Narrative development across cultural contexts: Finding the pragmatic in parent-child reminiscing

Abstract

Children learn the pragmatic conventions of storytelling during family reminiscing. This chapter discusses differences in narrative development and narrative practices observed during reminiscing in two different cultural groups: children from mainstream, white, Anglo, middle-class families and Latino children and their families. Our review indicates both groups differ with respect to the way they structure, contextualize and evaluate their narratives. Different from European communities, Latinos deemphasize the chronological structuring of their stories. Children in both cultures learn to contextualize information within a narrative, but Latinos emphasize the contextualization of characters, usually their relatives. Both groups introduce evaluation while storytelling, through the use of different strategies. Implications of these differences for the educational context are pointed out.