Masahiko Minami

Rice balls and bear hunts: Japanese and North American family narrative patterns

In past research, the form of Japanese childrens personal narratives was found to be distinctly different from that of English-speaking children. Despite follow-up questions that encouraged them to talk about one personal narrative at length, Japanese children spoke succinctly about collections of experiences rather than elaborating on any one experience in particular (Minami & McCabe, 1991). Conversations between mothers and children in the two cultures were examined in order partly to account for the way in which cultural narrative style is transmitted to children. Comparison of mothers from the two cultures yielded the following salient contrasts: (1) In comparison to the North American mothers, the Japanese mothers requested proportionately less description from their children. (2) Both in terms of frequency and proportion, the Japanese mothers gave less evaluation and showed more verbal attention to children than did North American mothers. (3) Japanese mothers pay verbal attention more frequently to boys than to girls. In addition, at five years, Japanese children produce 1.22 utterances per turn on average, while North American children produce 2.00 utterances per turn, a significant difference. Thus, by frequently showing verbal attention to their childrens narrative contributions, Japanese mothers not only support their childrens talk about the past but also make sure that it begins to take the shape of narration valued in their culture. The production of short narratives in Japan is understood and valued differently from such production in North America.

Haiku as a discourse regulation device: A stanza analysis of Japanese children's personal narratives

Conversational narratives of 17 Japanese children aged 5 to 9 were analyzed using stanza analysis (Gee 1985; Hymes 1982). Three distinctive features emerged: (1) the narratives are exceptionally succinct; (2) they are usually free-standing collections of three experiences; (3) stanzas almost always consist of three lines. These features reflect the basic characteristics of haiku , a commonly practiced literary form that often combines poetry and narrative, and an ancient, but still ubiquitous game called karuta , which also displays three lines of written discourse. These literacy games may explain both the extraordinary regularity of verses per stanza and the smooth acquisition of reading by a culture that practices restricted, ambiguous, oral-style discourse. The structure of Japanese childrens narratives must be understood within the larger context of omoiyari “empathy” training of Japanese children. Empathy training may account for the production, comprehension, and appreciation of ambiguous discourse in Japanese society. (Cultural differences in discourse style, the relationship among oral language, literacy, and literature)

Japanese preschool children's narrative development

This study analysed oral personal narratives of 20 middle-class Japanese preschoolers, half of them four years old and half five, and their mothers, using stanza analysis and high point analysis. The patterning in stanzas revealed that, compared to four-year- olds, five-year-olds have begun to use the form of adult-like narratives. High point analysis indicated that compared to four- year-olds, five-year-olds have begun to evaluate in the form of adult-like narratives. The results suggest that the preschool years, during which various narrative components evolve, represent a period of extremely rapid development in the childs acquisition of narrative capacity. They also illustrate that from early childhood on, Japanese children learn the narrative mode of discourse valued by their mothers.

Chapter 8 Cultural constructions of meaning: Cross-cultural comparisons of mother-child conversations about the past

Publisher Summary The chapter explores the acquisition of meaning from a cross-cultural perspective. The chapter emphasizes issues related to social psychology as well as ethnological and anthropological psychology. The chapter argues that human psychology should focus on meaning and its construction process under the influence of a specific culture. The acquisition of meaning, in general, requires a great deal of interaction with others. Conversational interactions with caregivers in earlier years, and peers and teachers in later years seem to exert an important influence on childrens growing sense of meaning. The chapter discusses the major differences in mother-child interactions between Japanese and North Americans related to imagination and creativity. Japanese children tend to just state facts presumably because in group-oriented Japanese culture, explicit/logical articulation leans toward too much individual focus and is thus, generally discouraged. On the other hand, North American children tend to go beyond simply stating facts; in a society in which individualism prevails, individual topic delivery or simply being verbally assertive—including an individuals imagination and creativity—is understood and, moreover, respected.

An analysis of narrative communication strategies used by Japanese-as-a-foreign-language learners

Abstract This study examines discourse strategies in personal narratives told by Japanese-as-a-foreign-language (JFL) learners. Both JFL learners and native Japanese speakers were asked to talk about any injury-related experience that they wished. Compared to intermediate JFL learners, advanced learners (1) told longer narratives using more words, a greater variety of words, and more onomatopoetic expressions, (2) switched to their first language less frequently and used fewer message replacements, repetitions, and confirmations, and committed fewer errors, and (3) used reported speech and onomatopoeias more frequently. A comparison of narratives told by JFL learners with those produced by native Japanese speakers revealed that while intermediate learners used rising intonation more frequently than did native Japanese speakers, advanced learners tended to use more words when using reported speech even when judged by native Japanese speakers’ norm. Overall, in the examination of JFL learners’ narrative discourse patterns with particular attention to the length of their stories and the discourse strategies they employed, the study suggests that JFL learners do not necessarily follow native-style narrative patterns, even after their language skills are relatively highly developed. The study instead implies the possibility of either U-shaped patterns of behavioral growth or the strong influence of L1 discourse strategies on L2 narratives (or a combination of both).

CULTURE AS THE CORE: PERSPECTIVES ON CULTURE IN SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNING

CULTURE AS THE CORE: PERSPECTIVES ON CULTURE IN SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNING. Dale L. Lange and R. Michael Paige (Eds.) . Greenwich, CT: Information Age, 2003. Pp. xvii + 362.

The development of language processing strategies: A cross-linguistic study between Japanese and English . Reiko Mazuka. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 1998. Pp. 156.

67.50 cloth,

Language Issues in Multicultural Contexts.

34.95 paper. It may be presumptuous to assume that all foreign or second language (L2) teachers agree that language instruction must involve some degree of learning about the culture of the native speakers of the language. However, it is next to impossible to deal with L2 education without taking culture into account. Because the goal of most L2 learning is communication, culture is inevitably involved in the curriculum. Yet, many language teachers are uncertain about what kinds of cultural aspects to include in the curriculum and instruction. In fact, we are sometimes puzzled about why L2 learners find it difficult to comprehend certain linguistic features that seem apparent to native speakers. If you are a language teacher and have ever had to deal with such questions, you will be attracted by the title of this volume. Lange, one of the editors, even asserts that “culture is the driving force in the process and the content of language learning” (p. 272).

Telling good stories in different languages: Bilingual children’s styles of story construction and their linguistic and educational implications

One of the most fundamental, yet often neglected, or even paradoxical questions in the field of language acquisition is how children who have not yet acquired stable grammar can process language and still manage to acquire new grammar. This question is further complicated by cross-linguistic differences, such as how English- and Japanese-speaking children process complex sentences in their respective languages. To answer these two intricate questions, we need to identify cross-linguistically common – possibly universal or quasi-universal – characteristics in terms of the development of language processing strategies. At the same time, we also need to know whether different language processing strategies are used by children who speak different languages. We thus need to take both developmental and cross-linguistic issues into consideration simultaneously.