Conversational Narration - Oral Narration
Last modified: 19 February 2013
Monika Fludernik
Oral narrative
http://lhn.sub.uni-hamburg.de/index.php/Conversational_Narration_-
Oral_Narration.html
1 Definition
“Oral narrative” is a term that covers a number of different types of storytelling:
spontaneous conversational narrative (“natural narrative”); institutionalized oral
narrative in an oral culture context; oral bardic poetry; simulations of orality in
written texts by means of narrative strategies such as pseudo-orality or skaz. For
narratology, oral narrative has been important at two different stages of the discipline.
In Russian formalism (especially in the work of Propp) and during the 1960s
(es-pecially in the work of Bremond and Greimas) fairytales, which had their
basis in orally transmitted storytelling, were used to analyze the deep structure
of narrative and to discover functions of plot elements and typical actant
structures (Jannidis → Character). More recently, Herman, Fludernik and others,
inspired by discourse analysis, have concentrated on conversational storytelling
both as an interesting type of narrative in and by itself and as a prototype of
all narration. This work has additionally had a close affinity with cognitive
studies (Her-man → Cognitive Narratology). Institutionalized oral narrative as in the
Homeric epics focuses on both the deep and the surface structure of narrative,
analyzing plot-related motifs and the repetition of epitheta and formulae on the
discourse level. The technique of pseudo-orality, finally, is a secondary
phenomenon. It refers to the evocation of charac-ters’ mode of utterance (especially in
terms of dialect and colloquiality) in the written representation of speech.
2 Explication
[4]
The basic prototype of oral narrative is spontaneous conversational narrative. This
covers narratives produced in face-to-face exchanges in a variety of contexts such as
storytelling sequences at dinner parties, brief narratives interspersed in telephone
conversations or in doctor/patient and lawyer/client exchanges. Labov & Waletzky
(1967) use the term “natural narrative” for this type of oral narration. In German, the
term Alltagserzählung (e.g. Ehlich ed. 1980) is current, emphasizing the fact that
conversational narrative occurs in the framework of everyday interaction. Spontaneous
(or unsolicited) conversational narrative must be distinguished from solicited narratives
told to interviewers. In the corpus of the Survey of English Usage (London), mealtime
conversations, telephone conversations, etc. were taped in which narratives
spontaneously occurred without solicitation or elicitation by the researcher. By
contrast, in Labov’s (1972) study, the material comes from solicited narratives in which
interviewers asked African-American youths to tell stories about specific personal
experiences. The same method was adopted for more extended acts of storytelling in
Terkel (1984). Unsolicited conversational storytelling takes place in very diverse
circumstances, but it is also present in much informal exchange on the telephone, in
social gatherings, etc. In the latter case, story sequences may emerge in which the
conversation develops into a series of narratives (one joke after the other, one story
after the other about one’s worst experience with doctors, etc.). Spontaneously
occurring natural narrative has received extensive analysis in the linguistic sub-
disciplines of discourse analysis and conversation analysis. (See Hutchby &
Wooffitt 1998; Jaworksi & Coupland eds. 1999; Johnstone 2002 for the former, and
Atkinson & Heritage eds. 1984; Psathas 1995; Schegloff 2007 for the latter.)
The second and third prototypes of oral narration characterize institutionalized
storytelling in an oral culture context. On the one hand, this includes oral poetry, on the
other, traditional and not necessarily poetic (i.e. verse-form) storytelling. Based partly
on the work of Lord (1960) and Parry (ed. 1971), Ong (1982), Foley (1990, 1995) and
others have studied the emergence of traditional epic poetry and noted extensive
similarities in structure and style between Homer’s Iliad or Odyssey and the oral epics
of the Balkans (guslar poetry). Much of this research focuses on the complexity of epic
poetry and on how oral production manages to create and sustain it with the help of
formulaic elements. In addition, Parry’s insights into the Homeric epics and Lord’s
analyses of contemporary guslar poetry raise questions regarding transformation from
the oral to the written poetic tradition.
[6]
In addition to the tradition of oral poetry, where long epics in verse are performed,
there are cultures in which narratives are presented by a storyteller to an audience that
interacts with the narrator while the story is being told, serving as a kind of chorus or
speaker of refrains. Such oral narratives can be found in various parts of the world,
e.g. in Canada (Tedlock 1983), in African countries, and in India. In contrast to
spontaneous conversational storytelling, this type of storytelling has an appointed bard
who is a practiced performer; nor is it framed by an ongoing conversation between a
small number of interlocutors in which stories are longer turns in verbal exchange.
