Sociolinguistic Methods Peter L.

Patrick
U. of Essex / LG 554 Autumn 2000

The Nature of Narratives of Personal Experience

(These notes summarize Labov '97, often quoting directly. Read Labov anyway!)

Personal narrative is not the same as classic storytelling – it is not elaborated,

entertainment spun out of nothing, or made up. It deals with important events
in its teller’s life simply and seriously. Examples are told in sociolinguistic
interviews: the interviewer is an interested, attentive and responsive audience.
Though often given in response to a question, narratives are monologues and
tend to be decontextualized. Such narratives are not interactive, fitted to
illustrate an argument, or co-constructed and contested by others present. It
has been evaluated and transformed from the raw experiences that form its
substance.

A narrative of personal experience is a report of a sequence of events that have

entered into the biography of the speaker by a sequence of clauses that
correspond to the order of the original events.

Temporal Structure

Two clauses are separated by a temporal juncture if a reversal of their order

results in a change in the listener's interpretation of the order of the events
described.
A minimal narrative must contain at least one temporal juncture.

A sequential clause is a clause that can be an element of a temporal

juncture. All sequential clauses are independent clauses. [In English] All
sequential clauses are in the realis mood, headed by verbs in the preterit
tense, past progressive, or the present tense with the semantic
interpretation of a preterit (historical present).
A narrative clause consists of a sequential clause [the head] with all subordinate
clauses that are dependent upon it.

Narrative/Labov notes – page 1 of 8

Sociolinguistic Methods Peter L. Patrick
U. of Essex / LG 554 Autumn 2000

The range of a narrative clause is the set of narrative clauses between the first
preceding and next following temporal juncture.

[In Labov’s transcription conventions, the narrative range is indicated by a left

subscript indicating the number of preceding narrative clauses the particular
clause is simultaneous with, and the right subscript the number of following
clauses. The range is then the sum of the two.]

A free clause is a clause which refers to a condition that holds true during the
entire narrative (i.e. one with maximum range). A free clause is thus defined
semantically, not syntactically; it cannot serve as a sequential clause in that
narrative in which it is free.

A [temporally] bound clause is an independent clause with a range of zero

(minimum). All bound clauses are sequential clauses.

A restricted clause is a narrative clause with a range greater than 0 (but less
than the maximum). Narratives are thus sets of bound, restricted and free
clauses.

[We can then rewrite any narrative to show the temporal ranges and classes of
narrative clauses. Quotations with multiple clauses are resolved into individual
sequential actions. In narrative, actions frequently overlap, while quotations
rarely do. ]

Types of narrative clauses

An abstract is an initial clause in a narrative that reports the entire sequence of

events of the narrative.
[Eg 'Losing the Ring' b: "He gave me the boot"]

An orientation clause gives information on the time or place of the events of a

narrative, the identities of the participants and/or their initial behavior.
[Eg 'The 60cc Yamaha', a-e: "I had a few drinks…"]

Narrative/Labov notes – page 2 of 8

Sociolinguistic Methods Peter L. Patrick
U. of Essex / LG 554 Autumn 2000

A clause of complicating action is a sequential clause that reports a next event

in response to a potential question, "And what happened [then]?" All sequential
clauses are clauses of complicating action and all clauses of complicating action
are sequential.

The resolution of a personal narrative is the set of complicating actions that

follow the most reportable event.
[Eg 'The 60cc Yamaha', s: "And the guys said"]

A coda is a final clause which returns the narrative to the time of speaking,
precluding a potential question, "And what happened then?"
[Eg 'Losing the Ring', m: "And nn-ow he goes out with some other girl…"]

If a narrative is a report of events that occurred, why do we find clauses

in narratives that do none of these things – sentences headed by negatives,
futures and modals* in narratives?

Evaluation
of a narrative event is information on the consequences of the event for
human needs and desires. [Not a linguistic concept, but social/emotional.]

An evaluative clause provides evaluation of a narrative event. A narrative clause

in an irrealis mood* is an evaluative clause. A narrator evaluates events by
comparing them with events in an alternative reality that was not in fact
realized. Evaluation is characteristically concentrated in an evaluation section [a
group of clauses of a common functional type], placed just before the most
highly evaluated action, or 'point' of the narrative, which function to suspend
the forward motion of events.

