources to articulate "appropriate" conduct. In so doing, the essay shows the value of including oral narrative in ethical inquiry, especially in narrative ethics, which, for most part, has focused on written sources. (shrink)

This article presents material from my ethnographic study in Śringēri, south India, the site of a powerful 1200‐year‐old Advaitic monastery that has been historically an interpreter of ancient Hindu moral treatises. A vibrant diverse local culture that provides plural sources of moral authority makes Śringēri a rich site for studying moral discourse. Through a study of two conversational narratives, this essay illustrates how the moral self is not an ossified product of written texts and codes, but is dynamic, gendered, (...) and emergent, endowed with historical and political agency and an aesthetic capacity that mediates many normative sources to articulate “appropriate” conduct. In so doing, the essay shows the value of including oral narrative in ethical inquiry, especially in narrative ethics, which, for most part, has focused on written sources. (shrink)

Recent work on enculturation suggests that our cognitive capacities are significantly transformed in the course of the scaffolded acquisition of cognitive practices such as reading and writing. Phylogenetically, enculturation is the result of the co-evolution of human organisms and their socio-culturally structured cognitive niche. It is rendered possible by evolved cerebral and extra-cerebral bodily learning mechanisms that make human organisms apt to acquire culturally inherited cognitive practices. In addition, cultural learning allows for the intergenerational transmission of relevant knowledge and skills. (...) Ontogenetically, enculturation is associated with neural plasticity and the development of new motor routines and action schemas. It relies on scaffolded learning that structures novice-teacher interactions. The acquisition of reading and writing are paradigm examples of enculturation. Based on an empirically informed analysis of the components of enculturation, I will apply the emerging account of enculturated cognition to narrative practices. To date, research on the impact of narratives on the constitution of the self and our understanding of folk psychology has not paid much attention to the question how narratives are influenced by cumulative cultural evolution and our capacity to acquire reading and writing during ontogeny. I will argue that textual narratives, above and beyond oral narratives, provide genuinely new ways of narration. Therefore, the enculturated interaction with textual narratives has the potential to contribute to a better understanding of ourselves and other cognitive agents. (shrink)

The essays collected in this volume address a range of issues that arise when the focus of philosophical reflection on identity is shifted from metaphysical to practical and evaluative concerns. They also explore the usefulness of the notion of narrative for articulating and responding to these issues. The chapters, written by an outstanding roster of international scholars, address a range of complex philosophical issues concerning the relationship between practical and metaphysical identity, the embodied dimensions of the first-personal perspective, the kind (...) of reflexive agency involved in the self-constitution of one’s practical identity, the relationship between practical identity and normativity, and the temporal dimensions of identity and selfhood. In addressing these issues, contributors engage with debates in the literatures on personal identity, phenomenology, moral psychology, action theory, normative ethical theory, and feminist philosophy. (shrink)

The oral history of philosophy is in the process of establishing. The article argues that this discipline is fundamentally different from the oral history of philosophers because the oral history of philosophy has to produce besides the empirical data (interview texts) but also a theoretical reflection that is inherent in any form of philosophy. The core product of oral history is the living narrative of a witness, which is only a starting point for the oral (...) history of philosophy that has to work for philosophical generalizations. This article describes for the first time four possible types of reflection in the oral history of philosophy at the empirical level: (1) at the stage of developing the plan and purpose of the interview, when the historian of philosophy identifies the type of empirical data needed to achieve the primary purpose of his research; (2) between views of an interviewer and a respondent, when the interview appears as a common reflection between those two not just as an adjustable conversation; (3) at the reflection level of the respondent (if he or she is a philosopher) preceded the interview; (4) in the mind of the reader / viewer of the interview, who is able to actively rethink ideas expressed in the interview. Types 1-3 of reflection are central to the oral history of philosophy as a discipline (type 4 is not scientific and belongs to the field of public opinion). Consequently, the result of the empirical research of the oral history of philosophy is not only the empirical data itself but also the primary reflections that need to be developed at the next theoretical stage of research. At the same time, the oral history of philosophy can be both a source of data (that is a special interviewing methodology relevant to any type of the history of philosophy), and a relatively independent discipline, the history of philosophy study primarily based on interview material. (shrink)

