Human Development

Original Paper

Working-Class Children’s Experience through the Prism of Personal Storytelling

Miller P.J. · Cho G.E. · Bracey J.R.

Author affiliations

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Ill., USA

Keywords: Comparative researchPersonal storytellingSocial classSocializationSpeech genres

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Human Development 2005;48:115–135
https://doi.org/10.1159/000085515

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Article / Publication Details

First-Page Preview
Abstract of Original Paper

Published online: July 11, 2005
Issue release date: May – June

Number of Print Pages: 21
Number of Figures: 0
Number of Tables: 0

ISSN: 0018-716X (Print)
eISSN: 1423-0054 (Online)

For additional information: https://www.karger.com/HDE

Abstract

Framed within recent developments in genre theory, this paper examines personal storytelling as practiced by working-class children and their families. Although both working-class and middle-class children encounter versions of oral storytelling that embody a personal perspective, these versions privilege different slants on experience. Drawing on a program of research that spans several decades and two European American working-class communities, we attempt to characterize the working-class slant on its own terms, not simply as a departure from a middle-class standard. We conclude that the working-class slant encourages children to see that they have the right and resources to narrate their own experiences in self-dramatizing ways, but that the right to be heard and to have one’s point of view accepted cannot be taken for granted.



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Article / Publication Details

First-Page Preview
Abstract of Original Paper

Published online: July 11, 2005
Issue release date: May – June

Number of Print Pages: 21
Number of Figures: 0
Number of Tables: 0

ISSN: 0018-716X (Print)
eISSN: 1423-0054 (Online)

For additional information: https://www.karger.com/HDE

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2005, Vol.48, No. 3

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