story grammar and first and second language · story grammar and first and second language...

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Story Grammar and First and Second Language Storytelling

(Received November 30, 1995)

Kyushu lnstitute of Technology George Russell

Abstract

This paper reports part of a study inspired by Tannen (1977). The study comparesstories told by Japanese speakers of English as a second language in their first and second

languages and stories told by native speakers of American English in their first language.

This paper analyzes the three sets of stories in terms of Johnson and Mandler's (1980)

story grammar, according to the hypothesis that, as the grammar is claimed to be univer-sal, all stories will be explainable through the grammar. However, all sets of stories con-

tained examples which did not follow the grammar, although such stories may have re-sulted from problems in the experimental conditions. The paper also considers aspects of

story and storytelling that might not be accounted for by the grammar, and discusses two

alternative approaches to analyzing the stories.

Introduction

Background

Tannen (1977) presents some of the results of a study seeking to investigate the in-

fluence of culture on thought. Tannen discusses narratives produced by Greek and

American women who viewed a six-minute film with no dialogue and were then asked,

"What happened in the movie?" To summarize the findings briefly, the American sub-

jects seemed to analyze the film as a film, while the Greeks talked more about the mes-

sage of the film: what it said, or what they thought it said, about human relationships.

The Americans tended to include a lot of detail in their natratives, as if they were per-

forming a memory task, while the Greeks tended to omit details that did not support

their interpretations.

Someone with an interest in the influence of culture on storytelling in a second lan-

guage may find Tannen's study valuable, but may also feel that the study could have

gone further. First of all, while the article includes one example each of an American

and a Greek narrative, and there is a mention of `mini-chunks' as a structural unit, there

is no detailed analysis of the structure of the narratives. Further, all narratives were

produced in the subjects' native languages (the sample Greek narrative is presented in an

English translation); a similar study, asking second language speakers to perform the

46 George Russelltask in both their first language (Ll) and their second (L2), might reveal interesting dif-

ferences between the two sets of narratives, such as an influence of the Ll culture upon

the L2 narratives.

According to these concerns, a study is being done of the stories, produced from a

cartoon stimulus, of Japanese speakers of English as a second language in their Ll and

L2, and of the stories of native American English speakers, using the same cartoon, in

their Ll only. The present paper reports part of the study, specifically, comparing the

three sets of stories in terms of story grammar.

The Concept of Story Grammar

Rumelhart (1975) proposes the idea that is a grammar for stories analogous to a

grammar for sentences. Rumelhart's work has been criticized for overstating this analo-

gy; Wilensky (1983), for example, argues that a sentence-like grammar for stories disre-

gards the importance of meaning as the basis of stories, and offers a concept of `story

points' as a substitute for a grammatical concept. Johnson and Mandler (1980), primari-

ly interested in orally transmitted folk tales, agree that semantic relations are more im-

portant in the structure of stories than in that of sentences. However, they go on to

argue that as the possible types of sentences are limited, so are the possible types of

stories, perhaps even more so, and that a grammar must account for these limitations.

They note that constraints upon human memory help determine the difference between

story grammars and sentence grammars, and offer ease of recall as a criterion for the

well-formedness of a story.i

Johnson and Mandler trace their own story grammar from Rumelhart (1975). The

grammar is refined from an earlier version (Mandler & Johnson, 1977) and further re-

fined, based on recall experiments, in Mandler (1987). Figure 1, an elaboration of a fi-

gure from Mandler (p. 25), shows one possible story structure contained in the grammar.2

The smallest units of the system are state and event; events are distinguished from states

by specifically concerning action. The largest unit is stoiy, which subdivides into set-

ting, a state which introduces the main character of the first episode and may give in-

formation about the time and place of the story, and episode. An episode is further sub-

divided into beginning, an event to which the main character reacts, complex reaction,

goal path, and ending, the last an event concerned with the consequences of, the re-

sponses of characters to, or statements about the complex reaction and the goal path. A

iRecall tasks have often been used in studies of story grammars; two recent papers reporting recall

tasks are Horiba, van der Brock, and Fletcher (1993), and Riley (1993).

