Conversational Narrative

1
Conversational Narrative

• Universität des Saarlandes
• Dept. 4.3 English Linguistics
• Professor Dr. N. R. Norrick
• HS Narrative
• Summer semester 2008

2
Goals

• Practical
• English narrative conventions prefaces,
  transitions, closings
• characteristic discourse markers, evaluation
  strategies, formulas
• standard listener responses, response stories,
  patterns of co-narration
• Narrative genres personal experience, anecdote,
  life story, reminiscence

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• Theoretical
• Narrative Terminology and general principles of
  linguistic description
• narrative clause, temporal juncture, floor,
  telling rights, tellability, tense shift,
  evaluation, narrative formulas, reported
  speech-constructed dialogue
• Analysis of narrative discourse and narrative
  passages in discourse

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Issues and Topics

• Whats narrative versus non-narrative discourse?
• Narrative structures, story grammar, narrative
  frames
• What are characteristic features of narratives?
• Internal structure of narratives, tense variation
  in narrative, written versus oral narrative,
  dialogue in narratives free indirect speech vs.
  direct speech

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• Who tells what to whom and when? And how do
  participants respond?
• Topicality, tellability, telling rights listener
  response, by-play, heckling co-production,
  duetting, polyphonic co-narration response
  stories, second stories, story topping
• Whats the relationship of narrative and event,
  narrative and memory, narrative and thought,
  narrative and culture?

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• How does narrative competence develop?
• narrative socialization, language learning and
  narrative, narrative across the lifespan
• What kinds of narratives are there?
• stories by children, personal stories, retold
  stories, narratives in conversation, narrative
  jokes, anecdotes, monologic vs. dialogic vs.
  polyphonic narratives

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• Where do narratives recur?
• narrative as therapy, troubles telling, narrative
  and remembering, narratives in education,
  narrative in oral cultures, life stories

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1. Introduction

• Conversation is the natural home of narrative,
  and the most familiar context of storytelling
• Conversational storytelling illustrates all the
  important features of narrative
• Narrative is a standard, familiar part of
  conversation
• We all tell stories
• to make a point
• to catch up on each others lives
• to report news
• to entertain each other

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• One story opens the floor to others for similar
  stories of their own
• There are many kinds of conversational narrative
  found in various contexts
• family dinner-table talk
• self-revelation in troubles talk between women
  friends
• talk between guys who have never met before at
  half-time in a sports bar
• Each context has its own characteristic
  conditions on storytelling rights and
  tellability, and may elicit stories of different
  kinds

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• Conversational narrative is
• always interactive and negotiated
• not simply audience designed by a single
  teller
• hard to determine even who is the primary teller,
  especially when the events were jointly
  experienced or the basic story is already
  familiar

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2. Definition story vs. narrative

• distinction
• narrative representation of past events
  (perhaps a travelogue or a project report)
• story narrative with a point in context
• also event, story, performance

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3. Floor, Tellability

• How do you signal to others that you want to move
  from turn-by-turn talk into narrative?
• Who is allowed to tell which story to which
  audience?
• Intertwined with shared versus unshared
  experience,
• A events, A-B events, O events, F events (and
  group events generally)
• new versus known story, potential for co-telling,
  team performance

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• Teller and recipient cues
• signals like
• guess what?
• Youll never guess what happened
• remember the time?
• this one time
• when I was a kid

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• Floor, Topicality
• Tellability it was so funny, so weird
• the first time, the most important
• Tellability without reportability
• The dark side of tellability

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4. Audience, Co-telling, Response

• How can/should listeners respond?
• How do they influence the trajectory and
  evaluation of the story?
• How and in what ways can they become
  co-narrators?
• When a teller starts to tell a story, the
  audience becomes active in many ways
• signaling attention, expressing judgments,
  interrupting, correcting, co-narrating

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• Conversational storytelling is always
  interactive, and more or less polyphonic
• By-play, heckling
• Retelling and retold stories
• Co-telling, duetting, team performance
• Response stories
• second stories
• story topping

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5. Sections, Features

• Internal structure
• Conversational narrative same as elsewhere, but
  needs regularization

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5.1 Opening, Elicitation

• Prefaces
• Formulaic prefaces youll never believe what
  happened
• Discourse markers well, this ONE time
• Initial disfluencies so, anyway, these- this
  one girl

