- 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
Cook-Gumperz and Green 1984 describe a single piece of research which sheds further light on the acquisition of a sense of story and what children themselves might actually
regard as a “story”. We will quote the example in full; the subject is a 3-year-old American child:
AlrightI think the truck book I havenew truck book [loud, declamatory voice]
Uh..........The dump truck has miles of...of...of rocks [voice trailing off]
- 63 - Wheelseven on fields are...are...like thatlike that.....like soft.....like that
[voice rushing] And thenin front it ride upstairs of the...of the...double bus
[sing-song voice] and downstairsfountainride downstairs and upstairs of the double-decker busIt’s
fun to...to...to look at trucks The end
At first glance, we would say that this discourse is a descriptive piece, not a narrative. It lacks cohesion, there are no events as such and so it is not a real story. However, it does
include the three essential elements of a “proper” story: a beginning, a piece of action, and an ending. True, the beginning is only marked prosodically by loudness and pitch, and
there is no opening formula, such as “Once upon a time...”; the actions are certainly disjointed, and there appear to be no human characters. But the ending is clear enough:
first a summary marked by special intonation and then a formulaic finis. But, as Cook- Gumperz and Green point out: “The biggest problem with this story is the disjointed
nature of the action sequence, which is not a sequential or consequential unfolding”. From the context, we learn that the child was asked by the researcher if he could tell a
story. Instead of a yesno response he queries the request: “Like tell a book?” So what he produces is a “story” based on a particular type of book with which he is familiar.
Narratives, such as the illustrated books by Richard Scarry, are based not on a series of sequential or consequential events but on a theme which runs through the written text. The
pictures can be used to tell independent stories that need not be part of the main text. Hence, there is plenty of scope for adult narrators to add to the text and interpret it in any
way they wish. Our own son had several Richard Scarry books. I remember reading the text to him and then pointing out additional details which only showed up in the pictures.
Often, these would develop into other small stories. So, perhaps the child who told the researcher about his truck book was making up his own story “as if reading the pictorial
elements in his mind”. Alternatively, he could have been recalling a particular story which he had recently heard. In our experience, children are able to recall descriptive details just
as easily as events in sequence. Either way, the frame “of what a story consists of” includes pictures as well as words. Do young children, then, see books of all kinds as synonomous
with stories? If so, their model of storytelling is book based rather than oral. Cook- Gumperz and Green 1984 make the following comment:
- 64 - This example [i.e. the story quoted above] indicates that the way in which pictorial and
verbal elements combine in the story suggests that there is a special influence of the form of books on the presentation of stories by young children; that is, young children may
combine both elements to produce meaning when they “tell a book”. 1984:207 Returning now to our own data, do these findings of Cook-Gumperz and Green shed any
light on the disjointed actions described by Shazia in her Story F? Could she, also, be “telling a book” by “reading the pictorial elements” in her mind? This is a distinct
possibility, especially as her Story F has no conventional story line at all. 1
Once upon a time there was— 2
He’s buying the drink and Rice Krisps. 3
Then he eat some milik. 4
He eat some—er Rice Krips and drink and nice dinner. 5
Then he eat his breakfast. 6
Then he eat some—er Rice Krips. 7
Then he eat some milik. 8
Then he eat some cooking. On the surface this is meaningless gibberish but if, in fact, she is describing the pictorial
elements which she can see in her mind’s eye then the whole thing makes sense. It would seem rather a futile exercise to produce nonsense and we must credit the child with a more
serious intent, especially as her delivery is purposeful, not flippant. Clearly, there is repetition as she either sees some of the pictures more than once or returns to them more
than once in her story. Verbal orientation: Once upon a time there was a person. This person is depicted
performing the following actions: Picture 1: a person buying some milk and Rice Krispies
Picture 2: a person drinking some of the milk Picture 3: a person eating some of the Rice Krispies
Picture 4: a person drinking more milk Picture 5: a person eating a nice dinner
- 65 - Picture 6: a person eating breakfast not Rice Krispies
Picture 7: a person eating more of the Rice Krispies Picture 8: a person drinking more of the milk
Picture 9: a person eating some other cooked dish. With this analysis, in which we include both words and pictures as the “frame” which
young children bring to the task of storytelling, we can explain both a sequentially ordered story and one that seems to lack coherence, such as the above. The original Story F which
was read to Shazia and her interlocutor, Shadi, was about a Chinese Take-away owner on the lookout for some new culinary experiences because he was bored with cooking
Chinese dishes. Shazia has latched onto the underlying theme—food—and woven a “picture” story around it. Maybe, she could not cope with a conventional narrative, or
maybe, she realized that Shadi’s English was even more limited than her own and that Shadi could not cope with a conventional narrative. Either way, what she produces is a very
simple “mental” picture book of the “Baby’s First Picture Book” type. This analysis does not explain the repetition. That is a notable feature of all Shazia’s stories and can be put
down to her lack of the necessary verbal skills to communicate her ideas clearly using “novel sentences” and hence to her need to rely on “prefabricated patterns” which have
been learnt as wholes, e.g. “He’s buying ___ “ and “He eat ___ “ immature form of “He eats” or “He’s eating”. When she gets stuck she simply repeats one of these formulas
without varying the inserted item in the frame.
3.5 The Story as a Set of Stanzas