2Elsewhere in this paper, this story grammar will be attributed to Johnson and Mandler, as theirs is

the most complete description, but the reader should be aware that the study uses the grammar as

improved by Mandler.

Story Grammar and First and Second Language Storytelling 47

complex reaction subdivides into simple reaction, which is an event, what the main char-

acter does or thinks in reaction to the beginning event, and goal, which is a state, what

the main character plans to do as a consequence of the beginning event. A goal path

subdivides into attempt, an event, what the main character does to achieve the goal, and

oectcome, an event, the result of the attempt.

STORY

SETTING EPISODE

BEGINNING . COMPLEX REACT'ION GOAL PATH ENDING

SIMPLEREACTION COAL ATITEMITF OUTCOME

event state event event

Figure 1. Diagram of a Possible Story Structure (see Mandler, p. 25)

The structure illustrated by Figure 1 and described in the previous paragraph is only

one structure permitted by the grammar, one that includes all of the terms but shows no

embedding. Johnson and Mandler explain in detail how embedding may occur in va-rious units, and ,under what conditions certain units may be deleted. Embedding and de-

letion will be explained in more detail as needed in the Results and Discussion section of

this paper. However, it is pertinent to note here that the basic principle of deletion is

ease of inference, because Johnson arid Mandler consider cross-cultural variation in

storytelling according to this principle. Deleted story elements which are easily inferred

in one culture may not be easily inferred in another, and for this reason it may be diffi-

cult for people of one culture to understand the stories of another. The story grammar

itself, however, is presumed to be universal.

Hypothesis

Out of curiosity more than out of firm conviction, the present paper assumes that

Johnson and Mandler's story grammar is universal, and thus makes the followinghypothesis concerning the structure of stories produced by the subjects: the three sets of

stories -- in Ll by Japanese speakers, in L2 by Japanese speakers, and in Ll by Amer-

ican English speakers -- will all exhibit structures which can be explained by Johnson

and Mandler's story grammar.

48 George Russell

Method

The subjects were 10 native speakers of Japanese (Subjects 1-10) and 10 native

speakers of American English (Subjects 11-20), with six females and four males in each

group. At the time of data collection, spring 1989, the American group had an average

age of 28.8, with a range of 20 to 33, while the Japanese group's average age was 31.7,

ranging from 18 to 47.

The American group consisted of eight graduate students at the University of

Hawaii at Manoa (UHM), one undergraduate, and one non-student who had a college

education at the graduate level. The Japanese group consisted of five UHM graduate

students, four students of the Hawaii English Language Program (HELP) at UHM, and

one non-student. Three of the HELP students were high school graduates, and the re-

maining HELP student and the non-student were junior college graduates.

All of the Japanese subjects had had formal education in English in junior high

school and high school, for a total of six years. Six had had formal English education

beyond high school, for an average of three additional years. One subject without

education beyond high school had been married to an American for 10 years.

Materials

A Garfield cartoon was used as an elicitation instrument in a storytelling task. All

of the dialogue of the cartoon was removed. Due to copyright restrictions, this paper

does not include the cartoon; however, Subject 17's narrative (see Appendix A) is a thor-

ough description.

Proeedure

Subjects were asked to look at the cartoon, think for one minute, and then tell a

story. Subjects 1 to 10 told stories in Japanese, after receiving instructions in Japanese,

to an accomplished speaker of Japanese as a second language, and, a week later, told

stories in English, after receiving instructions in English, to the present author. Subjects

11 to 20 told their stories to the present author.

All stories were transcribed, and the Japanese stories were translated into English

by the interviewer of the Japanese subjects. Recently, the Japanese transcripts were

checked and corrected, and the English translations in turn corrected, by a Japanese na-

tive speaker who is a linguistics scholar. Story structures were determined through ex--

amination of the transcripts.

Because of space limitations, a complete set of transcripts is not included herein;

L


Appendix A contains three sample narratives, and portions of other narratives will be

quoted in the Results and Discussion section (these quotes will be presented in the trans- •

cript orthography; Appendix B sets out the conventions of this orthography). Complete

transcripts are available upon request from the author.