Even so, oral poetry and oral storytelling in traditional cultural contexts do have a
frame: the institutional frame which gives the storyteller his exclusive “turn” as
performer, providing for audience/bard interaction in ritualized responses.
[7]
It could be argued that anecdotes, exempla, parables and similar short narrative forms
introduced into sermons, speeches or lectures constitute an intermediate type of oral
narration. In these contexts, narratives are inserted into ongoing oral discourse (as in
spontaneous conversational narratives), but with one dominant speaker (as in oral
poetry) rather than a framing conversational exchange.
[8]
The fourth type of oral narrative is “pseudo-oral discourse” (fingierte Mündlichkeit; cf.
Goetsch 1985). Although, literally, the evocation of orality in literary narrative has
nothing to do with actual conversational storytelling, this phenomenon is widespread in
literary texts and therefore of crucial importance to the narratologist. Pseudo-orality
occurs in two forms in literary (and sometimes in non-literary) narratives: the
representation of dialect or foreign speech in written dialogue and the evocation of an
oral narrator persona, as in the skaz (Ėjxenbaum 1918). As pointed out by Leech &
Short (1981: 167–70), the transcription of oral speech in literary dialogue aims not at a
phonologically precise rendering of dialect, but at accentuating typical dialect features.
By orthographic means, authors thus seek to highlight the differences between
standard written language and dialectal forms.
[9]
In addition to narratives that evoke linguistic alterity by stressing stereotypical features,
there are narratives that give prominence to a pseudo-oral narrative voice, a teller
figure whose style suggests that the discourse has been uttered rather than written
down. Such evocation of orality in narrative report can be based on the combination of
several techniques. In English literature, it requires the avoidance of literate
vocabulary and complex syntax. Thus, pseudo-oral narrators, such as Holden in J. D.
Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, are often garrulous, repetitive, contradictory and
illogical; they keep interrupting themselves and tend to address a fictive listener or
audience familiarly; they seem to have an intimate rapport with the fictional world, to
which they apparently belong, and also do not shy away from expressing their feelings
and views emphatically, thus setting themselves off from the typical narrators of
literary texts—aloof, bland, reliable, neutral.
[10]
Russian skaz (cf. Ėjxenbaum 1918; Vinogradov 1925; Schmid 2005: 156–76) often
falls under this category of the pseudo-oral, but at times undermines the mimetic
quality of the represented discourse by having a naïve peasant narrator resort to
inappropriately elevated diction, e.g. the register of the legal or administrative elite. It
must be noted that the evocation of orality in literary texts is just that: an evocation or
stylization produced by highlighting the most striking features of oral language. What
counts for narrative purposes is not a faithful copy of the “original” utterance in all its
linguistic detail, but the effect of deviation from the norm through quaintness,
informality, intimacy, lack of education, cultural difference, class ascription. The
simplifications and exaggerations of the linguistic features of orality and/or register
therefore serve the purpose of facilitating identification, stereotyping, “local color,”
or effet de réel. The technique is also used to characterize the narrator persona, just
as dialect in the dialogue of 19th-century fiction tends to underline class difference,
lack of education or idiosyncrasy (cf. Dickens, Scott or Trollope).
[11]
3 History of the Concept and its Study
[12]
Returning to the first category, spontaneous conversational narratives, a closer look
will be taken at research results in discourse analysis and conversation analysis
before going on to discuss their relevance for present-day narratology.
[13]
3.1 Discourse Analysis and Conversation Analysis
[14]
Discourse analysis developed as a sub-discipline of pragmatics, i.e. language in use
(Levinson 1983). More immediately, it derives from the work of sociologists, in
particular Sacks (1992). Sacks began by analyzing telephone exchanges at a call
center and then went on to establish the basic rules of conversation, notably (in
narrative sequences) “turn-taking,” “adjacency pairs,” “overlap,” “repair” and
“abstracts.” His initial research (in 1972) was followed by a landmark contribution
(Sacks et al. 1974) which concentrated on turn-taking. It was found that conversations
are structured by turns taken and held by each speaker. In narratives, speakers are
allowed longer turns, provided the interlocutors are alerted to the speaker’s intention to
delve into a story. In ordinary conversation, turns often come in adjacency pairs,
particularly at the beginning of exchanges: greeting/greeting; question/answer;
request/agreement or compliance; command/compliance; identification/recognition
(telephone); etc. Interlocutors frequently interrupt each other and overlap (B starts to
speak while A is completing his/her turn), but they also proceed in fits and starts and
may start their sentences over (repair): e.g. “I wanted… (pause) I was wondering…
(pause) could you tell me when flight LS 03 comes in?” These frame conditions have a
significant impact on how narratives are produced in spontaneous conversational
narrative.
