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An ethnographic study of a pre-school classroom explored an unconventional triangulated framework using literary theory, cultural and critical theory for communication inquiry into the narrative experiences of multicultural children. Field observations were conducted during 1991 in a pre-kindergarten class in a western United States university town; seven children of diverse nationalities were observed. The study experiments with a humanistic framework for interpreting narrative discourses on two levels: (1) narratives--written, oral, and gestural--of children from multi-cultural, non-U.S. backgrounds; and (2) written and oral narratives of the head teacher who represents organizational classroom activity, program philosophy, and values of the dominant culture. The ultimate purpose of such dialectical analysis of narrative and tale structures in the two sets of discourse is to reveal, by means of embedded ideologies, cultural codes, significant clusters, and symbolic meanings, the process of consent and struggle between the discourse systems. Further, by examining this process it should also be possible to portray the particular socio-cultural system of the classroom. (Thirty-eight references are attached.) (Author/PRA)