Lesson 20 A sociolinguistic model of narrative Labov

Lesson 20 A sociolinguistic model of narrative: Labov (1972)

A framework for natural narrative • • • Well this person had a little too much to drink And he attacked me And the friend came in And she stopped it (Labov 1972: 360) • [Prompt: recollect an experience where you felt you were in real danger]

• • • Just a skeleton What lacks? Contextualization (who, where, when, how…) Sense of closure/finality Dramatic or retoric embellishment • -> so what? ? ?

• Labov’s narrative model was elaborated on the basis of a spoken corpus of hundreds of stories told in the context of everyday conversation • He identified six core recurrent features (categories) underpinning a fully formed natural narrative • Each category addresses one Wh question (what is this story about? , where did the story take place? ). i. e. each category fulfils a different function in the story

Evaluation • Beginnings, middles, and ends of narratives have been analyzed in many accounts of folklore or narrative. But there is one important aspect of narrative which has not been discussed—perhaps the most important element in addition to the basic narrative clause. • That is what we term the evaluation of the narrative: the means used by the narrator to indicate the point of the narrative, its raison d’être: why it was told, and what the narrator is getting at. • There are many ways to tell the same story, to make very different points, or to make no point at all. Pointless stories are met (in English) with the withering rejoinder, “So what? ” Every good narrator is continually warding off this question; when his narrative is over, it should be unthinkable for a bystander to say, “So what? ” Instead, the appropriate remark would be, “He did? ” or similar means of registering the reportable character of the events of the narrative. (Labov 1972 a: 366)

• this was terrifying, dangerous, weird, wild, crazy; or amusing, hilarious and wonderful. . . that is, worth reporting. • Evaluative devices include direct statements, but more importantly, they include also: – responses to the action presented as part of the story [I closed my eyes and thought I was going to die]; – intensifying devices both of sound and word choice, including repetition;

• With external evaluation, the narrator turns to the listener directly and tells him/her “what the point is”, thus interrupting the flow of the narrative in order to do so. • One of Labov’s examples is part of a secretary’s account of a hair-raising plane trip “in which the plane almost didn’t get over the mountains”. Her narrative is punctuated with comments such as: – and it was the strangest feeling because you couldn’t tell if they were really gonna make it

• Evaluative action is where the narrator describes “what people did rather than what they said”; in other words, the evaluation is dramatized. • This includes “actions that reveal the tensions of the actors”. • Labov gives an example of this from the story of the plane trip mentioned earlier: – …and then everybody heaved a sigh of relief

Labov’s model and literary narratives • Appreciated by stylisticians because it enables comparisons between literary and everyday narratives • Generally applied to short narratives (about 100 words) • E. g. narratives within narratives.

Narratives beyond literature

Is this a narrative, according to Labov’s model? • • Francesco Illy founded illycaffè in 1933. His 1935 invention of theilletta, considered the blueprint for modern espresso machines, revolutionized coffee preparation. His innovative method of packaging, based on pressurization, enabled illy’s initial exports to. Sweden and Holland during the 1940 s. Francesco Illy’s method remains the standard for preserving and enhancing coffee’s freshness during transport and storage. Ernesto, Francesco’s son, earned a doctorate in chemistry and joined the company in the late 1940 s. His passion for learning gave rise to illy’s formal scientific and technological research efforts, starting with an-house laboratory dedicated to coffee chemistry. In the 1950 s, he spear-headed the company expansion into homes, selling smaller cans of ground coffee for the first time. In 1965 he moved the company to its current Via Flavia headquarters, still in. Trieste. In 1974, Dr. Illy furthered the company’s lead in coffee innovationwith ESE, the first pre-measured espresso pods, making café-quality espresso simple and easy at home or the bar. In 1988, he introduced and patented a photo-chromatic means to identify the highest quality beans, one by one, right at the source.

