young children's narratives and ideologies of language in classrooms

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YOUNG CHILDREN'SNARRATIVES AND IDEOLOGIESOF LANGUAGE IN CLASSROOMSDavid Bloome a , Laurie Katz b & Tempii Champion ca Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennesseeb Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro,Tennesseec University of South Florida, Tampa, FloridaPublished online: 30 Nov 2010.

To cite this article: David Bloome , Laurie Katz & Tempii Champion (2003) YOUNGCHILDREN'S NARRATIVES AND IDEOLOGIES OF LANGUAGE IN CLASSROOMS, Reading& Writing Quarterly: Overcoming Learning Difficulties, 19:3, 205-223, DOI:10.1080/10573560308216

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YOUNG CHILDREN’S NARRATIVES AND

IDEOLOGIES OF LANGUAGE IN CLASSROOMS

David Bloome

Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee

Laurie Katz

Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro, Tennessee

Tempii Champion

University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida

A research study of African-American preschool and kindergarten children in

urban settings was conducted to generate insights about narrative develop-

ment. This article discusses the use of two different narrative styles, narratives

as text and narratives as performance, and the tension that often exists between

these two perspectives. The production of a well-formed narrative text may not

necessarily be accompanied by an engaging performance and vice versa. More

importantly, there is a tension in how narratives are evaluated in school. Data

suggest that schools may emphasize an orientation toward narrative as text

and diminish the importance narrative performances, especially those that

build social relationships and social identities at the expense of ‘‘well-

structured’’ text.

Telling stories is a ubiquitous activity in preschool and early elementaryclassrooms. There are formal storytelling times, such as sharing time andwhen teachers read storybooks to children, and informal storytellingtimes, such as stories that children tell to adults to explain errant behavioror to each other during play. Telling a ‘‘good’’ story is both a matter ofcreating a ‘‘good’’ performance and a matter of framing experience in waysthat are efficacious, either for one’s own goals or for collective goals.

The research reported in this manuscript was supported in part by a grant from the National

Council of Teachers of English Research Foundation. The opinions expressed do not necessa-

rily reflect those of the NCTE Research Foundation. Parts of this manuscript were previously

presented at the 1999 Research Conference on Narrative Analysis in a Multicultural Society,

held at the University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida.

Address correspondence to David Bloome, Department of Teaching and Learning, Peabody

College of Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37203, USA. E-mail: [email protected]

Reading & Writing Quarterly, 19: 2057223, 2003

Copyright # 2003 Taylor & Francis

1057-3569/03 $12.00 + .00

DOI: 10.1080/10573560390196807

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Narrative development (i.e., becoming increasingly able and sophisticatedin creating and communicating a ‘‘good story,’’ be it a fictional account, areporting of experience or events, etc.) is important to academic successbecause the narratives produced by students are a major vehicle forassessing what students know and are able to do.* Further, to the extentthat narratives are ways to conceptualize experience and meaning, beingable to create effective narratives (effective for one’s own goals or forcollective goals) is an important tool for learning.

One major direction in the study of children’s narrative developmenthas been to examine changes in the structure of the narrative texts theyproduce. Approaches to the study of narrative as text include high pointstructure analysis (e.g., Labov, 1972), story grammar analysis (e.g.,Johnson & Mandler, 1980), conversational analysis (e.g., Jefferson, 1978;Sacks, 1972), critical discourse analysis (e.g., Fairclough, 1995), propo-sitional analysis (e.g., Frederiksen, 1989), and numerous literaryapproaches to the study of a narrative. Whether spoken or written, text ispart of the material conditions that people encounter and must addressin their everyday lives, and children are frequently confronted with abroad range of narratives in their academic activities. Whether one viewsthe structural aspects of texts as inherent to narratives or given to themby traditions of practice, researchers’ attempts to articulate textualaspects of narratives provide insight into what people may have toaddress in their creation and use of narratives.