Results and Discussion

'

Of the stories produced by the American subjects, Subject 17's story seems to be

easily analyzed as a oneÅípisode story according to Mandler and Johnson's story gram-

mar. Therefore, a detailed discussion of this particular story may be useful as a back-

ground when examining variations and/or deviations in other stories. The complete

story appears in Appendix A. The first two utterances give a time ("saturday") and

name a main character ("harry"), and so serve as a setting. However, it is somewhat

unclear where the setting ends and the beginning event starts. Perhaps the first part of

the next utterance ("there was a BEAUtiful sunrise") serves as a beginning event, but

one may argue that these words concern a state rather than an event, and so "[he] looked

out the window" is needed to form an event. Nonetheless, there is a clear simple reac-

tion ("he decided...") and a stated goal ("we should go on a PICnic"). Then Subject 17

describes a series of actions (from "he talks to garfield" to "TEAR out of the house"), all

of which are intended to achieve the goal, and so may be labeled attempt. There is an

outcome of this attempt ("and as they get out, (1) it's already nightfall ((laugh))") and

then an explanation of the outcome ("and they spent their WHOLE day getting ready to

go on the picnic and (1) now (1) they can't go.") which serves as an ending event.

The stories told by Subjects 16 and 20 also seem to be easily explained by the gram-

mar, but other stories have aspects that require some questioning. For example, Subject

13's story has a setting ("well one morning john woke up"), a beginning event ("and he

looked out his window and he saw the sun rising"), and a simple reaction ("he s-he prob-

ably thought to himself OH:: it's such a beautiful day"). Then the subject seems to start

to describe the attempt ("so he went over and he woke up his cat garfield" "and he said

to garfield oh:: it's a beautiful day") before including a statement of the goal ("let's go on

a picnic."). The stories of Subjects 15, 18, and 19 also seem to have a deferred goal

statement. Perhaps the grammar requires that action described before'a goal statement

be considered simple reaction and that action described after be considered attempt.

However, if the goal statement is deferred considerably, as it is subject 8's Ll Japanese

story, which will be discussed later, such a view seems to be an inadequate explanation

of the structure.

With some other subjects, there seems to be a mixing, or a fusion, of outcome and

ending. Subject 11's attempt section ends with "they're getting ready to dash out the

front door A::ND". Then the subject says, "unfortunately spent a::ll their ti::me (.) get-

50 George Russell ting ready", an explanation which seems to be part of an ending, then says, "and it was

ALready nightfall", the outcome, and then, "so:: (.) they may as well not go. ((laugh))",

an ending. Subjects 12, 13, 18, and 19 also have a mixing or fusion of outcome and en-

ding. Mandler and Johnson describe situations in which outcomes and endings may be

embedded, but neither case seems to explain the stories of these subjects. An example

of an embedded outcome is when a main character fails in one attempt to attain a goal

and then pursues a secondary goal on the way to try again, and an example of an

embedded ending is when the ending event of one episode corresponds to the beginning

event of another.

Even if the grammar allows for goal statements to be deferred and for outcomes and

endings to be mixed or fused, there are two stories by the native English speakers that

present definite problems for a grammatical explanation. Subject 12, before telling the

story, asks, "can I have two endings for my story?". The outcome of the story,

seemingly preceded by an ending event element ("because he was (1) he was um on the

other side of their house"), is "it looked like it was still evening". The first ending is

told this way: "be ((laugh)) cause uh:: he could see the moon and the stars but actually it

was-it was very early in the morning (and) and uh:: it was still in the morning." Then

there is a disjunct ("so the other possibility is that (.) um the SAME story except actual-

ly::"), and the second ending is given ("he didn't realize how long it was taking him and

it took him the whole day to get ready and so by the time got out the door it was actual-

ly evening."). Possibly from the viewpoint of Mandler and Johnson's story grammar

this is simply an ungrammatical story. Indeed, one wonders if Subject 12 would have

told such a story spontaneously, and perhaps by giving two endings Subject 12 is com-

menting on the ambiguity of a cartoon with blanked out balloons. While no other na-

tive English speaker offered Subject 12's first interpretation of the ending, such an inter-

pretation was given by a number of Japanese speakers, as will be discussed.

