Topic 4
Sociolinguistic approaches to
narratives: Norrick
http://it.bookzz.org/book/969122/61af58
Norrick
• Resting on Labov and Waletsky (1967), Labov (1972), and
Polanyi (1981, 1985), develops a new model for the analysis
of narratives
• Focus on conversational storytelling
– Internal structure, formulaicity, repetition
– Narrative contexts (who tells stories to whom, in which
contexts, with what responses and what interpersonal
consequences)
• Differently from Labov, Norrick places emphasis on teller
strategies (repetition, formulaicity ,disfluences…) as
structuring elements, more than on sequential ordering.
The rhetoric of storytelling
• Teller strategies can be collected under the
heading of rhetoric of storytelling
• Used to
– enhance coherence
– Modulate involvement
– Facilitate production, comprehension,
remembering
• Since tellers and listeners can allot only
limited cognitive resources to the construction
and understanding of narratives, they rely on
repetition, dialogue, tense shifts and
formulaicity, to reinforce evaluations and to
segment stories into manageable chunks
(Norrick 2000: 42)
Conversational narratives’ internal
structure
• Abstract
• orientational information
– Background
– General frame
– Narrow frame
• Main action
• Resolution
• Coda
+ Evaluation
Steps for analysis
1. construction of a basic narrative amalgamating teller
and audience contributions, eliminating disfluencies
2. tagging the parts of the narrative
3. consideration of formulaic elements, dialogue,
disfluences, tense and perspective shifts, verb classes,
chunking of intonation units (to cast a light both on
teller’s strategies and on the cues heares use to make
sense of convesational storytelling
(cf. April’s first job story and its reconstruction on
handouts 3 and 4)
Conventions for representing oral
storytelling
• Written texts are structured around complete
sentences, while spoken language is organized
around intonation units
• These tend to
• be about 5 words long,
• contain one idea unit each (typically subject +
predicate)
• contain one or more intonation peaks
– And I was so interested
– The fire was all gone
The rhetoric of storytelling:
Internal structure
• Formulaicity
• Repetitions
Narrative context (and tellability)
• Prefaces
• responses
The rhetoric of storytelling:
formulaicity
• Any relatively fixed unit of two or more words
which recurs in the discourses of a linguistic
community
– Narratives structured around a figurative formula
(“like a leaf in the wind”, cf. next slide)
– Formulaicity story openings and closing
Formulaic story openers
•
•
•
•
The first/most_____in my life
I remember the most_____in my life
Guess what?
Remember the time/when?
• Meant to attract the attention of the audience
Formulaic story closers
• Proverbs and clichés
• And I lived to tell the story (p. 51)
Local formulaicity
• Referred to cases where an otherwise non
formulaic phrase takes on formulaicity
through repetition
• E..g. “it was really weird” p. 55-57
• Can help tellers organize their narratives into
chunks, thus guiding listeners
• Can signal teller’s attitude and guide listeners
to adopt the same perspective.
The rhetoric of storytelling:
Repetition
1. restarting/rephrasing at story beginnings and
transition points
- Serves an organizational function (segments the story
or marks a progression) + functions as a marker of
story opening
2. Parallel structures to mirror parallel reported events
- Intensifies the dramatic effect of reported scenes
- Highlights the teller’s evaluation
Repetitions’ organizational function 1
• Includes rephrasing in introductions (false starts and
restarts, i.e. disfluences)
• Disfluences show that a speaker is beginning a story,
help orient the listener on how to receive the story
Sherry: we had amy mom always had a dish-cloth
that had holes in it
[the restart makes the story more relevant to the context, as
Sherry’s interlocutor had just told a story about her
mother)
Repetitions’ organizational function 2
• Parallel (semantic, syntactic and phonological
structures) for key events
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
P. 60-61
Are you the people with… (6/49)
Dad going down the hall for his nap (20 -47)
So he went /over he went (23/54)
There’s nothing/there’s no (35-36)
Saturday- Sunday- Monday (40-44)
Diddled and dawdeld (56)/ learned and determined
(58)
Repetitions’ organizational function 2
• p. 62-63,
• Paul went back with the shovel, hurled it / I mean, just
threw it
• That damn shovel came right down on his head / I
mean, it came down and flattened him
-> dramatic effect
• I mean, what is the likelihood…/ I mean, who would
have thought…
-> repetition to emphasise unlikelyhood/bizarreness,
hence worth telling
Narrative context
Tellability
• A narrator must be able to defend a story as
relevant and newsworthy in order to justify
the extended turns it requires
• Stories are thus prefaced to argue their
tellability and to signal the expected response
• Tellability is, however, a matter for negotiation
(stories which are not newsworthy can be told
in some contexts, e.g. routinely told familiar
stories)
Prefaces
Prefaces are used by conversationalists to
indicate the intention of taking the floor to tell
a story.
They divide into prefaces bidding to
• change the current topic of talk
• introduce a new narrative connected with
foregoing talk
Prefaces
• can change the current topic of talk
Jean: wasn’t that awful
about the guy that went hunting
and killed his son
cataphorical
Strong evaluation:
•generates interest
•Signals attitude
•Signals expected
reaction
Prefaces
• can change the current topic of talk
Jean: wasn’t that awful
about the guy that went hunting
and killed his son
abstract
Prefaces can introduce a new
connected story
Responses
• Responses can
– show recognition of a story
– Offer additional details (in case of familiar stories)
– Provide evaluation of the events told
– Solidify participants’ rapport
• Responses can also take the form of a second
story, parallel to the first one
Alignment
• The teller often bids to win the hearer over to
a particular point of view about the events
told
• This can be done thorugh open expression of
stance
Varieties of conversational narratives
Purpose
• Self-aggrandizement narratives: enhance the teller’s
reputation
– Explicit vs implicit
• Embarassment narratives (can also have an covert selfaggrandizement function: self-directed humour as a
positive quality)
• Trouble narratives
• Dream tellings
Type
First vs third person