William Labov

Columbia University

and

Joshua Waletzky

Harvard University

Most attempts to analyze narrative have taken as their subject matter the more complex products of long-standing literary or oral traditions. Myths, folk tales, legends, histories, epics, toasts and sagas seem to be the result of the combination and evolution of simpler elements; they contain many cycles and re-cycles of basic narrative structures; in many cases, the evolution of a particular narrative has removed it so far from its originating function that it is difficult to say what its present function is.

In our opinion, it will not be possible to make very much progress in the analysis and understanding of these complex narratives until the simplest and most fundamental narrative structures are analyzed in direct connection with their originating functions. We suggest that such fundamental structures are to be found in oral versions of personal experiences: not the products of expert story tellers that have been retold many times, but the original production of a representative sample of the population. By examining the actual narratives of large numbers of unsophisticated speakers, it will be possible to relate the formal properties of narrative to their functions. By studying the development of narrative technique from children to adults, and the range of narrative techniques from lower class to middle class speakers, it will be possible to isolate the elements of narrative

In the present paper, we will present an analytical framework for the analysis of oral versions of personal experience in English. We will first introduce definitions of the basic units of narrative, and then outline the normal structure of the narrative as a whole. Finally, we will present some general propositions about the relation of formal properties to narrative functions, based on our examination of a moderate body of data.

The analysis will be formal, based upon recurrent patterns characteristic of narrative from the clause level to the complete simple narrative. We will be relying upon the basic techniques of linguistic analysis, isolating the invariant structural units which are represented by a variety of superficial forms. From this analysis it is possible to derive a considerable amount of information on the syntax and semantics of English below the sentence level; but this direction of research will not be exploited here. We will be concerned primarily with the characteristics of the narrative itself.

The analysis will be functional: narrative will be considered as one of constructing narrative units which match the temporal sequence of that experience, in particular, a technique of constructing narrative units which match the temporal sequence of that experience. Furthermore, we will find that narrative which serves this function alone is abnormal: it may be considered empty or pointless narrative. Normally, narrative serves an additional function or personal interest determined by a stimulus in the social context in which the narrative occurs. We therefore distinguish two functions of narrative: (1) referential and (2) evaluative.

In most previous studies of folk narrative, the basic unit for analysis has been a substantial piece of thematic material, defined at various levels of abstraction by the type of action referred to. Thus the work of Propp (1958) was devoted to the formal structure of such large semantic units. The present study has assumed as a basic task the analysis of narratives which might appear as fundamental, unanalyzable units in Propp=s scheme. We will be concerned with the smallest unit of linguistic expression which defines the functions where phrases and words are relevant to evaluative function. Colby=s work (1996) takes as data the frequencies of individual words according to a semantic subcategorization; a linguistic approach is quite opposite in direction, focusing upon the syntagmatic structure of words and phrases operating in clauses and higher levels of organization. Schatzman and Strauss (1955) studied class differences in narrative technique by informal means; it is hoped that the methods developed in the present discussion will permit a more reliable and objective approach to studies of this type.

We will be dealing with tape-recorded narratives taken from two distinct social contexts. One is a face-to-face interview where the narrator is speaking only to the interviewer, a person not a member of a narrator=s primary group. In the second situation, the narrators recorded in interaction with his primary group; he is speaking in margins of the group who provides only a part of the stimulus for the narrative.

The following pages provide fourteen examples of the data on hand drawn from about 600 interviews gathered in the course of four linguistic studies.² The narrators include speakers from Negro and white communities, rural and urban areas, and they range in age from 10 to 72 years old. In one respect the range is limited: there are no highly educated speakers represented here; in fact, none of the narrators finished high school.

The ultimate aims of our work will require close correlations of the narrator=s social characteristics with the structure of their narratives, since we are concerned with problems of effective communication and class and ethnic differences in verbal behavior.³ In this paper, however, we are concerned with the narratives themselves, and so example 1-14 appear as anonymous narrations, arranged in descending order of the speakers= ages.

I never noticed it. Fact is, I didn=t like her very well, because she had--she was a nice looking girl until you saw her feet. She had big feet. Jesus, God, she had big feet!

I talked him out of it; and says, AWell, we=ll go look for her, and if we can=t find her, well you can--go ahead, pull the trigger if you want to.@ I was maneuvering.

So he took me up on it. And we went to where they found her handkerchief - the edge of a creek - and we followed down a little more, and we couldn=t find anything. And got back - it was a tent show - she was laying on a cot with an ice bag on her head. She hadn=t committed suicide.

