Unit 14 asked you to look closely at various kinds of written texts which undoubtedly have recognizable structure, but which differ from each other in complex ways. That is to say, we can recognize and describe the typical structure and grammatical choices of a newspaper editorial, and of a newspaper advertisement, and of an encyclopaedia entry. There are a number of ways in which these different discourse types are similar: to mention two of these, all three discourse types usually imply a vaguely-defined addressee (no-one in particular), and all three discourse types usually use present tense. More generally, we have seen that these discourse types have a number of the features of what Michael Hoey has termed discourse colonies, listed below:
Editorials, advertisements, prayers, cookbooks, and shopping lists are, then, a somewhat disparate collection of discourse-types. But they are united in at least one profound respect: they are all non-narrative, by which I mean that none of them tells a story. By contrast narrative itself is a well-recognized and unified discourse-type. In our use of language we are constantly encountering narratives. Indeed, probably reflecting how deep a part narrative plays in human experience, narratives are to be found in all kinds of non-verbal situations too.
What is essential for a thing to be rightly called a narrative? What attributes must a narrative have?
We can say that grammatical written sentences almost invariably must have a finite main verb. With honourable exceptions allowed, of course. And we say that every English syllable must have a vowel at its 'heart'. And we say that every noun phrase (the rowdy schoolgirl on the top deck of the bus to Solihull) must have a word functioning as a noun at its core (schoolgirl). Linguists love the idea of obligatory elements and secondary or optional elements. The obligatory elements are then defining of the item under study: if you don't have a vowel, you don't have a syllable; if you don't have a finite verb you don't have a grammatical sentence; and so on.
Back to narrative: what features or attributes can we say are defining of narratives?
Activity 1 Read over the following texts carefully, and decide whether you would call any of them a true narrative. Jot down some of the reasons why you would or would not call them narratives, trying to use linguistic or grammatical terms where appropriate. |
TEXT A
CAT'S FELINE FINE AFTER 45 DAYS UNDER THE FLOOR
Bruno ate insects
By CHRIS PHARO
A GIANT cat called Bruno survived after being nailed under floorboards for a staggering 45 DAYS.
The one-stone (6.3 kg) bruiser's weight halved as he fought to stay alive by eating spiders and insects.
He was eventually found suffering from starvation and dehydration after a builder heard his feeble mews.
Cries
Last night four-year-old Bruno - named after boxer Frank - was home with owner Aubrey Pitts after recovering at a vet's.
Aubrey said: "I'm overjoyed. I just can't believe he lasted that long."
Bruno vanished from home in Teignmouth, Devon, on April 9. Aubrey, 48, and girlfriend Merrill Colbourne, 50, put up notices but heard nothing. Then builder Derek Snell, renovating a flat two doors away, heard the cries when he turned off his radio.
He lifted the boards and rushed to get taxi boss Aubrey.
Aubrey said: "I stuck my head down the hole but couldn't reach Bruno. Then he recognised me. He literally dragged himself forward so I could get hold of him.
"The poor thing was a sack of bones with a head. It was pitiful. He went temporarily blind with the shock of being found."
He added: "It looks as though Bruno crept under the boards which were then nailed back. He must have lived off his fat and eaten spiders. It was dry as a bone in there. Clearly, curiosity nearly killed the cat."
Vet Neil Cottom put Bruno on a drip for several days. He said: "He's a lucky cat. He wouldn't have survived another week."
TEXT B
[ photo ] Meet Alistair.
Alistair saved himself £10 a month by changing to Midland home insurance.
He did it by calling DIRECT.
Like you, Alistair saw an advert in the paper claiming that Midland could lower his household insurance. Alistair's got some quite expensive furniture and his insurance premiums had been fairly hefty, so he felt that any saving would be welcome. He rang us on 0800 277 377, was given a free quotation, double-checked the policy document (which is available on request) and was pleasantly surprised. Maybe you would be, too.
TEXT C
Tour wholesalers win VAT battle.
By Michael Becket
CUSTOMS & Excise may be forced to repay up to £130m of back VAT to holiday tour wholesalers following a decision at a tax tribunal, according to Lorraine Parkin, national head of VAT at accountancy firm Robson Rhodes.
The Norman Allen Group Travel case folllowed a similar victory by Miss Parkin for Independent Coach Travel in which Customs & Excise called off an appeal to the High Court.
These companies organise package tours which they then sell on in bulk to the tour operators.
Customs & Excise had tried to treat them in the same way as the standard tour operators and prevent them recovering VAT on their purchases.
One of the main grounds for the appeal to the tribunals has been that the European Sixth Directive, which regulates the area, does not cover wholesalers. The tribunal not only found Norman Allen was entitled to VAT recovery but said Customs & Excise should not block repayment on the grounds of "unjust enrichment".
It also blocked an application to refer the case to the European Court. Miss Parkin already has a similar claim for another such company, Jetour, due to be heard next month, and she estimates there may be up to 100 such businesses in Britain eligible to reclaim VAT back to 1988 when the present scheme started.
They could easily be getting £100,000 each, plus accumulated interest since the start of their paying the tax.
Despite the decision not to appeal the Independent coach decision, Customs & Excise is thought to be considering an appeal to the High Court over Norman Allen, but this is unlikely to stop other travel wholesalers putting in their claims.