A second major direction views narratives as performance and definesnarrative development as children’s acquisition of the storytelling perfor-mance practices of the culture(s) and social institution(s) in which theyparticipate (cf., Bauman, 1986; Bauman & Briggs, 1990; Cortazzi, 1992;Dyson, 1989; Rosen, 1986; Toolan, 1988). Narrative texts do not exist aloneor in isolation; they only exist in some event in which they are ‘‘performed.’’As Bauman (1986) points out, ‘‘narratives are keyed both to the events inwhich they are told and to the events that they recount, toward narrativeevents and narrated events’’ (p. 2). Bauman makes a distinction among text,

*In this article, we use a broad definition of narrative. Narrative refers not only to what is

usually defined as stories and to temporal accounts (e.g., reporting what happened), but

also to scientific and descriptive explanations and expositions when those explanations and

expositions are reflective of an underlying set of related events, agency, or ‘‘story,’’ regardless

of whether the explanation or exposition itself temporally marks those events or the agency of

people in the events or in the framing of the events. Thus, we would define a report of a

science experiment as a narrative because it indexes a set of temporally related events and

activities, the agency of the experimenter, and consumers of the report must employ their

knowledge of the conduct of science to infer the hidden ‘‘story’’ behind the experiment,

even though the report may employ language and text structures not traditionally associated

with narratives.’’

206 D. Bloome et al.

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narrated event, and narrative event, although he views them as an‘‘indissoluble unity’’ (p. 7). Part of the importance of Bauman’s conceptionof narrative is to link narratives and storytelling in ways that shift theanalysis of narratives from solely a literary task to a sociolinguistic andethnographic task, similar to the implicit work that participants in a story-telling event must do. Although Bauman’s examples primarily involve nar-ratives that would traditionally be recognized as oral stories, the analyticframework he provides can be used with a much broader conception ofnarrative and storytelling, including the use of written language.

There is often a tension between these two perspectives, narratives astext and narratives as performance. The production of a well-formed narra-tive text may not necessarily be accompanied by an engaging or effectiveperformance, and vice versa. But more importantly, there is a tension inhow narratives are evaluated in school. The criteria for evaluating narra-tives is often derived from the perspective of narrative as text, pulling thetext out of its performative context and evaluating the text as if it werecontextless. One interpretation of the findings from our research is thatchildren and teachers are often ‘‘caught’’ in the tensions between these twoways of viewing narratives and must negotiate these tensions. Childrenneed to orient their narrative production toward the criteria employed inschool, which are derived from the perspective of narrative as text; at thesame time, they negotiate social relationships with peers and the teacher,making narrative performance salient even at the expense of well-formednarrative text. These tensions between narrative as text and narrative asperformance are not just matters of schooling, but index a conflict at a‘‘deeper’’ level, a conflict about language ideologies—a conflict about whatlanguage is and how it should be used.

Although there are different definitions of language ideology, in thisarticle we use language ideology to refer to two of the major definitionsnoted by Woolard (1998): (1) ‘‘sets of belief about language articulated byusers as rationalization or justification of perceived language structureand use’’ (Silverstein, 1979, p. 13, quoted in Woolard, 1998, p. 4), and (2)‘‘self-evident ideas and objectives a group holds concerning roles of lan-guage in the social experiences of members as they contribute to theexpression of the groups’’ (Heath, 1989, p. 53, quoted in Woolard, 1998,p. 4) and ‘‘the cultural system of ideas about social and linguistic rela-tionships, together with their loading of moral and political interests(Irvine, 1989, p. 25, quoted in Woolard, 1998, p. 4). Language users takedefinitions of language for granted, in a process that Fairclough(1995) calls ‘‘naturalization’’ and that has also been noted by Geertz(1983) and Street (1995), among others. A cultural ideology, including anideology about language, is most powerful when its machinations and

Young Children’s Narratives and Ideologies 207

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consequences are taken as natural, as common sense, as existing withoutalternative—that is, when it is hegemonic.