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5.2 Complicating action

• Narrative clauses with temporal juncture
• Non-narrative clauses
• Evaluation
• Repetition
• Details
• Dialogue

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5.3 Closing

• Characteristic formulas
• and I lived to tell about it
• and the rest is history
• Formulation
• Summary
• Coda

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6. Functions

• Narrative construction of identity
• Functions of conversational narration
• getting story straight
• group rapport
• ratifying group membership
• conveying group values

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7. Examples

• SEWING MACHINE
• Ann sewing is,
• something I want to go back to.
• I acquired an absolutely magnificent sewing
  machine
• by foul means.
• did I tell you about that?
• Betty no.
• Ann well when I was doing freelance advertising,
  
• the advertising agency
• that I sometimes did some work for
• rang me

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• GUARDIAN ANGEL
• Shel laughs I guess I better go.
• Cal you don't have to.
• Shel na, I don't have to,
• but if I want to get up tomorrow morning I do.
  
• guess-
• oh I couldn't believe it,
• I was so happy.
• I wanted to go home Friday morning, right?
• this guy's leaving early early Friday morning.
  
• well I have an eight o'clock class
• that I don't want to miss because . . .

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• BACK TO SCHOOL (closing)
• Conrad so at least they knew that my heart was
  in it.
• Ellen thats right.
• Conrad and uh and so I did that
• and- and here I am.

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• LETTER (closing)
• Jim Well I think y'know
• here were two sisters
• who didn't have a brother
• and two brothers who didn't have a sister
• and I think the idea was an exchange of a kind
  
• Vera You were being an educator.
• Jim Yeah.

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• SPIN OUT (closing)
• Marsha and he doesn't remember too much about
  it.
• Patricia you never do,
• because it takes seconds for it to happen.
• Marsha he- I can-
• he fought the car for a good ten, fifteen
  seconds
• before we lost total control.
• Patricia well the only thing you can both say is
  
• thank God you're safe.
• that's all.

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• Analyzing conversational stories
• Look for discourse markers, disfluencies,
  formulaic chunks, evaluation
• BARREL ROLL
• 1 Ned what about this flying?
• 2 you had a pilots license?
• 3 Winifred sure.
• 4 Ned when- how did you- learn to fly?
• 5 Winifred well laughing my first s- serious
  boyfriend became a pilot.
• 6 and I got really interested,
• 7 I flew with him a lot.
• 8 so I decided Id like to learn to fly myself.

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• 9 I just love to fly.
• 10 so ah-
• 11 Ned was this still- in the thirties, before
  the war ?
• 12 Winifred yeah.
• 13 so- I went out to the airport
• 14 and- just met some people out there
• 15 and started taking flying lessons.
• 16 and the day-
• 17 I went up to- with the-
• 18 the first- the last flight with a- pilot
• 19 Ned yeah.
• 20 Winifred he said uh did I ever do a barrel
  roll in a plane?
• 21 and I said no.
• 22 and he said you wanna try it?
• 23 and I said sure. laughter
• 24 so he- flipped that thing over laughing
• 25 I had- my eye on the odometer

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• 26 and it kept going down and down
• 27 and I thought oh well, this is it
  laughter
• 28 I knew I was gonna die that time
• 29 cause he couldnt get that thing back over.
• 30 and all of a sudden he got that thing turn
  back over
• 31 and started climbing
• 32 and didnt say a word for about five minutes
  laughter
• 33 and finally he said
• 34 Winifred, you do know how to pull that
• 35 thing on your parachute, dont you
  laughter
• 36 and I didnt say it
• 37 but what I thought
• 38 at five hundred feet
• 39 the parachute wouldnt have done much good.
• 40 laughter

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• Reducing performance to narrative
• delete listener input
• eliminate disfluencies
• consolidate narrative clauses

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• 1 well laughing my first s- serious boyfriend
  became a pilot.
• 2 and I got really interested,
• 3 I flew with him a lot.
• 4 so I decided Id like to learn to fly myself.
• 5 so- I went out to the airport
• 6 and- just met some people out there
• 7 and started taking flying lessons.
• 8 and the last flight with a pilot
• 9 he said uh did I ever do a barrel roll in a
  plane?
• 10 and I said no.
• 11 and he said you wanna try it?
• 12 and I said sure. laughter

