Children learn the pragmatic conventions of storytelling during family reminiscing. This chapter discusses differences in narrative development and narrative practices observed during reminiscing in two different cultural groups: children from mainstream, white, Anglo, middle-class families and Latino children and their families. Our review indicates both groups differ with respect to the way they structure, contextualize and evaluate their narratives. Different from European communities, Latinos deemphasize the chronological structuring of their stories. Children in both cultures learn to contextualize information within a narrative, but Latinos emphasize the contextualization of characters, usually their relatives. Both groups introduce evaluation while storytelling, through the use of different strategies. Implications of these differences for the educational context are pointed out.
(2008) Personal narratives: Cultural differences and clinical implications. Topics in Language Disorders, 28, 162–177.
Bliss, L.S., McCabe, A., & Mahecha, N.R
(2001) Analyses of narratives from Spanish-speaking children. Contemporary Issues in Communication Science and Disorders, 28, 133–139.
Bruner, J
(1986) Actual Minds, Possible Worlds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Cheatham, G.A., & Jimenez-Silva, M
(2011) What makes a good story? Supporting oral narratives of young children from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. Childhood Education, 87, 261–268.
Eisenberg, A
(1985) Learning to describe past experiences in conversation. Discourse Processes, 8, 177–204.
Fivush, R., & Fromhoff, F.A
(1988) Style and structure in mother-child conversations about the past. Discourse Processes, 11, 337–355.
Fivush, R., Haden, C., & Reese, E
(2006) Elaborating on elaboration. Child Development, 77, 1568–1588.
Haden, C.A., Haine, R.A., & Fivush, R
(1997) Developing narrative structure in parent-child reminiscing across the preschool years. Developmental Psychology, 33(2), 295–307.
Harwood, R.L., Miller, J.G., & Irizarry, N.L
(1995) Culture and Attachment: Perceptions of the Child in Context. New York, NY: Guildford.
Harwood, R.L., Schölmerich, A., & Schulze, P.A
(2000) Homogeneity and heterogeneity in cultural belief systems. In W. Damon (Series Ed.) & S. Harkness, C. Raeff, & C.M. Super (Vol. Eds.), New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development: Variability in the Social Construction of the Child (87) (pp. 41–57). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Heath, S.B
(1983) Ways with Words: Language, Life, and Work in Communities and Classrooms. Cambridge: CUP.
Hickmann, M., & Hendriks, H
(1999) Cohesion and anaphora in children’s narratives: A comparison of English, French, German, and Chinese. Journal of Child Language, 26, 419–452.
Hickmann, M., Hendriks, H., Roland, F., & Liang, J
(1996) The marking of new information in children’s narratives: A comparison of English, French, German, and Mandarin Chinese. Journal of Child Language, 23, 591–619.
Hymes, D.H
(1972) Models of the interactions of language and social life. In J. Gumperz & D.H. Hymes (Eds.), New Directions in Sociolinguistics: The Ethnography of Communication (pp. 35–71). New York, NY: Holt, Rinehart.
Karmiloff-Smith, A
(1985) Language and cognitive processes from a developmental perspective. Language and Cognitive Processes, 1(1), 60–85.
Keller, H
(2007) Cultures of Infancy. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Labov, W., & Waletsky, J
(1967) Narrative analysis: Oral versions of personal experiences. In J. Helm (Ed.), Essays on the Verbal and Visual Arts (pp. 12–44). Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press.
McCabe, A., Bailey, A., & Melzi, G
(2008) Spanish-language Narration and Literacy: Culture, Cognition and Emotion. Cambridge: CUP.
McCabe, A., & Peterson, C
(1991) Getting the story: A lo DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511815669 ngitudinal study of parental styles in eliciting narratives and developing narrative skill. In A. McCabe & C. Peterson (Eds.), Developing Narrative Structure (pp. 217–253). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Melzi, G
(2000) Cultural variations in the construction of personal narratives: Central American and European American mothers’ elicitation styles. Discourse Processes, 30(2), 153–177.
Melzi, G., Schick, A., & Kennedy, J
(2011) Narrative participation and elaboration: Two dimensions of maternal elicitation style. Child Development, 82(4), 1282–1296.
Michaels, S
(1981) “Sharing time”: Children’s narrative styles and differential access to literacy. Language and Society, 10, 423–422.
Michaels, S., & Cook-Gumperz, J
(1979) A study of sharing time with first-grade students: Discourse narratives in the classroom. Proceedings of the Fifth Annual Meetings of the Berkeley Linguistics Society. Berkeley, CA: University of California.
(2013) Difference of disorder? Cultural issues in understanding neurodevelopmental disorders. Developmental Psychology, 49(1), 45–58.
Ochs, E., & Schieffelin, B
(1986) Language acquisition and socialization: Three developmental stories and their implications. In R.A. Shweder & R.A. LeVine (Eds.), Culture Theory: Essays on Mind, Self, and Emotion (pp. 276–320). Cambridge: CUP.
