Haiku as a Discourse Regulation Device: A Stanza Analysis of Japanese Children's Personal Narratives.

Stanza analysis of the conversational narratives of Japanese children, aged five to nine, reveals that they are succinct and usually consist of free-standing collections of three experiences and that stanzas usually consist of three lines. The similarity between these narratives and the Japanese literacy forms of "haiku" and "karuta" are discussed. (61 references) (JL)