Linguistic form and social function: A discourse analysis of rhetorical and narrative structure in oral and written African-American folk narrative texts.
Item
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Title
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Linguistic form and social function: A discourse analysis of rhetorical and narrative structure in oral and written African-American folk narrative texts.
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Identifier
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AAI9130289
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identifier
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9130289
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Creator
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Anokye, Akua Duku.
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Contributor
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Adviser: William A. Stewart
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Date
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1991
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Language, Linguistics | Folklore
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Abstract
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This study is a performance based linguistic analysis of some African American folk narratives from the John and Master genre. The analysis is based on two sources of data: a previously unknown manuscript that includes field notes and stories, "Negro Folk-Tales from the Gulf States," collected by Zora Neale Hurston from 1927-1929 and housed at the Anthropological Archives of the Smithsonian Institute; and live recorded performances of folktales from the WPA's Hurston-Lomax-Barnicle Expedition of 1935 housed at the American Folklife Center of the Library of Congress.;Beginning with a performance based transcription of the live recordings, the study analyzes the discourse structure of the folktales and illustrates that the prosodic structure, which organizes these performances, underlies comprehension in the oral texts. It is the prosodic structure along with syntactic and semantic features which chunk the discourse into cohesive interpretable rhetorical units.;This analysis also examines the linguistic forms and social functions of these narratives and demonstrates the impact of audience interaction on the structure, theme, and performance. Through analysis of lexical, thematic, syntactic, phonological and paralinguistic choices made by John Davis, the study infers information about the social context of the communicative event. The study demonstrates also that by examining underlying cultural presuppositions contributing to the meaning of the stories one can more fully appreciate and understand the event and the culture out of which the stories operate.;The final piece of the study is a comparison of three versions of a John and Master tale "John and the Coon" told in the Gulf States from 1927-1935 and illustrates that there is an underlying narrative structure for that sub-genre whether oral or written tales. Study of these tales also provides insights about customary African American speech and language style and the perceived notions about appropriate and inappropriate African American speech and language behavior.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
