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

• Main Author: Coviello, Elizabeth Anne
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: Memorial University of Newfoundland 2005
• Subjects: Newfoundland
• Online Access: https://research.library.mun.ca/10351/; https://research.library.mun.ca/10351/1/Coviello_ElizabethAnne.pdf

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.