Dissertations and Theses @ UNI
Availability
Open Access Thesis
Keywords
Families--Folklore; Families; Oral biography; Oral tradition; Folklore;
Abstract
Current folklore researchers have described the telling of family narratives as performance. The purpose of this study was to identify performance behaviors used by a selected narrator of family stories. Using oral interpretation of prose as a performance model, this researcher proposed that behaviors recognized as performance in oral interpretation were also utilized by the family storyteller. This study was designed to collect and analyze video-taped telling of family stories to determine whether the behaviors demonstrated by the family narrator in telling the story were comparable to behaviors associated with oral interpretation performance. This study assumed that (1) oral interpretation performance consists of definable behaviors, (2) the use of recording devices for collecting the data does not significantly alter the way the stories are usually told, and (3) narrative behaviors demonstrated by this family storyteller are similar to those exhibited by other family narrators. The background of this study established that a relationship exists between oral interpretation and folklore since each involves performance and a recognition of the value of context in addition to text. Some oral interpretation scholars have cited the need for researching oral traditions while some folklorists, as students of oral traditions, have recognized the family narrative as a genre of folklore. This researcher examined the relationship between folklore and oral interpretation by incorporating those behaviors recognized and defined as performance in interpretation as an analytical framework for studying the oral folklore tradition of family narrative. An ethnographic research method was utilized in this study: field collection, participant-observation, observation, and interview. Twenty-six of this family's narratives recorded on video and audio tapes composed the data for this study. After the collection of data, a list of components was developed which represented features recognized as oral interpretation performance behaviors. The tapes were then reviewed to determine if any of those oral interpretation performance components also occurred in the telling of the family stories. Each story was represented by a graph which indicated the occurrence and frequency of each performance component that was observed. The various performance components noted were analyzed to determine patterns of co-occurrence. Finally, the family narrator was interviewed to determine her awareness and assessment of the storytelling "performance." In illustrating how the data were interpreted, a representative story was used to discuss the various performance features. The results of this study indicated that family narrative performance behaviors were composed of physical and vocal oral interpretation components that contributed to narrator point-of-view and characterization. The results of this study demonstrated that this narrator of family stories incorporated oral interpretation performance components in the telling of family stories. The follow-up interview indicated that she was aware of performance behaviors relating to characterization, narrator attitude, and empathy. The recognition of oral interpretation performance behaviors in family narratives has pedagogical implications for the teaching of oral interpretation, implications for family and interpersonal communication, and it may also offer some implications for the methods of collecting and disseminating oral history accounts.
Year of Submission
1984
Degree Name
Master of Arts
Department
Department of Communication and Theatre Arts
First Advisor
Phyllis Scott Carlin
Second Advisor
Marvin D. Jensen
Third Advisor
William L. Waack
Date Original
1984
Object Description
1 PDF file (245 leaves)
Copyright
©1984 Cathryn Anne Elmer-Baldner
Language
en
File Format
application/pdf
Recommended Citation
Elmer-Baldner, Cathryn Anne, "Performance in Family Narratives: An Ethnographic Study of Oral Interpretation Components" (1984). Dissertations and Theses @ UNI. 2584.
https://scholarworks.uni.edu/etd/2584
Comments
If you are the rightful copyright holder of this thesis and wish to have it removed from the Open Access Collection, please submit a request to scholarworks@uni.edu and include clear identification of the work, preferably with URL.