Chapter Outline:

• The phenomenon of linguistic change.

• Techniques of data collection and analysis within

both the Variation Analysis and Narrative Analysis
approaches to discourse.

• Main concepts and techniques of Narrative Analysis.

• The construction of individual and/or global identity

through narrative.

7.1. Variation Analysis: The study of linguistic change

Although the origins of the variationist approach are solely within the field
of Linguistics, this approach differs from traditional Linguistics in many
ways. The basic assumption of variationists is that there are patterns of
language which vary according to the social environment and therefore
such patterns can only be identified by studying a given speech
community. Variation Analysis, thus, is concerned with the variation and
changes observed in language along different speech communities.
Originally, prototypical variation analyses were limited to the study of
semantically equivalent variants, i.e., to the different words used to refer to
the same thing according to geographical location or social level.
However, such analyses have been extended to texts. The variationist
approach has developed “in the search for text structure, the analysis of
text-level variants and of how text constrains other forms” (Schiffrin,
1994: 282).
The most prominent figure within this approach is William Labov,
who developed the initial methodology and theory. Data collection and
field work play an important role in Variation Analysis. Labov (1996)
argues in favor of the inadequacy of intuition as a source of information
about language structure as well as of the importance of the vernacular
language (Labov 1972a) of a speech community as the variety showing the
most systematic grammar of a dialect. Thus, Labov holds a materialistic
conception of language, which views language as “a property of the
speech community, an instrument of social communication that evolves
gradually and continuously throughout human history, in response to a
variety of human needs and activities” (2004: 1). The materialist approach
starts by observing the variability which is characteristic of speech
production and then applies formalisms based on probability theory to this
variation. Multivariate analyses are then applied to the data in order to find
out how each element of the environment contributes to the application of
a rule. An adequate description of language should contain a dynamic and
evolutionary perspective, and that is the reason why much of the research
within this perspective has to do with the study of linguistic change.
Labov demonstrated how language changes spread through society. He
showed that linguistic changes are normally carried out by certain social
groups, and that dialect variation is by no means free or haphazard. On the
contrary, it is governed by “orderly heterogeneity” or structured variation
(Weinreich, Labov and Herzog, 1968).
One of Labov’s most important endeavors is the Telsur/Atlas project,
which deals with the linguistic changes in progress in North-American
English. It defines the major dialects of North-American English on the
basis of some phonological characteristics, and contains regional maps
where the phonological features of these dialects can be examined in
detail. The interpretation of the data is based on the acoustic analysis of
hundreds of linguistic interviews with speakers of the different North-
American regions.
Variation Analysis combines both qualitative and quantitative
techniques. Quantitative analyses are basic within this approach, and they
require the definition of the variants (or different realizations of a type), a
classification of the conditions under which those variants may be found,
and frequencies of occurrence of the different variants in relation to some
factors of the environment.
In addition, certain assumptions have to be made as to the relationship
between text and context which necessarily limit the interpretation of such
analyses. Therefore, even when quantitative studies of variants are of
crucial importance, they also present some limitations, such as, for
example, the lack of attention given to particular cases that might be of
interest, because variationists generally focus on general trends or patterns.
In general, researchers avoid making statements about typical patterns
unless they are based on frequency of occurrence and evaluated by
statistical tests.
An important notion in Variation Analysis is that of constraint. Thus,
it is assumed that the overall information structure of a text imposes
certain constraints on its parts, and so we see, for example, that the overall
temporal structure of a narrative places constraints on its composing
elements and even on the syntactic forms used to form those elements.
Another instance can be found in recipes: recipes normally have to contain
a list of ingredients, and therefore they always present constraints on the
referring terms of the list, which necessarily have to be terms related to
food. At the same time, their overall structure is normally constrained to
the use of both descriptive structure (lists) and narrative structure (the
steps followed for making the dish, which are generally presented in
temporal order).
According to Patrick, a typical sequence of analysis for variationists
would be the following:

1) Establish which forms alternate with one another –i.e., which are
“the same”.
2) Delimit the environments in which this alternation-with-sameness
occurs, and classify the factors within those environments
exhaustively.
3) Propose hypotheses for contextual factors which might constrain the
variation.
4) Compile a data set that allows for investigation and (dis-)
confirmation of the alternations and co-occurrences predicted by
hypotheses in (3).
5) Compare the frequencies/probabilities with which the different
variants co-occur with the different (environmental) factors.
6) Typically, place primary emphasis on internal linguistic factors, and
only secondary importance on external social explanations.
7) Typically, consider analysis primarily exploratory rather than
confirmatory (due to lack of precisely predictive sociolinguistic
theories) (2004:3).

