THE INFLUENCE OF CULTURAL SCHEMA ON L2 PRODUCTION: ANALYSIS OF NATIVE RUSSIAN SPEAKERS’ ENGLISH PERSONAL NARRATIVES A Thesis by MARY ELIZABETH CUNNINGHAM Submitted to the Office of Graduate Studies of Texas A&M University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF SCIENCE August 2011 Major Subject: Curriculum and Instruction The Influence of Cultural Schema on L2 Production: Analysis of Native Russian Speakers’ English Personal Narratives Copyright 2011 Mary Elizabeth Cunningham THE INFLUENCE OF CULTURAL SCHEMA ON L2 PRODUCTION: ANALYSIS OF NATIVE RUSSIAN SPEAKERS’ ENGLISH PERSONAL NARRATIVES A Thesis by MARY ELIZABETH CUNNINGHAM Submitted to the Office of Graduate Studies of Texas A&M University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF SCIENCE Approved by: Chair of Committee, Zohreh Eslami Committee Members, M. Carolyn Clark Radhika Viruru Head of Department, Dennie Smith August 2011 Major Subject: Curriculum and Instruction iii ABSTRACT The Influence of Cultural Schema on L2 Production: Analysis of Native Russian Speakers’ English Personal Narratives. (August 2011) Mary Elizabeth Cunningham, B.A., Baylor University Chair of Advisory Committee: Dr. Zohreh Eslami The present study focuses on 24 personal narratives told by eight highly proficient bilingual L1-Russian, L2-English speakers (NRS) in comparison to 24 personal narratives told by eight native English speakers (NES) in an effort to not only discover any structural differences that may be revealed through statistical analysis, but also to discover evidence of previously documented Russian and American cultural schema in the narratives through qualitative inquiry and narrative analysis. Although much has been written concerning Russian culture, cross-linguistic differences between Russian and English, and Russian English language learners these concepts have never been synthesized and applied to a study of Russian-English bilingual narratives in English in order to discover if the cultural schema and linguistic tendencies from L1 are maintained in the second language. The statistical structural analysis included in this study did not reveal any differences between the NES and NRS narratives. On the other hand qualitative analysis of cultural schemas revealed significant transfer of Russian cultural schema in the Native Russian Speaker participants’ L2 narrative production. The Russian speakers were found iv to maintain their distinctly Russian emotional expression. Influence of cultural schema on L2 production was also visible in the thematic differences between the two sets of stories. The NES responses to each prompt were thematically quite similar, and differed noticeably from the themes of the NRS stories. Similarly, Hofstede’s dimensions of national culture also revealed some differences between the two groups. However, the Russian cultural schema proposed by Croft, triplicity, was not found to be more prominent in the NRS narratives than in the NES ones. In conclusion, the Native Russian Speakers in this study showed significant transfer of their L1 cultural schema when speaking their L2. The findings of this study have revealed the high likelihood of influence and transfer of cultural schema, even when bilingual English language speakers have achieved a very high level of English language mastery. However, this cultural influence on L2 production does not impinge on competence of bilingual speakers when speaking English. v DEDICATION To Micah Cunningham, Mark and Lisa Fulmer, and Dr. Paul Larson: each of you has made an indelible mark on all I manage to produce. vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my committee chair, Dr. Eslami, and my committee members, Dr. Clark and Dr. Viruru, for their guidance and support throughout the course of this research. I also want to extend my gratitude to the women who contributed to this study through their stories. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT .............................................................................................................. iii DEDICATION .......................................................................................................... v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...................................................................................... vi TABLE OF CONTENTS .......................................................................................... vii LIST OF TABLES .................................................................................................... ix CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION AND LITERATURE REVIEW ............................ 1 Literature Review ........................................................................... 1 Methods .......................................................................................... 4 Analysis .......................................................................................... 8 II STATISTICAL STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS ..................................... 11 Introduction .................................................................................... 11 Methods .......................................................................................... 12 Results ............................................................................................ 13 Discussion ...................................................................................... 15 III CULTURAL SCHEMA: TRIPLICITY ............................................... 17 Introduction .................................................................................... 17 Methods ......................................................................................... 20 Instances of Triplicity in the Narratives ......................................... 21 Discussion ...................................................................................... 30 IV CULTURAL SCHEMA: EMOTIONAL EXPRESSION .................... 33 Introduction .................................................................................... 33 Methods .......................................................................................... 36 Results ............................................................................................ 39 Discussion ...................................................................................... 52 viii CHAPTER Page V CULTURAL SCHEMA: NATIONAL CULTURE .............................. 55 Introduction .................................................................................... 55 Methods .......................................................................................... 58 Results ............................................................................................ 58 Discussion ...................................................................................... 66 VI THEMATIC DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE NRS AND NES ENGLISH NARRATIVES .................................................................. 68 Introduction .................................................................................... 68 Methods .......................................................................................... 69 Results ............................................................................................ 69 Conclusions .................................................................................... 85 VII CONCLUSIONS ................................................................................ 87 Discussion ...................................................................................... 87 Implications for Teachers of ESL .................................................. 88 Limitations and Suggestions for Further Research ........................ 89 REFERENCES .......................................................................................................... 91 APPENDIX A ........................................................................................................... 98 VITA ......................................................................................................................... 113 ix LIST OF TABLES Page Table 1 Russian Participants .................................................................................. 7 Table 2 Means and Standard Deviations for Narrative Length Variables Comparing NES and NRS English Narratives .......................................... 13 Table 3 Means and Standard Deviations for Narrative Structure Variables Comparing NES to NRS English Narratives ............................................. 14 Table 4 Distribution of Stories Among Participants .............................................. 36 Table 5 Dimensions of National Culture of Russia and the United States ............. 58 1 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION AND LITERATURE REVIEW LITERATURE REVIEW Linguistic and pedagogical inquiry into communicative competence and cross cultural pragmatics has led, in the last two decades, to a plethora of studies which examine the cultural bounded-ness of story telling and the learnability of this particular genre of language use (Hall, 1983; Mandler, Scribner, Cole, & DeForest, 1980; Minami, 2002; Kintsch & Greene, 1978; Minami & McCabe, 1991; Kang, 2003). Studies have shown a strong correlation between cultural schema and characteristics and the stories that members of a culture produce (Tannen, 1980; Chafe, 1980; Caudill & Schooler, 1973; Harris, Lee, Hensley & Schoen, 1988; Melzi, 2000; Kang, 2003). These correlations are numerous and exist on multiple levels such as structure, theme, collaboration,