16.114, Review: Discourse Analysis: Klapproth (2004)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-16-114. Sun Jan 16 2005. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 16.114, Review: Discourse Analysis: Klapproth (2004)

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1)
Date: 14-Jan-2005
From: Olga Levitski < levitski at yorku.ca >
Subject: Narrative as Social Practice 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Sun, 16 Jan 2005 01:41:16
From: Olga Levitski < levitski at yorku.ca >
Subject: Narrative as Social Practice 
 

AUTHOR: Klapproth, Danièle M.
TITLE: Narrative as Social Practice
SUBTITLE: Anglo-Western and Australian Aboriginal Oral Traditions
SERIES: Language, Power and Social Process 13
PUBLISHER: Mouton de Gruyter
YEAR: 2004 
Announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/15/15-2965.html


Olga Levitski, Department of Linguistics, York University, Toronto

PURPOSE

This book is a comparative study of two cultures and their respective 
storytelling traditions: Anglo-Western and Central Australian Aboriginal. 
The author compares the oral storytelling traditions of two widely 
divergent cultures - Anglo-Western culture and the Central Australian 
culture of the Pitjantjatjara/ Yankunytjatjara Aborigines. The book 
demonstrates that the process of narrating stories has different meaning 
and different function in cultures under investigation. Narratives reflect 
values, worldviews, and patterns of representation the various situations. 
>From the point of view of social constructivism, narratives are used for 
social construction of reality. The core constructive element of 
narratives is cognitive/narrative scheme. The author demonstrates that, 
despite certain similarities, such schemata display a high degree of 
cultural variability, and are in fact culturally specific. 

The book deals with both theoretical and empirical issues and is 
indispensable to the scholars studying oral traditions and narratives. The 
book offers students of linguistics, folklore, and anthropology an 
original insight and methodological framework, which incorporates the 
theories of discourse analysis, cross-cultural pragmatics, folklore study, 
ethnography of communication, and anthropology. It opens a venue for 
studying storytelling as a social process and social practice, an 
essential human communicative activity.

CONTENTS 

The book is organized in two parts, theoretical and empirical. Part one 
consists of four chapters. The first chapter introduces the aims of the 
study, its theoretical and methodological background, theoretical 
framework, and outlines the analyzed data. The second, third, and fourth 
chapters focus on the theory of narrative discourse, its role in the 
social construction of reality, and its cognitive dimensions. 

Part two, with its empirical focus, presents a detailed comparison between 
Anglo-Western and Pitjantjatjara/ Yankunytjatjara oral folk narratives. 
Chapter 5 and 6 offer a discussion of the Anglo-Western fairy tale and a 
traditional Pitjantjatjara/ Yankunytjatjara narrative. These chapters aim 
at developing criteria of "what makes a good story" in two respective 
traditions. The final two chapters bring together theory and practice, and 
draw conclusions in respect with theoretical and empirical findings of the 
book.   

Chapter 1. Introduction

This chapter introduces the theoretical framework, aim of the study, and 
outlines the data for the cross-cultural comparison of two traditions: 
Anglo-Western and Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara, the Central 
Australian indigenous culture. Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara, people 
of the Western Desert, like all Central Australian people traditionally 
lived as semi-nomadic hunters-gatherers. This life was practised until the 
1930s. The Western Desert people had deeply religious understanding of the 
Universe. The present-day Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara people 
retained their traditional values, beliefs, and practices. The terms of 
Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara are the names of the two closely 
related (south-eastern) dialects of the Western Desert Language. Although 
there are certain differences between the two dialects, they are very 
close. The number of Pitjantjatjara speakers is estimated at around 1,600, 
and the number of Yankunytjatjara speakers at 200 to 300. (p. 17) 

This book is one of the few linguistically oriented studies of narrative 
discourse in Australian Aboriginal languages that examine oral folk 
narratives. The narratives encapsulate human experience and mirror 
worldviews. Although the genres of traditional oral folk narratives exist 
in both Anglo-Western and Pitjantjatjara/Yankunytjatjara cultures, their 
forms and functions differ, and they reflect different worldviews. For 
Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara people, the rich oral storytelling 
tradition plays an outstanding role in their socio-cultural life and, is 
intrinsically linked to the culture's religious and mythological worldview 
and totemic social organization. 

Chapter 2. Creating webs of significance: the role of narrative in the 
sociocultural construction of reality

This chapter focuses on storytelling as socio-cultural practice, and on 
its socio-cultural contexts. It discusses of the theoretical framework of 
social constructivism, introducing Berger and Luckmann's (1996) theory of 
social construction of reality. Language plays a central role in the 
processes of reality construction. This chapter also deals with the 
function of narrative in social construction of reality, construction of 
social identity, and exploration and transmission of knowledge in two 
cultures - Anglo-Western and Australian-Aboriginal. 