In this article, we are particularly concerned about ‘‘dualist’’ definitions oflanguage, which we view as the dominant ideology of language held inWestern society. By ‘‘dualist’’ we are referring to a set of dualisms that definelanguage. One set involves the separation of the sign from its use, assigningmeaning to the sign rather than to its contextualized use. In other words, itis the separation of text from context. While the separation of the sign fromits use can refer to the distinction between parole and langue(the study oflanguage as it is actually used by people versus the study of language as anabstract, theoretical system), it can also refer to definitions of language thatseparate out ideational content from interpersonal meaning regardless ofwhether such a definition of language is grounded in a distinction betweenparole and langue. Recently, there have been a series of critiques of suchdualist orientations to language and to narrative (for example, see Bruner,1997; Hopper, 1997; Joseph & Taylor, 1990; Simpson, 1993), althoughthere are earlier critiques as well (for example, see Volosinov, 1929). Ourconcern with dualist language ideologies is their hegemonic presence inschooling and, more specifically, in how they structure understandings ofyoung children’s narratives and the limited options they foreground forteachers and students. For example, if language is defined as a text whosemeaning and value is defined in terms of textual features and structuresconsidered outside of its use and context, then narrative performance andthe use of narrative within a face-to-face event may be overlooked asimportant or valued considerations. Narrative style and structure become adecontextualized standard for the evaluation of narratives rather thandynamic aspects of language=narrative-in-use defined by in situ social andcultural dynamics. We would argue that a decontextualized standard is, first,a misnomer, as it can be viewed as a language practice specific to a particularculture (a dominant culture) and a particular setting or institution (a highstatus setting or institution, such as school) that is applied to other culturalgroups and other settings and institutions. Secondly, we would argue that a‘‘decontextualized standard’’ acts as a way to legitimize the dominance ofnot only a particular set of language practices but also the set of social andpower relations that accompany the imposition of the standard (cf., Collins,1991). In brief, then, what is at stake with regard to language ideologies isnot just abstract conceptions of language but relationships among variouscultural groups, the hierarchical valuing of a broad range of events andsocial, cultural, and language practices, and definitions of what it means tobe a human being (cf., Williams, 1977).

As sociologists and others have suggested, no ideology exists unopposedeven when it seems hegemonic (e.g., see Bakhtin, 1953; Bourdieu, 1977; deCerteau, 1984; Foucault, 1980). Whether the result of historical and social


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processes, the failure of an ideology to be internally consistent or fullyexplanatory, or for other reasons, alternative ideologies exist even if notfully shared by all members of a social group and even if not at an expli-cated level of awareness. Indeed, it is one goal of educational programssuch as critical language awareness (cf., Fairclough, 1995) and some lit-eracy education programs (cf., Freire & Macedo, 1987) to use people’s dailyexperiences to raise awareness of the cultural and language ideologiesembedded in their lives and consciousness and to raise awareness ofalternatives. Thus, analysis of language ideologies needs to incorporateattention to the struggles among various ideologies rather than assuming astatic state of affairs.

For the past four years, we have been involved in a storytelling projectwith African-American preschool and kindergarten children in urban schoolsettings. Our primary goal has been to collect spoken and written narra-tives over time in order to create a corpus of data that could be used togenerate insights about narrative development. In this article, we present a‘‘telling case’’ (cf., Mitchell, 1984) from the data we have collected thataddresses the tensions we noted earlier between an orientation to narrativeas performance and an orientation to narrative as text.

[A telling case shows] how general principles deriving from some theoretical

orientation manifest themselves in some given set of particular circumstances.

A good case study therefore enables the analyst to establish theoretically valid

connections between events and phenomena which previously were ineluct-

able. From this point of view, the search for a ‘‘typical’’ case for analytic

exposition is likely to be less fruitful than the search for a ‘‘telling’’ case in

which the particular circumstances surrounding a case serve to make pre-

viously obscure theoretical relationships suddenly apparent. . . . Case studies

used in this way are clearly more than ‘‘apt illustrations.’’ Instead, they are

means whereby general theory may be developed. (Mitchell, 1984, p. 239)

Although the telling case is neither typical of the narratives the childrentold nor representative of a particular type of story they told or wrote, itdoes reveal the set of tensions that, we argue, are part of the institutionalcontext of storytelling events in classroom settings.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE RESEARCH STUDY

A detailed description of the research study and our procedures can befound in Bloome et al. (in press). Approximately 100 children haveparticipated in the study to date;{ almost equally divided between boysand girls. Of these, only three children were other than African-American:two white, one Asian-American. Almost all of the children came from


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low-income communities. The exceptions were the daughter of one of theteachers and children with special needs who were transported from out-side the local neighborhood to one of the classrooms used in the study.Twelve of the students were designated as having special needs, and ofthese only six had special needs directly related to language. The tellingcase reported in this article does not involve any of the children withspecial needs, except that two were in the classroom and were members ofthe listening audience.

Twice a week for most of the school year, the researchers§ ran the story-telling program in each classroom. One of the researchers would tell or reada story to the children,|| and the children would then be invited to tell a story.Then the children went to their tables to write stories in their ‘‘authorbooks.’’}

When they finished, they were invited to share the stories they hadwritten with the class. All of the children’s storytelling was audiotaped andall written stories photocopied. The teacher and often one or more teacheraides would assist with the storytelling project, listening to the children’sspoken stories as part of the audience, and circulating through the roomwhen the children were writing in their author’s books. The teachers oftenengaged in follow-up activities, such as writing the stories told in themorning on large sheets of newsprint, or allowing the students to spendadditional time in the afternoon with their author’s books. The teachers andthe researchers met at least once a month to discuss the project and thenarratives produced by the children.

