In this chapter, I will define the text type called narrative and its basic structure. I will show how the narrativity of a text is one of the major characteristics of narratives that communicates emotions, complemented by evaluations and perspectives. The chapter opens with Labov's basic definition of narrative, namely his concept of narrative clauses as the core element of any narrative text. Next, I will contextualize oral autobiographical narratives by outlining different kinds of narratives. Also, a variety of oral autobiographical narratives will be systemized by describing them over several dimensions. Subsequently, I introduce the global structure of narratives, and the concepts of narrative clause and narrative structure will be exemplified by analyzing three narratives. Finally, I turn to the limits of the concept of autobiographical narrative by differentiating it from other text types. This will be facilitated by analyzing four more oral texts, which are situated at the border of the narrative category.
Narrative
The term narrative is sometimes used in a broad sense, including any kind of discourse. The concept Narrative Psychology (Sarbin, 1986), for instance, covers an entire approach in psychology that is interested more in texts than in numbers. Jerome Bruner (1986) even claimed there were two basic modes of thinking, namely, the paradigmatic mode concerned with building logical connections between statements about the world, aiming at truth, and the narrative mode that was concerned with telling plausible stories about human actions and their motives. In this tradition, Brian Schiff (2017) argues for a narrative psychology, which is more holistic and integrates the psyche, which, in contrast, is departmentalized and cut down into variables by mainstream psychology.
I will use the term narrative in the narrower, technical sense that defines a specific type of representation of events basically by imitating their sequence (Labov & Waletzky, Reference Labov, Waletzky and Helm1967; Ricoeur, Reference Ricoeur1990). The basic sequence of events is generally termed story and their textual sequential representation narrative or discourse (e.g., Toolan, Reference Toolan1988). However, I will reserve the term discourse for the actual situation of the telling of the narrative. The order of events in the narrative may vary with regard to the story, revealing event information ahead of time (flash-forward) or with delay (flash-back; Genette, Reference Genette1980). These variations between the order of events and the order of their narrating are important means for rendering a narrative interesting and for achieving specific narrative effects. However, the basic definition of a narrative remains the imitation of the story sequence by the sequence of events in the narrative.
I will start with a definition by the sociolinguist William Labov, which will be the main reference point for how I understand narrative, even though I will complement the definition with other aspects. Labov defined narrative as fulfilling a referential and an evaluative function. The referential function regards the reporting of events. He formally defines as a narrative any text that contains a temporal juncture between two narrative clauses. A temporal juncture requires that the order of two main clauses imitates the order of events. Therefore, changing the order of these two narrative clauses changes the story. Thus, the two clauses:
1 And I fell into the river
2 and I drank a shot of rum to warm up
suggest that the speaker first fell into the river and then drank rum because he was cold from being wet. If we read the clauses in the reverse order:
1 And I drank a shot of rum to warm up
2 and I fell into the river.
The story and the causality implied by the sequence is quite different (I adapted the example from Toolan, Reference Toolan1988). In oral narratives, the prototypical narrative clause is introduced by “and then …” Not all sentences in a narrative are divided by temporal junctures. However, there must be a core of at least two narrative clauses separated by a temporal juncture for a text to be classified as a narrative. If a text is about events but contains no narrative clauses, it is termed a chronicle. Chronicles summarize events that often span over an extended period without detailing the sequence of events by imitating it.
Some clauses refer to a temporally specific event, but they could be shifted a little ahead or back in the text without changing their reference, i.e., the temporal order of events in the story. Labov and Waletzky (Reference Labov, Waletzky and Helm1967) call a set of at least two clauses that could change position between each other without changing the story coordinate clauses. They use the term restricted clauses for those that have a specific temporal place in the story but could be shifted by several clauses in the narrative without changing the story.
The second function of narratives is the evaluation of the reported events. He maintains that the mere reporting of events provokes the question “So what?” Narratives need to make a point about the events. Evaluation adds subjective perspectives onto the events, including those of characters in the story, the narrator, and sometimes others who are outside the story world. I will deal with evaluation in the following two chapters. In this chapter, I focus on the events and the global structure of narrative.
First, I will contextualize the narratives of personal experience that are the focus of this book by defining some dimensions on which various kinds of narratives differ, as well as some varieties of narratives of personal experience. Then the sources and preparation of the example narratives analyzed in this book will be introduced. As a final preparatory step, I introduce the theoretical approach to narrative that I have chosen for this book. After all these preparatory remarks, I will present Labov and Waletzky's (1967) concept of narrative structure, apply it to several narratives, and suggest minor modifications. The chapter closes with some borderline cases of narratives to sharpen the definition of what is to be considered a narrative.
Varieties of narratives
A fascinating aspect of narrative is that it comes in many different forms. Any symbolic representation that has a linear temporal form, which imitates the sequence of events it represents, counts as a narrative. The events need to be sufficiently detailed to be located within an episode, which is bounded by place, actors, and a time-period lasting between minutes and hours, and sometimes days. This differentiates narratives from other representations of events, such as chronicles or generic descriptions of extended periods of time. In addition, the events represented by a narrative need to be evaluated (Chapter 3), excluding, for example, lists of events and timetables. The evaluation requires a specific, basic narrative structure, which I will describe below using narratives of personal experience, or autobiographical narratives. Major kinds of narratives can be differentiated in several ways, including which medium is used (language or images), by their degree of fictionality and by their status as an aesthetic object, or not.
Narratives may be communicated in various media. The two major media are language and pictures, which are sometimes combined. At times, single pictures may tell an entire story. More typically, stories are told by series of pictures, like comic strips or medieval series of paintings depicting biblical stories. Picture books for children are another example. Films may also narrate stories using their own narrative conventions and means.
Whereas pictorial and written narratives have a fixed form, narrators may also perform a narrative text orally. The difference in a dramatic presentation of a story on stage is the absence of a narrator. Therefore, the narrative character of drama is under dispute in narratology (cf. Hühn & Sommer, Reference Hareli and Hess2012). However, both drama and film, even without a narrator, may be telling a story, which lends weight to their inclusion in the category of narrative (Chatman Reference Chatman1990).
A second basic distinction is between factual and fictional narratives. The difference between the two is not so much that between the historically true and the imagined. They differ more in the degree to which they claim authentically expressing subjective reality and being true to intersubjective reality versus being entertaining or providing insights. To some degree, all narratives claim to be different from factual accounts of what happened. Oral narratives of everyday events, for example, do claim to be true to fact, but as narratives they give leeway for composing the story in a way that makes it entertaining and convincing. Narrators and listeners share this expectation. Thus, even if narratives claim to be true to the facts of what happened, they always offer a version of that reality and can only claim verisimilitude, but not to be the sole valid representation of events (Chatman, Reference Chatman1978; Labov, Reference Labov2013). Some narratives, by necessity, claim to depict the most probable version of what really happened beyond reasonable doubt, such as the narratives that judges write in the opinion of the court when reconstructing the events (on the role of narrative in trials cf. Amsterdam & Bruner, Reference Amsterdam and Bruner2000; Brooks & Gewirtz, 1995). Historical narratives also claim historical truth, although they may allow more partisanship than those of the court.