But - however - that settled it for the day. But that night the manager, Floyd Adams, said AYou better pack up and get out because that son of a bitch never forgives anything once he gets it in his head.@

I had dogs that could do everything but talk. And by gorry, sir, I never licked >em.

(When you have small kids, they=re always asking for one more thing, like a drink of water, to keep from going to bed at night. I wonder if you had that problem, and what you did about it?) Yeah, but - a lot of the children I=ve seen, that their excuse they=ve got to go to the bathroom, and they don=t have to go at all. (How do you cope with it. You can=t--you never know...) No. I don=t remember how we coped with it. I never believed a whole lot in licking. I was never - with my children, and I never - when it was with my animals, dogs; I never licked a dog, I never had to. A dog knew what I meant; when I hollered at a dog, he knew the - what I meant. I could--I had dogs that could do everything but talk. And by gorry, sir, I never licked >em.

I never come nearer bootin= a dog in my life. I had a dog--he was a wonderful retriever, but as I say he could do everything but talk. I could waif him that way, I could waif him on, I could waif him anywhere. If I shot a crippled duck he went out after it; he didn=t see it in the water, he=d always turn around look at me, and I=d waif him over there, if the duck was there, or if it was on the other side of where we=re on, I could waif him straight ahead, and he=d turn and he=d go. If he didn=t see me, he=d turn around, he=d look at me, and I=d keep a-waifin= him on. And he=d finally catch sight of him, and the minute he did, you know, he would bee-line and get that duck.

I was gunnin= one night with that dog - we had to use live decoys in those days - a fellow named Jack Bumpus was with me; I was over at a place called Deep Bottom, darker than pitch. And - uh - heard a quackin= off shore. And, I said to Jack, AKeep quiet. There=s one comin= in.@ And - uh - finally Jack said to me, AI think I see >im.@ I said, AGive >im a gun. Give >im a gun. Try it.@

So he shot, and this duck went for the shore with his wings a-goin= like that for the shore. Went up on the shore. Well this dog never lost a crippled duck on shore, he=d take a track just the same as a hound would take a rabbit track. And I sent him over. I said, AGo ahead.@

So he went over there. And - gone a while and come back and he didn=t have the duck. And that was unusual--I said, AYou git back there and get that duck!@ And he went back there; and he stayed a little while longer, longer than he did the first time, and he come back and he didn=t have that duck.

And I never come nearer shootinÕ a dog. By gorry, I come pretty near. ÒYou git back there and get that duck!@ And that dog went back there, and he didn=t come back. And he didn=t come back. By gorry, we went over there - I walked over there, and here he was; one of my tame ducks that I had tethered out there had got the strap off her leg, and had gone out there, and when this fellow shot, he hadn=t hit the duck. The duck came for the shore, he hadn=t hit the duck; but the duck was scared and had come for the shore. My dog was over there, and had his paw right on top of that duck, holdin= him down just as tight as could be, and - by gorry, boy , I patted that dog, I=ll tell you if I ever walloped that dog I=d have felt some bad. He knew more An I did; the dog knew more than I did. He knew that was that tame duck; he wasn=t gonna pick him up in his mouth and bring him, you know. He was just holdin= him right down on the ground.

(Were you ever in a situation where you were in serious danger of being killed?) My brother put a knife to my head. (How=d that happen?) Like kids, you get into a fight and I twisted up his arm behind him.

Course kids, you know - he don=t hafta listen to me. So that=s when I grabbed him by the arm, and twisted it up behind him. When I let go his arm, there was a knife on the table, he just picked it up and he let me have it. And I started to bleed like a pig.

And, naturally, first thing was - run to the doctor. And the doctor just says, AJust about this much more,@ he says, Aand you=d a been dead.@

...They didn=t believe in calling the law or anything like that. They just took things in their own hands. (Did you ever see any shooting of that sort?) Oh, yes. I can remember real well. I w=s just a girl. >Fact, stayed with me quite a while.

Well, there=s a fellow, his name was Martin Cassidy >n= Bill Hatfield. Mr. Cassidy=s mother gave him some money an= tell him to go get a bushel of peaches. AnÕ he went down to Martin=s house. An= Martin had some moonshine down there.

Back down there, they make their own liquor, you know. So - we call it moonshine. Today, they call it white lightnin=; but at that time we call it moonshine.

An= I remember real well what happened. Bunch of us kids was out there playin=; an no one meanin= any harm about it. But anyway, Mrs. Hatfield come down an took away her money from Mr. Hatfield, you know, for the peaches, cause she know what he was gonna buy drinks with it. ÔNd Mr. Cassidy was laying out there in the yard.

