Narrative Production & Social Identity in Second Language Learning

1. Narrative Production & Social Identity in Second Language Learning Joel Walters Bar-Ilan University Oranim Conference on Bilingualism, Diglossia and Multilingualism May 6, 2009

2. Research Strategies Bilinguals vs. Monolinguals L1 vs. L2 Within Subject

3. Linguistic Models 1 Syntax-centered (Chomsky 1965, 1995) Phonology, Syntax, Semantics 2 Lexicon and Grammar (Ullman 2001, 2005) Declarative/Procedural Memory Temporal-Parietal/Frontal lobe, BA44, BA45

4. Acquisition/Bilinguals Acquisition Verb inflections, Prepositions, Definiteness, Lexis, Discourse Markers, Codeswitching, Code Interference Bilinguals Dominant/Weak language Children: Simultaneous, Sequential, Early, Late Adults: L1 Arabic/Amharic/Hebrew/Spanish Atypical: Aphasics, Schizophrenics, SLI

5. Why study Narrative Production? • Multiple linguistic levels and multiple indicators in a single task: lexis, grammar, discourse, fluency • Grounds language in the social world and allows linguistic performance to be enveloped in pragmatics

6. WG2 Israeli Narrative Studies • Lexis and Discourse in Preschool Narratives • Codeswitching in Bilingual Retelling • Autobiographical memory narratives among Amharic, English, Russian, Georgian and Hebrew Native Speakers • Health Narratives in Russian-Hebrew Schizophrenics • Children’s Holocaust Testimonies • Story Grammar Recall in Adult EFL learners

7. Overview of Talk I Story Grammar Recall in Adult EFL Learners II Lexis and Discourse in Preschool Narratives III Immigration narratives among Ethiopian College Students I

8. Four Approaches to Narrative • Story Grammars (Stein & Glenn 1979) • Labov on Narratives (1967, 1972, 1997) • Text Construction (Ravid & Berman (2009) • Systemic Functional (Martin & Rose 2008)

9. Stein & Glenn’s (1979) Story Grammar Setting: introduction of characters, time and place Initiating Event: event or action that sets up a problem or dilemma Internal Response/Goal: protagonist's reactions to the initiating event Attempt: An action or plan of the protagonist to solve the problem Consequence: result of protagonist's actions Ending: response by the protagonist to the consequence

10. Walters & Wolf (1986) EFL Story Recall Setting: Once there was a big gray fish named Albert, who lived in an icy pond at the edge of the forest. Initiating Event: One day Albert was swimming around and saw a fish near the surface of the pond. Internal Response: Albert loved worms and wanted to eat that one for his breakfast. Attempt(s): He swam toward the worm and bit into him. Consequence: Suddenly Albert was pulled into a boat. He had been caught by a fisherman. Ending: Albert was sorry and wished he had been more careful.

11. Story Grammar Categories in G3B Setting: Once upon a time there were three bears, a papa bear, a momma bear and a little tiny baby bear. They all lived in a tiny house in a great big forest. Initiating Event: One day a little girl named Goldilocks came walking through the forest. Internal Response/Goal: She was surprised to see the house and noticed it was empty. She was hungry and tired and wanted to rest. Attempt(s): Goldilocks went inside, tasted the three bowls of porridge, tried out the three chairs, and tried out the three beds. Consequence: The bears returned to find the porridge eaten, the baby chair broken and Goldilocks sleeping in the baby bear's bed. Ending: Goldilocks jumped out of the window and ran away.

12. Preschool Studies: Overall Design Language Pairs • English-Hebrew • Russian-Hebrew Stories • Familiar • Unfamiliar Tasks • Tell a story from memory • Tell a story from picture stimuli • Tell – retell from memory

13. Study I: Linguistic indicators Participants 8 SLI English-Hebrew bilinguals 9 TD English-Hebrew bilinguals Stories rendered Jungle Book (26) Goldilocks and the Three Bears (18) Languages English (24) Hebrew (24) Task: Tell story from picture stimuli

14. Study I: Linguistic measures Lexical indicators Morphosyntactic indicators Narrative indicators Fluency and intelligibility Experimenter influence Bilingual measures

15. Measures I: Lexical Indicators Utterances/Clauses Tokens Types Lexical Diversity: Type/token ratio Content words Semantic density: Content/token ratio Function words Verb-based utterances

16. Measures IIMorphosyntactic and Syntactic Errors Verb Inflections omissions and substitutions Prepositions omissions and substitutions Articles omissions and substitutions Person, number, gender Complex syntax

17. Measures III: Narrative Structure SE Setting IE Initiating Event GL Goal IR Internal Response AT Attempt CN Consequence EN Ending

18. Measures IV: Fluency and Intelligibility • Unintelligible utterances • Irrelevant utterances • Discourse markers – and, then, v’az, az

19. Measures V: Experimenter influence • Experimenter utterances • Experimenter tokens • Child responses to a Yes-No Question • Child responses to a Wh-question • Repetitions of experimenter utterance • Completions of experimenter utterances • Unrelated to experimenter utterances

20. Measures VI: Bilingual Indicators Codeswitching (CS) *CHI: tinok’s bed *CHI: mexina soup *CHI: in the delet *CHI: and then they go madregot Code-interference (CI) *CHI: in the delet *CHI: someone ate from me. *CHI: she is trying the porridge here, it’s too hot, it's too hot, but now this [/] this one is warm for her and it’s [/] and it’s not hot.