The other problematic English Ll story is told by Subject 14, who begins with a

goal statement ("well-sh time to go to the beach"), and then proceeds with setting ("wife

gets up" -incidentally, only Subject 14 identifies the main character as female) and then

attempt ("sees the ca::t, (.) procrastinates around, (.) decide what to wear,"). Mandler ' and Johnson note that the beginning event of a story may be deleted and the story may

start with a reaction to an event that can be inferred, but in this story the simple reaction

as well as the beginning event seems to be missing. However, after finishing, Subject

14 comments, "i:: don't know it well.", and so this seemingly inadequate story may be the

result of the subject not understanding the task.

. In consideration of the Japanese Ll stories, an examination of the story of Subject 5

may be illuminating, because the story, if not necessarily typical, illustrates a number of

differences between the Japanese and English Ll stories. Appendix A contains the full

text of the story, along with an English translation. There is a setting ("a (2) asa da::"),

Story Grammar and First and Second Language Storytelling sl

a statement by the main character which implies a beginning event and serves as a sim-

ple reaction ("kyoo mo ii tenki ni nari soo dakara"), a goal ("pikuniku ni ikoo"), an

attempt (from "yooshi (.) jaa kigaete::" to "let's go"), and an outcome ("are:: (.) okashii

naa dooshite yoru nan daroo"). However, the outcome lacks a sense of finality, and so

does not seem to include an ending. - A striking difference between this story and all of the English Ll stories is that it is

entirely in first person. While the American subjects occasionally use first person (see 'Subject 17's story), much greater use is made by some of the Japanese subjects. Subject

4 also tells the Ll story completely in first person, Subject 10 uses first person in Ll af-

ter giving the setting in third person, and Subjects 1, 3, and 9 use first person extensively

in Ll. There is evidence that this usage causes problems in terms of story grammar.

While Subject 5 manages to tell a story that, with the exception of a missing ending,

seems to conform to the grammar, the stories of Subjects 4 and 10 seem incomplete.

Subject 4's story has no stated simple reaction and no ending, and Subject 10's story has

no stated goal (and so it is difficult to distinguish simple reaction and attempt) and no

ending. It is unlikely that a Japanese native speaker would be able to infer any of the

story elements that these speakers leave out, or would rate either story as well-formed.

However, as mentioned earlier, the cartoon was presented with the dialogue deleted, and

a Japanese native speaker colleague has suggested that the subjects who used first per-

son may have been simply filling in the empty speech balloons. Therefore, they may in-

deed have assumed that the information not included would be inferred by a listener --

however, not necessarily a listener of the same cultural background, but one looking at

the cartoon. Appendix A contains instructions to the subjects and reveals that there is a

difference between those given in English and thog.e in Japanese; the Japanese instruc-

tions include the phrase "kono e ni yotte" ("corresponding to these pictures"). It may be

that some Japanese subjects interpreted the instructions as a request to fill in the bal-

'loons. Indeed, Subject2 asks, "kaiwa ni shinakya ikenain des ka?" ("DoIhave to make

it into a dialogue?").

I have noted that Subject 5's Ll story seems to have no ending. The outcome ex-

presses confusion as to the fact that it is night. The Ll stories of subject 4 and 8 also

express confusion about night. The rest of the stories are divided between the two in-

terpretations offered by Subject 12. Subjects 2, 3, 6 and 7 tell Ll stories which conform 'with Subject 12's second interpretation (and the interpretation of all other native English

speakers, which will be referred to as the "already night" interpretation), while Subjects

1, 9 and 10 tell Ll stories conforming with the first interpretation (which will be referred

to as the "still night" interpretaion). The Ll stories of Subject 2, 4, 5, 8, and 10 all seem

to lack endings, and there seems to be a relationship of this lack with interpretation.

