Signed Languages: Discoveries from International Research

The Emergence of Narrative Discourse in Two Young Deaf Children

The Emergence of Narrative Discourse in Two Young Deaf Children Astrid Vercaingne-Ménard, Lucie Godard, and Marie Labelle Children go from making free associations to making “frog leaps” and, finally, to creating sequences before they can produce real narrative discourse (at approximately the age of six or seven). A well-formed narrative can be described with “story grammar,” consisting of at least one complete episode containing an event that triggers some action, the action itself, and at least one consequence. In this particular study, we will look at the acquisition of narrative discourse among young deaf children who communicate in Quebec Sign Language (langue des signes québécoise, or LSQ) and will compare their development to the results found in the literature. We will start with a review of the available literature on the subject of narrative discourse acquisition in hearing children and in deaf children. To our knowledge, no data are available on the development of narrative schemas in deaf children of preschool age. LITERATURE REVIEW The review of the literature is divided into two parts. We first discuss the development of narrative discourse abilities in hearing children, then turn to similar studies of deaf children. The Hearing Child’s Development of Narrative Discourse Narrative discourse abilities in children have been the subject of many publications . The following sections present a brief survey of the development of narrative discourse abilities in hearing children, as it emerges from these numerous studies. The survey is summarized in table 1. 120 Two Years Old Sutton-Smith (1975) describes the narrative discourse of the two-year-old hearing child as the stage of free associations. Stories do not hold a central theme and include no sequential organization. The child simply describes actions and characters and makes no attempt to link sentences together. Applebee (1978) talks about discourse elements without any links between them. This stage is best characterized by a lack of a relation between events. Three Years Old Sutton-Smith (1975) describes a second stage of development in which the main character of a narrative is present from the beginning to the end of a story. The characters are egocentric, and the child always arranges objects in relation to himself or herself. According to Sutton-Smith, relating objects to one another rather than to the child himself or herself is part of Emergence of Narrative Discourse in Two Young Deaf Children 121 Table 1. The hearing child’s narrative discourse development Age Researcher and Finding Applebee Sutton-Smith McKeough Peterson (1978) (1975) (1984, 1987) (1990) 2 years Lack of relation Free associations between events (description of actions without links) 3 years Sequences stage Conservation of (activities without the main temporal planning) character 4 years Prenarrative Presence of Temporal (presence of a narrative schemas reference central element) Temporal and Spatial Logical relations causal links localization (cause and effect) Problems receive no solutions 5 years Thematic chain Conservation of True central action character related to a sequence of events Logical temporal links 6 years Problem immediately resolved Juxtaposition of events the third stage of development. Applebee (1978) also talks about a second stage at approximately the age of three years and calls it the “sequence” stage. During this stage, the elements of the story have a macrostructure that revolve around a central element and that are described without any temporal planning. Four Years Old Applebee (1978) describes the third stage of narrative development as “prenarrative.” At this stage, a character, an object, or an event constitutes the central element, and the story is built by adding attributes to it. The child also begins to use inferences. The fourth stage begins at approximately four and one-half years of age and is characterized by nonthematic chains. Events are linked to one another but lack a central theme. Logical relationships between elements (cause and effect) and temporal relationships between events can be found in the child’s narrative. McKeough (1987) makes a structural analysis of the actions in the story, which resembles the episode analysis done by Stein and Glenn (1979). This structural analysis brings out the fact that, at the age of four years, children generate event sequences or episodes in which four elements interact: a setup, an event trigger, an answer, and an end. McKeough also explains that children in this age group generate more than one event in relation to the problem but are not able to resolve the...