You are here: Home :: Area CULI :: Linguistics and literature :: Communication science

Karen Kow Yip Cheng

Negation and the role of gender and ethnic identity in the discourse of Malaysian children

This study is a qualitative study of Malaysian children aged between four and six years engaged in a story-telling task. The question posed in this piece of research, then, is the role played by gender and ethnic identity in discourse. If it does play a role, what, then, is the nature of this role? Listed below are the aims of this study:

1. To chart relatively uninterrupted discourse in story-telling among children aged between four and six.

2. To discover gender and ethnic differences in narrative forms, in particular, focus will be given to the use of negation.

3. To examine the role of gender and ethnic identity on the discourse of children.

The path taken by this study is to analyse discourse in story-telling. The aim is to examine the use of negation by children of both sexes and of two ethnic groups in Malaysia (Malays and Chinese) in the act of story-telling. This study is exciting in that actual transcriptions of the story-telling can be analyzed.

Multilingua Journal of Cross-Cultural and Interlanguage Communication, Walter de Gruyter

Print ISSN: 0167-8507
Volume: 25, 05/2006
Pages: 9 - 25

Show full article (external site)

Show all available items of this journal

 

Area CULI