| Scope and method of study. The purpose of this study was to examine the linguistic evidence for a perceptual organization of narrative based on an episodic structure. There were 50 American and 50 Japanese subjects who were randomly assigned to a gender-controlled group to record a narrative based on a picture book, which was presented in two formats. The narratives were then analyzed with respect to the occurrence of referential devices previously identified to mark episode boundaries. The occurrences of these devices were counted for each of the three characters in the story and were analyzed in relation to the format used by the narrators, their native language, their gender, and the linguistic devices that occurred at the episode boundaries using Analysis of Variance, ratios, percentages, and t-tests.;Findings and conclusions. Significant relationships were found between format, language, gender and episode location. The length of the narratives, as measured by number of intonation units and number of words, had a significant relationship to the format that the narrators used. This finding illustrated the features of extroverted and introverted consciousness (Chafe, 1994) which may be indicated by the change in format. Gender also played a role in the amount of language used by narrators, in that, the females in this study across languages and formats produced significantly more language than the males. Generally, the variables that demonstrated significance in relation to language were typologically predictable. Episode location was the most significant category across languages and across formats. Narrators in both Japanese and English mark the beginnings of episodes with an increase in mentions of the boy character and mark the beginnings and endings of episodes with an increase in mentions of the frog character, but they do not mark episode boundaries with reference to the dog character. The findings in this study parallel and support numerous other studies in language processing and cognition. and cognition. |