THE TELLING CASE: SHEILA’S NARRATIVESAND STORYTELLING=STORYMAKING

Sheila was the third child to tell a story that morning in December.Although she was not a frequent volunteer to tell stories, she had done soseveral times before. She was popular with many of the children in the

{ The number is only approximate because a few students entered the classroom late, others

left before the end of the school year, etc.§The research team included the three primary researchers (Bloome, Katz, Champion) and

graduate assistants from local universities. The research team consisted of both African-

American and white researchers, similar to the cooperating teachers.||All of the stories read or told by the researchers were either African or African-American

stories.}Author books consisted of ten pages of folded newsprint with a construction paper cover

stapled together. All written stories were dated by the researchers and teachers. The children

dictated to the adults the story they had written, and the adults wrote it on their stories next

to the pictures drawn by the children, their invented spelling texts, or their writing-like

scribbles, lines, and marks.


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classroom and had been with most of the children for two years (in bothpreschool and then currently in kindergarten). She had participated in thestorytelling project for nearly two years and was very familiar with itsprocedures. The story she told follows.

[Sh¼ Sheila, DB¼ researcher, CM¼ teacher, Sx¼ unidentified student,Ss¼ students]

01 DB: Shxxxx you’ve got a story for us02 CM: is it a happy one03 Sh: (nonverbal head movement)04 DB&CM: oh good05 Sh: me and Ms. Mxxxxxxx [the teacher]06 DB: uh huh07 Sh: Ms. Mxxxxxx buy me a necklace08 (extended silence)09 and then I said her tree looked pretty10 (extended silence)11 and12 Ms. Mxxxxx took me to the park13 (extended silence)14 and15 (extended silence)16 ummmm17 (extended silence)18 Nxxxx came over my house19 (extended silence)20 Ms. Mxxxxx came over my house21 Jxxxxx came over my house22 Sx: (nonverbal pointing to another student in the class)23 Sh: I already got her24 (extended silence)25 Fxxxx coming over my house26 (extended silence)27 Kxxxx came over my house28 Sxxxx coming over my house29 (extended silence)30 Mr. Bloome came over my house31 (extended silence)32 my mama looked downstairs and saw all of us33 she saw us making a pallet34 he was playing downstairs35 (giggling from students)


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36 Mxxxxx was sleeping with Jxxxxxx37 Ss: ooooooooo oooooooooo oooooooooo38 CM: [undecipherable] a soap opera39 Sh: Nxxxxx was sleeping down the [undecipherable]40 Ss: ooooooooo oooooooooo oooooooo41 Sx: I sleep with a girl42 Sh: Jxxxxx was sleeping up top43 Sx: oooooo ooooo44 Sh: I was I was sleeping by my own self45 (giggling from students)46 Sx: (undecipherable) sleep with a boy47 (giggling from students)48 CM: (undecipherable)49 Sh: Sxxxxxx was sleeping on the top bed50 (giggling from students)51 and52 Mr. Bloome was sleeping downstairs on the couch53 (giggling from students)54 Ms. Mxxxxxx was sleeping on the other couch55 Sx: so she can sleep (undecipherable)56 Sx: (undecipherable)57 Sh: Txxxxx and Jxxxxx was making them a (undecipherable)58 (giggling from students and various undecipherable comments)59 and I was sleeping on the bottom bed60 (various undecipherable comments)61 and I was sleeping62 and momma woke up and saw all of us sleep63 my momma woke up and took us to school64 quit coughing and get off of me Dxxxxx65 CM: (undecipherable comment)66 (extended silence and background whispering)67 and Dxxxxx was playing to the park68 my momma gave us a dollar69 Ss: ooooooo oooooooo70 Sh: my momma gave us two dollars71 Ss: ooooooo72 (extended silence)73 Sh: then my momma gave us three dollars74 Ss: ooooooo75 Sh: and then my momma gave us four dollars76 Ss: ooooooo77 Sh: all of my kids came over my house and got em four four dollars78 Ss: ooooooo ooooooooo