The distinction between fact and fiction cuts across the different symbolic media used. It correlates with a third distinction, specifically, between art and non-art. Documentary film claims to represent social and historical reality but is also an art form. The norms of the genre journalistic reportage require that it needs to be true to the facts but should also be written well.
Narratives of personal experiences
The focus of this book is on everyday, nonartistic oral narratives. Narratives produced in everyday life may differ on four major dimensions: stories about others versus about oneself, written versus spoken narratives, planned versus unplanned narration, and solicited versus spontaneous narration.
Everyday narratives may be impersonal when telling a story about events involving someone else, which the narrator has not personally experienced but has been told about or learned otherwise. These narratives have been termed nonparticipant narratives (Linde, Reference Linde2001) and narratives of vicarious experience (Fludernik, Reference Fludernik1996). They could be narratives of a movie plot, of public domain stories read in the paper, or a personal experience told by someone else. Narratives of vicarious experience have even been termed vicarious memories (Pillemer et al., Reference Pillemer, Steiner, Kuwabara, Thomsen and Svob2015) and vicarious life stories (Thomsen & Pillemer, Reference Thomsen and Pillemer2017). I find this latter use of the term vicarious somewhat misleading because neither a memory nor a life story is vicariously experienced as the memory of the remembering person, and the life story is that of the one who lived the life. Therefore, we usually speak of a biography and not a vicarious biography. I suggest speaking of everyday heterobiographical narratives if we wish to stress the contrast to autobiographical narratives. Both show basically the same characteristics (Norrick, Reference Norrick2013).
Autobiographical narratives, termed narratives of personal experiences by Labov and Waletzky (Reference Labov, Waletzky and Helm1967), recount events that the narrator has personally experienced. A borderline case, which I still count as an autobiographical narrative (in contrast to Fludernik, Reference Fludernik1996), are witness narratives, in which narrators speak about what they watched happening to someone else. In prototypical autobiographical narratives, the narrator who tells the story is identical with the protagonist of the story. Philippe Lejeune (1975) defined as autobiographies books in which the author claims the personal identity of author, intra-textual narrator, and protagonist. Everyday narrators only claim to be identical with the protagonist, that is, they ask listeners to believe that they actually experienced the story themselves.
A second distinction is between oral and written narratives. In everyday life, autobiographical narratives are usually communicated orally. Written forms used in earlier times were diary, letter, and autobiography. Nowadays personal experiences may be written via personal messaging services and posted on the Internet using social media.
Written autobiographical narratives may be more reflected than oral narratives, which can lead to syntactically more complete and complex sentences (Tannen, Reference Tannen1982). However, oral narratives may also have some degree of reflected-upon, planned character, such as planned public speeches, cultural stories like fairy tales, or frequently retold anecdotes.
Psychological research often uses written narratives, mainly for economic reasons, because they can be collected in groups or online, so that neither individual interviews nor transcriptions from tapes are necessary (e.g., Pennebaker, Mayne, & Francis, Reference Pennebaker, Mayne and Francis1997). Therefore, it is of interest to know how written and oral narratives differ. Research published in the 1970s and 1980s found only few systematic differences. However, these studies did not differentiate between planned and spontaneous narratives in either medium (Chafe & Tannen, Reference Chafe and Tannen1987). Several recent automated lexical comparisons between different methods of elicitation and registration also found little differences in the kinds of words used (van Abbema et al., Reference 342Van Abbema, McConell, Flanagan and Mitchell2005; Balon & Rimé, Reference Balon and Rimé2016), although Eaton (Reference Eaton2005) found more complexity and cohesion and fewer pronouns in hand-written and typed versus oral narratives of negative experiences. Similarly, written narratives of older children were syntactically more complex and contained, for example, more figurative language than their oral narratives (Drijbooms, Groen, & Verhoeven, Reference Drijbooms, Groen and Verhoeven2017). Comparing written and oral fear narratives by university students, Özyildirim (2009) found written narratives to be shorter, to contain more framing by abstracts and coda (see below), and to contain relatively more evaluative clauses, but fewer evaluative clauses naming emotions. However, all together the evidence regarding differences and similarities between written and oral narratives is inconclusive. Oral communication is typically known to be faster, more contextualized (more use of deictic expressions of person, place, and time), less normative, and grammatically and syntactically less correct and complete. Often words are repeated, parts of sentences are left out, and sentences are started anew, because processes of correction cannot be hidden (Schwitalla, Reference Schwitalla2002).
Narratives may also differ in whether they are solicited or produced spontaneously. Sociolinguistic research typically analyzes unsolicited, naturally occurring narratives. Sociolinguists point out that narratives require holding the floor for longer than is usual in conversations. Therefore, narrators have to use an efficient initial abstract, which announces that something worth being listened to will be shared. Also, listeners typically support the monologic narrative by brief utterances of interest and evaluation. Co-narrations sustained equally by two speakers are relatively rare, but may occur if speakers are well acquainted with each other, such as in old friends, couples, or families (e.g., Harris et al., Reference Harris, Barnier, Sutton and Keil2014). In the final two chapters of the book, I will discuss two special cases of unequal co-narrators in which the more competent one supports the less competent one in narrating her or his experience: parent–child and therapist–client dialogues.
Typically, narratives are not dialogues but mostly monologues, which justifies studying narratives that were elicited by a researcher who does not interfere in the telling. This procedure conforms to the experimental ideal of producing data that are influenced by the researcher in a very controlled way, such as the use of standardized instruction without flexible reactions to a narrative. Literary theorist Monika Fludernik (1996) expressed a negative verdict on the use of solicited narratives in research: “Solicited narrative therefore skews the patterns observable in spontaneous storytelling and is not a reliable guide for their analysis” (p. 77). She argues that the absence of turn-taking relieves the narrator from the necessity “to be relevant, to be brief, or to tell a really good story” (p. 76). However, we have repeatedly seen that even if listeners do not verbally intervene, narrators do adjust themselves to listeners’ assumed knowledge, interest, and to their nonverbal reaction. Fludernik exempts the stories collected by Quasthoff (Reference Quasthoff1980) and Couper-Kuhlen (unpublished) to which she herself had access. Furthermore, in making her general argument, Fludernik relies on Labov's insights, which are also based on elicited narratives.
With a preference for experimental conditions, psychologists prefer to control the environments under which they produce their data. In addition, for many decades psychologists have preferred to compare groups of people with one another, thereby devaluing case studies (Danziger, Reference Danziger1994). Because I have pursued my research more or less in this tradition, and also because it is easier to solicit larger numbers of comparable narratives than to collect them in the course of ongoing social interactions, the examples that I will use in this book are solicited autobiographical narratives.
About the narratives used for illustration in this book
I will analyze a series of oral autobiographical narratives, which were mostly solicited. They can tell a lot about the role of emotion in narratives. Most of the solicited narratives were collected by students from classes I delivered on emotions. Other narratives are from research projects undertaken by students for their theses.