And Mr. Cassidy just looked up and he said to Bill, just - just jokin=, just in a kiddin= way, he said AUh huh,@ he says, Athat=s - another dollar bill you won=t get to spend for drinks, hunh?@

>Nd Bill said, AI=ll fix you, ya so-and-so.@

So he walked in Martin Cassidy=s house, his own house, came out with a double-bitted axe, hit him down >crost the head once, turned over and hit him again, then throwed the axe down and run through the woods.

(Were you ever in a situation where you were in serious danger of being killed?) Yes. (What happened?) I don=t really like to talk about it. (Well, tell me as much about it as you can?)

Yeah, I was in the Boy Scouts at the time. And we was doing the 50-yard dash, racing, but we was at the pier, marked off, and so we was doing the 50-yard dash. There was about eight or nine of us, you know, going down, coming back. And going down the third time, I caught cramps and started yelling Ahelp!@, but the fellows didn=t believe me, you know. They thought I was just trying to catch up, because I was going on or slowing down. So all of them kept going. They leave me.

And so I started going down. Scoutmaster was up there. He was watching me. But he didn=t pay no attention either. And for no reason at all there was another guy, who had just walked up that minute... He just jumped over and grabbed me.

And she was the baddest girl - the baddest girl in the neighborhood. If you didn=t bring her candy to school, she=d punch you in the mouth. And you had to kiss her when she [>d] tell you. This girl was only about twelve years old, man, but she was a killer. She didn=t take no junk. She whupped all her brothers.

And I came to school one day, and I didn=t have no money; my ma wouldnÕt give me no money. And I played hookies one day. First time I played hookies, man, put sump=n on me, so I said, you know, I=m not gonna play hookies no more, > cause I don=t want to get a whuppin=.

So I says to myself AWell, there=s gonna be times my mother won=t give me money because a poor family, and I can=t take this all - and so, you know - every time she don=t give me any money. So I say, well, I just gotta fight the girl. She gonna hafta whup me. I hope she don=t whup me.@

(Were you ever in a situation where you were in serious danger of being killed?) I=m gonna die? When I was drownin=, I didn=t know - like, I was turnin= tumblesauts. But that was the only time.

I - I was in a fight downtown once. Like, - I went down to a party, and - this - this guy was a soldier - and this guy was a soldier, and he comes on, Agimme a cigarette.@

I said, AI don=t have any cigarettes@

AWell, lemme search you.@

I said, AYou=re not gonna search me.@

Well - I=m a soldier, and I know judo.@

I said AWell, I don=t - I don=t care if you=re a cop and you know karate, you=re not gonna search me.

And he hit me, man, like I hit him. And like, I - I got next to the guy. He didn=t get a chance to use nothing, and I put sump=m on him.

I had - had a couple of guys with me. So we walked around the corner, - after, you know , I knocked him down a couple of times. I said Awell, you know, we=ll soon get it.Ó

I walk around the corner about twenty guys come after us, down by the projects. And we=re runnin= - and, like - I couldn=t run as fast as the other guys. And they was catchin= up to me. And I crossed the street, and I tripped, man. And, like, when I tripped, they kicked me and they was on me and I said, Alike this is it, man@; I pulled a knife.

I was goin= with a girl, one time; we were layin= on a bed - we weren=t doin anything, we were talkin= - and I don=t know, I looked into her face and I saw, like, horns coming out of her head. You know - like - I said, AYou look like the devil!@

She said, AWhat do you mean, I look like the devil?@

ADon=t kid around.@ I said, AI=m not kiddinÕ. I saw horns cominÕ out of your head.Ó

` So, now, anything I see I believe it=s going to happen.

(What was the last cartoon you saw on television?) I don=t know, I was watching the Sandy Becker show. (What was the story about?) About this pig. (What happened?)

See he - they threw him out, you know. So he wanted to get back in, >cause , you know, it was sn- raining hard. So he got on this boat and tried to - go somewhere else. And the boat went over. And he tried to swim.

He took my glove, and say that his father found it downtown on the ground. I told him that he - it=s impossible for him to find downtown, >cause all those people were walking by, and just his father is the only one that find it? So he get all upset. Then I fought him. I knocked him all in the street. So he say he give. And I kept on hitting him. Then he start crying and run home to his father. And his father told him, he ain=t find no glove.

...See, Napoleon he took the ring and put it on the maiden. It was a statue of the maiden. Then he put it on her finger where the ring=s supposed to be, and then he saw the place where the project was made at. And everything wh - the doctor who made it was dead.