21. Findings: Lexical indicators

22. Lexical indicatorsVerbosity: Frequency of tokens Jungle Book Goldilocks

23. Lexical indicatorsType/Token Ratio & Semantic Density

24. Morphosyntax: Prepositions

25. Narrative indicator: CONSEQUENCES

26. Bilingual Measures: Codeswitching

27. Bilingual measures: Code Interference Group x Language Interaction

29. Bettelheim (1977) The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales. New York: Vintage. Goldilocks and the Three Bears historical development (from Scottish oral folktale to written form in 1837) describes a strange story, since, unlike other fairy tales, it offers the children two equally good individuals to identify with, and thus, two equally strong readings.

30. Goldilocks and the Three Bears The story is aboutIdentification Goldilocks is trying out different roles. However, there is no happy ending. Thus, even though she is especially attractive, and in need of a family, companionship or love, she remains alone: an excluded outsider

31. Identity Markers Two children (Mf509, Am506), before identifying with one of the characters, insert their “I”/ self/ self identity very strongly and then identify with one of the characters and help that character ‘win.’ A ‘safe’, even ideal, way to enter a story, to identify with a character, and to tell a meaningful story for the self is to first assert one’s own identity.

32. Mf509 Mf509 who identifies with Goldilocks *CHI: they’re making porridge and then they're going out. *CHI: xx and now Goldilocks is knocking on the door and she’s [//] nobody’s answering and she’s going in. *EXP: ok, let’s see what’s gonna happen. *CHI: she is trying the porridge here, it’s too hot, it's too hot, but now this [/] this one is warm for her and it’s [/] and it’s not hot. *EXP: ah, I see, so that one’s just right, yep yep, here she’s trying the porridge, yep, and then what about here? *CHI: he [/] here, she’s going into the room, here sh +... *EXP: uh hm.

33. Mf509 (continued) *CHI: here's [: here are] [*] the slippers and she’s trying [*] on and [/] and it’s not, um, comfortable for her +... *EXP: uh hm. *CHI: and this is not comfortable +. *EXP: uh hm. *CHI: but this is comfortable

34. Mf509 invents an Ending: Bears invite G back “and then they want her to stay” *CHI: and everybody went to their chair xxx he saw the little girl xxx falling xxx and he was angry. *EXP: yeah, he was angry, so then did Goldilocks st +.... *CHI: she ran. *EXP: she ran away, yeah, right, is that the end, uh, the end. *CHI: and then +... %com: CHI reopens the story; ending does not fit her identification with Goldilock *EXP: hm? *CHI: and then they want her to stay. [[She only did damage; why did they want her to stay? she’s beautiful, lonely, needs food, love, out of her element; so CHI wants her to stay to fit in]]

35. Sibling rivalry The part of the story about the Baby Bear is about sibling rivalry. It is about intrusion and having one’s place in the family endangered. Am506 identifies with the baby bear, and that is why he adds his evaluation at the end when he happily announces: “bye”, indicating that he is happy that Goldilocks, the intruder has left forever.

36. AM506 *Am506: me want to read this. *Am506: me know this. *Am506: three littlebear. *Am506: bears. [[focus is only on Little Bear, i.e. identifies with Baby Bear]] *Am506: daddy. *Am506: mommy. *Am506: the baby. [[definite article shows his identification; only use of def article is here]] *Am506: one day… *Am506: aba, ima. *Am506: xxx bear. *AKI: mitot. *AKI: yeah. *AKI: mommy. *AKI: tinok’s bed.

37. AM506 (continued) *Am506 : xxx oxel. *Am506: mexina soup. *Am506: no, a porridge. *Am506: hot. *Am506: went … *Am506: a walk. *Am506: Goldilocks. *Am506: tuk tuk. *Am506: in the delet. *Am506: no! *Am506: came inside. *Am506: and she sat kise. *Am506: xxx. *Am506: porridge.

38. AM506 (continued) *Am506: xxx mi- po. *Am506: to the bedroom. *Am506: this…this… *Am506: to the house. *Am506: xxx you should eat my porridge.// *Am506: and then they go madregot. *Am506: ha-tinok amar. *Am506: xxx sleeping in my bed. *Am506: yeah. *Am506: run here. *Am506: bye.

