Narratives Story Telling Across Cultures 11/13/24

Course Overview

• Course Title: Narratives & Story Telling Across Cultures

• Course Code: SPATH 5134 Clinical Linguistics and Psycholinguistics 1

Importance of Narrative in Speech-Language Pathology

• Speech-language pathologists integrate narrative stories in clinical practices.

• Understanding cultural influences on children's storybook narration is crucial (Gorman, Fiestas, Peña, & Clark, 2011).

Narrative Analysis and Clinical Practice

• Narrative analysis is essential in comprehensive exams to determine eligibility for speech-language services.

• Cultural context must be considered; failure to do so can penalize children for non-dominant culture narratives, blurring the lines between language disorders and cultural narratives (Gorman et al., 2011).

Impact of Mainstream Culture on Narratives (4)

• Mainstream school culture promotes narrative as a dominant text style, often focusing on fictional storybooks.

• This can lead to decontextualization from cultural diversity (Gorman et al., 2011).

• Omitting culturally relevant techniques can undermine a child's social identity and risk school failure (Inglebret, Jones, & ChiXapkaid, 2008).

Cultural Influences in Clinical Decision-Making

• Clinicians should recognize cultural influences in narrative production to enhance clinical reasoning.

• Use of wordless picture books can help avoid bias related to dominant cultural narratives (Gorman, 2011).

• Research shows that children create different stories in varying contexts; personal narratives often diverge more than storybook narratives across cultures (Gorman et al., 2011).

Narrative Structures by Cultural Background

know the difference between all of these narratives

European North American Narratives

• Topic-centered structure.

• Chronological event ordering.

• Contains a high point and resolution.

• Fluent narrative production with referents and conjunctions.

• Focus on the individual/protagonist (Bliss & McCabe, 2011; Gorman et al., 2011).

• examples include vacation, a birthday party, going to the zoo, mall, etc.

• goldilocks and the 3 bears, three little pigs, wizard of oz

African-American Narratives

• Tend to be topic-associating or performative.

• Emphasizes thematic maintenance over chronological.

• something happened to them, my sister, my dad, etc.

• Interactive storytelling style.

• Frequent use of direct quotes (and momma said you cant do that, then grandma said you can do that)

• Incorporates evaluative elements and lengthy descriptions.

• Several linked experiences around a theme or person (Bliss & McCabe, 2008).

• example: family reunion, trip

• think of the not todayyy lady

Central and South American Narratives

• Conversation-focused narratives. not one sided

• Family connections and events integration.

• Broad topic maintenance; events linked more to family members than specific events.

• Emphasis on habitual/background activities over detailed past event descriptions.

• Evaluation and description highlighted over event sequencing.

Korean Narratives

• Employ broad topic maintenance, linking 2-3 similar events.

• Minimal information is favored, highlighting brevity and concise turn-taking for children.

• Fewer explicit evaluations compared to European North American narratives (Gorman et al., 2011).

• no flowery and lengthy descriptions, short and simple and to the point