Chapter 3. The narrative sharing of worlds: storytelling as communicative 
interaction 

Chapter three describes with the pragmalinguistic aspects of narrating as 
act of communication exploring the model of narrative as interplay of 
narrated and narrative event. Following Bauman (1986), the narrative event 
is understood as an instance of socio-communicative verbal interaction in 
which stories are told and shared. (p. 28)

Casting experience into narrative form is one of the most central ways by 
which human beings attempt to make sense of their lives. (p.3) The chapter 
is based on a communication-oriented framework that recognizes the various 
levels of communicative event. The notion of narrative aesthetics is 
introduced here as the culture-specific coherence structures used in 
narrative creation. 

Chapter 4. Exploring the structure of narrated worlds: the search for 
story schemata

This chapter introduces the concept of the story schema as a tool that 
helps explore the culture-specific narrative coherence structures. 
Schemata are understood as structures of expectations that enable 
individuals to process, and make sense of, their experience. Story 
schemata consist of expectations of the structural make-up and conceptual 
organization of stories. This chapter analyzes a number of schema-related 
analytical frameworks and critically evaluates their usefulness for cross-
cultural narrative research. Central in this respect is the conclusion 
that Anglo-Western narratives are built as problem-solving episodes. 

Chapter 5. The Beautiful and the Beastly: cultural specifics of Anglo-
Western narrative aesthetics

This chapter offers a detailed analysis of the traditional fairy tale 
Beauty and the Beast. The text-building conventions, and the criteria of 
what makes a good narrative, are discussed there in light of the 
theoretical findings made in previous chapters. Using the concept of 
episodic analysis (Johnson and Mandler, 1980), the author shows that the 
Western stories are prototypically based on the concept of problem-
solving. 

Chapter 6. Always keeping track: text building strategies in 
Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara storytelling

Unlike in the Western narratives, the storytelling principles of the 
Pitjantjatjara tradition are not based on problem-solving. The chapter 
presents a detailed analysis and discussion of the traditional 
Pitjantjatjara narrative "A child transforms into a Kangaroo", and 
attempts to answer the question: what makes a good story in Pitjantjatjara 
and Yankunytjatjara cultures? Specifically, the chapter is dedicated to 
testing the analytical tools developed for Anglo-Western narratives and 
their cross-cultural applicability. It is aimed at defining the text-
building conventions used by the narrators within Pitjantjatjara culture. 

Chapter 7. Holding the world in place: the interrelatedness of story, 
practice and culture

In this chapter the author brings together the findings of the textual 
analysis of Chapters 5 and 6 by comparing the culture-specific narrative 
aesthetics of the two traditions. A special emphasis is put on how the 
narrative creation in both traditions is interwoven with culture-specific 
social discourses. 

Chapter 8. Conclusions and implications

This chapter summarizes the findings regarding the similarities and 
differences of the two storytelling cultures. The cross-cultural 
description and definition of the narrative is presented.

EVALUATION 

This book is a fascinating study, providing a highly original and 
innovative insight into the interrelatedness of narrative structures and 
the worldviews they mirror. Klapproth offers a very broad overview of 
disciplines, concepts, and theories that are related to the field of 
narratology. In general, this book can be of a great interest as an 
introduction to the subject of narrative analysis. The book overcomes one 
of the shortcomings of numerous studies that deal only with archival data. 
In addition to the archive sources, the author, a field anthropologist and 
linguist, analyzes the traditional stories that she personally collected. 
She also translated the studied texts as close to the originals as 
possible, without editing or embellishing them, because editing the 
stories makes them sound and be perceived as Western. The first-hand 
knowledge of the studied communities and their traditions enabled the 
author to provide an ethnographically thick description of the community's 
social practices. Such a thorough understanding of spiritual, religious, 
and many other aspects of a studied culture, and attention to linguistic 
and extra-linguistic details, help the author uncover the disparity 
between Anglo-Western and Pitjantjatjara/Yankunytjatjara aesthetic 
principles, which lay in the core of the storytelling practices. 

The descriptive treatment of the data is very rich and detailed. The book 
systematically examines the previous research in the various adjacent 
disciplines, such as cognitive science, discourse analysis, cultural 
anthropology, etc. The references and theoretical discussions of the 
concepts pertaining to the narrative theories are undoubtedly an excellent 
starting point for anyone who is interested in construction of reality 
through the narrative practices. The book certainly will be of interest to 
readers specializing in linguistics, anthropology, folklore, comparative 
and cultural studies. 

