Discourse patterns and practices of the Hmong acquiring literacy in Midville, California
Author(s):
Patch, Janis Hicks
Format:
Thesis
Degree granted:
Ph.D.
Publisher:
Ann Arbor : University of California, Berkeley, 1995.
Pages:
450
Language:
English
Abstract:
This dissertation reports a study of patterns of oral language use and patterns of written language development among oral-tradition, Hmong immigrants in Midville, California. The purpose is to describe the traditional oral patterns of narration and information transmission that are being used by the Hmong to acquire literacy and how such patterns work in concert or in conflict with writing skills development. The goal is to better understand how to help an immigrant population that is primarily from an oral-tradition culture acquire literacy at school. For this the dissertation studies for 6 months 9 Hmong subjects--an elder, transition, and younger member--representing three clans that vary in immigration experience factors. The study shows that the differences in narrative production are displayed not among the waves but in the generations. The elders of each wave hold control of the oral narrative traditions, both in the telling of stories or cultural history and in formal proceedings of oral discourse to regulate the society. The transition and younger members know much less of oral discourse practices for both stories and formal rituals, they have become more dependent upon literacy for narrative transmission. The basic narrative form that the young brings to school from home is poetic and lyrical; it values the expression of known events or formulaic patterned phrases that are uniquely arranged accounts or phrases told over an extended time. Here written, concise, explicit communication is both given for learning through books and taught as a preferred form of communicative discourse. The schools exhibit little progress in bridging the differences between the narrative patterns and practices of learning and production in the Hmong students' homes and schools. This presents severe and often unneeded conflicts for the Hmong students learning literate ways in America. The schools could help the Hmong student bridge the path to Western literacy practices in the classroom by displaying a greater sensitivity to the splendid linguistic past from which the Hmong youngsters come and building from that past to create a richer linguistic future that incorporates strengths of both oral and literate discourse.