When They Severed Earth from Sky : How the Human Mind Shapes Myth / / Paul T. Barber, Elizabeth Wayland Barber

• Record Nr.: UNISA996248075003316
• Autore: Barber Elizabeth Wayland
• Pubbl/distr/stampa: Princeton, NJ : , : Princeton University Press, , [2012]; ©2005
• ISBN: 1-283-37990-2; 9786613379900; 1-4008-4286-7
• Edizione: [Course Book]
• Descrizione fisica: 1 online resource (311 p.)
• Classificazione: 73.56
• Disciplina: 201.3
• Soggetti: Mythology - psychology; Mythology; Myth
• Lingua di pubblicazione: Inglese
• Formato: Materiale a stampa
• Livello bibliografico: Monografia
• Note generali: Description based upon print version of record.
• Nota di bibliografia: Includes bibliographical references (p. [253]-263) and indexes.
• Nota di contenuto: Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- ILLUSTRATIONS -- Acknowledgments -- 1 Time Capsules -- 2 The Memory Crunch: How Long a Pipeline? -- 3 The Silence Principle: Of Lethe and the Golden Calf -- 4 More Silence: Movie Reels from Snapshots -- 5 Analogy: Our Brain's Best Talent -- 6 Willfulness: The Atom or Thou -- 7 Multiple Aspects: The More the Merrier -- 8 Multiple Viewpoints: Ear,Trunk, or Tail -- 9 Views through Biased Lenses -- 10 Metaphoric Reality: Magic and Dreams (or Hū's on First) -- 11 Compression: Methuselah and the Eponymous Heroes -- 12 Post Hocus Ergo Pocus: Space Aliens Mutilate Cows! -- 13 Restructuring: New Patterns for Old -- 14 Mnemonics: Behind the Silliness -- 15 The Spirit World: A Realm Reversed -- 16 Of Sky and Time -- 17 Prometheus -- 18 Fire-Breathing Dragons -- APPENDIX. Index of Myth Principles -- BIBLIOGRAPHY -- INDEX
• Sommario/riassunto: Why were Prometheus and Loki envisioned as chained to rocks? What was the Golden Calf? Why are mirrors believed to carry bad luck? How could anyone think that mortals like Perseus, Beowulf, and St. George actually fought dragons, since dragons don't exist? Strange though they sound, however, these "myths" did not begin as fiction. This absorbing ; book shows that myths originally transmitted real information about real events and observations, preserving the information sometimes for millennia within nonliterate societies. Geologists' interpretations of how a volcanic cataclysm long ago created Oregon's Crater Lake, for example, is echoed point for point in the local myth of its origin. The Klamath tribe saw it happen and passed down the story--for nearly 8,000 years. We, however, have been literate so long that we've forgotten how myths encode reality. Recent studies of how our brains work, applied to a wide range of data from the Pacific Northwest to ancient Egypt to modern stories reported in newspapers, have helped the Barbers deduce the characteristic principles by which such tales both develop and degrade through time. Myth is in fact a quite reasonable way to convey important messages orally over many generations--although reasoning back to the original events is possible only under rather specific conditions. Our oldest written records date to 5,200 years ago, but we have been speaking and mythmaking for perhaps 100,000. This groundbreaking book points the way to restoring some of that lost history and teaching us about human storytelling.

The meaning makers [[electronic resource] ] : learning to talk and talking to learn / / Gordon Wells

• Record Nr.: UNINA9910778058703321
• Autore: Wells C. Gordon
• Pubbl/distr/stampa: Bristol ; ; Buffalo, NY, : Multilingual Matters, c2009
• ISBN: 1-84769-927-8; 1-282-46595-3; 9786612465956; 1-84769-200-1
• Edizione: [2nd ed.]
• Descrizione fisica: 1 online resource (356 p.)
• Collana: New Perspectives on Language and Education
• Disciplina: 372.6
• Soggetti: Children - Language; Language acquisition; Literacy; Language arts
• Lingua di pubblicazione: Inglese
• Formato: Materiale a stampa
• Livello bibliografico: Monografia
• Note generali: Description based upon print version of record.
• Nota di bibliografia: Includes bibliographical references.
• Nota di contenuto: Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgements -- Prologue to the Second Edition -- Introduction to First Edition -- Notes on Transcriptions of Dialogue Extracts -- 1. The Children and Their Families -- 2. Learning to Talk: The Pattern of Development -- 3. Learning to Talk: The Construction of Language -- 4. Talking to Learn -- 5. From Home to School -- 6. Helping Children to Make Knowledge Their Own -- 7. Differences Between Children in Language and Learning -- 8. The Centrality of Literacy -- 9. The Children’s Achievement at Age 10 -- 10. The Sense of Story -- 11. A Functional Theory of Language Development -- 12. Toward Dialogue in the Classroom -- 13. The Interdependence of Practice and Theory -- Epilogue: Making Meaning Together -- Appendix 1: The Bristol Language Development Scale -- References -- Index
• Sommario/riassunto: The Meaning Makers is about children’s language and literacy development at home and at school. Based on the Bristol Study, “Language at Home and at School,” which the author directed, it follows the development of a representative sample of children from their first ; words to the end of their primary schooling. It contains many examples of their experience of language in use, both spoken and written, recorded in naturally occurring settings in their homes and classrooms, and shows the active role that children play in their own development as they both make sense of the world around them and master the linguistic means for communicating about it. Additionally, this second edition also sets the findings of the original study in the context of recent research in the sociocultural tradition inspired by Vygotsky’s work and includes examples of effective teaching drawn from the author’s recent collaborative research with teachers.