So when they started to leave out, he had a Japanese man first tell him to surrender. And before he told him to surrender, the dog - the dog came in there. The dog had found them. And the Japanese man came and told >em to surrender.

See, they was inside the cave and the Japanese man was outside. And he told them to surrender. And he didn=t surrender. He first - he told them that he made a trap. Then he said, AYou can come in and make sure the project is all washed up, A >cause it was no more there. And they came.

ACalv -@

See, we - it was on a Sunday, and we didn=t have nothin= to do after I - after we came from church. Then we ain=t had nothin= to do.

So I say, ACalvin, let=s go get out - put our dirty clothes on so we can play in the dirt.@

And so Calvin say, ALet=s have a rock - a rock war.@ And I say, AAll right.@

So Calvin had a rock and we, you know - here go a wall and a faraway go a wall. Calvin threw a rock. I was lookin= and - uh - and Calvin threw a rock. It oh - it almost hit me.

Say ASssh!@ and= it pass me.

I say, ACalvin, I=m bust your head for that.@

Calvin stuck his head out. I th=ew the rock, and the rock and the rock went up, I mean it went up, came down, and say [slap], and smacked him in the head and his head busted.

[5=] c A friend of mine came in

[5==] d A friend of mine stopped the attack.

The sequence of clauses d through j does not match the sequence of events and situations inferred from the narrative. The situation described in g (AThis was out on Coney Island A) certainly did not follow f (AHe sort of ran out of the yard@); the event of I (Aand my mother had just sat down to have a cup of coffee@) did not follow h (Aand he started talk about it@)-- rather it preceded it; the referent of clause e is not temporarily ordered with relation to any of the events (Aand the reason the fight startedÓ). The clauses which do refer to events clearly in the sequence are@

[3=] f He sort of ran out of the yard

Here clause l (Ashe was going to commit suicide@) is the familiar construction of indirect discourse in which we refer to the fact that a person in the past referred to an event which would occur sometime in the future. Clause m, an the other hand, refers to events prior to clause k. One can quote any number of examples to show that any subordinate clause is removed from the temporal sequence of narrative, even if it retains its own temporal reference.

[7] w and they was catchin= up to me

[7=] x and I crossed the street

w and they was catchin= up to me

[7@] w and they was catchin= up to me

[7@=] 0 2 and they was catchin= up to me DS(w) = {w, x, y}

[14=] 0 0 [and the rock] came down

1 2 and says, AWell, we=ll go look for her,

2 1 and if we can=t find her, well you can--

go ahead, pull the trigger if you want to.@

Here clauses m, n, and p are coordinate, with identical displacement sets (m, n, o, p ) , since they could occur in any of the six possible permutations without altering the temporal sequence of the original semantic interpretation. But none of these could be placed before l ( He came to my hotel@) or after q ( ASo he took me up on it@)

1 17 and we was doing the 50 - yard dash A

2 16 racing A

3 15 but we was at the pier, mark off A

4 14 and so we was doing the 50 - yard dash A

down, coming back A

0 0 and I started yelling AHelp!@ {h}

0 l but the fellows didn=t believe me, you know, {i-j}

7 2 but he didn=t pay me no attention either {i-r}

Narrative No. 6 begins with six free clauses, all of which can range over the entire narrative; for each of these, the sum of the subscripts is 18. The third clause, Aracing,Ó is in apposition with doing in the second clause, and is treated as derived from we was racing. It must be analyzed separately, since it is possible that such an appositive could be temporally ordered in respect to other clauses. The situation and action described in these six clauses prevails throughout the entire narrative: that is, the 8 or 9 of us continue racing even when the narrator himself is in trouble.

Clause m is a narrative clause with a displacement set ranging over the three following clauses. These following clauses are not in strict narrative sequence; the first one, n, is a free clause (AScoutmaster was up there@). It should be understood that the test for displacement range must include a procedure for adjusting anaphoric reference. AScoutmaster was up there@ would be a strange utterance in initial position. But if we supply the referent of there-- at the pier-- we have AScoutmaster was up at the pier,@ which could stand in initial position without changing the temporal sequence of the original semantic interpretation. The reverse situation would apply if a specific free clause in initial position, with several proper names, was displaced to a point later in the narrative: pronoun substitution would be made.

The second clause o (AHe was watching me@) is a restricted clause, with DS(o) = {i-r} , extending before n. It could have been placed at any point after h AI started yelling >Help!=@, that is, after the action that called the scoutmaster=s attention to the narrator and logically motivated his action. It is worth following the logic of this argument in detail, since it is typical of the method for establishing the displacement sets of restricted clauses.

