Showing papers on "Narrative structure published in 2012"

The Mess Inside: Narrative, Emotion, and the Mind

Abstract: Preface and acknowledgements 1. Narrative thinking 2. Narrative thinking about one's past 3. Grief: A case study 4. Narrative thinking about one's future 5. Self-forgiveness: A case study 6. The narrative sense of self 7. Narrative, truth, life, and fiction Bibliography Index

Deixis in Narrative : A Cognitive Science Perspective

Abstract: This volume describes the theoretical and empirical results of a seven year collaborative effort of cognitive scientists to develop a computational model for narrative understanding Disciplines represented include artificial intelligence, cognitive psychology, communicative disorders, education, English, geography, linguistics, and philosophy The book argues for an organized representational system -- a Deictic Center (DC) -- which is constructed by readers from language in a text combined with their world knowledge As readers approach a new text they need to gather and maintain information about who the participants are and where and when the events take place This information plays a central role in understanding the narrative The editors claim that readers maintain this information without explicit textual reminders by including it in their mental model of the story world Because of the centrality of the temporal, spatial, and character information in narratives, they developed their notion of a DC as a crucial part of the reader's mental model of the narrative The events that carry the temporal and spatial core of the narrative are linguistically and conceptually constrained according to certain principles that can be relatively well defined A narrative obviously unfolds one word, or one sentence, at a time This volume suggests that cognitively a narrative usually unfolds one place and time at a time This spatio-temporal location functions as part of the DC of the narrative It is the "here" and "now" of the reader's "mind's eye" in the world of the story Organized into seven parts, this book describes the goal of the cognitive science project resulting in this volume, the methodological approaches taken, and the history of the collaborative effort It provides a historical and theoretical background underlying the DC theory, including discussions of deixis in language and the nature of fiction It goes on to outline the computational framework and how it is used to represent deixis in narrative, and details the linguistic devices implicated in the DC theory Other subjects covered include: crosslinguistic indicators of subjectivity, psychological investigations of the use of deixis by children and adults as they process narratives, conversation, direction giving, implications for emerging literacy, and a narrator's experience in writing a short story

Learning narrative structure from annotated folktales

Abstract: Narrative structure is an ubiquitous and intriguing phenomenon By virtue of structure we recognize the presence of Villainy or Revenge in a story, even if that word is not actually present in the text Narrative structure is an anvil for forging new artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques, and is a window into abstraction and conceptual learning as well as into culture and its influence on cognition I advance our understanding of narrative structure by describing Analogical Story-Merging (ASM), a new machine learning algorithm that can extract culturally-relevant plot patterns from sets of folktales I demonstrate that ASM can learn a substantive portion of Vladimir Propp's influential theory of the structure of folktale plots The challenge was to take descriptions at one semantic level, namely, an event timeline as described in folktales, and abstract to the next higher level: structures such as Villainy, Struggle-Victory, and Reward ASM is based on Bayesian Model Merging, a technique for learning regular grammars I demonstrate that, despite ASM's large search space, a carefully-tuned prior allows the algorithm to converge, and furthermore it reproduces Propp's categories with a chance-adjusted Rand index of 0511 to 0714 Three important categories are identified with F-measures above 08 The data are 15 Russian folktales, comprising 18,862 words a subset of Propp's original tales This subset was annotated for 18 aspects of meaning by 12 annotators using the Story Workbench, a general text-annotation tool I developed for this work Each aspect was doubly-annotated and adjudicated at inter-annotator F-measures that cluster around 07 to 08 It is the largest, most deeply-annotated narrative corpus assembled to date The work has significance far beyond folktales First, it points the way toward important applications in many domains, including information retrieval, persuasion and negotiation, natural language understanding and generation, and computational creativity Second, abstraction from natural language semantics is a skill that underlies many cognitive tasks, and so this work provides insight into those processes Finally, the work opens the door to a computational understanding of cultural influences on cognition and understanding cultural differences as captured in stories

Presence in the reading of literary narrative : A case for motor enactment

Abstract: Drawing on research in narrative theory and literary aesthetics, text and discourseprocessing, phenomenology and the experimental cognitive sciences,this paper outlines an embodied theory of presen ...

