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Some of the most common stories shared by recipients of public assistance are "origin stories": personal experience narratives that describe how people found themselves in need of help. In terms of the narrative event, these stories initially appear complete, meeting common criteria for defining narrative. But participants also narrate futures that provide an alternative ending to their origin stories and, in doing so, reframe, redefine, and "refinish" these stories. Analysis of these alternative endings reveal narrators to be both bricoleurs and cultural commentators, often referencing two well-established narratives in US culture: the cultural myth of the American Dream and the legend of "the welfare queen." Further, the move to imagine the future encourages narrators to transform stories of their lives into more holistic life stories, revealing the life story as an emic genre of folklore. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of "fairy tale" was introduced to China in the early twentieth century. Subsequently, a wave of collecting and publishing fairy tales, along with other genres of folklore, spread all over China. By the early 1930s, the most influential editor in this folklore collection movement, with more than a thousand tales in multiple volumes, was Lin Lan. The tales were collected from everyday people in rural areas. These tales have demonstrated a continuing interactive history of oral storytelling and written records in Chinese history. By the late 1930s, many of the tales from the Lin Lan series had been introduced to the West. However, at the same time, questions about the actual identity (or identities) of "Lin Lan" and why the Lin Lan phenomenon occurred were never openly mentioned or discussed. Further, Lin Lan is still unknown beyond the Chinese-speaking world. This article revisits the Lin Lan phenomenon, examines the social background, and argues that Lin Lan should be appropriately acknowledged as the "Brothers Grimm of modern China" [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Mana (01049313) is the property of Contra Capa Livraria and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Changeling lore is the focus of a great deal of scholarship and there is a well-established associated typology in terms of Migratory Legends and of narrative motifs. This study considers the ways in which an unusual (and potentially unique) narrative relates to widely known changeling lore and to associated analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista de Estudos da Linguagem is the property of Revista de Estudos da Linguagem and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Res Humanitariae is the property of Res Humanitariae and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Eesti Rakenduslingvistika Ühingu Aastaraamat is the property of Eesti Rakenduslingvistika Uhing (ERU) / Estonian Association for Applied Linguistics and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This study investigated the characteristics of oral narratives produced by six Aboriginal children aged between 6;6 and 9;6 years in North Queensland. Fictional narrative retellings were analysed at microstructure and macrostructure levels. Results were compared to the narrative story retell database included in the Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts software. Most children gained lower results on measures of narrative microstructure, such as mean length of C-unit and number of different words, but performed well on several measures of narrative structure, namely the Narrative Scoring Scheme (NSS) total score and component scores for Introduction, Character Development and Conclusion. Older children performed within normal limits, or better, on more NSS measures than the younger children. Implications for the development of appropriate assessment measures for Aboriginal children are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to show how folk legends can serve as useful source materials for social historians interested in understanding the world-view of individuals in earlier centuries. It underlines how such legends provide access to the minds of storytellers, human geography, and local belief systems, offering, in a sense, maps of the local geographical, mental, social and spiritual surroundings inhabited by the storytellers. In addition to providing information about the actual surroundings (meant to be recognized and understood by their audiences), folk legends also give an insight into local hierarchies, concepts of illness, attitudes to outsiders and the authorities, and models of behaviour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]