[15]
Discourse analysis has also been heavily influenced by Labov (1972) and his school of
discourse study, which remains fundamental to the study of conversational narrative.
Labov collected narratives elicited in interviews with young African-American males,
and from this material he developed a model of the structure of natural narrative.
Labov & Waletzky (1967) propose a model of episodic narrative consisting of a basic
structure: abstract; orientation; narrative clauses (insert clauses of delayed orientation
and evaluation); result; coda. Abstract and coda provide a link with the conversational
frame, while the orientation section introduces characters and setting. The authors
also introduced the terms “point” and “reportability” or “tellability”: to be effective,
narratives must be “newsworthy” (reportable) and have a “point” (demonstrate
something). These features play a crucial role in Fludernik’s definition of
experientiality, which consists in the dialectic of tellability and point (1996: 26–
30; → Tellability).
[16]
Discourse analysis since Sacks and Labov has developed in great strides. Many
fruitful insights into natural narrative and oral exchange have been gained by
Schegloff, Gail Jefferson, Schiffrin, Chafe, Tannen, Quasthoff, etc. Besides focusing
on the structure and syntactic and lexical peculiarities of natural narrative, this
research has moved into elucidating the psychological and cultural functions of
conversational storytelling (Bamberg ed. 1997; Ochs & Capps 2001), the construction
of identity (Lucius-Hoene & Deppermann 2004), and questions of gender
(Tannen 1990) as well as the aesthetic effects of using quoted speech or thought
(Schiffrin 1981).
[17]
Conversational exchanges, including narratives, come not in sentences but in
discourse units (Chafe calls them “idea” or “intonation units”) which are set apart by
pauses and the completion of frames (Ono & Thompson 1995). To keep an audience’s
interest, natural narrative is often repetitious and interlaced with verbatim dialogue by
the participants in the events and even quotations from their thoughts, thus
fictionalizing and dramatizing stories in ways that are reminiscent of novels or short
stories (Tannen 1984, 1989; Fludernik 1993: 398–433). Conversational narratives also
employ narrative and non-narrative “discourse markers” (Schiffrin 1987), namely
particles (mostly adverbs) placed in conjunct or adjunct position of a clause but whose
“meaning” remains vague. They serve primarily macro-structural discourse functions
such as initiation of a new topic, return from a side remark to the main topic, capturing
the interlocutors’ attention, etc. Specifically narrative discourse markers shift between
the on-plot and the off-plot levels of conversational narratives, and they also mark the
key points of narrative episodes (Fludernik 1991, 1992a, 1992b, 1996).
[18]
More recently, conversation analysis has been established as a still more refined
research discipline for examining conversational exchange. According to Hutchby &
Wooffitt (1998), discourse analysis describes the systematic, rule-governed features of
natural narrative, whereas conversation analysis is concerned with the performative
and interactive aspects of conversational exchange. In particular, conversation
analysis studies the online production of utterances and the unfamiliar shape of oral
syntax (Atkinson & Heritage eds. 1984; Longacre 1983; Hutchby & Wooffitt 1998;
Schegloff 2007). However, few conversation analysts deal with narrative, Quasthoff &
Becker (eds. 2005) being an exception.
[19]
Another sub-discipline, having more literary credentials, is critical discourse
analysis (Hodge & Kress 1979; Carter 1997; Blommaert 2005), which studies how
discourses generate, transmit and perpetuate ideologies and interpellate readers. Two
handbooks of discourse analysis also discuss some aspects of critical discourse
analysis (van Dijk ed. 1997; Schiffrin et al. eds. 2001).
[20]
3.2 Oral Poetry and Narratology
[21]
Analyses of oral poetry have concentrated on two questions: formulaicity and motifs.
The formulaic repertoire of the epic was found to employ recurring epitheta for
common objects and heroes such as “the crafty Ulysses.” Whole verse lines are
repeated nearly verbatim in order to facilitate oral composition and delivery. The oral
epic is also characterized by a recurrence of typical motifs such as greeting between
host and guest, raising of the cup, embarkation, burial of the fallen hero. More
narratologically relevant are discussions of narrative episodes based on Bremond
(1973), revealing the affinity between the structure of the epic and that of the fairy tale
(cf. Wittig 1978). However, due to narratology’s concentration on the novel and on
prose fiction, there has been little narratological analysis of epic verse narrative.