The role of the scientific discovery narrative in middle school science education: An experimental study.

Abstract: In an experimental study (N = 209), the authors compared the effects of exposure to typical middle-school written science content when presented in the context of the scientific discovery narrative and when presented in a more traditional nonnarrative format on 7th and 8th grade students in the United States. The development of texts was controlled so as to isolate the presence of the discovery narrative structure as the independent variable; outcome measures were developed according to the BEAR Assessment framework to be sensitive to a range of levels of understanding of presented information and to focus only on the conceptual material presented in the texts. Students exposed to the scientific discovery narrative performed significantly better on both immediate and delayed outcome measures. These findings are discussed in the context of a larger argument for the inclusion of the scientific discovery narrative in science instruction.

The Mnemonic Imagination

Abstract: We have spoken so far of certain pitfalls associated with thinking about the relationship between memory and imagination, and suggested that we want to see this relationship in terms of an interstitial space between past and future in which cross-temporal transactions are made. It is through such transactions that lived experience in the present becomes transformed into assimilated experience in a changed present. The remembering subject engages imaginatively with what is retained from the past and, moving across time, continuously rearranges the hotchpotch of experience into relatively coherent narrative structures, the varied elements of what is carried forward being given meaning by becoming emplotted into a discernible sequential pattern. It is that pattern which is central to the definition of who we are and how we have changed.

Storyspace: a story-driven approach for creating museum narratives

Abstract: In a curated exhibition of a museum or art gallery, a selection of heritage objects and associated information is presented to a visitor for the purpose of telling a story about them. The same underlying story can be presented in a number of different ways. This paper describes techniques for creating multiple alternative narrative structures from a single underlying story, by selecting different organising principles for the events and plot structures of the story. These authorial decisions can produce different dramatic effects. Storyspace is a web interface to an ontology for describing curatorial narratives. We describe how the narrative component of the Storyspace software can produce multiple narratives from the underlying stories and plots of curated exhibitions. Based on the curator's choice, the narrative module suggests a coherent ordering for the events of a story and its associated heritage objects. Narratives constructed through Storyspace can be tailored to suit different audiences and can be presented in different forms, such as physical exhibitions, museum tours, leaflets and catalogues, or as online experiences.

The Discursive Turn in Policy Analysis and the Validation of Policy Stories

Abstract: This paper is concerned with the language of policy documents in the field of health care, and how 'readings' of such documents might be validated in the context of a narrative analysis. The substantive focus is on a comparative study of UK health policy documents (N = 20) as produced by the various assemblies, governments and executives of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland during the period 2000-09. Following the identification of some key characteristics of narrative structure the authors indicate how text-mining strategies allied with features of semantic and network analysis can be used to unravel the basic elements of policy stories and to facilitate the presentation of data in such a way that readers can verify the strengths (and weaknesses) of any given analysis - with regard to claims concerning, say, the presence, absence or relative importance of key ideas and concepts. Readers can also 'see' how the different components of any one story might fit together, and to get a sense of what has been excluded from the narrative as well as what has been included, and thereby assess the reliability and validity of interpretations that have been placed upon the data.

The ‘successful’ return: Caribbean narratives of migration, family, and gender

Abstract: Research on female migrant caregivers has tended to focus upon the emotional and social problems they encounter working abroad, given women's traditional role as caregivers for their own families. This article analyses how Caribbean women who have returned after a period abroad as domestic workers inscribe their migration experiences within the gendered narrative of the good relative who migrates to help the family left behind and therefore deserves social recognition in the community of origin. It argues that this narrative allows the women to both affirm and reinterpret local family and gender roles within the context of migration. This analysis points to the close connection between narrative structures, accounts of migration experiences, and self-presentations and suggests that narratives about family and gender roles not only reflect people's lives, but are also a malleable resource that can be (re)shaped to validate a variety of life-courses.