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79 Sx: (undecipherable comment)80 Sh: and81 and82 (undecipherable) five dollars83 Ss: ooooooo ooooooooo84 Sx: (undecipherable whispered comment)85 Sh: no86 (extended silence)87 Sx: (undecipherable whispered comment)88 Sh: can’t tell you what to do89 CM: This is Sxxxxx Sxxxx’s story90 (extended silence)91 Does you story have a happy ending what happens

at the end of your story92 Sh: we all came back to school93 you took us to the dollar store the end94 Ss: ooooooooo ooooooooo95 DB: very good story96 Sx: yes yes

The storytelling event was segmented into twelve segments (shown inTable 1) based on theoretical constructs and methodological principlesfrom Erickson and Shultz (1977), Gumperz (1986), and Green and Wallat(1981), later revised by Bloome (1989).

In brief, it is assumed that people use a variety of communicative means,including prosodic cues and non-verbal cues, to let interlocutors know‘‘what is happening.’’ Close attention to shifts in prosody, prosodic patterns,and nonverbal configurations can give researchers cues to what is occur-ring, just as such cues give people in interaction with each other ways toinfer what is happening. Gumperz (1986) calls these cues ‘‘contextualiza-tion cues.’’ Elsewhere, we have shown how such prosodic cues can besystematically described and analyzed (see Bloome, 1989).

In our analysis, we focus on four segments: Segment 2, (lines 5712), thereport of fictional events with the teacher; Segment 4 (lines 18731), theinteractional report of coming over to the house; Segment 6 (the taboostory); and Segment 10 (the dollar story). In the three latter segments,story as text is a thin veneer for a particular interactional use of language(narrative) that foregrounds issues of social relationships, social identity,and event creation (story as performance=event).

Sheila begins her storytelling in Segment 2 with what might be con-sidered a traditional storytelling, reporting an event (real or imaginary).She is the speaker and the audience is passive; the event is distant.She begins with the introduction of the characters (line 5—me and Ms.


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Mxxxxxxx), provides an initiating event (line 7—Ms. Mxxxxxx buy me anecklace) which is followed by a subsequent event (line 9—Sheila com-pliments the teacher’s tree) that may be related to the initiating event(Sheila does something nice to her teacher in return for her teacher doingsomething nice for her). So far, the story has included various items thatare highly valued by the children, a pattern we have identified in many ofthe children’s stories (Champion et al., 1999). In brief, a child simply loadsthe story with items that have high status, like the teacher, a trip to thepark, Chuck E. Cheese, money, a gift, or candy, and those items position thechild as having high status. The loading of the story with highly valueditems may not necessarily involve a plot, although Sheila’s story even to thispoint (line 7) does involve a plot even if it is not a sophisticated or ela-borate one.

There is an extended silence in line 8, which may be time Sheila is usingto construct her story or it may be that she is scanning the audience toassess their reaction to what she has done so far. Line 9 involves an activitythat is highly valued by the children, going to the park, made even moreprestigious by being taken there by the teacher. Line 9 is followed by aperiod of long silence (lines 13 through 17), which can be interpreted as abreak between the narrative in Segment 2 and the narrative that follows inSegment 4, which has little or no connection to the narrative in Segment 2.

TABLE 1 A Segmentation of Sheila’s Story

(1) Lines 01704 are getting ready to tell the

story

(2) Lines 05712 are a report of events

(3) Lines 13717 are a transition from one story-

telling activity to another

(4) Lines 18731 are, for lack of a better term, a

interactional report (on one level it appears

to be a report, but given that the references are

to immediately present people, it may be more

appropriately characterized as foregrounding

immediate interactional relations)

