The incorporation of popular culture into Newfoundland school children's narratives

Coviello, Elizabeth Anne (2005) The incorporation of popular culture into Newfoundland school children's narratives. Masters thesis, Memorial University of Newfoundland.

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Abstract

The concept of children taking characters and ideas from popular culture and the mass media and incorporating them into new narratives is not new. On the Avalon Peninsula, Newfoundland I collected a corpus of narratives from two groups of children aged between seven and nine. It is commonly assumed that Newfoundland was isolated from mainland influences, but research has found it has a strong relationship to mainland popular culture and mass media. -- Despite Newfoundland's rich history of oral tradition, four categories emerged from the data showing evidence of influence from the mass media and popular culture. A gender division emerged in the data, with girls producing passive texts and boys creating action-adventure stories. I found my informants were all exposed to similar mass media and popular culture texts from which they took and incorporated characters and images into their own narratives.

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