Prototypes, Genres, and Concepts: Travelling with Narratives

Abstract: The “narrative turn” is (too) often understood as a celebratory term indicating the growing importance and popularity of narrative studies. This article elaborates the merits of a more critical approach to the history of narrative theory. By discussing David Herman’s idea of prototypical narrativity, the article suggests that there has been a longstanding contradiction between the abstract and universal notion of narrative and the narrow and particular Proppian prototype of narrativity. The article argues that “narrative” has primarily travelled either as a concept, metaphor, or prototype rather than as a full narrative theory or method. Instead of one, unitary narrative turn, the article argues for the existence of several diverse and partly contrasting narrative turns. The recent experiential turn in narrative studies and the consequent change of the prototype of narrative gives a strong impetus for a new wave of cross-disciplinary narrative theory.

Reframing Digital Storytelling as Co‐creative

Abstract: This study of the digital storytelling (DST) project at the South Asia Hub of the Pathways of Women's Empowerment Research Programme Consortium examines the capacity of DST practice to articulate women's diverse experiences of empowerment, given the genre's formalities and narrative guidelines. I challenge notions that DST mediation is limited to relationships between the storyteller and the technology, and instead focus on mediation as a co‐creative process. There are at least two overlooked dynamics in DST. The first is how the organisation adopts narrative guidelines to fit their framework and purpose; and second, the social relationships mediating the way actors related to one another in the workshop. I find that the workshop model and specific narrative structure may constrain ways of conveying ‘experience’. Not every participant's experience or mode of narration is readily suited for DST. On the other hand, participants also report DST as useful for strengthening community relationships and opening up a more self‐reflexive space for critical thinking.

From the Locked Room to the Globe: Space in Crime Fiction

Abstract: In his foreword to Kristin Ross’ The Emergence of Social Space: Rimbaud and the Paris Commune, Terry Eagleton comments that space “has proved of far less glamorous appeal to radical theorists than the apparently more dynamic, exhilarating notions of narrative and history” (Eagleton 2008: xii). This observation also applies to much criticism of crime fiction, which has tended to treat the genre primarily in terms of narrative structure and temporality, rather than in terms of spatiality, mostly because of the teleological bent given to that criticism by its emphasis on the solution to the crime. Exemplary in this respect is Tzvetan Todorov’s chapter in The Poetics of Prose entitled “The Typology of Detective Fiction”, in which he argues that crime fiction narratives are structured by a double temporality: the reconstruction of events leading up to the murder and the progress of the detective’s investigation, with both narratives eventually converging at the point of the crime’s solution. There is no doubt that crime fiction is centrally concerned with time; reconstructing not only who did what but when they did it is a crucial part of the detective’s job. This chapter will argue that crime fiction is a profoundly spatial as well as temporal genre because, as Geoffrey Hartman points out, “to solve a crime in detective stories means to give it an exact location: to pinpoint not merely the murderer and his motives but also the very place, the room, the ingenious or brutal circumstances” (Hartman 1999: 212).

Re-Embedding Sexual Meanings: A Qualitative Comparison of the Premarital Sexual Scripts of Chinese and Japanese Young Adults

Abstract: Through a comparison of the premarital sexual scripts of Chinese and Japanese young adults, we propose a general framework for cross-culturally comparing sexual scripts. Based on a breakdown of narrative structure into six narrative components—act, context, purpose, actors, agency and consequences—this narrative component method of comparison provides a way of accounting for the considerable differences in Japanese and Chinese premarital sexual norms. Both Chinese and Japanese students’ normative cultural scenarios for entry into sexual intercourse situate sexual intercourse within a “love” relationship; but narrative component analysis reveals key differences in the construction of acts, agents and contexts. Both the Japanese and Chinese findings point to a process of re-embedding sexual behavior in sexual scripts associated with a narrower scope of relational purposes and specific social contexts. The differential embedding of sexual scripts in an idealized relational context is shown to be relevant for the cultural construction of sexual agency.