As Labov explains, variationists focus upon different units of analysis:

It is common for a language to have many alternate ways of saying “the

same” thing. Some words like car and automobile seem to have the same
referents; others have two pronunciations, like working and workin’. There
are syntactic options such as Who is he talking to? vs. To whom is he
talking? Or It’s easy for him to talk vs. For him to talk is easy. (1972b:
188)

Thus, variation or linguistic change can not only be studied at the level
of semantically equivalent words, but also at other levels, such as the
phonological, the syntactic or even the textual level, as Labov himself has
demonstrated through his analysis of narrative.
Labov regards the study of narrative as “a privileged area of discourse,
because this discourse type is the closest to the vernacular” 1, and that is
the reason why he has devoted a great part of his research to the study of
narrative syntax.

7.1.1. The vernacular

The linguistic analysis made by variationists is not based on linguists’
intuitions of grammatically correct sentences, but mainly upon what
people actually say. Therefore, it is of utmost importance for researchers
to collect samples of authentic speech data. However, when people know
that their language is being recorded or observed, they may alter their
register and use different forms, structures or strategies than when not
being observed. This fact made variationists seek the mode of speech
called the vernacular. The vernacular is the variety acquired in pre-
adolescent years that is used by speakers of a given language when they
pay minimum attention to speech (Labov, 1984: 29). In order to collect
samples of the vernacular, variationists resort to sociolinguistic interviews,
which allow them to discover the regular rules of language and the social
distribution of variants. As Schiffrin explains, respondents to these
interviews are encouraged to tell narratives of personal experience:

Sociolinguistic interviews are a mixed genre of talk […]. One way in

which they differ from other interviews is that they encourage topic
shifting and group interactions among people present. Another difference
is that respondents are encouraged to tell narratives of personal experience.
This is not only because narratives reveal community norms and styles of
personal interaction, but also because speakers regularly shift toward the
vernacular when telling a story (Labov 1984: 32). (Schiffrin, 1994: 289-90)

The work with narratives of personal experience within Variation Analysis

is considered to be the basis for the analysis of narrative from a linguistic
point of view. We now turn to this approach.

7.2. Narrative Analysis

The first steps in narrative analysis from a linguistic perspective were
taken by William Labov and Joshua Waletzky as a by-product of the
sociolinguistic field methods that had been developed in the survey of the

1 Excerpted from a talk given at Georgetown University, 1998.

Lower East Side of New York (Labov 1966) and in the work that engaged
them at the time -- the study of African-American Vernacular English in
South Harlem (Labov, Cohen, Robins and Lewis 1968).
Labov’s concern with “verbal deprivation” was the trigger for his
interest in narrative. He argued against the generalized idea that black
children were verbally deprived and consequently genetically inferior. He
fought to eradicate the prejudices against Black English Vernacular (the
dialect of English used by black people in America) in favor of “a more
adequate notion of the relations between standard and non-standard
dialects” (Labov, 1972a: 201-02). By studying the verbal behavior of
black people in narratives of personal experience, Labov was able to
demonstrate that, far from being verbally deprived, some black people
used Black English Vernacular in a very talented and effective way. As
explained in 7.1.1., Labov considered the vernacular to be the form of
language “first acquired, perfectly learned, and used only among speakers
of the same vernacular” (1997b). Thus, this is a type of language that
speakers normally use when there are no other participants of a different
variety, which led Labov to reflect upon the so-called Observer’s
Paradox, i.e. the effort made by researchers to observe how speakers talk
when they are not being observed. The elicitation of narratives of personal
experience within the face-to-face interview was found to present at least a
partial solution to this paradox 2, and proved to be a very effective
technique to gain considerable insight into the entrails of narrative and the
vernacular language used in them.
Labov & Waletsky (1967) and Labov (1972a) provided a framework
for the analysis of oral narrative which illustrates their approach to
discourse units in a systematic way. These authors define a narrative as a
particular unit in discourse which contains smaller units having particular
syntactic and semantic properties. As Schiffrin notes, “narratives are a
discourse unit with a fairly regular structure that is largely independent of
how they are embedded in surrounding talk” (1994: 284). The different
sections of a narrative present different kinds of information which fulfil
different functions within the story. Labov defines narrative as “one
method of recapitulating past experience by matching a verbal sequence of
clauses to the sequence of events which (it is inferred) actually occurred”
(1972b: 359-60). The skeleton of a narrative, then, consists of a series of
temporally ordered clauses which Labov calls narrative clauses.
Broadly speaking, narratives contain a beginning, a middle, and an