39. Df608/No identification *CHI: yeah, I have it in my house, Goldilocks+And+The+Three+Bears. [[sets up for strong identification, but doesn’t follow through]] *EFR: once upon a time. *CHI: there was *EFR: there were three *CHI: bears, they went out *EFR: they had three. *CHI: chairs *EFR: and *CHI: three beds. *EFR: yes, one day. *CHI: Mommy baked xxx. *EFR: yeah. *CHI: and she putted [: put] [*] it down on the table. *EFR: yeah putted it. *CHI: and then they went. *EFR: where did they go? *CHI: I don't know. *EFR: okay, suddenly. *EFR: Goldilocks. *CHI: Goldilocks came in the house xxx. *EFR: hmm. *CHI: she sat down on the big chair, but it was too big.[[parallelism and repetition]] *EFR: right. *CHI: she ate daddy's soup, but it was too xx, too hot. [[parallelism and repetition]] *EFR: right. *CHI: she ate mommy's. *EFR: and? *CHI: and it was too warm. *EFR: right. *CHI: and. *EFR: and then she? *CHI: ate the baby's and it was very excellent. *EFR: right, then Goldilocks *CHI: went to the beds. *EFR: right. *CHI: she tried Daddy's bed but it was too big, she tried mommy's bed *EFR: but it was too. *CHI: small. *EFR: and then she fell asleep and the bears were coming. *CHI: home, xxx someone sat on my chair, someone ate from me. *EFR: and I want you, I want you to tell me the story, you're looking at the pictures but you're not telling me the story. *CHI: and he went upstairs and xxx, someone went on the stairs. *EFR: oh! *CHI: and then xx saw Goldilocks and she ran out xxx.

40. Study II: Codeswitching in Bilingual Story Retelling Research Question To what extent do language impairment, story content and task influence the frequency and direction of codeswitching? Participants 4 Eng-Heb bilinguals diagnosed as LI in both languages 9 TD English-Hebrew bilinguals Stories and Task Hebrew story retold to an English-speaking puppet English story retold to a Hebrew-speaking puppet Codeswitched story retold to a bilingual puppet Measures Frequency of CS Directionality of CS

41. Stimulus Stories

42. Stimulus Stories

43. Findings

44. Language Choice in the Bilingual story

45. Story told in English(L1), retold in Hebrew (L2) NMSLI01 *CHI: David gar ah at tel-aviv…david gar ba-tel-aviv ve ve-yesh lo aba, ve-yesh lo soup ve ve ve- hotdogs. He wants eh hamburgers and snichel ve-qetchop. Ima amar eh shouted out …she shouted shouted you are not gonna play with lego and you call his father. *EXP: ata yaxol lesaper le-dudidu ma yiqre axar~kax? *CHI: he he he shouted so much and he will not play with his lego and he'll call his father.

46. NMSLI01 (continued) *EXP: aval ani roca she-tesaper le-dudidu axar~kax ma yiqre. *CHI: 'axshav hi hi ima shelo shouted and hi loh hi loh hi loh natan lo lesaxeq 'im ha-logo 'im lego ve ve-hi amar aba hi amar aba shelo. *EXP: ken. Aval axar~kax ma yiqre 'im aruxat ha- 'erev? *CHI: he he yilex he yilex habayta. Ze ma she-hu halax

47. Story told in Hebrew (L2), retold in English (L1) NMTD02 *CHI:pa'am axat… eh once there was tal and dana. Eh they were friends. Outside they played with sand, and tal wanted to build a castle and she and dana didn't want to… *EXP: so what happened then? *CHI: tal said she she said I don’t understand, she didn't listen to her. *EXP: and dana. *CHI: and dana said she will play with a different friend, that she is…ani loh yodea ex omrim lehaskim be-anglit. *EXP: ok.

48. NMTD02 (continued) *CHI:ve then the gane then the ganenet said that that that she will tell it ti her ima and aba *EXP: and *CHI: and then she said she wouldn't be in the mifgash. *EXP: very good. Now what do you think would happen next in this story? Can you tell jane? *CHI:eh, loh yodea' *EXP: think what would happen after the teacher shouted at her? *CHI: she'll tell ima and aba., and she won' sit in the mifgash.

49. Labov on Narratives I/2 Temporal organization 3 Structural components 4 Evaluation 5 Reportability 6 Credibility Causality Assignment of praise and blame Viewpoint Objectivity Resolution

50. Labov 3 : Structural Components Abstract - initial clause in a narrative that reports the entire sequence of events of the narrative Orientation clause - information on the time, place of the events of a narrative, the identities of the participants and their initial behavior Complicating action - a sequential clause that reports a next event in response to a potential question, "And what happened [then]?" Resolution/Coda - a final clause which returns the narrative to the time of speaking, precluding a potential question, "And what happened then?“