Transcript Figurative Language Development Research and Popular

Figurative Language
Development Research and
Popular Children’s Literature:
Why We Should Know,
“Where the Wild Things Are”
Kathleen Ahrens
Agenda
• Introduction
• Problems from previous studies
• Reasons for the discrepancy in methodologies and
materials
• ‘Ideal’ methodologies and materials
• Aim of this study
• Research design
• Results
Introduction
• Previous studies has lead to a welldeveloped of understanding of how children
come to comprehend figurative language
• Children do not generally exhibit complete
adult proficiency in metaphor
comprehension until 7 or 8 years of age
• Before that, children’s metaphor
comprehension is limited
Problems from previous studies
• Concerns have arisen over the
methodologies and materials used to
evaluate children’s figurative language
comprehension abilities (metaphorical
comprehension ability)
Reasons for the discrepancy in
methodologies
• A dominant methodology in language
comprehension research involves presenting
artificial utterances created by adult
experimenters for children to comprehend
• This methodology considers adult proficiency
as a goal state with which the current level of
children’s performance is compared
Reasons for the discrepancy in
methodologies
• Through the use of clever techniques (e.g.
dishabituation paradigms) that children can exhibit
some cognitive functions much earlier than was
once believed
• By using material that children are unaccustomed
to (require adult proficiency to comprehend),
children’s figurative language processing
capacities may be underestimated
Reasons for the discrepancy in
materials
• The comprehension materials in language
development studies against what is found
in popular children’s books
• “Noun-phrase” metaphors were more
prevalent in study materials than in popular
children’s literature (Broderick,1992)
• Broderick’s (1992) alert has gone unheeded
Reasons for the discrepancy in
materials
• It is unclear whether children’s literature
serve as the appropriate external referent for
research materials
• Broderick (1992) noted there is a need to
understand children’s normal oral experience
with figurative language as a parallel means
of assessing the validity of research materials
‘Ideal’ methodologies and materials
• Verbal statements commonly found in
children’s literature as materials in language
development research
• Children’s literature should not be the
primary comparison case to assess its
validity because of a great deal of
variability exists in children’s literature
‘Ideal’ methodologies and materials
• Understanding the nature of the popular
children’s literature and the figurative
language content in children’s literature is
important to fully understand the
development of complex language
processing
‘Ideal’ methodologies and materials
• Level of difficulty in the content of
children’s literature should match with the
children’s processing capacities, otherwise
it may hinder developmental potential
Aim of this study
• Evaluate the figurative language content of
the children’s literature commonly available
in U.S. public libraries takes place across
three variables
• Historical
• Genre
• Audience
Aim of this study
• To determine the content of children’s literature has
been accounted for the development of children’s
figurative language capacity
• To determine whether metaphorical language is
differentially applied to expository versus
nonexpository texts
• To determine whether the developmental nature of
figurative language processing is accounted for in
the children’s popular literature
Research Design
• Materials
- Popular children’s books available in the
Children’s Department of the Racine Public
Library across three factors
- Historical (books published before 1950s VS after
1950s)
- Reason:
1950 is a compromise line between splitting the
selection of books at the library in half and splitting
the books according to the beginning of research on
children’s figurative language abilities
Research Design
• Materials
- Genre (Fiction VS Nonfiction according to the
Dewey Decimal classification system)
- Reason:
This is a tradition division in the library
classification system and it influences the amount
of metaphorical language
Research Design
• Materials
- Target Audience Age (books targeted to children less
than 8 years of age VS books targeted to children age
8 years and older according to several separate book
reviewers used by the librarians)
- Reason:
Current generally accepted full adult proficient
metaphor comprehension begins at around age 8 and
the designations of age range are the most widely
used and available in reality
Research Design
• Materials
- Source of the book collection is from the
children’s department of a large and well-stocked
public libraries in U.S.
- Reason:
This is the only source that attempts to appeal to a
wide range of children and their caregivers ad that
is readily available
Research Design
• Procedure
1. Two independent readers started out by reading all
of the books in the sample
2. The readers were instructed to record each
different kinds of metaphorical or similar
comparative statement they encountered in the
texts
Research Design
• Procedure
- The readers were first tutored on what it is
metaphorical instance by showing them examples
of conceptual metaphors from various source
- The readers were also tutored on Children's
books not used in the sample were perused by
each of the readers with the first author of this
article by highlighting the instances of language
that used conceptual metaphors
Research Design
• Procedure
3. An operational definition was constructed for the
four general types of comparative statements
identified in the books
- Four general comparative statements include
Conceptual metaphors, Nominal metaphors,
Similes, and personification
- Personification is omitted for this study because
the researchers suspected personification would be
more prominent in books targeted at younger
children instead just those aged below or above 8
Research Design
• Procedure
4. The operational definitions were tested by having
each of the readers count metaphors in a subsample
of texts.
5. Readers would then compare their notes to see if
they had the exact same number of metaphors and
appeared in the same instances of text as
metaphorical
6. The readers went through a second subsample of
texts to double-check their use of the operational
definition until they reached perfect agreement
Research Design
• Calculation of metaphors per book
- Books with short enough texts to enable a direct count of
all words and metaphors were designated “smaller”  the
number of metaphors and words were directly counted
- Books with difficulty to direct count all words and
metaphors were designated “larger”  the number of
metaphors and words were counted by representative
samples of at least three pages of texts and then averaged
on those pages, then these numbers were then multiplied
by the total number of pages to estimate the number of
metaphors and words in the entire text
- Mean number of metaphors per 1000 words of text was
calculated
Results
• The overall frequency of metaphors per 1000
words of text was 53.86 and ranged from 28.88 to
80.40
Results
• The factor that has the most significant numbers of
metaphors are from Fiction (70.32 metaphors per
1000 words)
Discussion
• Will be continued after Lunar New Year
Holiday