Only Subject 2 used the "already night" interpretation but did not include an ending. It

may be relevant to this situation that Subject 2 expressed a problem in understanding the

52 George Russellcartoon, saying, "kore wa (1) zenzen yoku wakaranai hh .hh (.) kedo." ("I don't get this

one at all.")

Some aspects of the English Ll stories that seemed difficult to explain in terms of

story grammar appeared in Japanese Ll stories. The Ll stories told by Subjects 3 and 6

seem to have the outcome and the ending fused, while those told by 7 and 8 seem to

have a deferred mention of the goal. Subject 8, as briefly noted earlier, defers the men-

tion of the goal quite a bit in the Ll story; the goal is stated after a description of the

main character's getting dressed, grooming, and haveing breakfast; it seems unlikely that

all of these actions should be analyzed as simple reaction rather than attempt.

Of all the Japanese Ll stories, that of Subject 1 is most easily analyzed by Mandler

and Johnson's story grammar. Incidentally, while Subject 7 prefaces the story by

saying, "(jaso) nihongo no aji o (1) ohanashi itashimasu" ("I'11 tell it with a Japanese fla-

vor" ), this subject seems to tell the story in Ll more like the native English speakers

than perhaps any other Japanese subject does.

Since Subject 5's Ll story has been analyzed in detail, a good approach to the L2

stories may be to start with Subject 5's story (see Appendix A for the complete text).

First, the story has what seems to be a combination of setting and beginning event

("WA::OW it's a (morely) BEAutiful day") and then a combination of simple reaction and

goal ("so let's go to (.) PICnic."). Then there is the attempt (from "let's get some

clothes" to "LET'S GO"). What follows the attempt ("oh my god it's already NI::ght

((laugh))") seems more conclusive than what was found in this subject's Ll story, and so

in this case there seems to be a fusion of outcome and ending.

Subject 5 has reinterpreted the cartoon; the story now has the "already night" inter-

pretation. It was noted that the Japanes Ll stories that had another interpretation were

more likely to be without an ending. Among the English L2 stories, there are four

(those of Subject, 2, 5, 6 and 7) with the "already night" interpretation and six (those of

Subjects 1, 3, 4, 8, 9 and 10) with the "still night" interpretation, There are three L2

stories with no end, all among the latter group (those of Subject 4, 9, and 10).

Subject 5 has carried over the use of first person to the L2 story. Subjects 4, 7 and

9 also tell their L2 stories completely in first person, while subjects 1 and 3 use first per-

son extensively. Of these stories, those of Subjects 4 and 9 seem unlikely to be judged

as well-formed. Subject 4's story does not specify the beginning event or the simple

reaction and has no ending, while Subject 9's story has stated goal and no ending. It

may be that these subjects again misinterpreted their task as one of filling in the speech

ballQons.

While Subject 10 has switched to third person for the L2 story, the story seems as

inadequately formed as the Ll story, as it lacks a stated goal and an ending. Concern-

ing the lack of goal, it is possible that Subject 7's L2 story may also be so analyzed.

Subject 7 begins with a simple reaction ("wake up wake up" "wake up tama"), and then

.


proceeds to a goal ("oh:: i wanna go TO:: the (.) n::nice place.") and an attempt ("s::o i i-

have to (.) HURry (the::) changing clothes now"). However, then there is a disjunct

("i::m sorry this is wrong.") and Subject 7 starts again. The second telling starts with a

setting ("wh:: it's a nice (.) beautiful day"), and perhaps one can argue that the subject is

correcting the story grammatically. However, the subject then seems to continue with

the attempt ("ah rush rush ..."), without restating the beginning event, goal, and simple

reaction. Without the restatement, the story does not seem well-formed. Incidentally,

among all pairs of stories told by the Japanese subjects, the Ll and L2 stories of Subject

7 are the most different. Perhaps such a difference can be attributed to a lack of En-

glish proficiency. However, there are no proficiency tests to lend support to this view

(in fact, Subject 7, one of the graduate students, did not seem to be particularly less pro-

ficient than the other Japanese speakers).

There is another possible problem concerning goal in the L2 story of Subject 1.

