Narrative Structure and Evaluative Language of Personal Narratives Shared by Urban Aboriginal Children in Taiwan

Labovian narrative theory is used to explore the personal narrative performance of five-year-old urban aboriginal children. Fifty-two participants with the same socioeconomic status (half aboriginal, half non-aboriginal) were recruited from 11 preschools in metropolitan Taipei, Taiwan. Narratives were collected by interviewing individual children about past experiences. Interviews were conducted in Mandarin Chinese, tape-recorded, and transcribed verbatim. With ethnicity as the independent variable, the results indicated the following: (1) in structure elements, urban aboriginal children tended to use more evaluations and non-aboriginal children offered more complicating actions. (2) Urban aboriginal children outperformed their counterparts regarding structural level (approximately half in the leapfrogging level and one-third in the chronological level). (3) Regarding evaluative features, urban aboriginal children used significantly more intention terms, sensory terms, reported speech, and negations, and non-aboriginal children used more obligation terms. The discussion and implication are provided in relation to cultural differences.