Measuring coherence 137

The picture stories were, next to relevance, also analyzed on the feature of coherence. Coherence, as has been pointed out, focuses on the ability of the learner to be able to speak in an orderly and logical fashion producing semantically meaningful utterances. In the picture stories there must be a consistent relation between the utterances and the sequential episodes of the story. In contrast to relevance, which focuses on the direct relation between what is said and what is seen, coherence focuses on making sense of the whole, as said by De Beaugrande and Dressler (1981) above. Each picture description must therefore be relevant, and throughout, these utterances must in some way be connected.

Picture stories are stories told with the aid of pictures. Each episode is presented in a picture. The story teller tells the story guided by each picture as he goes along from one to the next. In telling stories, more is involved than just conveying relevant meaning for each picture. The telling of the story must also have coherence in order for it to be characterized as a story. The text or story must be about something. The utterances within a response must be connected in some way to produce an internal relation. Each utterance must be formally connected to the previous utterance; they must, using the words of Reinhart, be linearly connected. Foster (1990) explains that these linear connections can be horizontal as well as vertical. Horizontal connection implies that consecutive utterances are connected to each other, while vertical connections imply that the utterances in general are connected to the topic being developed. In the case of the picture stories, it must be easy to infer the relationship between the utterances and the topic of the story as presented through the pictures – there must be connectedness. In line with Foster, such relationships are called here horizontal and vertical coherence. Horizontal coherence is expressed through the use of explicit linguistic devices and vertical coherence is expressed through semantic connections between the utterances and the underlying topic, or theme of the story.

Being able to produce relevant utterances for the individual pictures in a picture story does not automatically imply that the story is also coherent. Foster (1990) remarked that although relevance plays a crucial role in coherence, a picture story which is not relevant is, by nature, also not coherent; on the other hand, a coherent picture story is not always entirely relevant. The two stories, reproduced in Figure 6:8, illustrate the features of horizontal and vertical coherence. Two contrasting stories, one with strong coherence and the other with weak coherence, emphasize the complexity of determining coherence. In a sense, one feels the struggling of these learners in their endeavor to accomplish the task.

Yumna, in her effort to tell the story, was unable to connect the utterances from picture to picture horizontally nor could she connect them to the theme of the story – gift giving. This resulted in a non-coherent story. In the first two pictures she enacted the portrayed actions by playing the role of the protagonist.In the first picture she seemed to play the role of the man and in the second one that of the woman. By switching roles Yumna broke the connection between the two pictures; had she not done so, she would have produced horizontal coherence. In her story there is evidence of a trace of coherence in the vertical connectedness. Yumna’s utterance ik hier naar huis (I here to house) for the second picture could have contributed to vertical coherence, through shared knowledge between Yumna and the listener. As explained above, it is customary in Morocco not to open gifts in the presence of the giver. Yumna by saying that she is going home (presumably to open the gift) alluded to the theme of the story but this piece of information was not connected to the previous nor the following picture. It stands, as it were, in isolation. Consequently there is no vertical coherence. In the third picture she only said kapot (broken), presumably describing the torn wrapping paper, but this was not made explicit. In the final picture, although she identified the object, she could not make clear that the kan (jug) was the gift portrayed in the first picture nor that the “breaking” of the paper in the previous picture had any connection with this jug. Distinctly her story, though containing some attempts at forming connectedness, is neither horizontally nor vertically coherent.

Guli’s story is an example of one that is coherent. She was able to connect the pictures bringing about horizontal and vertical coherence. In the first picture the scene was set. In the second picture, the focus of the action switched from the man to the woman. She made this clear by explicitly mentioning the new agent mevrouw (woman) and strengthening the connection by repeating the word cadeautje (gift). In this manner she enhanced horizontal coherence. In the third picture she dropped the agent and the object, but by using the temporal conjunction dan (then) to express sequence of action she connected the utterance with the previous picture maintaining horizontal coherence. In the fourth picture, Guli did not know (or could not remember) the word for vaas (vase) and demonstrated her strategic competence by describing the appearance of the vase instead: kijk,

mooie (look, pretty). Even though Guli again used the word dan (then) in

this final utterance, there was no connection made with the previous utterance. As a result there was no horizontal coherence. Nevertheless, through inference a connection with the theme of the story was preserved – resulting in vertical coherence. Guli had connected most of her utterances horizontally and all of them vertically producing a coherent story. She had

made it clear that the gift given in the first picture is the object taken out of the box in the final picture.

Coherence Coherence

Picture story 1 Yumna

R elev an ce H ori zo nt al V ert ic al Guli R elev an ce H ori zo nt al V ert ic al Cadeautje, Cadeautje. Ik uuh geef. (Gift, gift. I uuh give.) P (Setting

the scene) De meneer voor deze vrouw door geef cadeautje.

(The man for this woman pass.1SG on gift.) R (Setting the scene) Ik hier naar huis. (I here to house.) O No No De mevrouw cadeautje halen.

(The woman gift fetch.INF)

P Yes Yes

Kapot.

(Broken.)

O No No Dan kom voor thuis.

Misschien openmaken.

(Then come.1SG for home, maybe open make.INF) P Yes Yes Kan uuh kan. (Jug uuh jug.) O No No Dan kijk mooie, de naam weet ik niet. (Then look.STEM, pretty, the name I don’t know.)

P No Yes

Figure 6:8 Relevance,, and horizontal and vertical coherence, for picture story 1 as told by two story tellers (R = relevant utterance,P = partially relevant utterance, O = not relevant utterance)

To my knowledge no other studies have focused on the aspect of relevance and coherence in discourse by LESLLA learners, except that of Kurvers (2002). Kurvers (2002) investigated, by use of a picture story, how such learners retell a story. In her study, including preschoolers, adult non- literates, and literates, all with similar ethnic and social backgrounds, Kurvers demonstrated crucial differences in task approach. In her study, the picture story could be told in the L1 or L2, whichever the candidate felt most comfortable. Concerning text coherence, Kurvers found that 45% of the stories told by the non-literate adults were coherent, while for the preschoolers this was 73.7% and 100% for the literate adults. Even though this study and that of Kurvers used different picture stories and the criteria varied, the similarities are remarkable.

Chapter 7