Unlike other researches, Klapproth uses her own detailed transcription of 
the recorded performances. The author's goal is to study the micro-
dynamics of performance, at pragmatic and discourse level in order to 
define the aesthetic criteria of what is considered an ideal/good 
narrative in a given tradition. This goal is achieved: the dissimilarities 
between the two traditions are evident. Different narrating techniques and 
principles govern the text generation and processing in two respective 
storytelling traditions. The differences in story production and 
comprehension are stipulated by the divergent worldviews (one is deeply 
rooted in a spiritual and religious syncretism that is characteristic of 
the Aboriginal people, who regard humans as part of nature, another one is 
a modern Westernized worldview and its aesthetics). 

Although the author's contribution to the narratological research is 
undisputable, the book is not free of minor shortcomings. The cross-
cultural applicability of schema-theoretical story model is tested on two 
sets of data. However, ironically, the choice of data is subject to the 
same criticism that we find in the author's discussion of the data used by 
other investigators. The author maintains that "one of the major problems 
affecting much of the story research carried out within the cognitive 
science framework stems from the fact that inadequate data were used in 
the development of the theories and models." (p.155) As Klapproth points 
out, the claims made by Johnson and Mandler, and by Rumelhart, two studies 
that are taken as a basis for testing the schema story models, are at 
times questionable, because "the development of a story that represents 
the underlying structure of stories ... [are] ... from a variety of 
cultures."(p.155) As Klapproth demonstrates, such a choice of data is not 
suitable for the culture specific micro-research, which deals with the 
patterns of conceptual and organizational structure of narratives, 
linguistic, prosodic, mimetic, etc., features found in live performances -
 "textual surface features"(p.167)

The author analyzes two performances of folklore texts. One is the 
artistic performance of the tale Beauty and Beast by a professional 
actress. The second one is a community member's performance of the 
traditional story of type Kutara-Pula-Stories ("brother pair") by a gifted 
storyteller. The tale Beauty and the Beast is a folklore tale by origin 
(AT 400-459), but its record represents a literary text. Its variant 
performed by Katherine Hepburn was not stored in, and retrieved from, a 
collective memory, but was a version of a story written down and 
memorized. R. Firth wrote about the "plasticity" of a folklore text: 

"One of the critical ways in which myth (like all folklore) differs 
radically from written or printed literature concerns variation. There may 
be as many different versions of a particular myth as there are tellers of 
that myth. Even one individual teller may alter details in his account of 
a myth over a period of years or a lifetime". (Firth, p. 207)

The comparative study would have benefited from the Anglo-Western data 
obtained in the same manner - from a community storyteller who narrated 
the story that he/she learned from another community member. Therefore, it 
would be more appropriate methodologically to study a live performance of 
the tale that is part of some local tradition, the text that is not merely 
memorized, but reproduced as a folklore variant. There is no doubt that 
the appearance and structure of a text in this case would differ 
significantly from that analyzed in a book, probably having more gaps, 
pauses, or logical inconsistencies. On the other hand, at the 
conceptual/content level, the narrative scheme - plot - might be very 
similar (same protagonists, goals, etc.) The folklore texts do not exist 
as ready-made narratives, but rather represent variants of a prototypical 
version that is stored in a collective memory, i.e. is known to the 
members of a particular culture. With very rare exceptions, the folklore 
texts are never mechanically memorized, but rather reproduced or re-
created each time they are performed. 

The second text under investigation is a traditional 
Pitjantjatjara/Yankunytjatjara story. We know that this tale exists in 
three variants in author's collection, and that the studied variant is the 
longest and most elaborate. (p.220) However, there is no information on 
how the storyteller has learned the tale, or on which occasions it was 
told. We don't know if the variants of this tale were recorded from other 
informants. Knowing the dynamics of folklore we may assume that the text 
in question is part of a local tradition, probably is a fragment of a 
myth. 

The plot of the tale can be schematically outlined as follows: there were 
two brothers, one of them (the younger) every night turned into kangaroo, 
keeping this secret from his elder brother. Once, when he was enjoying 
himself in a form of a kangaroo, the wild dingoes chased and torn him 
apart. His elder brother discovered his death and mourned his younger 
brother. Based on what we know about other oral traditions, this text is 
most probably, a fragment of a myth or mythical tale about human-animal 
metamorphosis and punishment for breaking a taboo. Although this version 
is elaborate, we cannot assume this text to be a full and final version. 
Thus, it is necessary to compare this text to other myths from the same or 
similar traditions in order to find parallels or its fuller versions. The 
text seems to be truncated, because there is no internal logic or 
motivation for 1) the younger brother to turn into kangaroo; 2) his death. 
There is a vague mentioning that the younger brother was punished for his 
transgression. The motivation for this metamorphosis could be found only 
based on the comparison of this text with others. 