Circles disturbed : the interplay of mathematics and narrative

Abstract: Circles Disturbed brings together important thinkers in mathematics, history, and philosophy to explore the relationship between mathematics and narrative. The book's title recalls the last words of the great Greek mathematician Archimedes before he was slain by a Roman soldier--"Don't disturb my circles"--words that seem to refer to two radically different concerns: that of the practical person living in the concrete world of reality, and that of the theoretician lost in a world of abstraction. Stories and theorems are, in a sense, the natural languages of these two worlds--stories representing the way we act and interact, and theorems giving us pure thought, distilled from the hustle and bustle of reality. Yet, though the voices of stories and theorems seem totally different, they share profound connections and similarities. A book unlike any other, Circles Disturbed delves into topics such as the way in which historical and biographical narratives shape our understanding of mathematics and mathematicians, the development of "myths of origins" in mathematics, the structure and importance of mathematical dreams, the role of storytelling in the formation of mathematical intuitions, the ways mathematics helps us organize the way we think about narrative structure, and much more. In addition to the editors, the contributors are Amir Alexander, David Corfield, Peter Galison, Timothy Gowers, Michael Harris, David Herman, Federica La Nave, G.E.R. Lloyd, Uri Margolin, Colin McLarty, Jan Christoph Meister, Arkady Plotnitsky, and Bernard Teissier.

Multimodal narrative construction in Christopher Nolan’s Memento a description of analytic method

Abstract: In this article, the authors propose a systematic method for analysing film that bridges the gap between analyses of narrative concerns, on the one hand, and the analysis of fine-grained technical details, on the other. They illustrate the approach on the basis of an analysis of Memento, a film particularly noted for its unusual narrative structure and show how their method maintains a tighter linkage with the filmic material presented while at the same time drawing out narratively significant generalizations.

Storytelling across the Primary Curriculum

Abstract: Part 1- Classroom Storytelling 1 Introduction : storytelling as the social art of language 2 Building the framework : narrative structure and meta-narrative 3 Lessons in thievery : selecting stories for classroom telling 4 Forging the tale anew : adapting the story for classroom telling 5 The craft of classroom storytelling Part 2 - Storytelling across the primary curriculum 6 Words, words, words : storytelling, language and literacy 7 Stories of pipers and tales of tall ships : history and geography through storytelling 8 Telling valuable tales and exploring deep meaning : religious education and moral development 9 Possibility thinking : storytelling, science and mathematics 10 Storytelling within the arts curriculum 11 Storytelling and the visual arts 12 Storytelling, drama and dance : living the narrative 13 Singing the narrative : storytelling and music

What is narrative

Abstract: This paper explores the definition and boundaries of ‘narrative’. First, focusing on narratives’ movement or succession of signs and building of meanings, it argues for the decentring of temporality and the recognition of ‘narrative’ in, for instance, still images. Second, taking into account the particularities of narratives, the paper examines how narrative research can allow for transferability and heuristics, rather than generalisability and predictivity. In the case of the extreme particularity of exceptional narratives, the paper argues that these operate as important interruptors of existing theory and calls to consider phenomena that have not yet been addressed.

The Changing Face of The Novel

Abstract: This article uses Dresang's dimensions of radical change to call attention to the evolving structures and features of novels for young readers being published today The controversial topics and elaborate design features contained in contemporary novels, for example, the expansion of dystopic fiction, the disruption of traditional narrative structures, and the utilization of meta-fictive devices, present challenges for young readers Due to these challenges, teachers need to become more sophisticated readers of contemporary novels if they are to expand their pedagogical approaches and classroom resources

