Caregivers’ strategies for eliciting storytelling from toddlers in Japanese caregiver–child picture book reading activities
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/rcsi.37287Keywords:
storytelling, Japanese, language socialization, grammar, cultureAbstract
Although storytelling is a central practice in everyday interaction, it is not an easy task for young children, because it requires extended turns-at-talk. To tell a story successfully, a child requires considerable support from the recipient. In this article, we examine how storytelling is facilitated in Japanese caregiver–child interactions, focusing on the strategies employed by caregivers to elicit storytelling from 2- to 3-year-old children during picture book reading activities. Our analysis indicates that caregivers employ various multimodal strategies in encouraging children to launch, develop, and end a story, and that these strategies are themselves effectively implemented through the application of several grammatical features, conventional expressions, and formulaic words. Hence, storytelling functions as a valuable device in orchestrating attention, affect, and morality in caregiver–child interactions.
References
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Burdelski, M. (2012). Language socialization and politeness routines. In A. Duranti, E. Ochs, & B. B. Schieffelin (Eds.), The handbook of language socialization (pp. 275–295). Chichester: Blackwell.
Burdelski, M. (2013). Socializing children to honorifics in Japanese: Identity and stance in interaction. Multilingua, 32(2), 247–273.
Burdelski, M. (2015). Reported speech as cultural gloss and directive: Socializing norms of speaking and acting in Japanese caregiver-child triadic interaction. Text & Talk, 35(5), 575–595.
Cekaite, A. & Björk-Willén, P. (2018). Enchantment in storytelling: Co-operation and participation in children’s aesthetic experience. Linguistics and Education, 48, 52–60.
Cook, H. M. (2006). Japanese politeness as an interactional achievement: Academic consultation sessions in Japanese universities. Multilingua, 25(3), 269–291.
Cook H. M. & Burdelski M. (2017). Language socialization in Japanese. In P. Duff, & S. May (eds.), Language socialization. Encyclopedia of Language and Education (3rd ed.). Springer, Cham.
Disbray, S. (2008). Storytelling styles: A study of adult–child interactions in narrations of a picture-book in Tennant Creek. In J. Simpson, & G. Wigglesworth (Eds.), Children’s language and multilingualism: Indigenous language at home and school(pp. 56–76). New York: Continuum.
Duranti, A., Ochs, E., Schieffelin, B. B. (Eds.)(2012). The handbook of language socialization. Chichester: Blackwell.
Elberfeld, R. (2011). The middle voice of emptiness: Nishida and Nishitani. In B. W. Davis, B. Chroeder, & J. M. Wirth (Eds.), Japanese and continental philosophy: Conversation with the Kyoto School(pp. 269–285). Indiana University Press.
Endo, T. (2015). Construction and social norm: -te ageruconstruction in Japanese family interaction. Papers from the National Conference of the Japanese Cognitive Linguistics Association, 15, 171–182.
Ervin-Tripp, S. (1976). Is Sybil there? the structure of some American English directives. Language in Society, 5(1), 25–66.
Filipi, A. (2017). The emergence of story-telling. In A. Bateman & A. Church (Eds.), Children’s knowledge-in-interaction: Studies in conversation analysis(pp. 279–295). Springer.
Funabashi, Z. (1997). Let’s play in the sandpit. Tokyo: Fukuinkan Shoten. (in Japanese)
Goffman, E. (1981). Forms of talk. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Goodwin, M. H. (2006). The hidden life of girls: Games of stance, status, and exclusion. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Goodwin, M., Cekaite, A., Goodwin, C., &Tulbert, E. (2012). Emotion as stance. In A. Peräkylä & M.-L. Sorjonen (Eds.), Emotion in interaction(pp. 16–41). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hasegawa, Y. (2006). The hole of navel. Kobe: BL Press.
Hayashi, M. (2003). Joint utterance construction in Japanese conversation. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Hayashi, M. (2005). Joint turn construction through language and the body: Notes on embodiment in coordinated participation in situated activities. Semiotica, 156(1), 21–53.
Heath, S. B. (1982). What no bedtime story means: Narrative skills at home and school. Language in Society, 11, 49–76.