[22]
3.3 Relevance of Conversational Narrative for Narratology
[23]
While classical narratology, in the foundational work of Propp (1928) and Bremond
(1973), analyzed short forms of narrative (the fairytale), the emphasis fell on event
sequences rather than on the oral delivery of such tales (in the absence of tape
recordings, written transcriptions were used). Narratological models such as those of
Genette and Stanzel shifted their interest to the discourse level of narratives but were
primarily concerned with the novel, largely disregarding narratives prior to the 18th
century and all forms of oral narration. Between the complexity and sophistication of
the novel and seemingly unstructured, syntactically misformed conversational
narratives, a wide gap was perceived, felt to be unbridgeable.
[24]
However, in the 1970s discourse analysts increasingly undertook research into the
structure of conversational narratives, analyzing them in their own right. In addition to
studies by Labov, Tannen, Johnstone and Chafe for English, major work was carried
out for German (Ehlich ed. 1980; Quasthoff 1980; Quasthoff & Becker eds. 2005;
Brinker & Sager 2006) and French (Gülich 1970; Mondada ed. 1995; Kerbrat-
Orecchioni 1996, 2001). In the field of narratology, two researchers have drawn
inspiration from conversational narrative as a major source of their own work.
[25]
Herman (1997, 1999) pleads for the relevance of natural narratives for postclassical
narratology. Taking a cue from Young (1999), who examines the performative nature
of spontaneous conversational narrative and the creation and maintenance of self in
patient/doctor exchanges, Herman proposes a model of conversational storytelling
treated as an interactive process in which the borders between ongoing conversation
and story are marked. He underlines the “jointly referential and evaluating function”
(1999: 231) of modal expressions and repetitions in conversational narratives and
emphasizes their “interactional achievement.” Based on a cognitive model in which
producers of stories and their listeners rely on cognitive action schemata and
inferences drawn from the events related or from information provided by the narrator,
Herman presents narratives (in his example: elicited ghost stories) as relying on “a
process of negotiation between storytellers and their interlocutors” (239). His ultimate
aim is to examine narrative competence in conversational narrative.
[26]
Fludernik moved into the study of conversational narrative through the problem of the
historical present tense. She developed a model of episodic narrative structure (a
modification of Labov) in which the historical present tense can occur at key points in a
narrative episode (1991, 1992a), serving a highlighting function (in modification of
Wolfson 1982). Fludernik (1996) went on to define conversational storytelling as a
prototype of narrative tout court. She maintains that conversational narrative is
basically about experientiality and that this is also true of the fictional narrative of
novels and short stories (53–91), therefore providing a bridge between oral and written
forms of narrative on the basis of narrativity (→ Narrativity) and the purpose of
storytelling (point and tellability). She further demonstrates that substrata of the oral
pattern of narrative episodes can be traced in English medieval and early modern texts
(92–128). In the history of English literature, the formal structure of the novel, which
looks so very different from that of conversational narratives, developed slowly out of
its oral roots in episodic narrative.
[27]
Over the past forty years, massive material has become available to discourse
analysts. Much of it was gathered in medical or therapeutic contexts (cf. Bamberg
ed. 1997), but oral history has also produced extensive records (Perks & Thomson
eds. 1990). One sophisticated model of conversational storytelling is provided by
Lucius-Hoene & Deppermann (2004), describing conversational narrative as a process
of ego construction, presentation of self, and negotiation of identities. In focusing on
these performative issues, the authors come strikingly close to the kind of analysis of
literary narratives undertaken by literary critics (→ Identity and Narration).
[28]
4 Topics for Further Research
[29]
Now that so much conversational narrative is available in transcript, there is ample
opportunity for narratological analysis of this material. The handling of dialogue and
thought processes in conversational narratives, the management of time schemata,
deictic shifts, the question of whether the concept of focalization (→ Focalization)
should be used in the analysis of conversational narratives—these topics and more
could well come into the scope of extensive research. Particularly with the narrative
turn at the end of the 20th century, such an emphasis on naturally occurring stories
could provide an increasing awareness of the affinity between natural narrative and
more literary and elaborated forms of storytelling.