While it is true that the scoutmaster=s job was to watch everyone, we interpret the statement o (AHe was watching meÓ) to mean that there was a significant change at one point, from watching everyone to watching the narrator in particular. This interpretation hinges on the word either this word coordinates the negation of AHe didn=t pay me no attention@ with some previous negative statement: the first preceding negative clause is I (Athe fellows didn=t believe me.@). Therefore we can conclude that both of these statements refer to events which responded to clause h (Aand I started yelling >Help!=@).Therefore, the displacement sets of o and p cannot include h therefore without a change in the temporal sequence of the original semantic interpretation.

On the other hand, clause o could range towards the end, at any point up to clause s. If clause o appeared after s then the same temporal inference that we now draw--that the scoutmaster began watching after the cry for help--would be altered. It would be the grabbing of the narrator by the Aother guy@ that would mark the beginning of the scoutmaster=s watching.

The rest of the narrative consists of simple 0 0 narrative units. Clause q (Afor no reason at all there was another guy@) has the temporal status of a punctual act, appearance: the viewpoint is clearly that of the narrator.

I j the fellows didn=t believe; they thought I was

c¹, c²...cⁱ...cⁿ

[1] cⁱ DS(c^j) if cⁱ...c^j and c^j...cⁱ yield the same temporal sequence in semantic interpretation [or if cⁱ = c^j]

[2] If cⁱ DS(c^k) and c^j DS(c^k)

and cⁱ DS(c^j) and c^j DS(cⁱ)

[a] and DS(c^k) = N, then c^k is a free clause.

[b] and DS(c^k) < N, then c^k is a restricted clause.

[3] If condition [2] does not hold, c^k is a narrative clause.

[10] 0^a2 I know a boy name Harry.

1^b0 Another boy threw a bottle at him right in the head,

0^c0 and he had to get seven stitches.

is a narrative, since a temporal juncture is found between b and c. A statement such as AI shot and killed him.@ would be a narrative, since it contains a temporal juncture, but not ÒI laughed and laughed at him.@ There are many ambiguous cases, which allow two distinct interpretations: AI punched him in the head, the mouth and chest@ the head, then in the mouth, and then in the chest. But the temporal interpretation is possible, and it is more likely in AI beat him up and stomped on him.@

[2] 0^u0 And - gone a while

0^v0 and come back

0^wl and he didn=t have the duck.

0^x31 And that was unusual--

l^y0 I said, AYou git back there

and get that duck.@⁵

0^aa0 And he went back there;

[1] 0^u1 and got back

21^v9 it was a tent show

1^w1 she was laying on a cot with an ice bag on her head.

12^x7 She hadn=t committed suicide.

1^y0 But - however - that settled it for the day.

In this example, was laying is in temporal order; it can be displayed before the free unit v and after the restricted unit x, but not before u or after y without changing the temporal sequence of the semantic interpretation. There is considerable semantic and syntactic interest in the questions raised by this use of the past progressive, ⁶ and many other such issues are raised by the data of narrative analysis; however, the present paper is confined to the description of the basic units and framework of narrative, and such questions will not be pursued here.

In general, the present perfect does not appear in narrative.⁷ The past perfect, as noted before, does not function as a narrative head. However, if the clause with the past perfect refers to an event developed in the narrative, rather than to some event preceding is the case in clause x in [1] above. Although x would have been true in initial position, it would not have referred to the particular suicide threatened in clause k. In its present position, x asserts that the threat of k was not consummated at some time prior to the moment in which x is stated--necessarily before the next preceding narrative unit. Therefore x can be placed before the disclosure of w, at any point after k It can also occur at any point after the disclosure w with no change in temporal sequence.

[2] 0ⁿⁿ0 I walked over there

0⁰⁰18 And here he was;

42^pp17 one of my tame ducks that I had tethered out there

43^qq16 and had gone out there,

30^rr15 and when this fellow shot he hadn=t hit the duck.