2 This is due to the fact that, when asked to narrate personal experiences, speakers
tend to use the vernacular, and consequently to handle more natural and “careless”
forms of speech.
end, but if we study them in detail, we shall find all or some of the
following elements:

1. Abstract (one or two clauses summarizing the whole story).

2. Orientation (a clause or clauses giving information about the
time, place, persons, their activity or the situation).
3. Complicating action (sequential clauses describing the
different events).
4. Evaluation (the means used by the narrator to indicate the
point of the narrative: why it was told, and what the narrator is
aiming at, i.e. to give information on the consequences of the
event for human needs and desires. Evaluative clauses are
normally in an irrealis mood, because they make reference to
events that did not occur, might have occurred, or would
occur, by comparing the real events with events in an
alternative reality that was not in fact realized. The evaluation
section is typical of narratives of personal experience).
5. Result or resolution (the set of complicating actions that
follow or coincide with the most reportable event).
6. Coda (a free clause at the end which signals that the narrative
is finished; a final clause that returns the narrative to the time
of speaking, precluding the potential question: “And what
happened then?”). (Labov, 1972b, 1997b).

Not all narratives contain all six elements, their basic characteristic being
their temporal sequence, which is an important defining property
proceeding from its referential function. In Labov’s view, not all
recapitulation of experience is a narrative. In order for a recapitulation of
experience to be a narrative it must recapitulate experience in the same
order as the original events (Labov, 1997c: 13). All complicating action
clauses (as well as the resolution clauses) are necessarily sequential
clauses, while those of abstracts, orientations and codas are not. By
sequential clause Labov means “a clause that can be an element of a
temporal juncture”, and “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” (1997b: 399).
According to Labov, the simplest possible narrative consists of the
single line of the complication without a clear resolution (1997c: 37).
Minimal narratives often have both complication and resolution (e.g. Jane
fell down and broke her arm). In more complex narratives, the structure O
(Orientation) - C (Complicating action) - E (Evaluation) – R (Resolution)
– C (Coda) appears to be the most common, the most frequent variant
being the case in which the evaluation ends the resolution (as in jokes,
ghost stories or stories with surprise endings).
Examine the different components of narrative in the following
example, taken from Labov (1997c: 10):

1 (Did you ever have a feeling, or a premonition, that

2 something was gonna happen, and it did?)
3 Yes, I did. (Tell me about it)
4 I was goin’ with a girl, one time; we were
5 layin’ on a bed –we weren’t doing anything, we
6 were talkin’ –and, I don’t know, I looked into her
7 face, and I saw, like, horns coming out of her
8 head. You know. You know – like– I said,
9 “You look like the devil!”
10 She said, “What do you mean, I look like
11 the devil?”
12 Don’t kid around.” I said. “I’m not kiddin’.
13 I saw horns comin’ out of your head.”
14 And the girl got very angry and walked
15 out. But, we got together, and we went together
16 for about four months.
17 And, like, this girl tried to put me in a
18 couple of tricks. Like she tried to get some boys
19 to hurt me. You know. And she was a devil.
20 So, now, anything I see I believe it’s going
21 to happen.

This narrative presents all the elements described above except for the
abstract, which is in some way given by the interviewer’s question (Did
you ever have a feeling…?). The other five elements appear in the
following order:

