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Narrative Development in Young Children

Narrative Development in Young Children

Narrative Development in Young Children

Gesture, Imagery, and Cohesion
Elena T. Levy, University of Connecticut
David McNeill, University of Chicago
August 2015
Available
Hardback
9781107041110
$138.00
USD
Hardback
USD
eBook

    As children begin to use language in early childhood, they produce increasingly large units of coherent speech, including narrative descriptions of events. This book examines the process of narrative development in young children, focusing on the development of 'cohesion' - the use of speech and gesture to create coherent perspectives on events. Surveying early narrative development in which gesture plays an integral part, the book explores the development of cohesive, clause-linking devices during the period from age two to three. Illustrated with longitudinal cases studies, the book examines the crib-talk of two-year-old Emily and compares it to the discourse patterns of storybooks and nursery rhymes, and to her father's pre-bedtime routines. In a second case study, the authors trace the changing relationships between speech and gesture in the spontaneous narratives of two-year-old Ella. This book will be invaluable to students and researchers in language acquisition, developmental psychology and gesture studies.

    • Will interest readers in the emerging fields of embodied cognition, gesture studies, and other language-related fields
    • Advances a synthesis of socially based approaches to language development with an account of the embodiment of language development in imagery and gesture
    • Presents longitudinal data from the spontaneous narratives of two children between the ages of two and three

    Product details

    August 2015
    Hardback
    9781107041110
    250 pages
    235 × 157 × 15 mm
    0.53kg
    38 b/w illus. 34 tables
    Available

    Table of Contents

    • 1. Toward an embodied account of narrative development
    • Part I. Narratives As Symbol Formation:
    • 2. Narratives, cohesion and symbol formation
    • 3. Social and natural sources of change
    • Part II. Social Sources of Cohesion:
    • 4. Social sources of cohesion – cohesive sources of coherence
    • 5. How early cohesion is grounded in enactment
    • Part III. Gestures, Cohesion, and Narrative Development:
    • 6. Dual semiosis and the roots of cohesion
    • 7. Gestural sources of early cohesion – insights from Ella's stories
    • 8. Gestures, cohesion, and symbol formation
    • 9. Implications for children with autism
    • 10. The material carrier
    • Appendix 1. Transcription of Ella's speech and gestures
    • Appendix 2. Description of Rosie and Jim episodes (94 weeks
    • 23:00 on video).
      Authors
    • Elena T. Levy , University of Connecticut

      Elena T. Levy is an Associate Professor in Psychology in the Department of Psychology at the University of Connecticut. Her publications on narrative discourse include studies of typically developing children and adults, as well as individuals with autistic spectrum disorders. She is co-editor with Susan D. Duncan, Justine Cassell of Gesture and the Dynamic Dimension of Language (2007).

    • David McNeill , University of Chicago

      David McNeill is Professor Emeritus in the Departments of Psychology and Linguistics at the University of Chicago. His publications include a 'trilogy' of gesture books, Hand and Mind (1992), Gesture and Thought (2005) and How Language Began: Gesture and Speech in Human Evolution (2012), plus an edited volume, Language and Gesture (2000).