- 60 - their comprehension which is being tested, not their “ability to produce or contribute to
narratives spontaneously” Cook-Gumperz and Green 1984:204.
3.3 The Story as a Speech Event
Oral storytelling is a much more complex exercise than recalling, reproducing and recognizing story structures under experimental conditions. Success does not depend solely
on the teller. The whole performance is a two-way interaction between speaker and hearer. Researchers, such as Kernan 1977, in studying children’s performances of storytelling,
have noticed how important the audience reaction and participation have been for the storyteller’s continued success. Watson-Gegeo and Boggs 1977 found that in traditional
Hawaiian storytelling, known as “talk-story”, children produced stories which did not have the structure described by story grammars. But these stories were both long and varied, yet
they relied for their success on active audience participation. In fact, the contributions of the audience were actually built into the story structure, although a main storyteller
continued as the primary speaker. Ervin-Tripp and Mitchell-Kernan 1977 in their Introduction describe them as follows:
The stories have content that is selectively relevant to some members of the audience, and they serve the function of teasing, criticizing, or censuring that individual.…Hawaiian
talk-story includes dramatic or role-played imitated dialogue. How is this skill learned? Boggs mentions ridicule in disputing. In addition, role-playing with vocal mimicry occurs
in early childhood play. Thus there are varied sources for the components of narrative skill. But these sources remain to be explored systematically. pp. 15–16
It would seem that there is such a thing as a folk narrative model which comes midway between spoken stories and formal narratives and combines features of both genres into a
single interactive-type structure. Work of this nature recognizes the interactive relationship between teller and audience as
an essential part of the storytelling process. “Using performance ability, children create a story for a person or group of persons as audience with a minimum of verbal stimuli”
Cook-Gumperz and Green 1984:204. Other classroom-based research has shown that interactive relationships between teacher and taught are also crucially important in the
whole learning process Mehan 1980; Golden 1983; Harker 1983. This includes activities such as reading stories to children Green 1977; Green and Harker 1982; Cochran-Smith
- 61 - 1984 and teaching children to read Bloome 1981; Cazden 1981 within a classroom
context. More specifically, researchers have studied children’s classroom performances: Michaels and Cook-Gumperz 1979 looked at the teacher’s role in helping children
structure story events, while Green 1977 and Green and Harker 1982 concentrated on the way teacher-directed interactions affect story recall and retelling performance. Cook-
Gumperz, Gumperz and Simons 1981 also demonstrated the essential part played by interaction in the learning process and in retelling stories to an audience.
This research would seem to indicate that children’s acquisition of a sense of story does not depend solely on their exposure to well-formed and well-told stories. They also acquire
knowledge of narratives from participating “in ongoing interactions that include instances of spoken stories and from participating in construction of narratives as part of ongoing
events in the environment” Cook-Gumperz and Green 1984:205. Therefore, any model of acquisition and development of narrative ability must include the interactional,
performance aspects of storytelling as well as aspects of story organization, such as the way the events described are sequenced.
Michaels and Collins 1984 examined the contrast between literate and oral discourse styles, which is an issue we will be discussing later in the chapter. They worked with six
first- and second-grade American children, black and white speakers, showing them “a six- minute film, designed to stimulate the production of oral narratives”. The data were elicited
in a “one-to-one interview situation in which the narrative was ‘for the record’ rather than conversationally embedded”. However, even though “the participant observer” tried not to
influence the child who was narrating, interaction did take place. They report as follows: She involuntarily provided listenership cues: nodding, back channel vocalizations,
laughter, etc. Erickson 1979. It is interesting to note that more of this listenership interaction occurred with some children than with others, and the timing of these cues was
more rhythmic and regular with some than with others. The presence or absence or degree of rhythmicity of those cues may well have had an effect on the amount of talk or even on
the complexity of the discourse elicited from the child. Further study on this topic is now in progress. Michaels and Collins 1984:231
Schiffrin 1987 also focused on the interactional, performance aspects of storytelling when she considered “four discourse tasks which figure prominently in conversational
storytelling: initiating the story, reporting events within the story, conveying the point of
- 62 - the story, accomplishing an action through the story”. All these tasks require a speaker to
attend to several different aspects of talk at one and the same time, and also to actively engage the hearer’s participation.
Consider, now, that these discourse tasks—opening a story, reporting events, making a point, performing an action—are accomplished not only through speakers’ manipulation
of different aspects of talk, but through a finely tuned process of hearer participation: by withholding their own turn-incomings, displaying their appreciation and evaluation of the
story at critical junctures, responding appropriately to the action, and in general making evident a receptive stance toward the story Goffman 1974:504, it is hearers of the story
who ultimately provide the turn, realize the point, and endorse the action. In short, speakers have only partial responsibility for the construction of narratives: speakers can
propose the form, meaning and action of what they are saying, but to be established as part of the discourse, such proposals need hearer endorsement. Schiffrin 1987:17
Schiffrin’s subjects were adults; they were also producing spontaneous stories in a conversational setting. So how is all this relevant to our work with children’s retold stories?
It is relevant simply because it pinpoints the hearer’s role so clearly and warns against viewing a set of narratives as self-contained entities. For, in our data, there are examples of
inadequate storytellers being prompted by their interlocutors, as well as by me in the role of researcher or participant observer.
Therefore, although we shall primarily be looking at the narrative structure and evaluative content of the narratives collected, i.e. story organization, we shall also consider how this
organization is influencedmodified by the intervention of interlocutors and observers.
3.4 Pictorial and Verbal Elements in Storybooks