Most narratives were elicited by asking for an emotional experience. Often we asked for a specific emotional quality, such as “Please tell me about an experience that made you sad.” Sometimes we simply asked for narratives of any kind of emotional experience. At other times, I also used narratives that were part of entire life narratives (Habermas, Reference Habermas2006). I will always indicate the question asked to elicit a narrative. In my experience, elicited narratives do not differ much from spontaneous narratives. However, one major difference is the decreased need for an abstract and a coda in elicited narratives.
The nature of narratives also differs according to the period of time from which respondents are supposed to select an event. For instance, when events from the same day or from the past week are solicited, they tend to be quite mundane, whereas when we ask for events from the entire life or even only from the past five years, the selected events tend to be more exceptional. Therefore, I will also provide the time frame from which the narrator could select an event.
As a rule, these narratives were collected anonymously so that the interviewees’ identities remained unknown. I also deleted the information about the interviewer. All names of persons and places were changed, and at times, I also changed details that might reveal narrators’ identities.
Students transcribed the audio-recordings verbatim. For ease of reference, I will provide a letter and a title for each narrative. In brackets, I note if the narrative has been translated by myself from German, attempting to maintain the lexical composition and syntactic structure as much as possible. All narratives were divided into propositions. This means that I will present narratives with each main or subordinate clause in a separate line (except for Chapter 12), as this form of presentation facilitates analyzing narratives and referring to specific parts in the narrative text. Each line is numbered within each narrative, and I will refer to these numbers when analyzing narratives. If a clause is inserted into another one, I begin each new clause with a new line number but report the remaining part of the clause that was cut off from its beginning by the inserted clause in a separate line without a number of its own. Thus, the number of numbered lines corresponds to the number of main or subordinate clauses. Special signs are used for transcribing pauses (a dash “-“ for one second pause) and for a lengthened pronunciation of a syllable (::).
Transcription is verbatim and only provides information about nonverbal aspects of the narrative if there are pauses longer than a second. Sometimes other nonverbal aspects are noted in squared brackets, but in an unsystematic way, as different students produced transcriptions. Transcripts from research projects follow clear rules for transcribing prosodic features. Conversation analysts have developed highly elaborate systems of transcription for rendering the transcript as true as possible to the verbal and nonverbal aspects of the narration. I will argue that although prosodic aspects of speech are important for communication, the bare words do transport the basic message. Prosody may provide a key in which to read the narrative. However, the main message is contained in the verbatim narrative, which can be modified by prosody, but not changed altogether.
Some methodological remarks
In this book I am concerned with narratives of everyday personal experiences. Consequently, for analyzing them I will mostly rely on instruments developed with and for autobiographical narratives. The main source for these instruments is the sociolinguistic model developed by William Labov (Labov & Waletzky, Reference Labov, Waletzky and Helm1967; Labov, Reference Labov1972; Labov, Reference Labov2013), with the help of narratives elicited with a question that asks for an experience when the narrator had escaped death. Other sociolinguists have further refined his model. Psychologists have mostly provided models of story grammar, which they studied in terms of story comprehension, which makes them less interesting for studying narratives themselves.
This chapter on narrative structure thus relies on Labov and related work, while the following two chapters concerning ways to verbally express emotions and on narrative perspectives will rely on linguistics and narratological work that deals with novels and films, written by literary and film theorists as well as by philosophers. The great advantage of the narrative format and of the discipline of narratology is that they cut across many, often separate, domains of communication and culture. I will take concepts from narratology that can also be used for analyzing autobiographical narratives, foremost the concept of narrative perspective. To my knowledge, it has rarely been used for describing structural aspects of autobiographical narratives. Narratological concepts cannot be applied without modification, but I suggest that as a rule of thumb, it is easier to transfer concepts from more complex to simpler objects than vice versa. And autobiographical narratives have, at least if they are treated as monologues, a simpler structure than aesthetic narratives.
Finally, the analysis of narratives will primarily be formal, regarding the structure of narratives and use of linguistic means. Naturally, to determine the emotional quality of narratives, i.e., which emotion they communicate or elicit, knowing their content is decisive. Nonetheless, my interest in narrative form remains for several reasons. To express and elicit emotions, narratives have to recount situations happening to a protagonist that more or less correspond to some emotion prototype, and they need to have an impact on the protagonist. The intensity of the emotion depends not only on the impact of the situation on the protagonist, but also on the way the situation is narrated. Highly aggravating situations can be narrated in a way that expresses or elicits little emotion. Furthermore, listeners need not identify or empathize with the characters’ concerns but may react with a different emotion, such as Schadenfreude, or glee about others’ misfortune. Most importantly, formal characteristics of narratives express and evoke emotions in a subtle, unnoticed way. Therefore, they are an apt indicator of emotional processes, including defensive processes directed against emotions, both of narrators and listeners.
The global structure of narratives
In the remaining part of this chapter, I will introduce the essentially sequential nature of narratives and their global structure. In addition, I will also introduce some explications and modifications of William Labov's model, based on exemplary analyses of several narratives. A discussion of several means used for attributing praise and blame will follow, which anticipates the more systematic treatment of evaluations in the following chapter. Finally, several borderline narratives will be presented to help differentiate narrative from nonnarrative texts.
Narratives follow a normative structure. Aristotle (Reference Aristotle1982) demanded a beginning, middle part, and ending. The basic tripartite sequence includes an initial state of equilibrium or normality, an event that brings disequilibrium or a breach of normality, and a subsequent reestablishment of the equilibrium or normality. The first to outline such a structure in more detail was Vladimir Propp (1928), who identified a recurring pattern in Russian folktales. The pattern is basically one of a quest where a hero commits a mistake, then allows a villain to create problems, and finally undertakes actions to defeat the villain.
William Labov and Joshua Waletzky (1967) undertook a sociolinguistic study of inner city language by asking people about experiences of when they had almost died and tape-recording the narratives. They devised a normative structure of such narratives not unlike, but less detailed than, the one suggested by Propp. According to them, a narrative normally starts with an orientation where a state of normality is described, which includes a background and context for the impending events. This context includes the relevant characters, the time, a location or setting, and possibly an activity. This constitutes the setting in which something is about to happen. Orienting information may also be added later in the narrative.
The ensuing complication is what the story is about, which typically involves a break with normality, or something unexpected and relevant happening to the protagonist. Most often it is a problematic event which is negative for the protagonist. The complication contains narrative clauses, because it is about a temporally, highly specific event and imitates the sequence of events. Narrative clauses use the past tense in English. Labov (Reference Labov2013, p. 17) claims that “a succession of independent clauses is the preferred choice in narratives of personal experience.” In addition, he claims that events are presented in chronological order: “flashbacks simply do not occur in oral narrative” (2013, p. 20). Furthermore, Labov identified an egocentric principle that suggests information is presented in the same order in which it had been known by the protagonist.
The complicating event is what makes the story tellable or reportable. It needs to be exceptional and interesting to motivate listeners to continue listening. A second condition for listeners to remain motivated to continue listening is the credibility of the story. Because tellability requires exceptionality, but credibility requires normality, there is an intrinsic tension between both (Labov, Reference Labov, Tannen and Alatis2001). Some stories are exempt from the requirement of being credible, such as jokes, dreams, and tall tales, which serve more the entertainment of listeners than to actually convey a personal experience of the narrator.