Subject 1 first mentions a goal ("anyway today is sunday we have to go:: PICnic") after a

simple reaction, but then changes the goal in the middle of the attempt ("oh wait a mi-

nute uh:: maybe going to the BEACH is better"). The correction is followed by a dis-

junctive comment concerning the cartoon itself ("he is not wearing (1) clo::the only a

pants"). Except for this correction, the L2 story of Subject 1 seems to be easily ex-

plained by Mandler and Johnson's story grammar, as did her Ll story. However, the

correction does seem to create a more poorly formed story.

Subject 8's story seems to follow the grammar but contains a lengthy prologue, ab-

out as long as the story itself, which explains why it was "still night" at the end. One

might argue that this prologue can be included in the setting, but there seems to be a

clear dividing point between the prologue and what is easily identifiable as a setting

("[end of prologue] sometimes (1) the sense of time (.) do not go right.(1) [setting] one

day (1) um:: they (1) got up (1) when the sun (1) was rising,"). One wonders if this

story would be judged ill-formed by raters.

The story of Subject 2 seems to follow the story grammar well. It was noted that

this subject's Ll story seemed to have no end, and, in fact, Subject 2 reports a learning

effect after telling the L2 story, saying, "cause first time i couldn't understand it."

Finally, since Subject 7's unsuccessful self-correction has been discussed, it may be

useful to discuss a seemingly more successful self-correction by Subject 3. Subject 3

says, "shall uh (1) ((click)) uh and today is a nice day then shall i-go to (the) picnic?"

Subject 3 seems to begin with the goal statement (the "shall" of "shall i-g6 to (the) pic-

nic?"), but then abandons it to give the (stated in first person) simple reaction ("today is

a nice day"). It could be a argued that the subject corrects the story to a more gramma-

tical order,

' Nonetheless, in summarizing this section, it can be said that, even accounting for some variations in the story grammar such as deferring a goal statement and mixing or

54 George Russellfusing outcome and ending, both the American subjects and the Japanese subjects, in

both conditions, produced stories that would be judged as ill-formed according to Man-

dler and Johnson's story grammar. Therfore, the hypothesis was not supported.However, the ill-formed stories may have been a result of subjects not understanding the

task or the blanked out cartoon.

Suggestions for Further Research

Recall experiments may offer evidence for the validity of the concept of story gram-

mar. However, even those who support the concept may question whether a grammar

explains everything about stories and storytelling. Brewer (1985), in fact, distinguishes

between story and narrative (a distinction not made in the present paper), and argues

that grammars such as Mandler and Johnson's explain narrative structure rather than

story structure. Brewer's claim is that the purpose of a story is to induce an affective

state in listener or reader. He specifies three such states --- surprise, suspense, and

curiosity -' and describes how stories may be structured to induce these states. He re-

ports that subjects asked to determine whether certain discourses comprised stories or

not made judgments according to the three states, not necessarily whether the subjects

themselves felt the states, but whether they perceived the discourse as intending to

arouse one of the states. It may be that Brewer's limitation of the types of stories to

three is extreme, and, moreover, one may be able to find stories that try to induce more

than one, or all three, states. Nonetheless, if the stories analyzed in this paper in terms

of story grammar were to be reanalyzed according to Brewer's principles, there may be

some interesting findings. "Surprise" seems to be the state that these stories try to

generate, perhaps because the original cartoon so intends. Even so, there may be par-

ticular techniques that the subjects use to create surprise. For example, note that there

are stressed words before the surprise is revealed in Subject 17's story ("GRABS"

"TEAR") and Subject 5's L2 story ("LET'S GO::").

Brewer makes other observations which seem to reveal limitations in the concept of

story grammar. Brewer considers the issue of what is universal and what is culturally

specific in storytelling by listing certain story conventions and then citing research con-

cerning how these conventions are used in different cultures. He reports that conven-

tionalized story openings and closings occur in many cultures, and speculates that such

conventions may be needed to distinguish stories form other discourse. On the other

hand, he notes variations in the use of epilogues to stories. An epilogue may or may

not be present in a story, and, if present, may have various purposes: to comment upon

the story, to summarize the story, or to give further information about the characters.