A series of other tax cases has been lost by Customs & Excise at various levels of adjudication recently, including VAT on interest-free credit and on company cars.
TEXT D
TODAY'S CHOICE
GILLIAN REYNOLDS
What happens if it really is you?
Hitting the Jackpot R4: 7.20 - 8.00 pm
Alan Beswick begins a real-life serial. Over the next 12 months he will follow the stories of some of the winners of the National Lottery, talking frankly to them, reporting in the plain, bold style which made his similar series on redundant miners a while ago so biting and memorable. Julia Shaw again produces.
The 1996 Analysis Lecture R4: 8.00 - 8.45 pm
To launch the new series of Radio 4's excellent programme of political thought, Paul Kennedy, author of The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, discusses the new perils to the nation state which come from international trends in trade and ownership. Peter Jay chairs the post-lecture discussion in the BBC's Council Chamber. [ photo ]
In fact, just as we have strong intuitions about what are grammatical English sentences and what are possible English sound-combinations (/s/ + /n/ at the beginning of a syllable is fine; but /b/ + /n/ is impossible), so we have strong judgements about what is and is not a narrative or story (I shall use these terms interchangeably). Our verbal narratives typically involve at least one human or quasi-human participant; and typically they are located at a specified place and time. But most essential of all, to a narrative, is that something must be perceived to have happened, such that the participant and the situation implied originally are perceived to have changed. For this reason
The mouse laughed at the elephant
is a narrative, however minimal, while
The mouse is laughing at the elephant
is not. Nor is
Put those bags down!
nor
I'll do it tomorrow
nor
Plosives involve a complete closure in the oral cavity.
In none of these cases is there a report of something that has definitely happened such that an implied earlier situation has changed into an inferable later situation. The beauty of the English simple past tense, by contrast, is that it does standardly imply all that: The mouse laughed at the elephant implies that first the mouse wasn't laughing and then it did laugh (and then it stopped laughing).
Narrative is clearly distinguishable from description, from much expository and procedural writing, from conversational dialogue, from annunciatory and promotional text (e.g. adverts), and from expressions of opinion and judgement. Unlike all those, at narrative's core is a reader's or listener's judgement that something has happened so as to bring about a change in the situation. Of course we usually look for much more than this from our narratives: at the very least we want something interesting to have happened, and we usually want this to have happened to someone whom we might be vaguely interested in. We prefer narratives to be 'tellable'.
I now want to jump abruptly to a very specific set of findings, of the American linguist William Labov. In the early 1970s, he recorded a large number of oral stories, about 'gripping' topics such as life-threatening incidents, from young African American men in New York. On the basis of that corpus of data, Labov suggested that a fully-formed oral narrative of personal experience would have most if not all of the following six elements. Here I list those six elements, in their most commonly cited order, and to the right of each of them I supply the kind of question which an addressee might conceivably formulate - if only to themselves - which each element seems designed to answer:
Elements |
Text |
Abstract |
Somebody just wrecked the front of our car. |
Orientation |
We were coming out of the North car park, just after lunch, and there was this guy ahead of us in one of those jeep-like deals, seemingly leaving too. |
Complicating Action |
He suddenly went into reverse and came back towards us at speed. He hit us even before we could sound the horn. |
Evaluation |
We were furious with him. There was broken glass all over the ground, and it didn't seem wise to drive the car without having a mechanic check it over. It wouldn't be so bad but the car isn't ours; it's on loan to us. |
Resolution |
Well we exchanged names and addresses and insurance and so forth. |
Coda |
But it means we're going to be without a car for a few days at least. |
Not all of these six elements are equally crucial. As you can see, in relation to my earlier definition of a minimal narrative, only element 3, Complicating Action, is absolutely required. This typically pairs with element 5, the Resolution. Items 2 and 4, also, are somewhat naturally paired, while 1 and 6 are often, literally and figuratively, the most peripheral and non-essential elements. Finally, while element 3 is required structurally, material which functions as element 4 is required situationally. This is because under Evaluation comes everything in a story that makes it more interesting than 'the bare events' alone would have been, everything that enhances the 'point' of a narrative, everything that adds suspense, emotion, drama, speaker-involvement, atmosphere, and context. In the simplest stories Evaluation falls between the Complicating Action and the Resolution, as the listing above would suggest. But in more complex stories - certainly in most written stories - Evaluation is dispersed in various ways throughout the whole narrative, from the Abstract to the Coda.
Activity 2 Analyse the following narrative, which was told by an eight-year-old, into Labov's six narrative elements. Note any points in the text where you feel that more than one of the six elements is being represented in the same sentence. 1. There was once this really awesome skier, I knew him, his name was Brian. 2. He lived in Colorado and he spent most of his time on the ski slopes of Aspen. 3. And, um, one day the most awful thing happened. 4. He was flying down the hill and hit a tree and he was hurt really bad. 5. But then the ski patrol men came and they put him in the sled thing and took him away. 6. And when they got to the ski hut they took him out of the sled and brought him to a bed. 7. And the nurse came in and looked at him and she found that he had broken two ribs. 8. And um he had to wear this brace for like four months or something. 9. It was really sad because he had been practising really hard to get into the Olympics, and he couldn't ski for a long time. |