BackgroundOnline assessment of narrative production and comprehension became an important component of language assessment during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study aimed to establish quantitative measures of narrative macrostructure in the production and comprehension of adult Irish-English bilinguals in an online assessment.MethodsA total of 30 Irish-English bilingual adults participated in an online assessment of oral narrative production and comprehension. Narratives were elicited using LITMUS-MAIN for Irish and English. Story-tell elicitation method was used for all stories. Twenty participants produced Baby (...) Birds and Baby Goats story pairs while 10 participants produced Cat and Dog story pairs. Quantitative measures of story structure, comprehension score, and the overall number of Internal State Terms in production and comprehension were compared across the story pairs, languages, and the output type.ResultsA general linear model indicated no differences in either story structure or story comprehension scores across languages for both sets of stories. Combined analysis for all participants and stories indicated no difference in the story structure scores or comprehension scores across the languages or the story pairs. While the overall number of ISTs was the same across languages, a higher number of ISTs was observed in comprehension relative to production in both languages for Cat and Dog story pair only, but not for Baby birds and Baby goats' stories. The major benefit of using online assessment was the accessibility of participants. The major drawback was the inability to control the environment and the quality of the internet connection.Conclusion and implicationsWhile online assessment increased the availability of participants, which is a significant factor in rural Ireland characterized by low population density and the high percentage of Irish speakers, the availability of stable internet connection limited the applicability of online assessment. Measures of narrative macrostructure were stable across the languages and the story pairs. This is important because of high variability in exposure to Irish, frequent code-switching, and a high number of morphosyntactic errors due to rapid language change that characterizes Irish-English bilinguals. Identifying reliable measures of language performance for Irish-English adult speakers is an important step toward establishing developmental norms for Irish-English bilinguals. (shrink)

Oral history makes a critical contribution in articulating the perspectives of people often overlooked in histories written from the standpoint of dominating class, gender, ethnic or professional groups. Using three interrelated approaches — life stories, oral history, and narrative analysis — this paper analyzes family responses to psychiatric care and mental illness in oral history interviews with family members who experienced mental illness themselves or within their family between 1930 and 1975. Interviews with three family members in (...) Alberta, Canada are the primary focus. These stories provide an important avenue to understand the meaning and transformations of mental health‐care from the point of view of families. Family members’ stories reveal contradictory responses to the dominant cultural discourse. Using a performative framework of interpretation, the narratives reveal a complex interplay between medical, social and cultural conceptions of mental illness, deepening our understanding of its meaning. The history of mental health‐care can be substantially enriched by the analysis of family members’ stories, not only revealing the constructed nature of mental illness, but also illustrating the family as a mediating context in which the meaning of mental illness is negotiated. (shrink)

The human person is an open book which should first be read by oneself in order to later be read by others. Throughout history we have seen many spoken and written narratives in different parts of the world, that along with having a historical value contribute to self-knowledge looking up ones life reflected in that who narrates its own life; within many others, we could point out the narratives of spiritual experiences, such as the Confessions of St. Augustine. (...) This kind of narrative work helps to come to the surface certain elements of oneself life that have been accumulated in the unconscious. For this reason, in the present we put emphasis on the value of the narrative work and in particular of spiritual experiences which we propose that helps to be aware of one’s own reality. We present the results of some online interviews from a religious movement which helps to clarify the influence of spiritual narratives in the awareness of one’s own life and a closer approach to God. -/- La persona humana es un libro abierto que en primer lugar debe ser leído por sí misma para luego ser leído por los demás. A lo largo de la historia se han visto numerosas narraciones orales y escritas en distintas partes del mundo que, además de tener un valor histórico, contribuyen al autoconocimiento viendo muchas veces reflejada la propia vida en la de quien la narra; entre muchas otras podríamos destacar las narraciones de experiencias espirituales, como las Confesiones de San Agustín. Este tipo de narraciones ayudan a aflorar algunos elementos de la propia vida que han quedado en el inconsciente. Por esta razón, en el presente trabajo se resalta el valor de la narración y en particular de la narración de experiencias espirituales para lograr una toma de conciencia de la propia realidad. Se presentan resultados de una encuesta realizada a jóvenes de un movimiento religioso que ayudan a esclarecer cómo la narración de las experiencias espirituales influye en la toma de conciencia de la propia vida y de su acercamiento a Dios. (shrink)