(Quotations in a narrative, as speech acts, may be evaluative; seemingly

neutrally-phrased events may turn out on inspection to conceal evaluation.
Sentence grammar provides the most direct clues to evaluation.)

Narrative/Labov notes – page 3 of 8

Sociolinguistic Methods Peter L. Patrick
U. of Essex / LG 554 Autumn 2000

Reportability

Telling a narrative requires a person to occupy more social space than in other
conversational exchanges. The narrative must carry enough interest for the
audience to justify this action. Otherwise, an implicit or explicit "So what?" is in
order, with the implication that the speaker has violated social norms.

In Sacks' approach, the problem is not seen as one of "holding the floor,"
but rather of controlling the assignment of speaker (backchannels are taken as
turns of talk). How/why does a narrator get the floor back after even such a
minimal turn as a back-channel?

1) Successful completion of a narrative requires automatic re-assignment of

speaker role to the narrator after a following turn of talk if the narrative is
not completed in that turn.
2) A narrative must be introduced by a speech act which informs listener than
automatic reassignment to the narrator will be required.
3) Listeners must have a reliable means of recognizing the end of narratives.
4) To be an acceptable social act, a narrative must be accepted as justifying the
automatic re-assignment of turns to the narrator.

A reportable event is thus one which justifies the automatic reassignment of

speaker role to the narrator. To be an acceptable social act, a narrative of
personal experience must contain at least one reportable event.

A most reportable event is the event that is less common than any other in a
narrative and has the greatest effect upon the needs and desires of the
participants in the narrative [i.e., is evaluated most strongly]. A narrative of
personal experience is essentially a narrative of the most reportable event
[normally reflected in the abstract].

Narrative/Labov notes – page 4 of 8

Sociolinguistic Methods Peter L. Patrick
U. of Essex / LG 554 Autumn 2000

Credibility

The credibility of a narrative is the extent to which listeners believe that the
events described actually occurred in the form described by the narrator.

Credibility is inversely correlated with reportability. The more reportable

the events of a narrative, the more effort the narrator must devote to
establishing credibility. A serious narrative which does not achieve credibility is
considered to have failed; the narrator’s claim to re-assignment of speakership
will then be seen as invalid. The narrator will suffer a loss of status which will
affect future claims to speaker rights.

Causality

Narrative construction is equivalent to assigning a personal theory of causality:

1. The narrator first selects a most reportable event e0,
which the narrative is going to be about.
2. The narrator then selects a prior event e-1 which is the efficient cause
of e0, that is answers the question about e0, "How did that happen?"
3. The narrator continues the process of step 2, recursively, until an
event e-n is reached for which the question of step 2 is not
appropriate (the orientation, i.e. behavior which the narrator
represents as typical and customary).
Selection of the orientation is thus the crucial interpretive act of the narrator.

Example from Shambaugh’s narrative:

e4 Orientation: Shambaugh & his shipmates were sitting at a table drinking.
e3 [For no known reason,] a Norwegian sailor came to complain to
Shambaugh about a non-existent condition.
e2 [Because there was no basis for the complaint,] Shambaugh rejected the
complaint.

Narrative/Labov notes – page 5 of 8

Sociolinguistic Methods Peter L. Patrick
U. of Essex / LG 554 Autumn 2000

e1 [Because there was nothing further to be said,] Shambaugh turned his

back on the sailor.
e0 [Because Shambaugh had turned his back to the sailor,] the sailor was
able to cut Shambaugh's throat.

The narrator and the audience inevitably assign praise and blame to actors for
the actions reported (and inferred). This happens in a wide variety of ways, but
notably includes evaluation, invention or deletion of events, etc. It’s rarely made
explicit – rather it’s part of the underlying ideological framework. Thus a shared
moral framework is assumed between narrator & recipients, and the narrator's
function is to affirm this accepted morality and expound local cultural norms.
However, the effect of the narrative in transferring experience is relatively
independent of the narrator's assignment of praise and blame.