Heath, S. B. (1983). Ways with words: Language, life and work in communities and classrooms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hickmann, M. E. (1993). The boundaries of reported speech in narrative discourse: Some developmental aspects. In J. A. Lucy (Ed.), Reflexive language: Reported speech and metapragmatics(pp. 63–90). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Jefferson, G. (2004). Glossary of transcript symbols with an introduction. In G. H. Lerner (Ed.), Conversation Analysis: Studies from the first generation(pp. 13–23). Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Johnson, S. J. (2017). Multimodality and footing in peer correction in reading picture books. Linguistics and Education, 41, 20–34.
Kawashima, M. (2017). Four ways of delivering very bad news in a Japanese emergency room. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 50(3), 307–325.
Kidwell, M. (2005). Gaze as social control: How very young children differentiate “the look” from a “mere look” by their adult caregivers. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 38(4), 417–449.
Kobayashi, S. (2005). The Phase for a speaker and autonomy in the Japanese Language. The Bulletin of Faculty of Sociology, Toyo University, 43(2), 37–54.
Kobayashi, S. (2006). “Place” of the Japanese language: Considered from cognitive linguistics and arguments on the physicality of the language. The Bulletin of Faculty of Sociology, Toyo University, 44(1), 5–22.
Kokubun, K. (2017). The world of middle voice: Archeology of intention and responsibility. Tokyo: Igakushoin.
Kyratzis, A. (2017). Peer ecologies for learning how to read: Exhibiting reading, orchestrating participation, and learning over time in bilingual Mexican-American preschoolers’ play enactments of reading to a peer. Linguistics and Education, 41, 7–19.
Lerner, G. (1992). Assisted storytelling: Deploying shared knowledge as a practical matter. Qualitative Sociology, 15(3), 247–271.
Mandelbaum, J. (2010). Concurrent and intervening actions during storytelling in family ceremonial dinners. In D. Schiffrin, A. De Fina, A. Nylund (Eds.), Telling stories: Language, narrative, and social life(pp. 161–172). Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press.
Mandelbaum, J. (2013). Storytelling in conversation. In J. Sidnell & T. Stivers (Eds.),The handbook of conversation analysis(pp. 492–510). Chichester: Blackwell.
Marék, V. (2008). Pebble tale (translated by T. Ishizu). Tokyo: Fukuinkan Shoten. (in Japanese)
Minami, M. (2002). Culture-specific language styles: The development of oral narrative and literacy. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
Mori, A. (2014). Tendency of usage of the Japanese potential verbs mieru and mirareru: A corpus-based analysis of language usages in conversation by native and non-native speakers. Studies in Japanese Language and Japanese Language Teaching, 5, 75–90. (in Japanese)
Morita, E. (2005). Negotiation of contingent talk: The Japanese interactional particles ne and sa. John Benjamins.
Nieda, M. (2009). The middle voice and transitivity. Bulletin of Kyoto University of Education, 114, 105–119. (in Japanese)
Nishizaka, A. (1997). The perspective of interaction analysis: Sociological description of culture and mind. Tokyo: Kanekoshobo. (in Japanese)
Ochs, E. and Capps, L. (2001). Living narrative: Creating lives in everyday storytelling. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Ochs, E. & Schieffelin, B. B. (2012). The theory of language socialization. In A. Duranti, E. Ochs, and Schieffelin (Eds.), The handbook of language socialization(pp. 1–21). Chichester: Blackwell.
Pizziconi, B. (2011). Japanese honorifics: the cultural specificity of a universal mechanism. In S. Mills & D. Z. Kádár (Eds.), Politeness in East Asia: Theory and practice(pp. 45–70). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Psathas, G. (1992). The study of extended sequences: The case of the garden lesson, In G. Watson, & R. M. Seiler (Eds.), Text in context: Contributions to ethnomethodology(pp. 99–122). London: Sage.
Reese, E. (1995). Predicting children’s literacy from mother-child conversations. Cognitive Development, 10(3), 381–405.
Sacks, H. (1978). Some technical considerations of a dirty joke. In J. Schenkein (Ed.), Studies in the organization of conversational interaction(pp. 249–269). New York: Academic Press.
Schegloff, E. A. (2007). Sequence organization in interaction: A primer in conversation analysis: volume 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Schieffelin, B. B. & Ochs, E. (1986). Language socialization. Annual Review of Anthropology, 15, 163–191.
Sidnell, J. (2006). Coordinating gesture, talk, and gaze in reenactments. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 39(4), 377–409.