Just a chronology

Effective narratives in corporate communication • • In the communications business, we don’t have 300 to define characters or advance a plot with the requisite twists and turns that culminate in a payoff and happy ending. But it’s not just the element of time that poses a quandary for communicators. The intrinsic nature of classic storytelling revolves around crisis, or better yet, the type of failure that causes the audience to wince. That’s what teases out the tension. That’s what keeps the audience engaged. PR, on the other hand, is conditioned to do the exact opposite. We’re striving to highlight achievements, ever conscious of keeping any semblance of a crisis behind the closed – no make that locked – doors. It’s this catch-22 that led to creation of “The Communicator’s Spike. ”

• • • What gives lift to this narrative comes from the gap or contrast between the old way and the new way. The greater the difference between the old way and the new way, the more interesting the story. It still requires PR to get out of its comfort zone. Often, we don’t want to discuss the past because it wasn’t flattering. Yet, without the past, the journalist or reader has no way to frame the story, which generates the contrast (between two points in time). By storytelling fodder, I don’t mean just facts and figures. There needs to be texture, anecdotes and language that demands attention.

• • • Coding Dojo’s curriculum was created and designed in 2011 by Micheal Choi, a widely respected tech-leader and founder of several successful start-ups. While serving as CTO and CEO of several technology startups, Michael found it increasingly difficult to find qualified software engineers who possessed the practical know–how to build comprehensive, full-stack web applications. Therefore after successfully exiting Zurple in 2011 and founding Village 88 soon afterwards, a start-up incubation company, Michael made the firm decision to forego traditional hiring, and instead chose to personally train internal software developers in order to meet the engineering needs of his companies. Not only did he believe this to be more pragmatic and efficient, but Michael also loved to teach. Read more >> Although ambitious at the time, Michael strongly believed that he could mold the ideal developer from the ground-up by his own means. In 2011, Michael Choi and John Supsupin, a Village 88 co-founder, created an in-house curriculum designed to train junior software developers within several months. At the time, the course was commonly known as the Village 88 internal training program, but little did they know that this was the first trace of what would eventually evolve into Coding Dojo’s 3 full stack curriculum. Over time, Michael and John continued to refine the curriculum, and after one year of constant improvement and being tested against more than 2000 users, they had invented a course that was so effective and comprehensive, that they launched a publicly offered programming course at the start of 2013: the very first Coding Dojo cohort. And the rest was history.

Norrick • Resting on Labov and Waletsky (1967), Labov (1972), and Polanyi (1981, 1985), develops a new model for the analysis of narratives • Focus on conversational storytelling – Internal structure, formulaicity, repetition – Narrative contexts (who tells stories to whom, in which contexts, with what responses and what interpersonal consequences) • Differently from Labov, Norrick places emphasis on teller strategies (repetition, formulaicity , disfluences…) as structuring elements, more than on sequential ordering.

The rhetoric of storytelling • Teller strategies can be collected under the heading of rhetoric of storytelling • Used to – enhance coherence – Modulate involvement – Facilitate production, comprehension, remembering

• Since tellers and listeners can allot only limited cognitive resources to the construction and understanding of narratives, they rely on repetition, dialogue, tense shifts and formulaicity, to reinforce evaluations and to segment stories into manageable chunks (Norrick 2000: 42)

Conventions for representing oral storytelling • Written texts are structured around complete sentences, while spoken language is organized around intonation units • These tend to • be about 5 words long, • contain one idea unit each (typically subject + predicate) • contain one or more intonation peaks – And I was so interested – The fire was all gone

The rhetoric of storytelling: Internal structure • Formulaicity • Repetitions Narrative context (and tellability) • Prefaces • responses

The rhetoric of storytelling: formulaicity • Any relatively fixed unit of two or more words which recurs in the discourses of a linguistic community – Narratives structured around a figurative formula (“like a leaf in the wind”, cf. next slide) – Formulaicity story openings and closing

Formulaic story openers • • The first/most_____in my life I remember the most_____in my life Guess what? Remember the time/when? • Meant to attract the attention of the audience

Formulaic story closers • Proverbs and clichés • And I lived to tell the story (p. 51)

Local formulaicity • Referred to cases where an otherwise non formulaic phrase takes on formulaicity through repetition • E. . g. “it was really weird” p. 55 -57 • Can help tellers organize their narratives into chunks, thus guiding listeners • Can signal teller’s attitude and guide listeners to adopt the same perspective.