Viewpoint

The viewpoint of a narrative clause is the spatio-temporal domain from which

the information conveyed by the clause could be obtained by an observer.
In personal narratives, unlike literature, the events are always seen
through the eyes of the narrator. There is no switching of viewpoints, changing
of consciousness, or impersonal observation. The temporal sequence of events
in oral narratives of personal experience follows the order in which the events
became known to the narrator. There are no flashbacks in oral narratives of
personal experience.

Objectivity

Narratives of upper middle class, university-educated speakers tend to report

on the narrators' emotions. In contrast, many working class narrators are
sparing in their reporting of subjective feelings.

Narrative/Labov notes – page 6 of 8

Sociolinguistic Methods Peter L. Patrick
U. of Essex / LG 554 Autumn 2000

An objective event is one that became known to a narrator through sense

experience. A subjective event is one that the narrator became aware of
through memory, emotional reaction or internal sensation.
Since it is generally agreed that narrators' observations can be affected by
their internal states, reports of objective events are more credible than reports
of subjective events.
The transfer of experience of an event to listeners occurs to the extent that
they become aware of it as if it were their own experience. To the extent that
narrators add subjective reports of their emotions to the description of an
objective event, listeners become aware of that event as if it were the narrator's
experience. Thus, the objectivity of the description of an event is a necessary
condition for the transfer of experience in personal narrative.

Summary

The most reportable event is the semantic and structural pivot on which
the narrative is organized. The capacity of a narrative to transfer the experience
of the narrator to the audience depends upon the unique and defining property
of personal narrative, that events are experienced as they first became known
to the narrator. Transfer of experience to listeners is only possible if the
narrator reports events as objective experience without reference to the
narrator's emotional reactions. A narrative can be viewed as a theory of the
causes of the most reportable event, so that the crucial interpretive act is the
location of the orientation as the situation that does not require an explicit
cause. The chain of causal events selected in the narrative is intimately linked
with the assignment of praise and blame for the actions reported. In this view,
narrative is a theory of moral behavior and the narrator is an exponent of
cultural norms.

References
Labov, Wm. 1972b. "The transformation of experience in narrative syntax." In
Language in the inner city. University of Pennsylvania Press.

Narrative/Labov notes – page 7 of 8

Sociolinguistic Methods Peter L. Patrick
U. of Essex / LG 554 Autumn 2000

Labov, Wm. 1982. "Speech actions and reactions in personal narrative." In

Deborah Tannen, ed., Analyzing discourse: Text and talk. Georgetown
University Press.
Labov, W. 1997. ‘Some further steps in narrative analysis.’ Journal of Narrative
& Life History 7: 395-415.

Queries

Susan: In Labov's (1997) online article, he was talking about Quotations as

being Evaluative. and I understood that, but then in his description 1'', he had:
CA oKo "[and he said] Your throat's cut."
so he lists it as Complicating Action -- and I don't understand why.

PLP: Ok, let's look more carefully! The narrative has 4 quotations, in lines g, h, j,
and k. Two are CA, two are EV.
My take is this. A reported utterance is an event, therefore always
potentially CA. But sometimes trivially so. And sometimes, much more
importantly than being an event (and in fact often, we can assume or work out
that the utterance didn't actually OCCUR at the time), it is evaluative. (As I
understand it, the utterance can be both, but is classified as to which is more
critical to interpretation-- this is all about interpretation.)
Line (g) is a simple imperative. A command speech act, which must have
a consequent ACTION in this interaction. Thus CA.
Line (j) is a NEGative imperative, which as Labov discusses "evaluates the
situation in comparison with one where it would be safe for Shambaugh to
move his head". Evaluation is "information on the consequences of the event for
human needs and desires", so this imperative is EV.
A similar account can be given for line (h): the utterance expresses to the
listener (and also, if it was actually said, to the participants in the storyworld)
the narrator/actor's attitude towards the guy he shoved. Notice that the
essential action of the story could have proceeded identically if this clause had
not been included, unlike line g.
Line (k), finally, reveals the central event of the narrative through a
reported utterance: the sailor cut his throat. Thus, it's CA.

Narrative/Labov notes – page 8 of 8