Mobile digital interactive storytelling: a winding path

Abstract: These places (and, indeed, particular spatial orientations and vistas) are so central to the telling of stories that their names may become proxies for the stories themselves. It is not just that stories are about places, then, but that stories are about being in places. Brewer and Dourish (2008, p. 967) Stories in the physical world The idea of inscribing stories into the physical landscape is one that has been around since long before the recent developments in mobile technology. The myths of the Australian aboriginals tell about how the ‘‘Dreamtime’’ is sung, and by that, sings the very land into existence (Chatwin 1986). In that way the myths are inscribed into each Aboriginal group’s local landscape. Over the centuries, architects have been designing paths through the landscape to guide movement and direction of sight*and game designers do the same in their virtual worlds. The psychogeography movement (DeBord 1955), which aimed to explore the psychological effects of the geographical environment, created numerous forms for playful exploration targeted to reveal and transgress such designed structures. Several modern movements can trace their roots back to this movement, such as the urban exploration movement, which explores the hidden city landscape through accessing underground tunnel systems and rooftops pathways. Independently, skateboarders, Parkour runners and Flash mobs instead focus on exposing and transgressing the ordinary use of public space, through injecting alternative usages of urban space. Lynch’s (1960) age-old work on the social cityscape was extremely early in describing traveling on a road as a narrative experience. At the center of his works lies the understanding that physical movement creates a sequential experience and as such constructs a basic narrative structure. Early graphical games such as Myst) 1 offered spatial exploration of a virtual space as the primary form of activity. The free movement in such games already offers a primitive level of interactive storytelling, as the paths chosen will determine how the narrative is formed and to some extent even which plot is told.

Macro structure and basic methods in the integrated narrative generation system by introducing narratological knowledge

Abstract: This paper proposes the comprehensive architecture of an integrated narrative generation system to discuss main two methods which are the foundations for integrating a variety of modules or elements and show a preliminary version utilizing our existing programs directly for seeing the picture of the integrated system. After we propose the macro structure of the proposed integrated system, we describe two fundamental methods to generate narrative structures and controlling the execution. And we show a pilot or preliminary version for the system developed by a kind of “bricolage” of existing programs corresponding to each module in the narrative generation process. Last, we discuss some issues for building the next version of the integrated narrative generation system. Moreover, this architecture is also differentiated from other many systems and approaches in the interdisciplinary concept of AI and narratology.

The nightmare and the narrative.

Abstract: This paper proposes that dreams can be analyzed from a narrative perspective and that this approach produces a new appreciation of dreams. When we ask the dreamer narrative-like questions such as “How would you change the story of the dream?” or “If they were making a movie of this dream, who would play you?” we take the dream work in a different direction than when we ask questions of the form “Does this dream remind you of something in your waking life?” Consideration of the formal narrative components of the dream report allows us to address issues and remedies that are not readily apparent in other approaches. In the case of the nightmare, imagining the dream as a story can prepare the dreamer to master the nightmare’s climax. Within the logic of the nightmare, it enables the dreamer to identify or create sources of support and to see herself as someone who can solve the nightmare problem. It provides the dreamer with the means to eliminate the nightmare. A dream report is rarely a complete story and narrative can be utilized when we can conceptualize the dream as a fragment implying a narrative whole. The nightmare can be seen as a fragment which consistently halts at what would be the climax of a plot. Correspondingly, there is a quasi-nightmare embedded in the plot of many novels and films, Stephen King’s horror story, Carrie, is taken as an example. Many of the analyses and techniques used in both nightmare studies and in nightmare interventions already imply a narrative perspective. In particular, narrative offers an explanation for THE NIGHTMARE AND THE NARRATIVE 4 the success of the Imagery Rehearsal Technique (IRT) method of working with nightmares. Narrative analysis can benefit dream work in three ways. Firstly, narrative suggests a framework in which current approaches to nightmares can be understood; secondly, it offers a different way to consider dream reports; and thirdly, the extensive body of narrative theory as well as practical applications, such as screenwriting techniques, can be applied to dream work.

Linguistic and narrative development in a Japanese–English bilingual's first language acquisition: a 14-year longitudinal case study

Abstract: In the seven decades since Leopold's groundbreaking 1939 study, there has been no longitudinal study covering more than two years of a Japanese bilingual subject's development. Despite the lack of longitudinal research, however, we have been broadly informed by the veritable outpouring of research on a short-term basis since the late twentieth century. This longitudinal study tracks a Japanese–English bilingual from childhood (4;09) into late adolescence (19;01). Data collected orally were analyzed in terms of fluency, accuracy, complexity, and vocabulary. By continuing through the late acquisition phase, we were also able to observe the development of the subject's growing ability to employ narrative structure, examining her nondominant language, English, from both the linguistic and narrative perspectives, to determine whether the nondominant language develops in a similar manner to monolinguals and/or to bilinguals who are acquiring two linguistically close languages. The results indicate that...