The author's argument against those investigators who approach the 
folklore texts as having universal underlying narrative schemata is valid 
only at the discourse level of analysis of the live performance. However, 
it becomes problematic at a higher level of analysis (content of tale, or 
its plot). Plots of both the Anglo-Western and Aboriginal tales are based 
on the same motif of human-animal transformation and protagonist's 
real/possible death as a result of breaking a taboo/promise. While the 
logic of the narrative/plot in the Anglo-Western tale is clear (spells and 
the evil sisters preventing the Beauty from coming on time), the 
motivation for the Aboriginal tale is not obvious. Nevertheless, its 
absence in the studied version does not mean that it does not exist. There 
might be such motivation in an Aboriginal story as well. Knowledge of the 
internal logic of the plot could be crucial for the author's goal in 
studying the worldview and the various social practices in a given 
culture. For example, the motivation for the transformation can be rooted 
in some kind of totemic beliefs (a kangaroo may be a totemic animal). 
Alternatively, it can provide an insight regarding the cosmogony, myths of 
creation, etc. 

Analyzing data from different unrelated traditions is a method used in a 
comparative folklore, which studies macro, or content level of the 
narrative schemata, namely motifs that have worldwide parallels, and are 
classified and catalogued in the Folklore motif index. (Aarne-Thompson) 
The macro level of the narrative schemata is as important as its micro-
dynamics level, but the reviewed book addresses only the micro-level of 
the schemata. The notion of narrative scheme when applied to the folklore 
text can also presume a macro-level or content analysis. There can be a 
broader understanding of a narrative scheme as mini-scenario that is 
stored in a collective memory, and is retrieved or re-created during each 
performance. As the author remarks, the analysis is possible on a variety 
of levels (p. 168), and the conceptual level presupposes the abstract 
level of the story plot. Here is, for example, how P. Crepeau explains the 
importance of understanding that in respect with folklore, the level of 
cognitive competence, "langue", and the level of performance, "parole", 
are interrelated:

"That folklore is a communicative process rather than an aggregate of the 
traditional materials and that it should consequently be dealt with as 
such is a point no one will argue. But one should also bear in mind that 
if analysis of folklore items cannot pretend to explain the whole of 
folklore, it nevertheless constitutes a necessary step towards a full 
comprehension of this cultural phenomenon. ...Of course folklore is 
performance and as such it cannot be fully explained without any attention 
paid to its process. However, in folklore as in language, there is no 
performance without underlying competence. Folklore is a communicative 
process on its own, with its own structuring rules. There is the 
folkloristic parole; there is also the folkloristic langue..." (Crepeau, 
p.12-13)

In conclusion, it can be said that the author understands the narrative 
scheme quite narrowly, as a surface level of text formation, appearance, 
or linguistic make-up of the individual text/performance with all the 
richness of its prosodic, mimetic, gestural and grammatical features. 
(p.173) Such understanding of a story scheme is perfectly legitimate, and 
corresponds to the book's goal. It helps reveal the individual 
characteristics of the studied texts and uncover the differences in 
storytelling practices in two cultures.  

REFERENCES

Bauman, R. (1986) Story, performance and event: contextual studies of oral 
narrative. Cambridge: Cambridge University press. 

Berger, P. and Luckmann, T. (1966) The social construction of reality. 
Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Crepeau, P. (1978) The invading guest: some aspects of oral transmission. 
In: Yearbook of symbolic anthropology, 1, 11-29. 

Firth, R. (1984) The plasticity of myth: cases from Tikopia. In: A, Dundes 
(ed.) Sacred narrative. Readings in the theory of myth. University of 
California press, Berkley, Los Angeles, London. 

Mandler, J. and Johnson., N. (1977) Remembrance of things parsed: story 
structure and recall. In: Cognitive Psychology, 9, 111-151.  

Rumelhart, D. E. (1975) Notes on schema for stories. In: Bobrow, D. and 
Gollins, A. (eds.) Representation and understanding. New York: Academic 
Press, 211-236. 

Thompson, S. (1955-1958) Motif-Index of Folk Literature. A classification 
of narrative elements in Folktales, Ballads, Myths, Fables, Mediaeval 
Romances, Exempla, Fabliaux, Jest-Books and Local Legends. Rev. & enlarged 
ed., 6 vols. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Olga Levitski has a MA degree from St-Petersburg State University, where 
she specialized in folklore. Now she is a MA student of theoretical 
linguistics at York University of Toronto. Her main interests are 
discourse analysis, sociolinguistics, and folklore. At the moment she is 
finishing up her master's degree working on plurilingual codeswitching; 
this also involves fieldwork conducting sociolinguistic interviews (data 
collection, transcription and analysis).





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