Perhaps all of these functions can be included in Johnson and Mandler's category of en-

ding event, but, conversely, the single category cannot differentiate all these functions.

Perhaps more tellingly, Brewer notes that the role of a narrator can vary greatly; the nar-


rator can merely report the story or can comment upon it.

Brewer's observations of a narrator's role bring to mind the research of Labov

(1972), whom Brewer cites. Labov studied stories of personal experience that people,

specifically Americans, tell in the course of conversation, rather than orally transmitted

folk tales. For such personal stories, Labov posits a structure consisting of abstract,

orientation, complicating action, evaluation, result or resolution, and coda, a structure

which has elements in common with Johnson and Mandler's grammar. Orientation seems to correspond to setting, and abstract, which can be a summary of the story in one

or two clauses, may also be included in setting. Complicating action seems to corres-

pond to episode, and result or resolution and coda can be included in ending. However,

evaluation has no equivalent element in Johnson and Mandler's grammar. Labov de-

fines evaluation as what a narrator says to justify the telling of the story. While the

other elements are listed in temporal order, evaluation can occur throughout a narrative.

Labov distinguishes three kinds of evaluation: external evaluation, in which a disjunctive

comment is made, embedded evaluation, in which a comment expressing the narrator's

view is given to a character in the story, and evaluative action, in which action is de-

• scribed in such a way as to imply a narrator's view point. None of these kinds would

be marked as evaluation by Johnson and Mandler's grammar. Further, while embedded

evaluation and evaluative action may be accounted for under other categories in the

grammar, there is no unit which can mark external evaluation. Indeed, if one adheres to

the grammar one must classify such evaluation as "external" to the story.

Labov's view of evaluation is relevant to a study of cross-cultural differences in

storytelling because Labov offers evidence that people of different cultures use evalua-

tion differently. For example, he found that middle class Americans tended to use ex-

ternal evaluation, while working class Americans, particularly older men, tended to use

embedded evaluation. This paper has discussed a type of evaluation used by the sub-

jects of the present study: expressing confusion or noting something wrong. A detailed

examination of all instances of evaluation in the 30 stories might reveal cultural differ-

ences in the American and the Japanese Ll stories, or even aspects of language acquisi-

tion in the L2 stories.

Conclusion

With an interest in crosstultural variation in storytelling and its influence on story-

telling in a second language, this paper has examined Ll and L2 stories told by Japanese

speakers of English as a second language and Ll stories by native speakers of American

English according to Mandler and Johnson's story grammar. While there were stories

told by both sets of subjects, and by the Japanese subjects in both conditions, which did

not conform to the grammar, it is possible that such stories were the result of subjects'

misunderstanding of the nature of the task or of the cartoon stimulus. Also considered

56 George Russellwere two other approaches, which do not seem to be accounted for by Mandler and

Johnson's story grammar, that might illuminate cross-culture differences and/or language

acquisition matters revealed in these stories: examining how the stories try to arouse an

affective state, and examining how the storytellers use evaluation. Such issues are to be

discussed in subsequent papers.

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Julie Okuda for eliciting, transcribing, and translating the

Japanese Ll stories, Gabriele Kasper of the University of Hawaii at Manoa for sternly

and yet fairly criticising the first version of the study, and Makoto Shimizu of Kyushu

Institute of Technology for checking the Japanese transcripts and translations and for

suggesting the "fill the balloons" idea.


Appendix A

Transcripts of Three Stories

Subject 17 (Ll English)

I: 'kay please look at this cartoo::n and think of a story, (.) you will have a minute to

prepare before you begin, (.) you may take as long as you want to tell the story. (.) kay

ready, begin.

S: .hh hh (28) ((laugh)) um:: (34)

I: okayS: 'kay (.) .hh hh shall I start?

