ORIGINAL AND ADAPTED TEXT: CHARACTERISTICS, SIMILARITIES, AND DIFFERENCES.

Abstract

This study examines the characteristics of original and adapted story versions and compares these characteristics in order to identify similarities and differences between original and adapted story versions. The two original stories selected for study were "Charles" by Shirley Jackson and "Hearts and Hands" by O. Henry. One published adaptation of each was also selected for analysis. These adaptations were found in high interest-low vocabulary materials intended for use with less able readers. Four systems of text analysis were applied to the story versions in order to analyze both story structure and story content. Narrative analysis, adapted from Omanson's system, was used to analyze the structure of story events. Propositional analysis, adapted from the system described by Turner and Greene, was used to examine the detailed semantic content within the stories. Cohesion analysis, adapted from the ideas developed by Halliday and Hassan, was used to examine connections within the texts. Surface feature analysis was used to analyze text features occurring in the surface structures of the stories. Data consisted of the results of the application of the text analysis systems to the four story versions. Specifically, data included numbers and types of content units, i.e. central, supportive, and distracting content units; numbers and types of propositions, i.e. predication, modification, and connection propositions; numbers and types of cohesive elements, i.e. reference ties, lexical cohesion, ellipsis, substitution, and conjunction; and numbers and types of surface features, i.e. words, sentences, main clauses, subordinate clauses, nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. The data were analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively. Results indicated that different original stories which are written at similar readability levels according to a formula, may contain similar compositions of semantic content and surface features but may vary considerably according to story structure and coherence. In addition, adapted story versions appear to maintain story integrity; however, they may differ from the original stories in richness of detail. It was also concluded that text analysis systems do offer appropriate and reliable procedures for comparing different stories and different versions of the same story.