Post-Apocalyptic Nostalgia: WALL-E, Garbage, and American Ambivalence toward Manufactured Goods

Abstract: Historically, apocalyptic literature has involved the destruction of an old, corrupt world and the potential emergence of a renewed, perhaps better world. This narrative structure is also commonpla...

The Narrative Inquiry Museum:An Exploration of the Relationship between Narrative and Art Museum Education

Abstract: The Narrative Inquiry Museum: An Exploration of the Relationship Between Narrative and Art Museum Education Angela A. West Department of Visual Arts, BYU Master of Arts For art to become personally meaningful to visitors, museums need to view art interpretation as a narrative inquiry process. General museum visitors without art expertise naturally make meaning of art by constructing stories around a work to relate to it. Narrative inquiry, a story based exploration of experience, fits into contemporary museum education theory because it is a constructive and participatory meaning making process. This thesis examines how art museums can build upon visitors’ natural interpretive behaviors, by employing art-based narrative inquiry practices and using the work of art as a narrative story text. Individuals learn when their personal narrative comes into conflict with the narrative of the museum and they negotiate new meaning. This kind of narrative learning is a process of inquiry that visitors must engage in themselves. The art museum interpretive experience can foster in visitors the ability to engage in an art-based narrative inquiry process by suspending disbelief, recalling personal memories, comparing different narrative versions, imagining possible meanings, and re-storying experiences into new understandings. This research text explores these topics through a narrative based method of inquiry comprised of a series of autobiographical stories describing the researcher’s experiences in coming to understand the relationship between narrative inquiry and art museum education.

Intertextuality and Narrative Practices of Young Deaf Students in Classroom Contexts: A Microethnographic Study

Abstract: This study explores how intertextuality influences the narrative practices of young deaf children in two classrooms. Specifically, the study examines how variations in what texts are made available to juxtapose and variations in how texts are juxtaposed influence the narratives young deaf children produce. A major premise underlying these two purposes is that intertextual links are socially constructed by teachers and children. Data from each classroom was collected using ethnographic methods including participant observation 2.5 days per week in each classroom for six months, collection of classroom artifacts (e.g., student writing and drawing) and video recordings of select storytelling and story writing events. Data analysis involved transcribing the video recorded events, identifying potential instances of intertextuality in the transcripts and student written products, and coding for intertextual substance (the range of texts referenced) and intertextual process (how intertextual connections were constructed). Findings revealed two models of narrative practice in the classrooms: an individual model with a focus on a narrow range of narrative forms and structures aligned with formal curriculum and required assessments and a narrow range of potential intertextual connections; and, a shared model of narrative practice that involved a broader range of potential intertextual connections, social play, a focus on author-audience relationships (where the audience were classroom peers) often eschewing formal narrative structures and forms, and the use of multiple modalities / sign systems. In one of the classrooms the individual model prevailed, while the shared model prevailed in the other. The findings suggest that over time deaf children, like hearing children, engage in, adopt, and adapt different classroom narrative practices dependent on the classroom social contexts of their production. The findings have implications for reconceptualizing narrative development and the assessment of spoken and written narratives.

Diverse Narrative Structures in Contemporary Picturebooks: Opportunities for Children's Meaning-Making.