Identifying the most tellable event or the core of the story is the most important step in understanding the structure of a narrative because all other parts depend on its location. The complicating event deems everything that happened before as normality and as part of the orienting section. The complication also defines which part of the event sequence counts as the result of the narrative, as the resolution of the complication. The complicating event is not an objective given but depends on the way the narrator reconstructs events.
Labov identifies the beginning of the complication section as the beginning of the specific scene that culminates in the most tellable event. A first event sets into motion a series of events and actions, which are often related causally or motivationally with one another. Labov and Waletzky (Reference Labov, Waletzky and Helm1967) noted that when preparing to tell a story in their minds, narrators must start with the most tellable event and then mentally work their way back in time by reconstructing the antecedents leading up to the beginning of the complication section. Thus, they must decide on an initial event that diverges from normality and is constructed to have no antecedent, which means that it is the event that sets off the plot (Labov, Reference Labov2006).
Labov thus defines a climactic plot structure in which suspense is built up to culminate at the end of the complication section. Labov and Waletzky (Reference Labov, Waletzky and Helm1967) suggest that the next section, which is situated between the complication and resolution, is typically an evaluation. Its main function is to increase suspense by stepping outside the time line by reporting the subjective reaction of someone. Often these are the thoughts of the protagonist, or sometimes comments by someone else. Another typical evaluative device is contrasting what happened to other events or to what could have happened.
Next, suspense is released by presenting the resolution of the complication: the danger has been averted, the loss has been diverted or accepted, or the provocation has been paid back. I will term the resolution section result, because in some stories this section contains a negative result of the complication, which was not resolved.
Finally, a coda leads the listener back from the story-world to the present and is often formulaic. In fairy tales there is a formulaic coda “and lived happily ever after,” or in German “and if they haven't died, they live on to this day.” The coda may also express the narrator's present global evaluation of the story or mark the ending of the narrative.
In 1972, Labov added an initial segment of narratives named abstract, which announces what is about to be narrated, thereby claiming the floor in a natural conversation. The abstract usually names the main event, which makes the story tellable and the narrative worth listening to.
I will exemplify this basic narrative structure with two narratives about the birth of a child. I chose them because they thematically match Labov's stories of near-death experiences, but differ, as they do not report violent encounters. I add the interviewer's question and comments in square brackets. Only the narrative's clauses are numbered. I will mark narrative sections in italics at the right side. In the text, I refer to specific lines by providing the line number in brackets.
Narrative A: Peter didn't want to come the natural way (translated) - Arlene, 32 years
[Please tell me about a very scary experience from your life.]
1 A really terrible moment in my life wasAbstract
2 when Peter was born.Orientation
3 And he didn't wanna come the natural wayComplication
4 and at some point I got a really high fever
5 and the child's pulse was almost gone
6 and the midwife said to me:
7 “It'll get a little hectic now,Evaluation
8 ‘cause we change shift in half an hour”
In its brevity, this rudimentary narrative is quite effective in transmitting the protagonist's rising anxiety. It has only one orienting clause, providing participants, probable location, time, and action. The complication is stated in a global way. All four clauses of the complication are introduced by the typical “and,” creating the expectation that there will be a cascade of events. Clause 3 is too general to be understood as a specific event, but still does contain a series of signs of a complication. Then in lines 4, 5, and 6 the narrator uses narrative clauses, suggesting that she is depicting events in chronological sequence. Each event increases the sense of danger. The change from Peter (3) to herself (4) to Peter (5) to the midwife (6) creates a chorus of increasingly dramatic voices. The direct quote is at the level of narrated events, but at the same time evaluates the situation, which increases the tension.
This brief story exemplifies the basic structure of narratives, as well as a typical complication with a stepwise increase of suspense. Also, a direct quote prolongs the time until the listener learns about the resolution, which introduces another escalation of the complication.
The first modification (#1) of Labov's scheme of narrative structure can be made by observing that not all narratives need to be complete. Rather, abstract and coda are sometimes missing, depending on the communicative context. Here, the abstract is not necessary because the question already names the kind of event to be reported. Furthermore, the result section may be missing. In this case, it leaves the listener wondering how the events turned out, so that there is a strong communicative constraint to finish the story.
Second, Labov described several degrees of explicitness of evaluations. The most explicit form of evaluation is when it constitutes a separate section of the narrative. In narrative A, the evaluation is situated before the resolution and marks the climax. Moreover, there may be evaluative clauses distributed throughout the entire narrative (Labov, Reference Labov1997). Finally, there may be evaluative aspects to any kind of clause, as I will discuss in the next chapter. A second distinction introduced by Labov and Waletzky (Reference Labov1972) is the degree of embedding evaluations in the narrative. Evaluations may be more external or internal to the action plane. In the narrative about Peter's birth, the evaluation section is made up by a remark of one of the characters. Therefore, it is an internal evaluation. In contrast, the abstract section in line 1 is made up of an evaluative clause with an evaluation that is external to the narrated time plane. The second modification of Labov's scheme I suggest, like several other authors before me, is to drop evaluation as a separate narrative section of the narrative structure (modification #2). As I will demonstrate later, evaluation clauses and evaluative elements can appear at several places in a narrative. Therefore, evaluation is situated at another level than the narrative structure, although I do agree that evaluations are placed most probably at certain locations in a narrative.
The following much longer narrative is also about a birth experience. I will use it with a subsequent third narrative to suggest some further modifications of Labov's basic narrative structure.
Narrative B: Birth of Anna (translated) – Bridget, 34 years
[Please think about a time when you were really frightened, and tell me what happened and what you experienced.]
1 Well, as you know,Abstract
2 I had my first child seven weeks ago.
3 And if think back to it now,
4 I guess
5 it was also my last child, hahaha. [laughs sadly]
6 Uhm, well, I had a terrific, super relaxed pregnancyOrientation
7 and when labor set inComplication1
8 I was even looking forward to giving birth,
9 ´cause,
10 you know, I thought
11 that it would be a relaxed thing as well.
12 Well, but then the problems started.
13 ‘round about 6 in the evening [I went] into the hospital,
14 and uhm at 2 in the morning I was still lying there with really bad labor pain.
15 Well, I'll spare you the details now.
16 They're not that important for your work, right?
17 The important things come later. [Interviewer: Just tell me, what you experience as important].
18 OK, well, uhm, - right, then the amniotic sac had to be blasted,Attempt to solve1
19 ´cause it wasn´t going ahead,
20 and already the water, well, the amniotic fluid came out all black.Complication2
21 The nurses immediately called the doctor,Attempt to solve2
22 my husband told me later.
23 I didn't notice any of that then, -
24 I was so much in pain -
25 you can't really imagine. -
26 Well, first everything was OKIntermediate positive result2
27 and my little Anna was healthy,
28 but then then they came to get her --Complication3
29 and they said,
30 they had to take her to the intensive care unit. --Attempt to solve3
31 Well, you know
32 what it's like in the hospital,
33 there is none right there,
34 so she had be taken to Frankfurt.
35 I wasn´t really well yet
36 and therefore I had to stay in the hospital for the time being.Complication4
37 They come get your child,
38 whom you just gave birth to,
39 and you can't even come along.