0⁰⁰18 and here he was

28^rr17 and when this fellow shot he hadn=t hit the duck

43^qq16 one of my tame ducks that I had tethered out there

44^pp15 She had got the strap off her leg. ⁸

a. The rock say Ashhh!@

b. Ashhh!@ is what the rock say

c. What the rock say is Ashhh!@

d. It=s a fact that the rock say Òshhh!Ó

e. The rock=s saying Ashhh!@

0^a0 he attacked me

0^b0 the friend came in

0^a0 he attacked me

then 0^b0 the friend came in

1^b? Martin Cassidy=s mother give him some money

?^c0 an= tell him to go get a bushel of peaches

0^d0 an= he went down to Martin=s house

0^b0 Martin Cassidy=s mother give him some money

0^c=0 an= bring up a bushel of peaches from the cellar

0^a18 1^b17 2^c16 3^d15 4^e14 5^f13 6^g0 0^h0 0^I1

1^j0 0^k1 1¹0 0^m3 13ⁿ5 6⁰3 7^p2 0^q0 0^r0 0^s0

0^a18 1^b17 2^c16 3^d15 4^e14 5^f13 6ⁿ12 7^g0 0^h0 0^I1

1^j0 0^k1 1¹0 0^m2 5^o3 6^p2 0^q0 0^r0 0^s0

0^a18 1^b17 2^c16 3^d15 4^e14 5^f13 6ⁿ12 7^g0 0^h0

0^o8 1^p7 2^I1 3^j0 0^k1 1^l0 0^m0 0^q0 0^r0 0^s0

0^a-n9 1^g0 0^h0 0^o-p5 1^i-j0 0^k-l0 0^m0 0^q0 0^r0 0^s0

Formally, We consider a narrative c¹ , c²...cⁱ...cⁿ with left displacement ranges

a¹ ,a²...aⁱ...aⁿ , where 0<i<n. A left displacement function y(N_i) is defined for each permutation

N₁ , N₂ ...N_m of the clauses c² , c² ...cⁿ which preserves the temporal sequence of the original

y(N_i) = 3 aⁱ

When y(N₁) is minimal, any sequence cⁱ , c^j where DS(cⁱ ) = DS (c^j ) is rewritten as c^k and displacement ranges re-assigned. The resulting string is the primary sequence of the series

N₁ , N₂ ... N_m .

In many cases, a long string of events may actually consist of several cycles of simple narrative, with many complication sections, This is the case with Narrative No. 2, the product of a practiced story teller who is widely known in his community [Martha=s Vineyard] as an expert in this traditional art.⁹ The subdivisions of No. 2 are plainly marked by structural features to be discussed below; but in No. 13, this task is much more difficult, and must depend upon informal semantic criteria.

[11] 0^a0 See he- they threw him out, you know.

0^b0 So he wanted to get back in, >cause, you know, it was sn--raining hard.

0^c0 So he got on this boat

0^d0 and he tried to--go somewhere else.

0^e0 and the boat went over.

0^f1 And he tried to swim.

6^g6 And this other man was fishing in the rain.

1^h0 So he seen the pig

0^I0 and he went over there

0^j0 and picked the pig up

0^k0 and put it in the boat

0^l0 and brought it back to the shore, so he would land there.

0^m0 And that was that.

Narratives are usually told in answer to some stimulus from outside, and to establish some point of personal interest. For example, among the narratives we are given here we find many examples of narrative dealing with the danger of death. When the subject is asked if he were ever in serious danger of being killed, and he says AYes,@ then he is asked, AWhat happened?@. He finds himself in a position where he must demonstrate to the listener that he really was in danger. The more vivid and real the danger appears, the more effective the narrative. If the narrative is weak and uninteresting, he will have made a false claim. (See Nos. 1, 3, 6, and, 8.)

{1} 0^a30 Well, in the business I was associates at that time, the Doc was an old man...

1^b29 He had killed one man,

2^c28 or - had done time.

3^d27 But he had a young wife

4^e26 and those days I dressed well.

5^f 25 And seemingly, she was trying to make me.

6^g24 I never noticed it.

7^h23 Fact is, I didn=t like her very well, because she had - she was a nice looking girl until you saw her feet.

8^I22 She had big feet.

9^j21 Jesus, God, she had big feet!

10^k0 Then she left a note one day she was going to commit suicide because he was always raising hell about me.

0¹0 He came to my hotel. Nice big blue 44 too.¹⁰

0^m3 I talked him out of it,

1ⁿ2 and says, AWell, we=ll go look for her,

2^o1 and if we can=t find her, well, you can--go ahead, pull the trigger if you want to.@

3^p0 I was maneuvering.

0^q0 So he took me up on it.

` 0^r0 And we went to where they found her handkerchief--the edge of a creek--

0^s0 And we followed down a little more,

0^t0 And we couldn=t find anything.

0^u1 And got back -

21^v9 it was a tent show-

1^w1 she was laying on a cot with an ice bag on her head.

12^x7 She hadn=t committed suicide.

1^y0 But - however - that settled it for the day.

0^z0 But that night the manager, Floyd Adams, said, AYou better pack up

0^aa0 and get out,

because that son of a bitch never forgives anything once he gets it in his head.@

0^bb1 And I did.