(5) Lines 32735 begin the Mama story

(6) Lines 36761 shift to a taboo story and shift in

narrative style to statement and response

(7) Lines 62763 shift to ending of Mama story

(8) Line 64 manages the storytelling event

(9) Line 67 starts and abandons a story about the

park

(10) Lines 68783 begin the dollar story and style

shift to statement and response

(11) Lines 88789 manage the storytelling event

(12) Lines 91794 end the story


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In line 18, Sheila incorporates members of the audience into her story,using the process of selecting characters from the audience as a way tosignal friendships and social status. Children had often done very similarstorytellings, so that it had become a genre familiar with the children.Sometimes children would raise their hands to try and be included in thelist of participants. The park, a birthday party, Chuck E. Cheese, or a housewould often be the scene, all high status scenes for the children. In eachextended silence, Sheila looked over the seated participants, engagingin a process of selecting and through her eye gaze maintained the floor andher right to choose. Incorporating the teacher and the researcher also gaveher high social status because of their status in the classroom. The verbalpart of the narrative sets up a pattern, repeating the basic utterance ([nameof person] came over my house). The repetitive pattern, and the way it wasprosodically rendered (elongating the vowels in ‘‘house’’ and ending theutterance with a rising intonation pattern) signaled to the participants thatthere was more to come, and that she was still holding the floor. Line 23(I already got her) is a response to a student’s suggestion about who toinclude. The student’s suggestion was not caught on the audiotape andtherefore is not shown in the transcript. Line 23 is interesting because itwas rendered in a different prosodic pattern, suggesting anger, commu-nicating in tone that the student should back off, and that she (Sheila) wasmaking the decisions about who to incorporate in the story. The right todecide whom to include is a type of power that the storyteller in thisparticular storytelling practice receives through assuming the position ofstoryteller. Throughout the storytelling project, the researchers and theteachers had made clear to the students that whoever the storyteller washad the ‘‘right’’ to tell their story however they wanted, including whatevents to include, who to include, and what events to modify. For example,when students would retell a familiar story, such as the The Three LittlePigs, if a storyteller deviated from the traditional story and comments weremade by other students to correct the storyteller, the audience was toldthat it was the storyteller’s story and that he=she could tell it however theywanted. Such a cultural rule for storytelling events does not necessarilyhold across storytelling events, even within the school setting. Part of theissue with such a cultural rule is understanding the opportunities it pro-vides as well the limitations on how narratives and storytelling events aredefined (and what definitions of narrative and storytelling events aremarginalized).

When Sheila begins describing who was sleeping with whom, she hasentered taboo territory, but she carefully negotiates the territory keeping acertain level of deniability of the story’s sexual content. Notice that thechildren in the class understand the sexual content or at least the taboonature of the story, as Sx (line 41) announces ‘‘I sleep with a girl.’’ We are not


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claiming that the children actually have explicit sexual knowledge, butrather that they understand the domain that has been entered and under-stand that it is to some extent a taboo subject in certain situations, espe-cially school. Notice also that Sheila finds a way to protect herself from thetaboo (line 44 ‘‘I was sleeping by my own self’’) and that she protects theteacher and the researcher (lines 52 and 54) although it may be more likelythat she was protecting herself from negative consequences had she impliedanything otherwise. In brief, she is playing the audience, she is interactingwith the audience, engaging them in a verbal play and journey into a taboozone, although doing so in a way that deftly avoids negative sanctions andconsequences. Notice that she continues to use repetition to engage theaudience and maintain the floor, as she did in the previous segment.

Similarly, lines 68783 play the audience, as Sheila waits for audienceresponse to each mention of dollars. While at some level her story could beviewed as similar to various counting books available in the classroom, theprominent feature of this storytelling is not the increasing number butrather the interactional play of storyteller and audience. In line 77, Sheiladistinguishes between ‘‘us’’ and ‘‘all of my kids.’’ ‘‘All of my kids’’ is taken bythe students in the class to mean all of them, and their response in line 78 isa much more vigorous and loud ‘‘oooooooo. . .oooooo’’ than in previousresponses, and from that point on each of their ‘‘oooooooo. . .oooooooo’’responses increases in volume and vigor, as if in the interaction betweenline 77 and 78 the audience had been given or defined for itself anopportunity for greater participation.

Practical considerations led the teacher to suggest that the storyshould come to an end (in line 91). In team meetings between theteachers and the researchers, there had been discussion about how tohandle stories that were very long and what was perceived to be diffi-culties that the children were having ending their stories. There had alsobeen discussions about the violence that had been appearing in many ofthe stories. One of the strategies agreed on was to ask a storytellerhow the story ended if the story went on for a long time (given theneed to provide time for other children to tell stories and the need forother instructional activities). Another strategy was to ask the children iftheir story was a happy one and if it had a happy ending, as an attemptto get children to reflect on the content of their story and on connec-tions between the content and affective consequences. Such interven-tions do, of course, have consequences on what stories the children telland how they tell them. Notice how quickly Sheila ends the story afterthe prompt from the teacher in line 91. Sheila even announces that it is‘‘the end,’’ which was rare among the storytellings. Line 94 is interestingbecause it suggests that even though Sheila has ended the story, theaudience has not yet caught up with the end of the storytelling event,


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and they are still enacting their role (in the case of line 91, perhapsresponding to the highly valued activity of being taken to the store bythe teacher).

