Organizer and Chair: Masahiko Minami, San Francisco State University

Discussant: Emi Fujiyama, University of Nevada, Las Vegas

This panel is shaped by two disciplines: (1) second language (L2) acquisition and (2) narrative discourse analysis. Narrative, which is generally considered to be a text in which a narrator relates a series of events — either real or fictive — in chronological order, is typical of human practice across languages and cultures. The construction of narrative involves not only attribution of meaning to otherwise disconnected events, but also includes highly interpersonal uses of language that provide context to these narrated events, so that the narrator can foster a complex discursive relationship with the listener. The narrator thus relies on affective expression as a primary means of conveying the relational significance of narrative events. Telling a story, however, involves many other factors, such as whether narratives are related in the narrator's first language or in a second language. Unfortunately, far fewer studies using narrative discourse analysis have been conducted on foreign-language learners and bilingual children. Designed to address some of these gaps in the literature, the proposed panel analyzes narratives told by English-Japanese bilingual children (children of Japanese heritage) and adult learners of Japanese as a second/foreign language. For instance, when applying narrative analysis to L2 learning, we would seek to uncover the techniques needed for L2 learners to acquire the means by which to encode their own perspectives and emotions in the target language in appropriate ways. By combining the above two disciplines, the panel discusses the deployment of narrative discourse devices in bilingual children and L2 learners.

Momoe Saito Fu, Stanford University

Narrative cohesion is one of the important requirements for telling good stories. One way of establishing narrative cohesion is through tracking and maintenance of reference (e.g., full noun phrases or pronouns) across clauses and chunks of clauses. This study examines what kinds of referential strategies English-Japanese bilingual children, who are faced with the task of keeping track of the right system in the right language, deploy in storytelling activities in the two different languages. The investigations focused on how storytellers referred to characters in the subject position of sentences, that is, whether a full noun phrase (nominal referent), a pronoun (pronominal referent), or zero anaphora (ellipsis) is used on first mention, second mention, re-introduction, and continuous mention of a referent. The study revealed that, while the usage of some linguistic devices are language specific (pronouns in English and ellipsis in Japanese), similarities exist between English and Japanese in the usage of noun phrases on first mention, second mention, re-introduction, and continuous mention. Notwithstanding the shared patterns between the two languages, different referential topic management devices are also used by bilingual children when speaking different languages. The findings in this study suggest: (1) There exist cross-linguistically common — possibly universal or quasi-universal — cognitive constraints with regard to referential topic management in narratives. At the same time, (2) bilingual children understand language-specific devices/functions for referring to story referents and use appropriately strategies for each language.

Sanae Fukuda, Kobe University; Masahiko Minami, San Francisco State University

One of the longstanding critical debates in language studies revolves around the relationship between language and thought processes. The linguistic relativity hypothesis (Whorf, 1956) claims that speakers of different languages think differently, and that they do so because of the differences in the languages they speak. This study represents an attempt to look at some aspects of (1) narrative studies and (2) bilingual studies against the background of the linguistic relativity hypothesis. The study specifically examines narratives in Japanese and English told by forty bilingual children in order to determine which of certain language forms and functions are common to the narratives in both languages and which are exclusive to one of the languages used. Based on the analysis of their use of such linguistic devices as verbal functions (tenses, voice, aspect) and nominalization, the study revealed: (1) When comparable verb forms are available in the two languages, bilinguals deploy similar organizational strategies in the use of those forms. (2) When comparable forms are not available or are rarely used in a language, bilinguals access different linguistic systems in their mind and organize their narrations accordingly. Their choices signal that narrators, when speaking different languages, are under the constraints of the language they are using. The form-function mapping differs depending on the language used. The results obtained in this study, which seem to show both shared (possibly universal) and language-specific patterns of development, suggest that children's narratives reflect both their age and the specific language they are using.

Hiromi Nishida Urayama, University of California, Berkeley

Narrative studies in the context of first language acquisition demonstrate that narrative styles vary depending on the cultural or social setting and the developmental stage of the speaker. The acquisition of language/culture-specific style of thinking has been broadly studied in native languages, but has yet to be examined with regards to second/foreign (L2) language acquisition. The current study attempts to address some of these issues by analyzing personal narratives elicited from English speaking adults and examining narrative development in adult learners of Japanese. The study has two main objectives: (1) to study narrative development in the course of L2 acquisition by examining differences between narrative structures elicited from intermediate and advanced level speakers of Japanese as a foreign language, and (2) to examine whether learners of Japanese eventually produce narrative patterns similar to native speakers as they reach high proficiency levels by comparing narrative components of learners of Japanese language and native Japanese speakers. A comparison between the intermediate and advanced level groups showed that advanced learners provided longer narratives by giving more background information through orientation clauses than the intermediate learners. The overall comparison showed that advanced speakers provide longer narratives than do native speakers. Advanced speakers lengthened their narratives by providing more background information, whereas native Japanese speakers provide more explicit attempts to attract listeners’ attention. The results of this study suggest significant cultural differences that influence the production of oral narratives of personal experiences in terms of L2 acquisition.

Seiko Kosaka, University of California, Berkeley

Grammatical accuracy is no doubt one of the main factors for becoming proficient in a foreign language. Learning Japanese as a foreign language is no exception. Even advanced Japanese-language learners, however, at times produce somewhat unnatural and confusing sentences when it comes to telling a story. This unnaturalness seems to stem from differences in discourse structure between Japanese (L2) and English (L1). This study examines the discourse characteristics of Japanese and English in terms of perspective taking in constructing narrative discourse. The study also examines the discourse development of second/foreign (L2) language learners of Japanese. Comparing L2 learners’ discourse/narrative production with that of native speakers of Japanese, the study tries to reveal what kinds of problems L2 learners have in terms of discourse construction. The study revealed that Japanese and English have different characteristics in terms of perspective taking in constructing narrative discourse. However, native English speakers learning Japanese tend to use their native language discourse format when telling stories in Japanese. The statistical analysis also supports the possibility of L1 transfer at the discourse level. The study furthermore suggests that the problem of L2 learners’ nonnative-like storytelling is attributable to L1 transfer. This study also showed that having a high proficiency level and large vocabulary does not necessarily mean that L2 learners are capable of telling native-like narratives. These results suggest the importance of understanding the unique characteristics of the target language and the necessity of teaching languages at the discourse level in order to attain native-like proficiency.