1^cc0 I packed up

0^dd0 and got out.

0^ee0 That was two.

The first narrative unit is k (AThen she left a note one day...@), followed by 1 (AHe came to my hotel@) and m (AI talked him out of it@). We then have two clauses coordinated with m--clauses n (AAnd says@) and o (AI was maneuvering.@). These multicoordinate clauses suspend the action at a critical moment--when the danger of death is greatest, and they contain an explicit statement of the attitude of the narrator. His coolness in a moment of crisis emphasizes the danger and reflects well on himself.

Five narrative clauses follow this suspension, resolving the crisis introduced by l and m. A second evaluation section occurs at a subsidiary point where the situation is further resolved--the fate threat to the narrator. The action is suspended at this point by the use of a free clause which might have occurred in the orientation section, v (Ait was a tent show@) and a direct comment x that might have been inferred from w. The resolution is stated with some finality in y (Athat settled it@). Finally, there is an added explicit evaluation of a third party which confirms the implications of the previous evaluation section, and a conclusion. The overall diagram shows how evaluation sections outline the structure of the narrative.

view, the first section is the major break in the complicating action.¹¹

1. direct statement: AI said to myself: this is it.@

2. Lexical intensifiers: AHe was beat up real, real bad.@

AI whupped that dude half to death.@

see Narrative 2: (at the moment of crisis when the dog is gone for the 3rd time) ÒAnd he didnÕ come back. And he didnÕt come back.@

4. symbolic action: AThey put an egg on his door.@

AI crossed myself.@

AYou could hear the rosaries clicking.@

0^j0 Then he start crying

0^k0 and run home to his father.

0^l0 And his father told him, he ain=t find no glove

0^h0 So he say he give

0^I0 And I kept on hitting him.

It is normal not to hit someone after he says AI give.@ This incident evaluates the narrative by indicating that the anger of the narrative was so great--due to excessive and unreasonable provocation-that he was carried away to the extent of violating this norm. The other boy had placed himself outside of normal sanctions by his behavior.

An important characteristic of narratives is the degree of embedding of the evaluation in the narrative framework. There is a wide range from the most highly internalized type--a symbolic action or the evaluation of a third person, to the most external--a direct statement of the narrator to the listener about his feelings at the time. In the examples given above, we find internalized evaluation in No. 1, in the dramatic statements of narrator and manager; in No.3, in the statement of the doctor, (Ajust about this much more,@ he says, Aand you=d a been dead.@). The last narrative, No. 14, has a dramatic statement of the narrator (ÒI say, ÔCalvin, IÕm bust your head for dat.=@).

Sometimes the evaluation occurs in a statement of the narrator to himself, less well integrated into the narrative, as in No. 7: (ASo I says to myself, >Well, there=s gonna be times...=@).

The other end of the scale is shown by a comment at the end of the narrative directed towards the listener, as in No. 13: (AJust over two dollars that he was sent for peaches with.@). Still more direct is No. 2: (AI=ll tell you if I had ever walloped that dog IÕd have felt some bad.Ó).

Internal 1. And when we got down there, her brother turned to me and whispered, AI think she=s dead, John!@

2. And when we got down there, I said to myself, AMy God, she=s dead!@

3. And when we got down there, I thought, AShe=s dead.@

External 7. You know, in cases like this, it=s clear that she was likely as not dead.

The actual sequence of events described in the narrative does not, as a rule, extend up to the present. The Coda is a functional device for returning the verbal perspective to the present moment. This is accomplished by a variety of means, so that the codas cannot be identified by such simple tag lines as AAnd they lived happily ever after.@

[1] 0^aa0 I packed up

0^bb0 and got out.

0^cc0 That was two.

[7] 0^bb0 That was one of the most important.

[8] 0^gg1 And that - that was it, you know.

1^hh0 That was it.

[11] 0^m0 And that was that.

[8] 0^bb0 and they was on me and

0^cc0 and I said ALike this is it, man.@

0^dd0 I pulled a knife

he=s a detective in Union City,

and ever since then I haven=t seen the guy, >cause I quit.