The tension within Sheila’s narrative involves the relationships betweenher use of interactional events and her use of text and how theserelationships are developed by her teacher. For example, her interactionalevents include how she incorporates the audience into her narrative; thatis, maintaining the floor, deciding who and what information to include inher story, and negotiating the sexual content of the story, whereas Sheila’suse of text refers to her development of plot, character, and sentencestructure.

What we argue is that the story told by Sheila is perhaps better char-acterized as a series of interactional events than as a series of storystructures. In some of those events, story as text is foregrounded, whereas inother events, story as interactional performance (not just the performanceof the storyteller but of the group) is foregrounded. In brief, it seems as ifit is the case that any storytelling event involves both story as text and storyas interactional event. Thus, the question to ask is not whether it is one orthe other, but rather how the people involved (e.g., students and teachersin the classroom) orchestrate these two orientations to narrative=story-telling and which is foregrounded.

We briefly want to contrast Sheila’s storytelling with storytelling that ismore traditional, at least in our opinion, in classrooms. Such traditionalstorytelling involves the textual representation of an event, often as areport of an event, as if there were no immediate interactional event. Forexample, consider the written story below created by Sheila shortly aftershe told the story above (see Figure 1).

When asked by one of the teacher aides to read her story so it could bewritten down on the accompanying page, Sheila said, ‘‘ [1] Me. [2] I wasfittin to go home. [3] And a hand walked past me. [4] We had to go in thehouse. [5] Because there was a monster. [6] A flower growed. [7] Themonster was trying to save us. [8] The end.’’ Each of the items Sheilamentions can be seen in her written=pictorial story. In addition, she haswritten her name and a series of letter-like forms and writing-like scribbles.While one can use the written=pictorial story to assess Sheila’s level of earlyliteracy development, we are interested here in the nature of the narrativeshe has produced.

Sheila produced this narrative alone and without an audience immedi-ately present. Although she was sitting next to other children and they didlook at each others’ stories, at least during this event Sheila appears to havecreated this story without direct and immediate concern for those aroundher. (On other days, Sheila, like the other children, occasionally created awritten=pictorial story with immediate awareness of how what she was


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writing or drawing was affecting others around her.) Although writtenstories could be shared with classmates, it was most frequently the casethat children who told a spoken story during the first part of the storytellingactivities were not selected to share their written stories later in the

FIGURE 1. Sheila’s written story.


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morning. Sheila may have been conscious of this procedure and known shewas not going to have an audience for her written story, although it is alsopossible that she nonetheless hoped she would get a chance to share herstory. At issue here is that it cannot be taken for granted that Sheila iscreating her story specifically for the reaction it will produce in her class-mates. It may be the case that she is herself the primary audience for thestory, or possibly the teacher or teacher aide who will ask her about it.

The items in the story—herself, home, the hand, monster, flower—andthe actions—going home, flower growing, saving us—are all items andactions that have frequently appeared in previous stories that Sheila andmany other members of the class have written or told. The story isstructured with an introduction of the main character ([1] ‘‘Me.’’), followedby a description of the setting ([2] ‘‘I was fittin’ to go home’’ #). In line three,there is an initiating event. The hand and the monster are separate entities.In her story, the monster does a good thing and saves them (line 7, theclimax), followed by an announcement of the end (line 8). The use of‘‘Because’’ in line 5 may reference a cause-effect relationship with line 4,although it may also be the case that Sheila is using because as a moregeneral conjunction. It is also possible that ‘‘Because’’ has two meanings: itmay be a cause-effect relationship with line 4 but then shift its meaning asSheila perhaps changes the story as the monster saves them instead ofbeing a danger to them. The flower in line 6 may be an anomaly. Many ofthe stories written by the girls have flowers, sometimes integral to thestory, other times not. Although flowers occasionally appeared in thestories of a few boys, we have viewed the flowers as marking gender. Part ofwhat we find interesting about line 7 is that Sheila appears to feel requiredto incorporate into her story all of the items she has drawn on the page.