Lines 4-6: Orientation

Lines 6-16: Complicating action (notice the sequential clauses)
Lines 17-19: Result or resolution
Line 19 (“She was a devil”): Evaluation
Lines 20-21: Coda
An important contribution of this approach is the insight gained into
the capacity of a narrative to transfer the experience of the narrator to the
audience, which has also provided some explanation about the defining
property of personal narrative that events are experienced as they first
became known to the narrator (Labov, 1997b: 415).
The analysis of narrative shows, among other things, how variationists
extend beliefs about language structure to the analysis of texts. Social
context influences the construction of speech actions and rules and thus it
becomes an important part of the study of discourse units: the display of
linguistic competence is affected by the setting where a story is told.
Narrative is a social phenomenon and, as such, it varies with social
context; consequently, the data extracted from narratives will vary
depending on the social context within which they are collected.
Thus, Labov and Waletzky demonstrated that the effort to understand
narrative is amenable to a formal framework, a framework that “proved to
be useful in approaching a wide variety of narrative situations and types,
including oral memoirs, traditional folk tales, avant garde novels,
therapeutic interviews and most importantly, the banal narratives of every-
day life” (Labov, 1997b: 396).
As the reader will surely have noticed by now, narratives are privileged
forms of discourse which play a central role in almost every conversation
and, consequently, they also play an important role in people’s
construction of identity 3. This is the reason why so many scholars have
approached the subject not only from the linguistic point of view, but from
other perspectives (e.g. that of psychology, sociology or literary criticism)
as well.
An essential concept within narrative analysis (especially within the
analysis of narratives of personal experience) is that of reportability.
This concept has to do with the fact that telling a narrative requires a
person to hold the floor longer, and the narrative to carry enough interest
for the audience to justify its telling. Otherwise, as Labov remarks, “an
implicit or explicit ‘So what?’ is in order, with the implication that the
speaker has violated social norms by making this unjustified claim” 4
(1997b: 405). Thus, a reportable event is defined as “one that justifies the
automatic reassignment of speaker role to the narrator”, and a most
reportable event as “the event that is less common than any other in the

3We shall deal with this particular aspect of narrative in 7.2.3.

4 Namely, the claim that the story was worth telling, and consequently that the
speaker had the right to occupy more social space than the other participants in the
conversation.
narrative and has the greatest effect upon the needs and desires of the
participants in the narrative (is evaluated most strongly)” (1997b: 406).
Therefore the most reportable event of a narrative can be said to be the
semantic and structural crucial point around which the narrative is
organized.
Another important concept is the notion of credibility, which refers to
“the extent to which listeners believe that the events described actually
occurred in the form described by the narrator” (Labov, 1997b: 407). If
credibility is not achieved when telling a narrative of personal experience,
the narrative will be considered to have failed and its narrator’s claim to
reassignment of speakership will most probably not be attended to.
Considerations of credibility lead to the issue of causality, which is
another of the characteristics of narratives. Every narrative requires a
personal theory of causality, where the sequence of events is explained by
(a series of) explicit or implicit causal relations. In other words, there is a
proposed chain of events that links the orientation to the most reportable
event through a web of causal relations.
The narrator’s point of view is normally reflected in the assignment of
praise or blame to the actors or actions involved in the narrative. This
viewpoint constitutes the ideological framework within which events are
presented or seen by the narrator, and it is rarely a conscious process.
Related to these issues is the concept of objectivity. In Labov’s terms,
an objective event is “one that became known to the narrator through
sense experience”, and a subjective event is “one that the narrator became
aware of through memory, emotional reaction, or internal sensation”
(1997b: 412). Labov observes (in contrast to therapeutically oriented
writers) that the narratives of personal experience that have the greatest
impact upon audiences are those that use the most objective means of
expression, mainly due to the fact that, normally, objectivity increases
credibility. However, as we shall see in 7.2.1., a great deal of subjectivity
can be found in successful narratives, especially in their evaluative
structure. So it might be concluded that it is probably in the sequence of
events (complicating action and resolution) where the audience expects the
narrator to be more objective, whereas greater degrees of subjectivity are
expected and tolerated within the evaluative clauses of the narrative. In
plain words, the story is more likely to succeed if the events can be proved
to be true, irrespective of whether the point of view of the narrator (with
which the audience may agree or not) seems to be objective or subjective.
7.2.1. Information structures
One of the main concerns of variationists is to search for the information
structures that prevail in discourse, considering that syntactic and semantic
differences among linguistic items are sensitive to text structure. Such
differences may be analyzed within one text type or across text types.
Therefore, differences among text types can be discovered by examining
how certain linguistic forms fit a given distributional pattern.
As anticipated in 7.2., temporal structure is a central criterion for the
definition of narrative. The linear presentation of event clauses in a
narrative is crucial for the assignment of reference time. However, in a
different type of text, the temporal structure may be of no importance or
may fulfil a completely different function. Schiffrin (1994), for instance,
compares the temporal structures of narratives and lists, and concludes
that, whereas the temporal structure of a narrative is central to its identity
as a discourse unit and to its semantic interpretation, it has little relevance
in the structure of lists.
Descriptive structures can also form part of narratives, but they are
not central to them, since description in narratives is typically assigned to
a background orientation function (Labov 1972b). Narrative descriptive
orientation may preface the narrative action itself, or it may be embedded
within the complicating action. A speaker might, for example, interrupt the
narration of sequential events in order to describe the physical and/or
spiritual features of a given character in the story.
Schiffrin notes that, since stories are often said to be constructions of
an experience rather than representations of a reality, narrators may
impose their own subjectivity on what happens at a variety of levels (1994:
306). A lot of subjectivity is involved in the process of making a point
when telling a story, and the point of a story is indicated by means of some
sort of evaluation. Evaluative structures are then important in the
construction of narratives. Whereas evaluation is normally necessary and
required in stories, it may be optional and less important in other types of
text, like, for example, recipes or the manual instructions to use an
appliance.
The different information structures of texts display the arrangements
of units in recurrent patterns. These units are related to one another so as
to make texts coherent. This leads us to reflect upon one of the key tasks
of variationists: the comparison and contrast of the use of the different
information structures across text types, as well as within a given text type.
This type of analysis leads to a more systematic study of the characteristics
of different texts and their functions, which in turn leads to a basic
assumption in both variation and narrative analysis: that equivalence (or
difference) in syntactic form does not always imply functional equivalence
(or difference). Likewise, equivalence (or difference) in function does not
always presuppose equivalence (or difference) in form. To put it in a
simpler way, there is not a biunivocal relationship between form and
function in linguistics: a given form may fulfil different functions, and a
given function may be realized by different forms.