40 That was really bad. ---
41 Later got the news,Intermediate negative result4
42 that she wasn't doing well at all,
43 that besides having the gestosis,
44 she had caught herself an infection, a hospital bug,
45 wait,
46 what's-it-called-again, uhm, --
47 well, I've told it so many times,
48 and now I can't find the name, uhm [Interviewer: ORSA?]
49 yeah, right --.
50 Yeah, ´t was all really bad,
51 was so scared
52 that the little one wouldn't survive it.
53 Anyway, and the end of the story was,Result positive
54 that of course she did survive it all,
55 ´cause otherwise she wouldn´t be lying here next to me, haha,Coda
56 but I´ve never been so scared in my life
57 and hopefully I'll never have to go through that again -
58 cried so much.
The abstract announces a story about a bad birth experience. The first line is a typical appeal to the listener's knowledge or evaluation, creating a common ground. In lines 3 and 4 the narrator jumps to the present, providing an evaluation of the entire episode by sarcastically anticipating a permanent change in life goals, i.e., not wanting to have any more children. She thereby foreshadows terrible things to come. Line 6 introduces background information on a state of normality preceding the events, specifically, a happy pregnancy that had made her expect everything would go smoothly, which determined the positive outlook at the beginning of the specific episode (7–10). This is important for evaluative reasons, especially to create a maximal contrast between normality and complication in order to make the complication sound as surprising and as bad as possible.
Line 10 announces the complication. In the narratives analyzed by Labov (Reference Labov2013) in his book, the complication did not start with the complicating event, but with the beginning of the specific episode that contains the complication. The reason for this decision is that narrative clauses may be used in the specific episode, which contains the complication before the complication itself occurs. Labov asserts that narrative clauses are used exclusively in the complication section. Consequently, he needs to start the complication segment at the beginning of the specific episode containing the complication. However, as in this case, everything is still normal at the beginning of the specific episode, and the complication arrives only in the course of the events of this episode. Furthermore, this narrator uses three lines (8–10) to evaluate the beginning of the episode as normal. Therefore, it might seem more appropriate to place the beginning of the complication section in line 12, when problems are announced, or even in line 14 when they actually set in. Where to start the complication section is a pragmatic question of usefulness because there are equally good arguments for starting the section with the specific scene containing the complication and for starting it with the complication itself. I will follow Labov's convention (explication #1) because in many narratives it is easier to determine where the scene starts than where the actual complication begins.
Lines 13 and 14 are narrative clauses. In lines 15 to 17, the narrator interrupts the narrative to directly warn the listener that worse things are yet to come. Line 17 carries the next event, which is not a further complication, but rather an attempt to solve the complication. In his analysis of folktales that belonged to the genre of quest, Propp (Reference Propp1928) highlighted that after the introduction of a complication, the stories continued with a series of attempts to solve the complication, with each ending with a (negative) intermediate result, until the final (positive) resolution was reached. Todorov (Reference Todorov1969) suggested a slightly different narrative structure than Labov, based on an analysis of Boccaccio's Decamerone:
1 Initial situation in balance (Orientation)
2 Event that brings imbalance (Complication)
3 Protagonist notices imbalance (Evaluation)
4 Protagonist tries to reestablish balance
5 Balance is successfully reestablished (Resolution)
This pattern was taken up by psychological story grammars of the 1970s (e.g., Stein & Glenn, Reference Stein, Glenn and Freedle1979) who stressed the intentional structure of the story. Whereas the story of Peter's birth does not contain attempts to solve the complication (and not only because it is structurally incomplete), the story of Anna's birth does achieve a stepwise increase in suspense by a series of attempts to solve the complication and their successive failure.
As we will observe, many, but not all narratives of personal experiences, contain attempts to solve the complication. I will add these attempts and their intermediate outcomes as a structural element, marking each such step with a number (modification #3). An exceptional aspect of this narrative is that the attempts to solve are attributed to characters other than the protagonist herself, who is helpless. Only in line 39 does the narrator mention the protagonist's attempt to prevent the separation, but in a negated form, which Labov and Waletzky (Reference Labov, Waletzky and Helm1967) underlined as a typical form of evaluation.
The first attempt to solve the complication is expressed not in a narrative clause, but in a modal clause expressing a necessity, which, in turn, is justified in line 19. The use of the word blast adds a violent tone to the event. The result is negative, as the action reveals an additional complication (20). A more potent actor is called to the scene to solve the complication (21).
Lines 22 and 23 are surprising, because they violate Labov's (2013) egocentric principle when the narrator adds a piece of information she learned about only later from her husband. This seriously questions the validity of Labov's principle, also because such insertions of knowledge, which were gained later, are not uncommon in our sample of elicited narratives. In addition, the technique of foreshadowing also introduces information that the protagonist had not yet known at the time of the event (modification #4). Again, the insertion serves evaluative purposes that stress how self-focused she was in her pain and anxiety, as explained in lines 24 and 25.
Miraculously everything appeared to be fine as the baby was healthy (26–27), but the illusory positive outcome is destroyed when the baby is taken away to a neonatal ICU in a different hospital. “They came to get her” (28) is clearly another complication. Separating a mother and her newborn child is so cruel that listeners need no further comment. The same action also reveals to be an attempt to solve the complication (29–30). The next four clauses (31–34) interrupt the sequence of events by providing additional orienting information. Labov (Reference Labov2013) suggests that a retarded providing of orienting information only in the complication section serves, like evaluative clauses, to suspend the action and thereby increase suspense. Thus, orienting information may also be spread throughout the narrative (Labov, Reference Labov2013). However, in contrast to evaluation, an orientation section does have a normative place before the complication and is essential for building the narrative tension between normality, break with normality, and restitution of normality. Therefore, I will keep the orienting section and follow Labov in allowing for later orienting clauses (explication #2).
An additional complication prohibits the protagonist from following her baby (35–36). In the subsequent evaluation, she appeals to listeners’ sympathy by summarizing the events and using the generalized “you”. Then it seems that bringing the baby to the ICU as an attempt to solve the complication failed, because instead of helping baby Anna, it damaged her (41–49). Turning toward the listener for help dramatizes in the present situation the helplessness that characterized her as a protagonist in the past, thereby demonstrating how overwhelming the experience still is for her. Then, there is a final evaluation of the scariness of the entire experience (50–52) before she announces the happy end (53–54). It is blended with a coda (55), which proves the happy outcome. The final clauses serve to evaluate the entire experience by comparing it to the rest of her past and future life (56–58).
The distribution of evaluative parts in this narrative is fairly typical, as the abstract contains an overall evaluation (3–5), as does the coda (56–58). Additionally, the orientation contains two evaluations stressing positive normality (6) and normality expectations (8–11), which serve to maximize the evaluative contrast with the complication. Labov and Waletzky (Reference Labov, Waletzky and Helm1967) stressed the use of contrasting what happened to what may have happened by negatives, comparators, and irrealis modals. Next, the consecutive complications are evaluated (15–17, 24–25), then a shared evaluation of complications 2 and 4 in lines 37–40, followed by a final evaluation in lines 50–52. The result section usually contains an evaluation of the result and an overall evaluation of the entire experience, which is part of the coda.
