Extraordinary from the ordinary : personal experience narratives in American Sign Language / Kristin Jean Mulrooney.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Mulrooney, Kristin J.

Series:

Sociolinguistics in deaf communities series ; v. 15.

The sociolinguistics in deaf communities series, 1080-5494 ; v. 15

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American Sign Language--Composition and exercises.

American Sign Language.

Narration (Rhetoric).

Physical Description:

174 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Washington, D.C. : Gallaudet University Press, 2009.

Summary:

Personal narratives are one way people code their experiences and convey them to others. Given that speakers cansimultaneously express information and define a soical situation, analyzing how and why people structure the telling of personal narratives can provide insight into the social dimensions of language use. In this study, Kristin Jean Mulrooney shows that accounts by Deaf person expressed in ASL possess the same characteristics and perform the same function as oral personal narratives.

Mulrooney analyzes twelve personal narratives by ASL signers to determine how they "tell" their stories. She examines the ASL form of textual narration to see how signers use lexical signs to grammatically encode information and how they also convey perceived narration. In perceived narration, the presenter depicts a past occurrence in the immediate environment that allows the audience to partially witness and interpret the event. Mulrooney shows that ASL narratives reveal a patterned structure consisting of an introduction, a main events section for identifying and describing past occurrences, and a conclusion. They also can include background information, an explication section in which the presenter expands or clarifles an event, and a section that allows the presenter to explain his or her feelings about what happened. Liberally illustrated with photographs from videotaped narratives, Extraordinary from the Ordinary offers an engrossing, expansive view of personal narratives embodying the unique linguistic elements of ASL.

Contents:

Chapter 1 Narrative Analysis 1

Chapter 2 Theoretical Background 22

Chapter 3 Analyzing Narratives 40

Chapter 4 A Prototypical Narrative 53

Chapter 5 The Structure of Introduction and Background Sections in ASL Narratives 70

Chapter 6 The Structure of Main-Event Sections in ASL Narratives 95

Chapter 7 The Structure of Explication, Reflection, and Conclusion Sections in ASL Narratives 129

Chapter 8 Conclusion 145.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781563684166

1563684160

OCLC:

326503068