To what extent does the way children are socialised into narrative in a given subculture affect the way they are perceived in the wider culture, both as children and subsequently as adults?
The paper will begin firstly in the overview and correlation of socialisation and the concept of narrative which must be tackled in order to put the topic into context.
Learning has much to do with one’s milieu and social context. In this manner, the cultural background of a child is an integral variable in forming patterns of communication. The orientation begins in the home, and later, to a wider culture. Narratives, discourses, or story-telling is able to shape and invoke family, social and cultural identities. Learning, society and culture are thus tightly knitted to each other. Cultural diversity may manifest itself in discourses among the areas of telling, tales, and tellers.
Narratives and their Underlying Influence
Narratives are best known in the literary scene as consisting of plots and stories or a collection of events as presented in books, film, or other media. Thus, the dominating theme is that Narrative is a fictional event. However, its definition had no sooner expanded to encompass other fields other than Literature or the Humanities, such as science. It may now involve the recounting of experiences and actions beyond the story telling medium of paper or multimedia. It can in fact involve the accounts of daily life depending on who tells the story, how it is told, and what it contains. It becomes an interpretation and a compilation of human affairs. “Indeed, there are narratives of social affiliations, cultures, sports, hobbies and recreational endeavours, movies and the arts, professional groups, armed forces, political groups, and so on”, which in their own, bring people together, or separate them. This means that the narrative can most certainly involve real life events with people as participants and with context creating the background of the storyline. Another difference is the concept of space and time between the literary narratives to the actual narratives. While time and sequencing of events is what determines the arrangement of literary narratives, actual narratives would depend on space and theme rather the plot. The narrative remains a controversial method in the clinical field.
Describes narrative as a “dynamic structure that converts ‘talk’ into ‘text’.” It allows the conversion of conversation to something intelligible and it allows itself to be transformed and transported from one teller, to one listener, and recur itself in multiple conversations, contexts and cultures (5). Narrative juggles the imagination and one’s experience in a way that is compact and economical (15).
Listening to a narrative, like witnessing a magician’s act, is a relatively inexpensive means of trying out patterns of living, situations and emotional reactions that one may never experience, or want to experience, in one’s own life. The feelings, among others, of curiosity, awe, pity, sheer fun, and final reassurance that a narrative evokes-those indirect ‘perlocutionary effects’ of speech act theory-must occur in our minds, not just or even necessarily, within the story-teller’s.
This indicates the influence a narrative is capable of experience without having to actually go through it. A narrative is able to mould, shape and change perceptions according to how the narrators (typically an adult) sees this. In this regard, the narrators are in a privileged and authoritative position of dictating thoughts according to how they see fit because they will be regarded as truth and dictating bodies.
The impulse towards narrative telling comes at the instinct to entertain others and the gratification brought by the fact that one is able to make an effect in someone’s mind. “Narratives are culturally priced, and sometimes dismissed” because this attempts to reach towards another at the risk of being accepted or disapproved. Good narratives have in their ability to bind communities. The unbelievable and the rational become true and accepted in a culture. Narratives naturalizes these otherwise incredible facts by merging “causes to effects and inductive evidence to deductive inferences” (16)
Narrative is a means towards self-assertion and self-preservation. It allows an individual to define him/herself and create as well as project an identity that will stand out from the rest of the community. It is an “interlocking device for self-perpetuation that has of necessity to involve at least two members of the human community before it can work” (22) It summons several emotions in its dialogues and it creates imagination and experiences in the part of the active interpreting listeners as told by the tellers. A narrative won’t be significant and successful until these two parties are involved and active, the listener as well as the teller. In between these two, the narrative connects and shares the most impossible and false thoughts that maybe shaped as truth.
Narrative has a lot of learning processes taking place in it. The act of telling stories employs a great deal of motor skills and a great deal of reflection especially when it comes to the following: “social values, beliefs, dilemmas, and goals that underlie and motivate human interaction”. This is significantly dictated by culture. The narratives and the storytellers need to be culturally acceptable. For narratives to take place, there must firstly be the active involvement of socialization which will feed children what they need to know. Eventually, out of this storytelling will come something original from the children through the selection of events and through the mastery of vocabulary and emotions such that the culture will supply.
Socialization Processes
Socialization eventually expands from parents, family to community, from subculture to a wider culture. Eventually, culture will clash and merge because children will meet others in differing ethnicities.
Socialization through language and culture stands as a “interactional display (covert or overt) to a novice of expected ways of thinking, feeling, and acting” Social contexts and relationships control how this communication takes place in such a way that the child in question does not only learn of the motor skills in speaking or acting but also internalizing the milieu, the very actions and relationships that will be appropriate for such socializations. Such milieus will involve the transformation from family and school, proceeding through the notion that culture is not static, but instead it involves multiple discourses and processes that may be learned and forged in other milieus, and agents such as friends and other children of the same age through socialization into narratives. Children either accept or resist this, defending previously established beliefs and identity against the incoming new ones. This is especially rampant in educational settings and the community beyond the home.
On the topic of socialisation within the educational setting, Basil Bernstein had a great deal of work that focuses on social class and language (which is the vehicle of socialisation and narratives). According to Basil Bernstgein, class presents differences in how language is conveyed through the manner of restriction. Working Class are at an disadvantage especially when the educational system favors the middle class language. This immediately creates more socialisation and narrative opportunities for middle class than working class. The milieu antagonizes and contrasts the way of thinking, the culture, as well as the values and beliefs of working class children making it more difficult to establish interaction or relationships. In this context, the extent of socialisation into narratove from subculture to a wider one is significantly large because clearly, it determines cognitive skills and learning in the long run whether limited and permitted to grow.
As such, the extent of children socialised into narrative in a given subculture is large in the manner they are perceived in the wider culture, both as children and subsequently as adults. The idea here is that socialisation and narratives affect brain work, cognitive skills and learning. The paper elaborated on the significance of socialisation and narratives in growth and in conditioning a child. How these would be handled for children will be crucial in many ways.
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