Sidnell, J. & Stivers, T. (Eds.) (2013). The handbook of conversation analysis. Oxford: Blackwell.
Sterponi, L. (2012). Literacy socialization. In A. Duranti, E. Ochs, & B. B. Schieffelin (Eds.), The handbook of language socialization(pp. 227–246). Chichester: Blackwell.
Stivers, T. (2008). Stance, alignment, and affiliation during storytelling: When nodding is a token of affiliation.Research on Language & Social Interaction, 41(1), 31–57.
Stivers, T. (2013). Sequence organization. In J. Sidnell & T. Stivers (Eds.),The handbook of conversation analysis(pp. 191–209). Chichester: Blackwell.
Strauss, S. & Kawanishi, Y. (1996). Assessment strategies in Japanese, Korean, and American English. In N. Akatsuka, S. Iwasaki & S. Strauss (Eds.), Japanese/Korean Linguistics Vol. 5(pp. 149–165). Stanford, CA: CSLI.
Takada, A. (2012). Pre-verbal infant-caregiver interaction. In A. Duranti, E. Ochs, & B. B. Schieffelin (Eds.), The handbook of language socialization (pp. 56–80). Chichester: Blackwell.
Takada, A. (2013). Generating morality in directive sequences: Distinctive strategies for developing communicative competence in Japanese caregiver-child interactions. Language & Communication, 33, 420–438.
Takada, A., & Endo, T. (2015). Object transfer in request-accept sequence in Japanese caregiver-child interaction. Journal of Pragmatics, 82, 52–66.
Takada, A. & Kawashima, M. (2016). Relating with an unborn baby: Expectant mothers socializing their toddlers in Japanese families. In A. Bateman & A. Church (Eds.), Children's knowledge-in-interaction: Studies in conversation analysis(pp. 211–229). Singapore: Springer.
Tsunoda, I. (1973). What is he doing? (illustrations by Tsunoda, A.)Tokyo: Bunka publishing Bureau. (in Japanese)
Vygotsky, L. S. (1962). Thought and language (edited and translated by E. Hanfmann & G. Vakar). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. [Vygotsky, L. S. (1934). Myshlenie i Rech’: Psikho-logicheskie Issledovaniya. Gosudarstvennoe Sotsial’no Ekonomicheskoe Izdatel’stvo.]
Bourdieu, P. (1977). Outline of a theory of practice. (R. Nice, Trans.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bourdieu, P. (1990). The logic of practice. (R. Nice, Trans.). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Bruner, J. (1983).Child's talk: Learning to use language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Burdelski, M. (2012). Language socialization and politeness routines. In A. Duranti, E. Ochs, & B. B. Schieffelin (Eds.), The handbook of language socialization (pp. 275–295). Chichester: Blackwell.
Burdelski, M. (2013). Socializing children to honorifics in Japanese: Identity and stance in interaction. Multilingua, 32(2), 247–273.
Burdelski, M. (2015). Reported speech as cultural gloss and directive: Socializing norms of speaking and acting in Japanese caregiver-child triadic interaction. Text & Talk, 35(5), 575–595.
Cekaite, A. & Björk-Willén, P. (2018). Enchantment in storytelling: Co-operation and participation in children’s aesthetic experience. Linguistics and Education, 48, 52–60.
Cook, H. M. (2006). Japanese politeness as an interactional achievement: Academic consultation sessions in Japanese universities. Multilingua, 25(3), 269–291.
Cook H. M. & Burdelski M. (2017). Language socialization in Japanese. In P. Duff, & S. May (eds.), Language socialization. Encyclopedia of Language and Education (3rd ed.). Springer, Cham.
Disbray, S. (2008). Storytelling styles: A study of adult–child interactions in narrations of a picture-book in Tennant Creek. In J. Simpson, & G. Wigglesworth (Eds.), Children’s language and multilingualism: Indigenous language at home and school(pp. 56–76). New York: Continuum.
Duranti, A., Ochs, E., Schieffelin, B. B. (Eds.)(2012). The handbook of language socialization. Chichester: Blackwell.
Elberfeld, R. (2011). The middle voice of emptiness: Nishida and Nishitani. In B. W. Davis, B. Chroeder, & J. M. Wirth (Eds.), Japanese and continental philosophy: Conversation with the Kyoto School(pp. 269–285). Indiana University Press.