I: yes please

S: okay. .hh hh ((cough)) (.) .hh it was saturday an-and harry woke up and looked out

the window (.) and there was a BEAUtiful sunrise and he decided ah:: (1) been waiting

for saturday (1) .hh and it's such a beautiful day (1) we should go on a PICnic (2) he

talks to garfield and says GARfield (.) look outside it's a beautiful day (.) let's go on a

picnic (5) (and so) harry ((laugh)) .hh hh says o::kay we'11 get out my picnic clothes. (1)

tears through his drawers, looking for his picnic clothes, finally finds them, (.) gets dres-

sed. (.) goes into the bathroom he says (1) o:: kay, let's:: uh ((laugh)) let's get sha::ved and

ready to go, (,) and then we'11-bthen we'11 go to the picnic-then we'11 go on our picnic (1)

so he tears through the-the:: um (1) um (1) medicine cabinet, gets ready, shaves (1) next

he goes into the kitchen, says (.) okay we just have to make (.) sandwiches for our picnic

(.) something good to eat so he gets out the peanut butter and jelly and makes (.) sand-

wiches (1) a::nd uh:: (1) packs the picnic basket, says Okay garfield we're ready we're

ready let's go let's go. by THIS time garfield, (.) who at first was unimpressed (.) is now

really excited about going. (.) so harry GRABS the picnic basket, (.) and garfield and he

(.) TEAR out of the house (.) and as they get out, (1) it's already nightfall ((laugh)) and

they spent their whole day getting ready to go on the picnic and (1) now (1) they can't

go. (1)

I: um, (okay).

Subject 5 (Ll, Japanese)

I: mazu (.) kono manga o goran ni natte kudasai .hh soshite (.) .hh kono e ni yotte, (.)

ippun inai de (.) nanika suji no totta ohanashi o kangaete mite kudasai. hh:: (1) ohanashi

suru ni taishite (.) jikan no seigen wa arimasen (1) dewa (.) yooi, (4) suttato (62) yoroshii

des ka?=

58 George RussellS: =un=I: =hai (1) doozo (2)

S:a (2) asa da:: (2) kyoo mo ii tenki ni nari soo dakara pikunikku ni ikoo (1) yooshi (.)

jaa kigaete:: (1) ha o migaite:: (.) hige o sotte:: kao o aratte:: (2) sorekara:: (.) sandoichhi o

tsukutte. (.) let's go (1) are:: (.) okashii naa dooshite yorU nan daroo,

(English translation)

!: First of all, please look at this cartoon, and within one minute, try to think of a story

with a plot, corresponding to these pictures. There is no time limit on telling the story.

Well, ready ?

S: Yeah.

I: Begin.

S: Ah, it's morning. It looks like today will also be a nice day, so let's go on a picnic.

Okay, well, I'11 get dressed, brush my teeth, shave, wash my face... and then make some

sandwiches. Let's go... wait a minute, something's strange here. I wonder why it's

night...

Subject 5 (L2, English)

I: 'kay look at the cartoo::n,

S: um//hmI: //try' to think of a story,

S: (yeah::,)

!: you'11 have one minute to plan the//story,

S: //umhm'!: and then you can take as long as you want to tell the story.

S: Okay.I: okay:: , begin. (64) okay

S: okay. (1) WA::OW it's a (morely) BEAUtiful day so let's go to (.) PICnic. Iet's get

some clo::thes and sh:::: and (.) brush my too::th, and (.) sha::ve, and let's make so::me

peanuts butter and jelly sandwich and LET'S GO:: (.) oh my god it's already NI::ght

((laugh))

!: o:: ((llaugh)) kay thank ((laugh)) you.


Appendix B

Transcription Conventions

okay normal utterances.GRABS utterances spoken with a noticeable increase in stress.

(and so) utterances guessed at.

:: extended speech sounds.? rising intonation, such as that suggesting a question., slightly rising intonation, such as that suggesting the continuation of an utter-

ance. falling intonation, such as that suggesting the conclusion of an utterance.

(1) pauses of one second or more.(.) pauses of less than one second.// the start of overlapping speech.

* the end of overlapping speech.= uninterrupted speech from one speaker to another.

- aglottal stop.((click)) tongue click by a speaker.

((cough)) coughing by a speaker.

((laugh)) laughter by a speaker.

.hh the audible in-breath of a speaker.

hh the audible out-breath of a speaker.

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