Peterson, C., & McCabe, A
(1983) Developmental Psycholinguistics: Three Ways of Looking at a Child’s Narrative. New York, NY: Plenum Press.
Peterson, C., & McCabe, A
(1992) A social interactionist account of developing decontextualized narrative skill. Developmental Psychology, 30(6), 937–948.
Peterson, C., & McCabe, A
(1994) Parental styles of narrative elicitation: Effects on children’s narrative structure and content. First Language, 12, 299–321.
(2013) Culture, narrative, imagination. In M. Taylor (Ed.). Oxford Handbook of the Development of Imagination (pp. 196–211). Oxford: OUP.
Reese, E., & Fivush, R
(1993) Parental styles of talking about the past. Developmental Psychology, 29, 596–606.
Reese, E., Haden, C.A., & Fivush, R
(1993) Mother-child conversations about the past: Relationships of style and memory over time. Cognitive Development, 8, 403–430.
Riessman, C.K
(1987) When gender is not enough: Women interviewing woman. Gender & Society, 1(2), 172–207.
Rodino, A.M., Gimbert, C., Pérez, C., & McCabe, A
(1991) Getting your point across: Contrastive sequencing in low-income African-American and Latino children’s personal narratives. Paper presented at the 16th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, Boston.
Rosabal-Coto, Mariano
(2008) Parenting in the Costa Rican Context: Parental Belief Systems, Conflict Resolution Strategies, and Cultural Orientation in the Mother-Child Interactive Context: Two Samples Study. Saarbrücken: VDM Verlag Dr. Müller.
Serra, M., Serrat, E., Solé, M.R., Bel, A., & Aparici, M
(2000) La adquisición del lenguaje. Barcelona: Ariel.
Silva, M., & McCabe, A
(1996) Vignettes of the continuous and family ties: Some Latino American traditions. In A. McCabe (Ed.), Chameleon Readers: Teaching Children to Appreciate All Kinds of Good Stories (pp. 116–136). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
Snow, Catherine E
(1983) Literacy and language: Relationships during the preschool years. Harvard Educational Review, 53, 165–189.
Sparks, A
(2008) Latino mothers and their preschool children talk about the past: Implications for language and literacy. In A. McCabe, A.L. Bailey, & G. Melzi (Eds.), Spanish-language Narration and Literacy: Culture, Cognition and Emotion (pp. 273–295). Cambridge: CUP.
Uccelli, P
(2008) Beyond chronicity: Evaluation and temporality in Spanish-speaking children’s personal narratives. In A. McCabe, A.L. Bailey, & G. Melzi (Eds.), Spanish-language Narration and Literacy: Culture, Cognition and Emotion (pp. 175–212). Cambridge: CUP.
Vygotsky, L.S
(1978) Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Cited by (7)
Cited by 7 other publications
Helms-Park, Rena, Maria Claudia Petrescu, Mihaela Pirvulescu & Vedran Dronjic
2024. Canadian-born trilingual children’s narrative skills in their heritage language and Canada’s official languages. International Journal of Multilingualism 21:1 ► pp. 464 ff.
Rohrer, Patrick Louis, Júlia Florit-Pons, Ingrid Vilà-Giménez & Pilar Prieto
2022. Children Use Non-referential Gestures in Narrative Speech to Mark Discourse Elements Which Update Common Ground. Frontiers in Psychology 12
Shiro, Martha & Erika Hoff
2021. A multidimensional approach to Spanish–English bilingual preschoolers’ narrative skills (Un enfoque multidimensional de las habilidades narrativas de los niños preescolares bilingües inglés/español). Journal for the Study of Education and Development 44:2 ► pp. 370 ff.
Carmiol, Ana M., Kimberly R. Kelly, Grace Ocular, Marcela Ríos-Reyes, Melissa González-Chaves & Jesús Plascencia
2020. Talking about Past Experiences in Two Cultural Contexts: Children’s Narrative Structure and Maternal Elaboration in Dyads from Costa Rica and the United States. Early Education and Development 31:2 ► pp. 234 ff.
Mareovich, Florencia, Daniela Eva Jauck & Olga Alicia Peralta
2020. La construcción de producciones orales en la infancia a partir de imágenes realistas y no realistas. CES Psicología 13:2 ► pp. 85 ff.
Rungrojsuwan, Sorabud
2019. The Development of Narrative Macrostructure of Thai Children. rEFLections 26:2 ► pp. 1 ff.
Zevenbergen, Andrea Angell, Ewa Haman & Jason Andrew Zevenbergen
2018. “Do You Remember Going to the Beach?”: References to Internal States in Polish and American Mother-Preschooler Shared Narratives. Psychology of Language and Communication 22:1 ► pp. 441 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 19 july 2024. 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.