Attempts to solve the complication may lead to negative results, which require a renewed attempt to solve the complication. Alternatively, as is the case in this narrative, new attempts to solve may be motivated by additional complications. Sometimes a negative result may also pose a new complication.
Labov and Waletzky's example narratives were mostly very brief and contained no or few attempts to solve. Most of them contained only one scene in terms of setting, participants, and time. Later Labov (Reference Labov2013) did analyze multi-episode narratives. He treated each episode as if it was a single narrative, although the different episodes are connected by an overarching complication and the goal to solve it. Therefore, the abstract, orientation, result, and coda do have a bracketing function by announcing the main complication, defining the initial state of normality, and stating and evaluating the outcome. Following others (e.g., Propp, Reference Propp1928; Stein & Trabasso, Reference Stein and Trabasso1981), I therefore prefer to maintain the integrity of an entire narrative and mark the episodes of a narrative by the additional codes of intermediate results, additional complications, and attempts to solve them. Such multi-episodic narratives often require additional orienting clauses and call for evaluations of each intermediate result and additional complication. This way of coding narratives maintains the hierarchical structure between the overall complication and goal, and also the more local complications and goals of single sub-episodes. In the two birth stories, the protagonist suffers under and struggles against mounting odds that help increase the tension. In the story of Peter's birth, the mounting odds do not constitute disparate episodes, while in the story of Anna´s birth, the scene changes between the third and fourth complication. Therefore, Labov would have had to divide the narrative into two separate narratives, each with an autonomous and complete structure. In comparison, my style of coding marks each new complication as part of one overall narrative structure, even if it is not part of the same spatiotemporal episode (modification #5).
The distribution of praise and blame
The next narrative serves to discuss another essential dimension of narratives of personal experiences, and also shows how the basic narrative structure generalizes across topics and types of eliciting questions. Here we did not ask for a specific emotional quality, but very generally for an emotional experience.
Narrative C: Getting caught stealing groceries – Charlene, college student
[Please think of an emotional event which you experienced about 3 months ago, that has moved you strongly and that you feel comfortable sharing.]
1 Well, I used to steal groceries and stuff for the household for a whole semester.Orientation
2 I got away with it all the time
3 and it was like not having to spend any money on food anymore
4 which was great.
5 And so yeah anyway one day I was in a grocery store with my boyfriendComplication1
6 and as usual I took my big bag to put all the groceries in
7 and at the end
8 when I was about to walk out the store a Mexican guy stopped me
9 and asked me to follow him.
10 At that point I didn't really know
11 what was happening.
12 He took me and my boyfriend up to
13 where the cameras were.
14 And some people
15 who worked there were sitting there.
16 And they took my bag
17 and accused me of stealing.
18 I first come up with this storyAttempt to solve1
19 about how I was going to tell my boyfriend to get my debit card from the car
20 and how I haven't walked out the store
21 and I was actually going to buy everything
22 and how I would pay for it now.
23 But they didn't believe meIntermediate result1
24 and the police cameComplication2
25 and they put me in the car
26 and took me to central bookings.
27 And I didn't call anyoneAttempt to solve2
28 because I didn't want anyone to know.
29 And the place was filthy full of bugs and weird people.Complication3
30 I really wanted them to let me goAttempt to solve3
31 but I waited and waited and waitedIntermediate result3
32 and nothing happened until the next morning.
33 And I'm just sitting there thinking
34 that
35 what happened is a sign of God
36 and he's telling me
37 not to steal anymore.
38 And I cried
39 and I was scared
40 and I was sick of waiting for so long.
41 And finally they let me out the next day at night.Result
42 Oh yeah, and I had to sleep on the floor
43 and I was cold
44 but yeah, they let me out.
45 And I didn't have to pay anything
46 but I got probation
47 and need to do community service hours.
48 And I haven't stolen anything since then.Coda
First, I will briefly highlight the structure of this narrative and the evaluations. This narrative has a similar structure as the one before, because it also contains several complications and attempts to solve them. In the prior narrative, the main complication was the danger to the baby's life, which was increased by the separation. In this narrative, the complication appears to be that the method of acquiring groceries is made impossible by being caught (8) and arrested (24–25). The protagonist tried to talk her way out of the situation in an attempt to be released by shop assistants (18–22), which did not work (23). The second attempt to solve the complication was not to be released, but rather refraining from calling somebody (27). This reveals that the arrest was unpleasant for her not because she felt guilty or feared punishment, but because she was ashamed (28). The “bugs and weird people” (29) was another reason that made Charlene's arrest difficult, which suggests that she was disgusted by the company, and possibly also by herself for being part of that class of inhabitants of “central booking” where all arrestees are initially held. The final attempt to solve the situation by trying to talk herself out of it was also unsuccessful, so she resigned to enduring the experience. The resolution is that she was finally released (41). The subsequent clauses go back in time and repeat how bad it had been to be held in custody, adding the physical hardship as an additional complication, and repeating the statement about being released. Repetitions serve evaluative ends as they emphasize how hard it had been and how relieved she was in the end (Chapter 3). Only then does the narrator report the consequences of her arrest in more detail (45–47). The coda contains a moral lesson and biographical consequence, based on an earlier evaluation (33–37).
The narrative contains relatively few evaluative clauses. The state of normality is evaluated as great (4). The contrast between Charlene's hope to be released and the reality of being kept for twenty-four hours also serves an evaluative function (31–32). Then there is a lengthy evaluative section right before the final resolution (33–40). Other evaluative devices below the clause level are also used, like the alliteration of “filthy full” and the alignment of “bugs and weird people” (29). Additionally, the protagonist's abstention from attempting to shorten the arrest by calling someone for help (27) serves to evaluate how embarrassing the situation was for her.
This narrative highlights an essential dimension of narratives of personal experiences, specifically, the distribution of praise and blame or the narrator's precarious task of balancing a plausible story with a self-serving self-presentation, both as a protagonist and as a narrator. This story requires much more management of blame than the earlier narratives because of the content of the story. The protagonist violated norms and might expect the listener to disapprove of her. She presents the theft as a state of normality by describing it as a routine activity (“I used to” – 1) and as not having any negative, but only positive consequences (2–3).
Choosing a place for problematic actions in the narrative structure determines the distribution of blame in an implicit, unquestioned way. Placing information in the orientation section makes it part of what is normal and in the background. What is mentioned as background is not questioned and requires no further explanation: “The orientation wipes the causal slate clean” (Labov, Reference Labov2013, p. 37). Therefore, theft is a given, and only getting caught introduces a complication. Selecting the event that first broke from normality is a powerful narrative tool, as any argument about who began a fight shows. Correspondingly, narratives by victims use a more extended temporal context than narratives by perpetrators (Baumeister, Stilwell, & Newman, Reference Baumeister, Stilwell and Wotman1990).
