Cover not available
Article published In:
Journal of Narrative and Life History
Vol. 6:1 (1996) ► pp.65–86

Looking for Frogs in the Narrative Stream: Global and Local Relations in Maternal Narratives

 | Northeastern University American Sign Language Program
 | San Diego State University
Abstract In this study, we compared storytelling of a pictured narrative, Frog, Where Are You?, by 6 Deaf and 6 hearing mothers in American Sign Language (ASL) and in English, respectively. How do these mothers construct their stories, that is, how do they mark episodes? And how do English-speakers' strategies differ from ASL-users' strategies? We found that stories in ASL contained more explicit markers to signal both local and global relations of the narrative. Because of modality and grammatical differences between English and ASL, Deaf mothers seemed to have more strategies available to use. Although the overall pattern of use throughout the story was similar, Deaf mothers appeared to be more "dramatic" in their storytelling than were hearing mothers. Both groups of parents used a variety of markers to call their children's attention to the theme of the story. (Psychology)
Published online: 4 August 2015
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jnlh.6.1.04loo
References (21)
Baker, C., & Cokely, D. (1980). American Sign Language: A teacher's resource text on grammar and culture. Silver Spring, MD: TJ Publishers.Google Scholar
Bamberg, M. (1987). The acquisition of narratives. Berlin: deGruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bamberg, M., & Marchman, V. (1990). What holds a narrative together? The linguistic encoding of episode boundaries. Papers in Pragmatics, 41, 58–121. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Berman, R. (1988). On the ability to relate events in narrative. Discourse Processes, 111, 469–497. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Berman, R., & Slobin, D. I. (1994). Relating events in narrative: A crosslinguistic developmental study. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.Google Scholar
Grimes, J. (1975). The thread of discourse. The Hague, Netherlands: Mouton. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(1978). Narrative structures in oral texts. In W. U. Dressier (Ed.), Current trends in text linguistics (pp. 123–32). Berlin: DeGruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Karmiloff-Smith, A. (1981). The grammatical marking of thematic structure in the development of language production. In W. Deutsch (Ed.), The child's construction of language (pp. 23–52). London: Academic.Google Scholar
Klima, E., & Bellugi, U. (1979). The signs of language. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Labov, W., & Waletzky, J. (1967). Narrative analysis: Oral versions of personal experience. In J. Helm (Ed.), Essays on the verbal arts (pp. 12–44). Seattle: University of Washington Press.Google Scholar
Liddell, S. (1980). American Sign Language syntax. The Hague, Netherlands: Mouton.Google Scholar
Mandler, J. (1978). A code in the node: The use of a story schema in retrieval. Discourse Processes, 11, 14–35. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mandler, J., & Johnson, N. S. (1977). Remembrance of things parsed: Story structure and recall. Cognitive Psychology, 91, 111–151. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mayer, M. (1969). Frog, where are you?. New York: Dial.Google Scholar
Provine, K., & Reilly, J. (1992, October). The expression of affect in signed and spoken languages. Poster presented at the fourth meeting of the American Psychological Society, San Diego, CA.Google Scholar
Reilly, J. S. (1992). How to tell a good story: The intersection of language and affect in children's narratives. Journal of Narrative and Life History, 21, 355–377. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Reilly, J. S., McIntire, M. L., & Anderson, D. (1994, November). Look who's talking! Point of view and character reference in mothers' and children's ASL narratives.. Paper presented at the 19th Boston University Conference on Language Development, Boston.Google Scholar
Reilly, J. S., McIntrie, M. L., & Bellugi, U. (1990). The acquisition of conditionals in American Sign Language development: Grammaticized facial expressions. Applied Psycholinguistics, 111, 369–392. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Reilly, J. S., Mclntire, M. L., & Bellugi, U. (1991). Baby face: A new perspective on universals in language acquisition. In P. Siple & S. D. Fischer (Eds.), Theoretical issues in sign language research: Vol. 2. Psychology (pp. 9–23). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Rumelhart, D. E. (1975). Notes on a schema for stories. In D. G. Bobrow & A. Collins (Eds.), Representation and understanding: Studies in cognitive science (pp. 211–236). New York: Academic. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Supalla, T. (1982). Structure and acquisition of verbs of motion and location in American Sign Language. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of California, San Diego.Google Scholar
Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Brentari, Diane
2019. Sign Language Phonology, DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 10 january 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.