[30]
5 Bibliography
[31]
5.1 Works Cited
Atkinson, John Maxwell & John Heritage, eds. (1984). Structures of Social
Action: Studies in Conversation Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.
Bamberg, Michael, ed. (1997). Oral Versions of Personal Experience. Three
Decades of Narrative Analysis. Special Issue of Journal of Narrative and Life
History 7.
Blommaert, Jan (2005). Discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.
Bremond, Claude (1973). Logique du récit. Paris: Seuil.
Brinker, Klaus & Sven F. Sager ([1989] 2006). Linguistische Gesprächsanalyse.
Berlin: Schmidt.
Carter, Ronald (1997). Investigating English Discourse. London: Routledge.
Chafe, Wallace (1994). Discourse, Consciousness, and Time. The Flow and
Displacement of Conscious Experience in Speaking and Writing. Chicago: U of
Chicago P.
Chafe, Wallace, ed. ([1980] 2006). Pear Stories. Cognitive, Cultural, and
Linguistic Aspects of Narrative Production. Norwood: Ablex.
Ehlich, Konrad, ed. (1980). Erzählen im Alltag. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
Ėjxenbaum, Boris (Eikhenbaum) ([1918] 1975). “The Illusion of ‘Skaz’.” Russian
Literature 12, 233–36.
Fludernik, Monika (1991). “The Historical Present Tense Yet Again: Tense
Switching and Narrative Dynamics in Oral and Quasi-Oral Storytelling.” Text 11,
365–98.
Fludernik, Monika (1992a). “The Historical Present Tense in English Literature:
An Oral Pattern and its Literary Adaptation.” Language and Literature 17, 77–
107.
Fludernik, Monika (1992b). “Narrative Schemata and Temporal Anchoring.” The
Journal of Literary Semantics 21, 118–53.
Fludernik, Monika (1993). The Fictions of Language and the Languages of
Fiction. The Linguistic Representation of Speech and Consciousness. London:
Routledge.
Fludernik, Monika (1996). Towards a ‛Natural’ Narratology. London: Routledge.
Foley, Miles (1990). Traditional Oral Epic. The Odyssey, Beowulf, and the
Serbo-Croatian Return Song. Berkeley: U of California P.
Foley, Miles (1995). The Singer of Tales in Performance. Bloomington: Indiana
UP.
Goetsch, Paul (1985). “Fingierte Mündlichkeit in der Erzählkunst entwickelter
Schriftkultur.” Poetica 17, 202–18.
Gülich, Elisabeth (1970). Makrosyntax der Gliederungssignale im
gesprochenen Französisch. München: Fink.
Herman, David (1997). “Scripts, Sequences, and Stories. Elements of a
Postclassical Narratology.” PMLA: Publications of the Modern Language
Association of America 112, 1046–59.
Herman, David (1999). “Toward a Socionarratology: New Ways of Analyzing
Natural-Language Narratives.” D. Herman (ed). Narratologies. New
Perspectives on Narrative Analysis. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 218–46.
Hodge, Bob & Gunther Kress ([1979] 1993). Language as Ideology. London:
Routledge.
Hutchby, Ian & Robin Wooffitt (1998). Conversation Analysis. Principles,
Practices, Applications. Cambridge: Polity.
Jaworski, Adam & Nikolas Coupland, eds. (1999). The Discourse Reader.
London: Routledge.
Johnstone, Barbara ([2002] 2008). Discourse Analysis. Oxford: Blackwell.
Kerbrat-Orecchioni, Catherine (1996). La conversation. Paris: Seuil.
Kerbrat-Orecchioni, Catherine (2001). Les actes de langage dans le discours.
Théorie et fonctionnement. Paris: Nathan.
Labov, William (1972). Language in the Inner City: Studies in the Black English
Vernacular. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P.
Labov, William & Joshua Waletzky (1967). “Narrative Analysis: Oral Versions of
Personal Experience.” J. Helm (ed). Essays on the Verbal and Visual Arts.
Seattle: U of Washington P, 12–44.
Leech, Geoffrey N. & Michael H. Short (1981). Style in Fiction. A Linguistic
Introduction to English Fictional Prose. London: Longman.
Levinson, Stephen C. (1983). Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.
Longacre, Robert E. ([1983] 1996). The Grammar of Discourse. New York:
Plenum.
Lord, Albert (1960). The Singer of Tales. Cambridge: Harvard UP.