The ambiguities of the story aside, Sheila’s written story is a relativelycoherent text which has a sense of traditional, high point structure. Weargue that her written story reflects what we earlier described as anorientation to narrative as text and not an orientation to narrative as per-formance.** Sheila’s interaction with the teacher’s aide is framed by anorientation to narrative as text; they hold the written story between themas if it were an object detached from her production of it and Sheiladescribes what is on the paper (in the text) framed as a story

#We interpret her description of the setting as a psychological one. That is, she does not

describe where she is but rather that she is intending and readying to go home.

**Although the narrative as text occurred during a written language activity, we do not argue

that there is any inherent quality of written language that would predispose it to narrative as

text; similarly, we would argue that there is nothing inherent in spoken language to predispose

it to narrative as performance anymore so than written language. If a particular mode of lan-

guage has become associated with a particular orientation to narrative, we would argue that it

is likely to be the result of historical, cultural, and political factors.


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In our view, such narrative texts are highly valued by schools. But moreimportantly, such stories—and story as text in general—have come todefine narrative and storytelling in school with other definitions margin-alized or discounted. Thus, stories such as the one Sheila told may bedescribed as ‘‘cute’’ or as part of a ‘‘developmental path’’ that will eventuallylead her to creating ‘‘good’’ stories—that is, stories defined as text.{{

FINAL COMMENTS

The analysis reported here suggests that part of the work involved in youngchildren’s language and literacy development in school may involve socia-lization to an ideology of language grounded in a dualist view of language.With specific regard to narrative, children may be socialized in school to ahegemonic view of narrative as text. Our recent research suggests that suchsocialization may begin very early and constitute a major component of theeducational framework within which children are evaluated.

Cross-cultural research on narratives in school has shown that differ-ences exist across cultures with regard to how to structure a narrative,appropriate content, and who may tell what narratives, how, and when (e.g.,Gee, 1991; Heath, 1982, 1983; Michaels, 1981; Scollon, 1988). Our studybuilds on that research, suggesting yet another dimension to the role ofschooling in the promulgation of children’s use of narratives. Our datasuggest that schools may emphasize an orientation to narrative as text anddiminish the importance of particular kinds of narrative performances (e.g.,those that explicitly build social relationships and social identities of thestoryteller and audience at the expense of a ‘‘well-structured’’ text). Oneimplication of an emphasis on narratives as text is to ‘‘objectify’’ narratives(cf., Foucault, 1980), separating their existence from the storyteller=maker,the storytelling event, and from the social relationships potentially estab-lished. A second implication is that the emphasis on narratives as textsprovides a way to establish a normative order for the creation of narratives,reduce the process of creating a narrative to a supporting role (rather thansomething of importance in its own right), and create a way to establish anormative order for the creation of narratives that can be put under sur-veillance (cf., Foucault, 1980). The cross-cultural issues raised seem to go

{{We caution readers about making judgments regarding how the teacher valued Sheila’s

narrative and narratives similar to it. Our comments about the valuing of narratives in school

settings refers to institutional processes rather than specific acts or evaluations by teachers.

We would claim that even when teachers highly value narratives such as those told by Sheila,

the material conditions of schooling as a social institution (e.g., the nature and structure of

formal evaluation procedures and educational tasks across grade levels) frames the evaluation

of narratives in ways that defines a narrative as text.


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beyond the issues of ‘‘style and structure’’ differences raised by earlier cross-cultural studies of narratives across school and home=community contexts.

The issues we have raised in this article have led us to speculate on whatrole the language ideology of dualism may play in schooling in general ifschools do not give substantial and overt consideration to narratives astexts and as performatives. Many children who demonstrate and producenarratives predominately as interactional events may be considered ashaving delays in speech or language. For example, the student who exhibitsstrong verbal skills in her storytelling performance but is perceived weak inhow she structured the text of her story may be placed in low abilitygroupings or referred for remedial=special education services.

There are also issues with regard to the language and literacy curriculumof early childhood and elementary classrooms. Narrative production is notjust about the production of text; it is also and importantly about socialrelationships among people. These social relationships include the people inthe storytelling event (the teller and the audience) as well as among andacross various cultural groups (as occurs in classrooms where children fromdiverse cultural backgrounds share their experiences and stories). A curri-culum that overlooks these social relationships may be sending an implicitmessage to children that the social relationships involved in storytelling (orany type of language use) are not important and do not need to be considered.At the very least, there will be little opportunity or incentive to examine andreflect on the social relationships implicated in a storytelling event.

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young children's narratives and ideologies of language in classrooms

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