Abstract: The authors discuss how picturebooks with complex and diverse narrative structures can enhance students' development as readers, writers, and imaginative thinkers.THOSE READERS FAMILIAR with The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales (Scieszka, 1992) know that one of the final endpapers appears before the end of the book. Jack speaks directly to readers and explains his reasons for creating this disruption in both narrative and conventional placement of a peritextual element: "Shhhhh. Be very quiet. I moved the endpaper up here so the Giant would think the book is over. The big lug is finally asleep. Now I can sneak out of here. Just turn the page very quietly and that will be The..." (n.p.). A turn of the page reveals another interruption - the Little Red Hen. She continues recounting 'her' story, a narrative that has been told in multiple installments throughout the picturebook.The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales, which is discussed later in this article, is one of many contemporary picturebooks that feature a nonlinear and complex narrative structure (see the Appendix for a sample of other picturebooks with diverse narrative structures). In this article, we situate our discussion of diverse narrative structures in the context of oral storytelling practices and postmodern picturebooks. We focus on three contemporary picturebooks: Don't Read This Book! (Lewis, 2009), Abe Lincoln Crosses a Creek: A Tall Thin Tale (Hopkins, 2008), and The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales (Scieszka, 1992), and examine the various narrative structures evident in each selection of literature. Our article concludes with a discussion of how picturebooks with diverse narrative structures can augment students' development as readers, writers, and creative thinkers.Contextualizing Diverse Narrative StructuresNarrative, which is derived from the Latin verb narrare, "to recount," is indeed frequently defined as 'a narrated account.' Although the word 'story' is often used as a synonym, the term narrative can also be used to describe the technique or process or art of narrating. All narratives have a structure - a framework that underlies the order in which a narrative is presented to narratees - those to whom the story is addressed.Many historical, cultural and social factors need to be considered when examining the structural framework of oral and written narratives, and when considering students' narrative competence, their "ability to produce and understand narratives" (Prince, 2003, p. 61). The longitudinal research conducted by Wells (1986) documented how young children's lack of experience with narrative (i.e. listening to stories read aloud) negatively affected their academic success in school. Through multiple experiences with oral and/or written stories, individuals construct schemata or cognitive representations of story structures, elements, and genres. Indeed, research by Heath (1983), McCabe (1997), and Bliss and McCabe (2008) has revealed significant differences in how children construct oral narratives. Heath's (1983) seminal ethnographic research described how the specific features of three communities' storytelling traditions and narrative structures affected their children's interactions and achievement at school. McCabe (1997), whose research revealed cultural differences in the structure of children's oral narratives, wrote that many European North American children are "equipped for the kind of stories they hear in school," the kind that have a "clear beginning, middle and end" and that "contain a clear temporal sequence of events that matches some sequence of events in the real world" (p. 456). However, not all children share the same experience with linear sequenced narratives. Indeed, there is more than one way to tell a story and various narrative structures should be acknowledged, appreciated, and discussed in classrooms.Several theorists and researchers have developed or embraced a structural approach to analyze narratives. …

Translation and Metalepsis: A Narrative Account of Goldblatt's English Version of Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out

Abstract: In terms of research on literary translation,narratology possesses strong explanatory power,applications,and theoretical value.As such,translational narrative study is one of the main bodies of literary translation studies.In view of narrative studies,this paper offers a detailed analysis of the English translation of Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out by Mo Yan.The focus of this paper is on narrative voice,narrative point of view,and metalepsis.It has been found that there are two kinds of metalepsis in the target text(TT) by Howard Goldblatt — overt metalepsis and covert metalepsis.Both paralipsis narrative and pseudodiegetic narrative feature these two kinds of metalepsis,and they are related to narrative voice and narrative point of view.

The Narrative Turn and the Poetics of Resistance: Towards a New Language for Critical Educational Studies.

Abstract: This article argues for the adoption of a new language in critical educational studies through the 'narrative turn', a turn that politicizes knowledge by drawing attention to questions concerning the meaning, construction and authorship of narratives. In the authors' interpretation going back to the poetics of early narrative forms they development the argument that there is an ancient history of the form that privileges it as a means and form of resistance. The article tracks the adoption of narrative in the human sciences and details the development of narratology as the scientific study of narrative by such luminaries as Paul Ricoeur, and describes the 'crisis of narrative' in the postmodern condition by reference to the work of Lyotard, who begins to problematize the 'metanarrative' and its role in legitimation processes. This political understanding of narrative is further explored in relation to 'narrative identity' through the work of Benedict Anderson, Homi Bhabha and Charles Taylor and their emphasis on social imaginaries.