Although the normality of stealing may reflect the lived experience of the protagonist, Charlene knows that depending on the moral convictions of the listener, she may need to justify this placement. She does so by outlining the absence of negative and the presence of positive consequences of stealing. When narrating the specific events, she again underlines that she was acting as always (6). The acquiescing presence of the boyfriend further normalizes this routine activity of a young couple. This idyllic scene is disrupted by the appearance of a shop assistant who is allusively discredited when described as a migrant of low status and possibly himself of illegal status (7–8). The unknowing protagonist feels torn from her innocent routines (10–11). Her ignorance increases the violence of the break from normality. Linguistically, agency can be attributed or mitigated by the choice of agent and object positions in a sentence and by the choice of the verb, i.e., active or passive voice, and by the use of causative verbs such as make, let, had (Labov, Reference Labov2013, p. 37).
The crucial evaluative clauses are positioned before the resolution and take the form of indirect thought by the protagonist and indirect speech by God, the effect of which is heightened by the contrast to the two prior unsuccessful attempts to speak by the protagonist (23, 31). The reevaluation of stealing implicitly leads to the resolution, and the release was under the condition that she would actively make amends for the theft. Although Charlene never explicates that stealing had been wrong, or that she felt or feels guilty, she does return to normality by accepting that stealing will be punished. Therefore, in terms of narrative structure, the orienting section and evaluating clauses play a crucial role for attributing blame and for possibly averting the blame.
In the first two narratives, the protagonists experienced unfortunate events, and consequently, the attribution of blame was not at the forefront of the narrative. Still, in narrative A, Peter was ascribed an unwillingness to be delivered the natural way (A3), and the midwife was made responsible for the time pressure (A7–8). Narrative B begins with an impersonal style of narrating complications until suddenly a human agent in the form of an anonymous plurality shows up: “they came to get her” (B28). This was repeated in an impersonal, but also atemporal way (B37). Although the baby is blamed for “catching a germ,” the denomination as “hospital bug” shifts responsibility back to the impersonal hospital. In this narrative, the protagonist had been as optimistic as a mother should be, up until impersonal forces created the complication.
The limits of narrative
To date, I have defined narrative in terms of its essential and typical features. Another way to define narrative is by differentiating it from other forms of text and communication. I will first contrast narrative with other text types and then discuss some cases of texts that have some narrative characteristics but lack others.
Comparison to other text types and other clause types in narratives
Narrative is a text type that can be differentiated from other text types, especially from argument and description (e.g., Chatman, Reference Chatman1990). Argument is a text that serves to prove a point using a set of reasons that support an idea. Typically, arguments require a thesis and arguments for or against it. Arguments involve logical relations that are most explicitly expressed using causal conjunctions such as because (causal), in order to (instrumental), in spite of (concessive), and if-then (conditional). Treatises and editorials are examples of arguments. Descriptions provide information about a state of affairs, such as when describing a painting, a landscape, or the appearance of a person. Another text type is a chronicle, which is related to narrative due to their shared reference to events. Narrative, however, contains narrative clauses and imitates event sequences that take place within a specific spatiotemporal setting. In contrast, chronicles summarize events without detailing occurrences sequentially, and they may encompass extended time periods, such as in sentences that cover entire lifetime periods. Other text types, such as instructions and expositions, are more distinct from narratives and, therefore, less relevant for them.
Text types are not homogeneous but may, and often do, contain elements of other text types. Chatman (Reference Chatman1990) argues that narratives can serve as examples in arguments and may also appear in descriptions. Narrative is perhaps the one text type that most relies on integrating clauses that are arguments or descriptions. To contextualize the identification of descriptive and argumentative clauses, I will proceed to identify the narrative clauses for each of the three narratives.
In narrative A, clauses 3–5 are arguably narrative, because they reflect the sequence of events. In narrative B, narrative clauses joined by a narrative juncture are 13 and 14, 20 and 21 and 28 and 29. Furthermore, clauses 41 and 51 are restricted narrative clauses as defined earlier, i.e. they contain temporally specific events and could therefore not be moved beyond the next narrative clauses. Narrative C has the largest proportion of narrative clauses: 6–7, 8, 12, 16–18, 23–27, and clause 41 again is a restricted narrative clause about a temporally specific event.
Normatively, the orientation contains descriptive clauses. They describe a place, a time, and the participants. It might also contain chronicling sentences summarizing an event. However, narratives A, B, and C are atypical. The orientation of narrative A names a kind of event and a child's name, which is sufficient to imply other participants, like the narrating mother and the usual personnel and location. In narrative B, the orienting section consists of a single clause, which summarizes a time period, specifically a good pregnancy, in an evaluative manner. Information about the lack of neonatal ICU in hospitals is later broached when necessary (B32–33). Narrative C has a greater orienting section of four clauses that chronicle a habitual activity and its consequences. Again, descriptive information about where Charlene was taken is added later (C13–15). The description of central booking (C29) and some clauses in the orienting section are not merely descriptive, but also highly evaluative.
Arguments in narratives explicate motives and causes, and they also justify evaluations. In narrative A, the midwife justifies her prediction that the situation will be further disrupted by the approaching change of shift (A8). In narrative B, the narrator employs many arguments. First, she justifies an evaluation, specifically her initially positive expectations for giving birth (B9–11). Then, she provides reasons for the necessity of opening the amniotic sac (B19). She further justifies the effect of her pain on her narrowing attention (B24). The people who took away her child also provided a justification of what they were doing (B30). The narrator then explains why she did not go see her child (B35). Then she adds a concession (B47), that although she had told the story many times, she had forgotten the name of the bug. In contrast, there is a comparative dearth of arguments in narrative C. Clauses 2 and 3 justify the positive evaluation of stealing (C4). And later, the narrator explains (C28) why she did not call anyone when arrested.
The relative frequency of narrative clauses, that is, of clauses with sequenced events at the discourse level, may be taken as a measure of the narrativity of a text (cf. Abbott, Reference Abbott, Hühn, Meister, Pier and Schmid2011). Similarly, it is possible to speak of the descriptivity or argumentativity of a text in terms of the proportion of the respective kinds of clauses.
Some borderline cases
How much narrativity does a text need to be classified as a narrative? The basic Labovian definition is that the text needs to have at least two narrative clauses joined by a temporal juncture, such that a reversal of the clause order changes the referential meaning of the text. Texts not fulfilling this criterion, but which are predominantly about reporting events, qualify as chronicles. An additional criterion for a narrative text might be that it contains all the sections of narrative structure.
To convey a sense of the diversity of oral narratives of personal experiences, I briefly present four short texts about scary experiences.
Narrative D: Alone in bed (translated) − Dora, 23 years
[Please think about a time when you were really frightened, and tell me what happened and what you experienced.]
1 Well, I was lying in bed at home - Orientation
2 a:and --- was by myself – yeah -
3 and nobody was there.
4 It was night
5 and I couldn't fall asleep.
6 I had - the window open.
7 And - outside I heard kind of sounds out in the court,Complication1
8 as if - kids were yelling, crying,
9 as if someone was doing something wrong,
10 but I didn't dare to go look.
11 And was lying - in my bed, frozen, for a couple of hours
12 and stared to the ceiling
13 and hoped,
14 that I would fall asleep soon.
15 I was really scared then,
16 that somehow, there was a crook,
17 who wanted to do something really bad to me
18 and come into my flat at any moment – yeah.