It is interesting to note that all codas are separated from the resolution by temporal juncture. At the same time, it seems that some semantic criterion is necessary to identify codas: the fact that they are frequently not descriptions of events, or of events necessary to answer the question AWhat happened?@

Here the originating function of the narrative is applied at the base of the diamond; we proceed up and to the left with the orientation section, then up to the apex with the complication. Frequently, but not always, the evaluation suspends the action at this apex, as represented by the circle. The resolution proceeds downward and to the right, and the coda is represented by the line which returns to the situation (point in time) at which the narrative was first elicited. The simplest possible narrative would consist of the single line of the complication, without a clear resolution; frequently we find minimal narratives which have both complication and resolution (He hit me hard and I hit him back@). As we proceed to more complex narratives, told by speakers with greater over-all verbal ability, we find a higher percentage of narratives which duplicate the exact form of the diagram given above. Perhaps the most frequent variant is the case where the evaluation ends the resolution: jokes, ghost stories and surprise endings take this form, as the story is re-shaped by many retellings.

1. The work described in this paper was supported in part by the U.S. Office of Education in connection with Cooperative Research Branch Project No.3288, AA Study of Non- Standard English of Negro and Puerto Rican Speakers in New York City,@ under the over-all program of Project Literacy.

2. The materials include 70 interviews with speakers from various occupations, ethnic membership and ages on Martha=s Vineyard, Mass.; 230 interviews with speakers representing a stratified random sample of the Lower East Side of New York City; 250 interviews of children and adults from our current research in Central Harlem; and 50 interviews from exploratory work in Cleveland, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, Phoenix, and Beaufort County, S.C. The basic interview techniques are described in W. Labov, APhonological Correlates of Social Stratification,@ American Anthropologist, Vol. 66, No. 6, Pt, 2:164-176 (1964), The Social Stratification of English in New York City (Washington, D.C.: Center for Applied Linguistics, 1966), and W. Labov , P. Cohen and C. Robins, Final Report on Project 3091, Cooperative Research Branch, U.S. Office of Education.

4. As in, AWe were running, walking, and then creeping down the road.@ We might better say that an apparent appositive turns out to be a coordinate clause. Coordinate verbs are always analyzed separately if they are independent, and in most cases where they are subordinated to verbs of saying and telling. See example [2] below, AI said, >You git back there/ and get that duck.=@ If the narrator had cited himself as saying, > You get that duck and get back there,= he would have been reversing the inferred sequence of eventsCin this case, two utterances. The same argument holds for the example in [1] above, clauses n and o. On the other hand, if someone says, AYou try and get it,@ we cannot understand these as two independent verbs, but rather the use of and equivalent to an infinitive embedding, the same as AYou try and get it.@

5. As noted above, the subordination of Òget back thereÓ and Òget that duckÓ to ÒI saidÓ is not the type of subordination that removes clauses from temporal sequence. We can consider the coordination: AI said, >You git back there,= and I said, >You get that duck.=@

6. If was laying is accepted as a narrative clause, it cannot have the basic grammatical meaning of >simultaneous= as stated by Diver (1963). It would rather differ from the simple past lay by the feature >extended.= The meaning of >simultaneous= can be supported by arguing that these clauses are equivalent to AWhen we got back, she was layingY@ In other cases, Diver has pointed out, the use of the past progressive may force a metaphorical interpretation >the action was so swift that it was as if it was simultaneous with the preceding,= as in AI was on the masthead; the ship gave a lurch; I was falling through the air; I hit the water.@ These and other interpretations can be subjected to an increasing number of empirical tests through the analysis of narratives such as the one given here.

7. Diver (1963) shows this form in his narrative axis with the meaning of >present, before,= and gives a constructed example, AAll day the sun has warmed the Spanish stepsY@ One can find such examples in literary works which use historical present sequences freely, perhaps, but they have not occurred in the material we have examined to date.

9. As noted above, Narrative No. 2 has many formal features which set it aside from the others, and identify it as the product of a practiced story teller. One can point to the embedding of an essentially anonymous Aother@ in the complicating action; frequent if traditional metaphor; the triple sub-cycle typical of developed folk tales; strategic repetition and also the determination shown by the nartator in introducing the story. The preliminary material illustrates how a narrator of this sort will get the topic of his favorite stories into the conversation despite the fact that the interview theme was decided solely by the subject, and the actual stimulus for the narrative was his own.

10. The phrase ANice big blue 44 too@ might as well be considered a narrative clause, derived from AHe had a nice big blue 44 too.@ However, the status of had as the head of a narrative clause is still at issue, and it would be tendentious to use a deleted form as evidence. We have therefore been treating this phrase as subordinate to AHe came to my hotel,@ equivalent to Awith a nice big blue 44 too.@

Source: Oral Versions of Personal Experience: Three Decades of Narrative Analysis. Special Volume of AJournal of Narrative and Life History, Volume 7, 1997, 3-38 (edited by Michael G.W. Bamberg).