Lucius-Hoene, Gabriele & Arnulf Deppermann (2004). Rekonstruktion
narrativer Identität: Ein Arbeitsbuch zur Analyse narrativer Interviews.
Wiesbaden: VS für Sozalwissenschaften.
Mondada, Lorenza, ed. (1995). Formes linguistiques et dynamiques
interactionelles. Lausanne: Institut de Linguistique des Sciences du Langage.
Ochs, Elinor & Lisa Capps (2001). Living Narrative: Creating Lives in Everyday
Storytelling. Cambridge: Harvard UP.
Ong, Walter (1982). Orality and Literacy. London: Methuen.
Ono, Tsuyoshi & Sandra A. Thompson (1995). “What Can Conversation Tell Us
About Syntax?” P. W. Davis (ed). Alternative Linguistics: Descriptive and
Theoretical Modes. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 213–71.
Parry, Adam, ed. (1971). The Making of Homeric Verse. The Collected Papers
of Milman Parry. Oxford: Clarendon.
Perks, Robert & Alistair Thomson, eds. ([1990] 2006). The Oral History Reader.
London: Routledge.
Propp, Vladimir ([1928] 1968). Morphology of the Folktale. Austin: U of Texas P.
Psathas, George (1995). Conversation Analysis. Thousand Oaks: Sage.
Quasthoff, Uta (1980). Erzählen in Gesprächen. Tübingen: Narr.
Quasthoff, Uta & Tabea Becker, eds. (2005). Narrative Interaction. Amsterdam:
Benjamins.
Sacks, Harvey (1972). “An Initial Investigation of the Usability of Conversational
Data for Doing Sociology.” D. Sudnow (ed). Studies in Social Interaction. New
York: Free P, 31–74.
Sacks, Harvey(1992). Lectures in Conversation. Ed. G. Jefferson. 2 vols.
Oxford: Blackwell.
Sacks, Harvey et al. (1974). “A Simple Systematics for the Organization of
Turn-taking for Conversation.” Language 50, 696–735.
Schegloff, Emanuel A. (2007). Sequence Organization in Interaction: A Primer
in Conversation Analysis. Vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.
Schiffrin, Deborah (1981). “Tense Variation in Narrative.” Language 57, 45–62.
Schiffrin, Deborah (1987). Discourse Markers. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.
Schiffrin, Deborah et al. eds. (2001). Handbook of Discourse Analysis. Oxford:
Blackwell.
Schmid, Wolf (2005). Elemente der Narratologie. Berlin: de Gruyter.
Tannen, Deborah (1984). Conversational Style. Analyzing Talk Among Friends.
Norwood: Ablex.
Tannen, Deborah (1989). Talking Voices. Repetition, Dialogue, and Imagery in
Conversational Discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.
Tannen, Deborah (1990). You Just Don’t Understand. Women and Men in
Conversation. New York: Morrow.
Tedlock, Dennis (1983). The Spoken Word and the Work of Interpretation.
Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P.
Terkel, Studs ([1984] 1990). ‘The Good War.’ An Oral History of World War
Two. New York: Ballantine.
van Dijk, Teun A., ed. (1997). Discourse Studies. 2 vols. London: Sage.
Vinogradov, Viktor ([1925] 1980). “The Problem of Skaz in Stylistics.” E. Proffer
& C. R. Proffer (eds). The Ardis Anthology of Russian Futurism. Ann Arbor:
Ardis.
Wittig, Susan (1978). Stylistic and Narrative Structures in the Middle English
Romances. Austin: U of Texas P.
Wolfson, Nessa (1982). CHP. Conversational Historical Present in American
English Narrative. Dordrecht: Foris.
Young, Katherine (1999). “Narratives of Indeterminacy: Breaking the Medical
Body into its Discourses; Breaking the Discursive Body out of Postmodernism.”
D. Herman (ed). Narratologies. New Perspectives on Narrative Analysis.
Columbus: Ohio State UP, 197–217.
[32]
5.2 Further Reading
Norrick, Neal R. (2000). Conversational Narrative. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Polanyi, Livia (1985). Telling the American Story: A Structural and Cultural
Analysis of Conversational Storytelling. Norwood: Ablex.
Renkema, Jan (2004). Introduction to Discourse Studies. Amsterdam:
Benjamins.
Ten Have, Paul (1999). Doing Conversation Analysis. A Practical Guide.
Thousand Oaks: Sage.
Zumthor, Paul ([1983] 1990). Oral Poetry. An Introduction. Minneapolis: U of
Minnesota P.