Endo, T. (2015). Construction and social norm: -te ageruconstruction in Japanese family interaction. Papers from the National Conference of the Japanese Cognitive Linguistics Association, 15, 171–182.
Ervin-Tripp, S. (1976). Is Sybil there? the structure of some American English directives. Language in Society, 5(1), 25–66.
Filipi, A. (2017). The emergence of story-telling. In A. Bateman & A. Church (Eds.), Children’s knowledge-in-interaction: Studies in conversation analysis(pp. 279–295). Springer.
Funabashi, Z. (1997). Let’s play in the sandpit. Tokyo: Fukuinkan Shoten. (in Japanese)
Goffman, E. (1981). Forms of talk. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Goodwin, M. H. (2006). The hidden life of girls: Games of stance, status, and exclusion. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Goodwin, M., Cekaite, A., Goodwin, C., &Tulbert, E. (2012). Emotion as stance. In A. Peräkylä & M.-L. Sorjonen (Eds.), Emotion in interaction(pp. 16–41). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hasegawa, Y. (2006). The hole of navel. Kobe: BL Press.
Hayashi, M. (2003). Joint utterance construction in Japanese conversation. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Hayashi, M. (2005). Joint turn construction through language and the body: Notes on embodiment in coordinated participation in situated activities. Semiotica, 156(1), 21–53.
Heath, S. B. (1982). What no bedtime story means: Narrative skills at home and school. Language in Society, 11, 49–76.
Heath, S. B. (1983). Ways with words: Language, life and work in communities and classrooms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hickmann, M. E. (1993). The boundaries of reported speech in narrative discourse: Some developmental aspects. In J. A. Lucy (Ed.), Reflexive language: Reported speech and metapragmatics(pp. 63–90). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Jefferson, G. (2004). Glossary of transcript symbols with an introduction. In G. H. Lerner (Ed.), Conversation Analysis: Studies from the first generation(pp. 13–23). Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Johnson, S. J. (2017). Multimodality and footing in peer correction in reading picture books. Linguistics and Education, 41, 20–34.
Kawashima, M. (2017). Four ways of delivering very bad news in a Japanese emergency room. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 50(3), 307–325.
Kidwell, M. (2005). Gaze as social control: How very young children differentiate “the look” from a “mere look” by their adult caregivers. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 38(4), 417–449.
Kobayashi, S. (2005). The Phase for a speaker and autonomy in the Japanese Language. The Bulletin of Faculty of Sociology, Toyo University, 43(2), 37–54.
Kobayashi, S. (2006). “Place” of the Japanese language: Considered from cognitive linguistics and arguments on the physicality of the language. The Bulletin of Faculty of Sociology, Toyo University, 44(1), 5–22.
Kokubun, K. (2017). The world of middle voice: Archeology of intention and responsibility. Tokyo: Igakushoin.
Kyratzis, A. (2017). Peer ecologies for learning how to read: Exhibiting reading, orchestrating participation, and learning over time in bilingual Mexican-American preschoolers’ play enactments of reading to a peer. Linguistics and Education, 41, 7–19.
Lerner, G. (1992). Assisted storytelling: Deploying shared knowledge as a practical matter. Qualitative Sociology, 15(3), 247–271.
Mandelbaum, J. (2010). Concurrent and intervening actions during storytelling in family ceremonial dinners. In D. Schiffrin, A. De Fina, A. Nylund (Eds.), Telling stories: Language, narrative, and social life(pp. 161–172). Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press.
Mandelbaum, J. (2013). Storytelling in conversation. In J. Sidnell & T. Stivers (Eds.),The handbook of conversation analysis(pp. 492–510). Chichester: Blackwell.
Marék, V. (2008). Pebble tale (translated by T. Ishizu). Tokyo: Fukuinkan Shoten. (in Japanese)
Minami, M. (2002). Culture-specific language styles: The development of oral narrative and literacy. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
Mori, A. (2014). Tendency of usage of the Japanese potential verbs mieru and mirareru: A corpus-based analysis of language usages in conversation by native and non-native speakers. Studies in Japanese Language and Japanese Language Teaching, 5, 75–90. (in Japanese)
Morita, E. (2005). Negotiation of contingent talk: The Japanese interactional particles ne and sa. John Benjamins.
