This special issue on narratives originated in a conference on Narrative Analysis in a Multicultural Society held at the University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, in October 1999. This multidisciplinary conference was cosponsored by the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders and the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (Special Interest Division 1, Language Learning and Education, and the Office of Multicultural Affairs). This symposium brought together researchers from the disciplines of communication sciences and disorders, psychology, and education to share new perspectives on alternate frameworks for narrative analysis that, potentially, might yield deeper understanding of the cultural, linguistic, and discourse practices that children from diverse sociocultural groups bring to the classroom.
This purpose was motivated by the continuing concern that sufficient evidencebased research is still lacking on patterns that distinguish normal boundaries of language variation from atypical language development within and across different sociolinguistic groups. The outcomes of inadequate information on relationships between variations in home socialization practices and patterns of cultural/linguistic variation in the language-related abilities that support school success have unfortunate consequences. For example, children living in high poverty areas who are African-American, Spanish-speaking, or Native American encounter significant reading difficulties by Grade 4 in proportions inconsistent with their numbers in the school-age population (Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998). Yet, not all