Abstract

Cultural schema theory presents a cognitive approach to the question of how cultural knowledge is represented (e.g., Palmer, 1996; D’Andrade, 1995; Strauss & Quinn, 1997). Cultural schemas are conceptual structures which enable an individual to store perceptual and conceptual information about his/her culture and make interpretations of cultural experiences and expressions. In other words, cultural schemas provide “templates” that help guide our interpretation of cultural events. Cultural schemas may be studied by setting up experiments or by text analysis. The underlying assumption in the latter approach is that linguistic expression provides a window to cultural-cognitive systems. In this approach, recurrent patterns and clues in discourse are exploited for what they tell us about the speakers’ underlying cognitive structures and processes that feed and are fed by cultural systems. Cultural schema theory provides an interface where the interplay of language, culture, and cognition can best be observed.

While cultural schemas are rightly understood to be closely associated with language (Palmer, 1996), data from monolingual English speaking urban dwelling Aboriginal speakers provides strong evidence that they may be carried over into an indigenous variety of a second language. This paper details how cultural schema theory has been employed to explore some aspects of Aboriginal English oral narrative (e.g., Malcolm et al, 1999; Malcolm, & Rochecouste, 2000). The merit of this approach lies in the explanatory tools that it has provided us with, in accounting for the features of oral narrative in Aboriginal English which are distinctive and which often impair its lucidity to non-Aboriginal speakers. In particular, we have focused on the exploration of a) recurrent semantic and formal patterning across a large body of narratives, b) evidence of speakers’ use of indigenous schemas in processing oral narrative, and c) schema maintenance in discourse in non-traditional settings and on non-traditional subjects. The data that we have drawn on comprise naturalistic oral narratives produced by Aboriginal people from different cultural subgroups living in urban and non-urban areas in Western Australia.

Thus far, our analysis reveals distinctive schemas which are clearly relatable to aspects of Aboriginal culture. There are also some recurrent features of Aboriginal English oral narrative which appear to give evidence of these schemas playing a distinctive role in processing of discourse. Finally, a growing body of evidence exists which testifies to the widespread maintenance of such schematic frameworks, in whole or part, in urban Aboriginal discourse.
 

References:

D'Andrade. R. (1995). The development of cognitive anthropology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Malcolm, I. G., Haig, Y., Könisgberg, P., Rochecouste, J., Collard, G., Hill, A., & Cahill, R. (1999). Towards
        more user-friendly education for speakers of Aboriginal English. Mount Lawley: Centre for Applied
        Language and Literacy Research, Edith Cowan University.

Malcolm, I. G. & Rochecouste, J. (2000). Event and story schemas in Australian Aboriginal English discourse.
        English World-Wide, 21(2), 95-123

Palmer, G. B. (1996). Toward a Theory of Cultural Linguistics. Austin: University of Texas Press.

Strauss, C. & Quinn, N. (1997). A cognitive theory of cultural meaning. New York: Cambridge University
        Press.