Nieda, M. (2009). The middle voice and transitivity. Bulletin of Kyoto University of Education, 114, 105–119. (in Japanese)
Nishizaka, A. (1997). The perspective of interaction analysis: Sociological description of culture and mind. Tokyo: Kanekoshobo. (in Japanese)
Ochs, E. and Capps, L. (2001). Living narrative: Creating lives in everyday storytelling. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Ochs, E. & Schieffelin, B. B. (2012). The theory of language socialization. In A. Duranti, E. Ochs, and Schieffelin (Eds.), The handbook of language socialization(pp. 1–21). Chichester: Blackwell.
Pizziconi, B. (2011). Japanese honorifics: the cultural specificity of a universal mechanism. In S. Mills & D. Z. Kádár (Eds.), Politeness in East Asia: Theory and practice(pp. 45–70). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Psathas, G. (1992). The study of extended sequences: The case of the garden lesson, In G. Watson, & R. M. Seiler (Eds.), Text in context: Contributions to ethnomethodology(pp. 99–122). London: Sage.
Reese, E. (1995). Predicting children’s literacy from mother-child conversations. Cognitive Development, 10(3), 381–405.
Sacks, H. (1978). Some technical considerations of a dirty joke. In J. Schenkein (Ed.), Studies in the organization of conversational interaction(pp. 249–269). New York: Academic Press.
Schegloff, E. A. (2007). Sequence organization in interaction: A primer in conversation analysis: volume 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Schieffelin, B. B. & Ochs, E. (1986). Language socialization. Annual Review of Anthropology, 15, 163–191.
Sidnell, J. (2006). Coordinating gesture, talk, and gaze in reenactments. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 39(4), 377–409.
Sidnell, J. & Stivers, T. (Eds.) (2013). The handbook of conversation analysis. Oxford: Blackwell.
Sterponi, L. (2012). Literacy socialization. In A. Duranti, E. Ochs, & B. B. Schieffelin (Eds.), The handbook of language socialization(pp. 227–246). Chichester: Blackwell.
Stivers, T. (2008). Stance, alignment, and affiliation during storytelling: When nodding is a token of affiliation.Research on Language & Social Interaction, 41(1), 31–57.
Stivers, T. (2013). Sequence organization. In J. Sidnell & T. Stivers (Eds.),The handbook of conversation analysis(pp. 191–209). Chichester: Blackwell.
Strauss, S. & Kawanishi, Y. (1996). Assessment strategies in Japanese, Korean, and American English. In N. Akatsuka, S. Iwasaki & S. Strauss (Eds.), Japanese/Korean Linguistics Vol. 5(pp. 149–165). Stanford, CA: CSLI.
Takada, A. (2012). Pre-verbal infant-caregiver interaction. In A. Duranti, E. Ochs, & B. B. Schieffelin (Eds.), The handbook of language socialization (pp. 56–80). Chichester: Blackwell.
Takada, A. (2013). Generating morality in directive sequences: Distinctive strategies for developing communicative competence in Japanese caregiver-child interactions. Language & Communication, 33, 420–438.
Takada, A., & Endo, T. (2015). Object transfer in request-accept sequence in Japanese caregiver-child interaction. Journal of Pragmatics, 82, 52–66.
Takada, A. & Kawashima, M. (2016). Relating with an unborn baby: Expectant mothers socializing their toddlers in Japanese families. In A. Bateman & A. Church (Eds.), Children's knowledge-in-interaction: Studies in conversation analysis(pp. 211–229). Singapore: Springer.
Tsunoda, I. (1973). What is he doing? (illustrations by Tsunoda, A.)Tokyo: Bunka publishing Bureau. (in Japanese)
Vygotsky, L. S. (1962). Thought and language (edited and translated by E. Hanfmann & G. Vakar). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. [Vygotsky, L. S. (1934). Myshlenie i Rech’: Psikho-logicheskie Issledovaniya. Gosudarstvennoe Sotsial’no Ekonomicheskoe Izdatel’stvo.]
Published
2019-08-29
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Takada, A., & Kawashima, M. (2019). Caregivers’ strategies for eliciting storytelling from toddlers in Japanese caregiver–child picture book reading activities. Research on Children and Social Interaction, 3(1-2), 196-223. https://doi.org/10.1558/rcsi.37287