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• 13 so he- flipped that thing over laughing
• 14 I had- my eye on the odometer
• 15 and it kept going down and down
• 16 and I thought oh well, this is it
  laughter
• 17 I knew I was gonna die that time
• 18 cause he couldnt get that thing back over.
• 19 and all of a sudden he got that thing turn
  back over
• 20 and started climbing
• 21 and didnt say a word for about five minutes.
  laughter
• 22 and finally he said
• 23 Winifred, you do know how to pull that
• 24 thing on your parachute, dont you laughter

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• Tagging sections
• Orientation background information
• Narrow frame transition into main action
• Main action only active verbs in past tense no
  negatives, no continuing actions
• Evaluation interrupts main action for thoughts
  feelings
• Result direct effects of main action
• Resolution what finally happened
• Coda final comment, later or present perspective

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• ORIENTATION
• 1 I decided Id like to learn to fly.
• 2 so I went out to the airport
• 3 and just met some people out there
• 4 and started taking flying lessons.
• NARROW FRAME
• 5 and the last flight with a pilot
• MAIN ACTION
• 6 he said uh did I ever do a barrel roll in a
  plane?
• 7 and I said no.
• 8 and he said you wanna try it?
• 9 and I said sure. laughter
• 10 so he flipped that thing over laughing
• ORIENTATION
• 11 I had my eye on the odometer
• 12 and it kept going down and down

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• EVALUATION
• 13 and I thought oh well, this is it
  laughter
• 14 I knew I was gonna die that time
• 15 cause he couldnt get that thing back over.
• RESULT
• 16 and all of a sudden he got that thing turn
  back over
• 17 and started climbing
• RESOLUTION
• 18 and finally he said
• 19 Winifred, you do know how to pull that
• 20 thing on your parachute, dont you
  laughter
• CODA
• 21 and I didnt say it
• 22 but what I thought
• 23 at five hundred feet
• 24 the parachute wouldnt have done much good.

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Cringe Stories
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• 1. Mind the gap.
• 1. I went to an Indian restaurant with my family
  to celebrate my
• 2. brothers GCSE results. When we sat down, I
  noticed some really fit
• 3. boys sitting at the other side of the room. I
  tried to look cool all night
• 4. and it seemed to be working. But when I was
  about to get up to
• 5. leave, I slid along the bench towards the end
  of the table and fell
• 6. into a gap between two seats. I tried to get
  up but Id got totally
• 7. stuck! The waiters came rushing over to pull
  me out and everyone
• 8. was staring. The fit lads were crying with
  laughter. Ill never go back
• 9. there again!
• Sneaks number one fan, Kent (Sneak, Issue 82,
  2nd-8th Dec. 2003. P. 25)

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• 2. Dinner disaster.
• 1. My family and I went for a meal. On the table
  next to us was this fit
• 2. boy. I couldnt keep my eyes off him. When my
  food came, I was
• 3. really hungry so I stuffed a huge bit into my
  mouth. But it was so hot,
• 4. it burned my tongue and I had to spit it out.
  The lad was looking over
• 5. right at that very moment. I couldnt look him
  in the eye again after
• 6. that.
• Fenella, London. (Mizz No. 464, Feb 26th March
  11th 2003. P. 16)

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• 3. Gone off the boil.
• 1. I popped over to the local chemist to pick up
  some stuff for my nan.
• 2. When I looked at the list, I realised she
  wanted me to buy some
• 3. cream for her boils. I was just paying for it
  when my crush walked
• 4. into the shop. How embarrassing? I havent
  spoken to him since.
• Mizz fan (Mizz No. 464, Feb 26th March 11th
  2003. P. 16)

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• 4. Pyjama palaver.
• 1. I went to the supermarket with my dad
  recently, but I couldnt be
• 2. bothered to get dressed up properly. So I put
  my long coat on to
• 3. cover up my Winnie-the-Pooh PJs. By the time
  we got to the till, I
• 4. was feeling really hot, so I took off my
  jacket. Id totally forgotten
• 5. what I was wearing underneath. The shop
  assistant couldnt stop
• 6. laughing. Im never going back there again.
• Chloe, London (Mizz, op.cit. page 16)