台灣與美國敘述策略之跨語言研究

A Cross-linguistic Study of Narrative Strategies between Taiwanese Chinese and American English

詹玉立(Yu-Li Chan)

指導教授 ： 林淑璋

元智大學/人文社會學院/應用外語學系/碩士(2009年)

https://doi.org/10.6838/YZU.2009.00249

摘要

近三十年來口說敘述文已成為重要的研究議題，其重要性在於將敘述者個人的思想及經驗傳達給他人並建立起人際間互動的關係。再者，電影分享是成人的主要溝通話題之一，因此我們欲進一步了解成人透過口語方式敘述電影。然而過去的文獻鮮少著墨於敘述策略好壞，針對不同語言民族的好壞敘述策略又更少之又少。因此，本研究旨在探討不同語言敘述人士以自身母語對兩部電影短片好壞的敘述策略(narrative strategies)，特別著重分析好的口語敘述者在敘述結構 (narrative structure) 上的展現，以及評價 (evaluation) 上的使用。
本論文的研究目的是要研究不同母語人士的電影口語敘述策略，因此研究對象分別為八位台灣與八位美國大學畢業生對一部台灣和一部美國文化的電影作口語敘述分享，針對各個國籍的人分別蒐集十六篇口語敘述語料，總計語料為三十二篇。另外為區分出電影敘述的好壞，分別對於八位教文學的老師進行深度訪談，四位中文母語人士與四位英語母語人士各自對同語言的電影口語敘述者的語料給予評分及意見。本研究所採取的研究框架是以 Labov (1972) 的敘述結構 (narrative structure) 為基礎來探討口語敘述文，並結合 Martin(2005) 評價系統的態度 (attitude in appraisal system) 來分析敘述者評價電影的好壞敘述策略。
研究發現，從和教文學的老師訪問意見得知評價在Labov敘述結構 (narrative structure) 中最為重要。此外，不同語言的敘述者會因自身的文化而有不同的敘述策略。關於敘述策略的評價，台灣好的電影敘述者傾向點到為止，美國好的電影敘述者則較為詳盡。而好的台灣跟美國敘述者都會對電影理解正確，再對電影作正確的評價，不好的敘述者則會因錯誤理解電影內容，因而評價錯誤或給予不必要的評價。因此，本研究期望藉由提供好的敘述策略可以在敘述領域的台美的口語敘述作為參考。

關鍵字

敘述分析 ； 跨語言比較 ； 敘述策略 ； 敘述結構 ； 評價

並列摘要

Oral narrative has become an important research issue since the 1980s, and its importance lies in providing a narrator’s personal thoughts and experiences to others to build up the interpersonal relationship between people. Within oral narrative, relating the content of the films is one of the major conversational topics. It is for the reason that we want to investigate adult narration on films. Moreover, there have been few studies which investigate the quality of narrative strategies, especially in cross-linguistic manner. Thus, this thesis aims to study the quality of narrative strategies used by narrators in two different languages to narrate two short films, with an emphasis on analyzing good narrators’ narrative structure and their use of evaluation.
Our research subjects include eight Taiwanese and eight American college graduates who were required to narrate the content of one Taiwanese and one American film. This added up to 16 narrative texts in each language, and 32 narrative texts in all. In order to rate the quality of these narratives, we interviewed eight literature teachers, including four native Chinese speakers and four native English speakers who gave their judgment and opinions on the narrative texts in their respective languages.
The research framework of this thesis is based on Labov’s (1972) narrative structure to investigate oral narrative and Martin’s (2005) attitude in appraisal system to analyze the quality of narrative by investigating evaluations used by narrators.
From the interview with the literature teachers, we found that evaluation in Labov’s narrative structure was the most important element of being a good quality of a narrative. In addition, narrators in the two languages have different narrative strategies due to their respective cultures. Taiwanese Chinese narrators tended to be brief, while good American English narrators tended to be more detailed. However, good narrators in both languages understood the films correctly and thus gave correct evaluations on the films. In contrast, poor narrators misunderstood the content of the films and thus gave wrong evaluations or delivered non-essential evaluations. Through this study, we hope to provide a reference for future studies on Taiwanese and American oral narration by analyzing good narrative strategies.

並列關鍵字

Narrative Analysis ； Cross-Linguistic Comparison ； Narrative Strategies ； Narrative Structure ； Evaluation

參考文獻

Charles, C. (Producer), & Charles, C. (Director). (1936). Modern Times.〔Motion picture〕.America: United Artists.

Bamberg, M., & Damrad-Frye, R. (1991). On the ability to provide evaluative comments: Further explorations of children’s narrative competencies. Journal of Child Language, 18, 689-710.

Berman, R., & Slobin, D. (1994). Narrative structure. In R. Berman & D. Slobin (Eds.), Relating events in narrative: A crosslinguistic developmental study (pp. 39-84). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Brown, H. D. (2000). Principles of language learning and teaching (4th ed.). New York:Longman.

Chang, J. H. (2001). A study of narrative structure and evaluative device in personal narratives of children. Unpublished master’s thesis, Providence University, Taichung, Taiwan.