The abstract is missing here, because when the narrative is a reply to a question, the question may already serve the function of an abstract, as it specifies the kind of event to be recounted, as well as ceding the floor to the narrator. Also, the result and coda section are missing as well as any attempt to solve the complication. Instead, two hypothetical attempts are explicitly negated (10–11). There is no temporal juncture between neighboring clauses, but clauses 7, and 11–13, plus 15 could not switch their positions because they narrate temporally successive events. Clause 7 is thus a restricted clause and clauses 11–13 and 15 are coordinate clauses, because they could switch positions among each other, but not with clause 7. Furthermore, in contrast to the first three narratives, there is no increase in tension and no climax. Therefore, the lack of immediately neighboring narrative clauses renders this text one with little narrativity. Nonetheless, it is about a specific event in a particular temporal and spatial setting, and there are two sets of restricted narrative clauses with a limited range. This qualifies the text as a narrative. As I will repeatedly demonstrate, neither a climax (modification #6) nor actions aiming at achieving a resolution (cf. explication #3) are necessary aspects of narratives.
Narrative E: Unwelcoming base (translated) − Emmy, 31 years old
[Please think about a time when you were really frightened, and tell me what happened and what you experienced.]
1 This was a situation from my childhood,Orientation
2 which happened frequently,
3 that I was just so scared at night.Complication
4 Of course, everybody knows this!,
5 that at night you wanna go in Mummy's bed.Attempt to solve
6 And that was somehow really terrible for me,
7 ´cause she also didn't wa(ha)nt this [speaks fast]Result
8 and rejected me.
9 And, well, also just left me alone [speaks fast].
10 But it was just such a fear, such an anxiety without reason,
11 but which was still heart piercing [German: ging durch Mark und Bein].
12 And I can still remember this feeling of helplessness and this sadness real well.Coda
This is also a story about the fear of being alone at night. There are possibly two neighboring narrative clauses (7–8), although they more or less report the same event under different descriptions, which makes them coordinated narrative clauses. However, the event is not depicted in detail. In this story there is an (unsuccessful) attempt to solve the complication of being alone, but again no climax. In contrast to the preceding narrative, this text does not depict a specific, one-off event, but a repeated event that Labov (Reference Labov2013) terms pseudo-narrative. I recommend continuing to treat texts with repeated events as narratives, because they are important in autobiographical remembering (cf. Habermas & Diel, Reference Habermas2013; Waters, Bauer, & Fivush, Reference Waters, Bauer and Fivush2014). Still, they are a special, atypical case (explication #4).
Narrative F: Separation anxiety (translated) − Fanny, 24 years
[Please think about a time when you were really frightened, and tell me what happened and what you experienced.]
1 OK -- well I used to be really afraid of going to nursery.
2 I never wanted to go the::re,
3 I always uhm cried and everything,Action
4 and that was a giant scare for me.
5 My mother always dragged me there,Action
6 and I didn`t want to.
7 Same for Ballet classes,
8 I had to go there too,
9 never wanted to either.
Again, this is a recollection of two similar repeated events. The entire text looks like an abstract, because there is no orientation and no specific complication. At the story level, the complication could be in clause 5, but it is already present in the first clause, because it implies that she had to go to nursery. The text is made up of three pairs of statements, which contrast the obligation to go with a negative evaluation (1 and 2–4, 5 and 6, 7–8 and 9). There are no narrative clauses. Therefore, this text, which was offered in response to a question asking for a narrative, can be classified as a chronicle.
Narrative G: Ambulance in front of home − Gertrud, 22 years old
[Please think about a time when you were really frightened, and tell me what happened and what you experienced.]
1 Well, I believe,Abstract
2 in everyday life I am anxious - mostly -- for other people.
3 That means,
4 that people
5 who are close to me are affected ---,
6 well, and there was one experience,Orientation
7 which was a while ago,
8 when I was, -- well, let me say I was still a kid,
9 when I was returning home one afternoon,
10 there were an ambulance and a mobile ICU standing in front of the houseComplication
11 when I realized pretty soon,
12 that they had come to our house,
13 well, I was, I was really very much afraid,
14 that something really bad had happened –
15 well then I went,Attempt to solve?
16 at least as far as I remember,
17 I wanted to go in fast,
18 Also did,
19 I believe, run,
20 to know,
21 what's going on. -
22 Well, afterwards it turned out,Result
23 something had indeed happened.
24 Well, the ambulance was there for my father.
25 But in retrospect it wasn't anything dramatic,
26 which I was quite relieved about.
This is a narrative of a specific event with a complication (10–12), narrative clauses (9–11; I disregard the when in 11 and treat the clause like a main clause) and coordinate narrative clauses (15, 17–18). Rushing into the house could be understood either as an attempt to solve the complication, or as the complication itself, i.e., the threat that someone close was not well. This is a small climax before the resolution (22–26). This narrative is comparable to the earlier narratives with a climax (A-D), but differs in presenting a situation in which the protagonist is not directly affected herself by the danger, but where someone close to her is. This is partially a witness narrative, as there may be no particular relationship to the character affected by the danger. Evidently, the narrator presented this story as a response to the request to provide a story of when she had been very frightened. Therefore, I will count this as a clear case of a narrative of a personal experience (explication #5).
The last four texts exemplified some deviations from the prototype of a narrative as suggested by Labov. Text F about separation anxiety deviated most, as it lacked both a complication section and narrative clauses. Therefore, I prefer to classify it as a chronicle. Narrative E about the nocturnal rejecting mother is not about a specific, datable event, but about a typical scene. It does have a complication and narrative clauses and, therefore, counts as a narrative. However, narratives of typical or repeated events often lack a climax, as they follow an expectable course. Narrative D about being afraid while alone in bed at night is deficient in its attempts to solve the situation, like narrative A, and also lacks a climax. The absence of a result section for both narratives may be related to missing attempts to solve and a missing climax. Nonetheless, these are narratives that include a complication and narrative clauses. Finally, narrative G about the ambulance is also a narrative with a complication section and narrative clauses, although it is more about someone other than the narrator.
Table 2.1 summarizes the suggested specifications and modifications of Labov's ideas about the structure of narratives of personal experience. They are not original, because Labov's conception of oral narratives has been criticized and expanded (cf. De Fina & Georgakopoulou, Reference De Fina and Georgakopoulou2012; Johnstone, Reference 329Johnstone2016; Romano, Porto, & Molina, Reference Romano, Porto and Molina2013). Rather, they serve to modify Labov's analysis in preparation for the following analyses of oral narratives in his book. This chapter situated autobiographical narratives in the context of other text types and defined two central characteristics, namely narrative clauses and a global narrative structure, which is developed around the choice of a reportable complication. The analysis of elicited narratives of emotional and more specifically, scary, experiences demonstrated the wide variety of structural configurations, showing some variation from the Labovian prototype. It was especially remarkable how narratives could lack some elements and still work well as interesting narratives, whereas others also lacked elements and no longer conveyed a sense of what happened and what that meant to the narrator. Narrative clauses and the complication resulted as the central elements of narratives. Next these will be complemented by the second essential element of narratives, evaluation.
Table 2.1 Explications and modifications of Labov's definition of narrative
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