For assignment 2.6 I decided to answer the first question regarding oral stories and how Robinson’s story “Coyote Makes a Deal with King of England” uses oral syntax in order to encourage readers to read the story out loud (King, 186). This question was initially interesting to me personally because as an Asian studies major I had experiences looking at Chinese vernacular written oral stories from the Ming dynasty called huaben. These huaben stories use storytellers rhetoric and tell the story in a way that feels like the narrator is speaking to a simulated audience by using transitional terms like “behold!” and “there, for all to see …”. Because I had all of this knowledge on huaben stories I wanted to see if there were any similarities between vernacular huaben stories and Robinson’s stories that use oral syntax (long story short, I found out that they were totally different from each other!).
Because Huaben stories and Robinson’s stories that use oral syntax are so different from each other I am going to move past trying to compare and contrast these two type of stories and focus on trying to uncover how the oral syntax works in Robinson’s stories. Most of us already know that “First Nations storytelling involves expert use of the voice, vocal and body expression, intonation, the use of verbal imagery, facial animation, context, plot and character development, natural pacing of the telling, and careful authentic recall of the story” and when trying to transcribe oral stories we often loose all of these features that make oral stories special. However, King explains that “Robinson, within the confines of written language is successful in creating an oral voice” (King, 186). And in order to figure out how Robinson successfully writes in a way that captures an oral voice I have read one of his stories called “Coyote Makes a Deal with King of England” as this story uses oral syntax in order to encourage readers to read the story out loud.
By reading this story once in my head and once out loud I learned how Robinson plays with syntax and structure in order to encourage readers to read the story out loud. When reading Robinson’s story silently in my head I initially felt that the rhythm of the story felt choppy and awkward. And some of the reasons why I felt awkward while reading this in my head is because there were sometimes missing words in the sentence, some of the sentences were fragments, sentences repeated themselves, abbreviated words and some of the sentences used grammar that I deemed to be “incorrect”. However, when reading Robinson’s story out loud it felt much more natural, I realized that Robinson was writing not in sentences but in utterances as when you said the story out loud it sounded close to how people speak in everyday life. Like for example when we are speaking in everyday life we do not have really long grammatically perfect sentences we speak in shorter choppier utterances and we are often dropping off words, using abbreviated words, and repeating our words and phrases to emphasize important points of our speech. Furthermore, I realized that the choppy lines were actually an indication for where to take breaths and how long you should pause. For example in the story when the story goes:
“And the fog come.
The fog on the lake … and they disappeared.
And they don’t see ’em.
So they go back.
Another time.” (Robinson)
readers know that there are short pauses between the first three lines and then long pauses for the fourth and fifth line as the spaces between the utterances are much longer.
I feel that because Robinson is writing in a way that is mimicking natural speech this encourages the readers to want to read this story out loud rather than read this story in their head. When reading this story in your head it just feels wrong and in my opinion is harder to understand and make meaning out of the story. When reading it out loud it sounds more natural and it feel like someone is actually telling you a story as is written in a way that mimics human speech patterns.
citations
“Story Telling.” First Nation Pedagogy Online, firstnationspedagogy.ca/storytelling.html.
King, Thomas. “Godzilla vs. Post-Colonial.” Unhomely States: Theorizing English-Canadian Postcolonialism. Peterbough, ON: Broadview, 2004. 183- 190. Web. 04 april 2013.
Robinson, Harry. Living by Stories: a Journey of Landscape and Memory. Ed. Wendy Wickwire. Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2005. Print.
Theobald, Ulrich. “Huaben 話本, Story Scripts.” Huaben 話本 (Www.chinaknowledge.de), 3 May 2013, www.chinaknowledge.de/Literature/Terms/huaben.html.
“Why Human Speech Is Special.” The Scientist Magazine®, www.the-scientist.com/features/why-human-speech-is-special–64351.
Hi Sidney!
Referring back to the passage you mentioned, I feel like part of the reason that I thought it was more natural to read out loud versus read internally was that the passage reads rather ambiguously. I think at times it’s uncertain what the subject the determiner is referring to. That being said, I think along with your idea of the breaths/pauses the passage is structured rather poetically. When spoken with voice inflections and intonations, the passage really transforms. When I read it in my head it was hard to keep myself from dissecting and deciphering the intent of the passage, which I feel like is similar to your sentiment!
Yes! You totally are right! I felt when I read it out loud I was able to understand what subject the sentence was referring too. I actually felt this and thought about this earlier on but I did not know how to exactly explain it but the way you explained it was perfect. When I read the passage in my head I often forgot what the subject was supposed to be and I would end up being confused and having to go back reread and remind myself. The interesting thing is I did not have to do this when reading aloud it was more natural and I knew what the sentence was referring to. Maybe this has to do with our memory maybe we remember for longer when hear things out loud.
