Narrative as Social Practice: Anglo-Western and Australian Aboriginal Oral Traditions

This is a highly original comparative study of the oral storytelling traditions of two widely divergent cultures, Anglo-Western culture and Central Australian Aboriginal culture. Concerned with both theoretical and empirical issues, this book offers a critical discussion of the most influential theories of narrative. It evaluates them on the basis of textual analyses of Anglo-Western and Australian Aboriginal oral narratives, viewed in the context of the different storytelling practices, values and worldviews in both cultures. The book offers new insights to readers interested in linguistics, narratology, discourse analysis, cross-cultural pragmatics, anthropology, and Australian Aboriginal studies.

Review:

This book is a useful reference for those who are interested in the theoretical and methodological issues in contrastive study of narrative, and particulary for those who carry out research into the linguistic and cultural pratices of Australian Aborigines. Judy Woon Yee Ho in: Discourse & Society 2/2006