Hey Sidney! I really appreciate your insight and knowledge surrounding forms of storytelling. I was fascinated by the way your exploration made me hear the passage you shared for the first time. I read a lot of plays and most of the time in my head. I only tend to read the plays out loud in the rehearsal hall or when I am preparing to audition or perform on stage or in front of the camera. There is a physiological shift that happens to me when speaking text out loud and a sort of character is formed. I tend to lose y analytical brain the more I go over the same story out loud. This may be a very personal thing, but did you feel yourself become someone, become a storyteller perhaps as you read out loud? Did you feel any shift within yourself?
Yes! I actually did feel this. When I read out loud it felt like I was actually being a story teller. Even though I was the only person in the room and no one was listening to me my voice became more expressive, I played with the tone of my voice, and for the dialogue part I would try and mimic what I thought the characters should sound like. On a side note when I read out loud I actually was able to picture what was happening in the story better, its almost like it was easier to imagine what the characters were doing.
Hi Sidney!
Thanks for taking the time to write this great post!
I believe, and someone please correct me if I’m wrong, that the story “Coyote Makes a Deal with King of England” was spoken out load by Robinson then transcribed by Wendy Wickwire (I think you mentioned above that Robinson wrote it). I only mention this because I think it is amazing that Wickwire did so well transcribing the stories told to her by Robinson in a way that preserved his story teller voice. I also found that it was easier to read the story outlaid to find the correct rhythm. Additionally, the more I read it, the better my telling of the story became. Do you think that repetition is also why story tellers are so good at conveying their stories?
P.S. Thank you for the cool note about heaven stories, I will definitely need to look into those!
Sorry about that, yes Wickwire is the one who wrote it and it was spoken by Robinson. I will make sure I will not make the same mistake next time! I also felt that the more I read it the more I got a sense of how the voice of the characters and how the characters voices should be portrayed as well as the voice of the narrator telling the story. I think it is really interesting to have an oral story that is written down like this, because most oral stories when they get told over and over again things change like places, characters, what characters said. But when the story is written like this the information in the story cannot be changed, but what can be changed is the tone and pitch of your voice, the speed of your reading, and how you portray characters voices to sound. It would be interesting to have a bunch of people read this story a few times and see how different people would make changes to their voice when telling it and how these changes would develop over time as they told it over and over again.
Hi Sidney! We both did the same question but I found your post really interesting, as you focused on the grammar and style of the story, which I only lightly touch upon. I loved how you expanded on the syntax of the story, linking the breaks, repetitions, and fragments, things we would never see in written stories to everyday oral speech, which was very insightful. I found the difference in your idea of Chinese written oral stories and Robinson’s interesting as well. Since I commented that the story felt like a play to me, something that is acted out with different voices, breaks and tones, we both thought similar things. But I found your insight to the story relating to a more common speech form more insightful, since plays are generally structured grammatically correct. A question I would propose to you is, what do you think of the relation to oral stories and plays? Do you feel that like the Chinese written oral stories, plays are much different from each other, without the stage direction and more leaning on theatrical rather than real life imitation?
Thanks for the comment! Like you said Robinson’s oral story written down is much like everyday speech which is not always grammatically correct, lack subjects, and are produced in short utterances, it is hard to compare this to plays in general because I would imagine there would be many different types of plays. I would guess that plays in some ways like you said would be more structured and grammatically correct but I imagine that all depends on the type of play. Maybe they would be similar in a way as they would have specific places for a person to pause and take a break when speaking. When comparing plays and Hua ben stories I would say that these are very different. The reason why is because Hua ben stories are long sentences that are grammatically structured, there are no pauses for breathing and it is not close to common speech at all. Hua ben’s are pretty much like your average Fairy tale story the only difference is that the narrator is very present and is continuously addressing the audience and also there is a commentator that will chime in with his opinions once in a while.
Hi Sidney,
this is such an interesting post about the possibility of properly transcribing an oral story. I really enjoyed reading the part you said that you were feeling awkward and choppy about Robinson’s story. It made the story sound more interesting and as a reader of your blog I would like to read it. Moreover, when you found out that the choppy lines in the reading are created for taking breaths and to pause, like in speech, I think it is logical and gives modern writer an example to learn from.
Yes, this is really interesting as I feel that a lot of other writers have looked at the way that Robinson’s book is written and have tried to adopt this style somewhat. A great example is the novel by King Green Grass, Running Water, the author in this story does not completely adopt this style as it is a novel that you can still read comfortably in your head. However, his style of writing is based on this and you can tell as he does give pauses, write in smaller sentences, and once in a while will use a bit grammar that sounds more vernacular.