7.2.2. Sample analysis of data

Examine the following narrative, in which a High School student tells
what happened to his English teacher one of the times he (the teacher) was
at gunpoint.

A: Did you ever meet a real brave person?

B: Oh, yeah. That’s my English teacher. You know, he’s the one that’s
uh… been four times at gunpoint. One time there was this guy who uh,
wanted him to get out of his property, so uh…he got out his rifle and
threatened to shoot him. My teacher just got pissed, went up to him and put
his hand on the barrel. The guy was drunk and didn’t even know what he
was doing so he fired the rifle. But then when he actually saw a bullet
come out, he was surprised ‘cause he thought the gun wasn’t loaded. The
bullet went through my teacher’s hand and left a terrible wound. If you
look now, uh… you can see he has quite a scar there.

(Personal communication with a student at the American School of Madrid,

January 2005)

Albeit not very long, this story contains many of the elements and devices
of narratives. It has an abstract (You know, he’s the one that’s uh… been
four times at gunpoint.) which summarizes the point the student wants to
make (that his teacher is brave because he was at gunpoint four times and
faced the events). The abstract is followed by a short orientation as to one
of the times he was at gunpoint (One time there was this guy who…)
followed in turn by a succession of events related to this time, which
constitute the complicating action. The result or resolution is expressed
by means of the clause The bullet went through my teacher’s hand and left
a terrible wound, and the final clause functions as a coda, showing how
the effect of the actions described in the narrative has been extended to the
present moment (If you look now, uh…you can see he has quite a scar
there).
If we compare this narrative to that of Labov’s reproduced in 7.2., we
shall see that they do not have exactly the same elements. As explained in
complicating action
Sequential Structure tres olution
7.2., the one element all narratives do seem to have in common is their
sequential structure, manifested in the complicating action and the
resolution, because that is the characteristic that, according to Labov and
many authors following him, defines a narrative 5. The other elements may
vary, as is the case with some of them in these two particular narratives.
Labov’s story in 7.2. does not have an abstract proper, but it does have
some clauses fulfilling the function of orientation. While Labov’s
narrative has an evaluative clause (She was a devil), the narrative in this
section does not strictly contain any explicit evaluative clause: the student
seems to limit himself to the telling of the events. However, the response
to the interviewer’s question (Oh, yeah. That’s my English teacher) could
be considered as an evaluative introductory clause, and, also, it is clear
that every subsequent clause contributes to the main point of the story, i.e.
that the English teacher is brave, which in itself constitutes an implicit
evaluation.
This type of discourse analysis, if taken further and done in more
detail, can lead the researcher to draw conclusions as to the different types
of narratives there are, as well as to the different devices used in each type.
If the analysis were to be intended within Variation Analysis (following all
the steps, as we saw in 7.1.), we would need a more extensive corpus
(containing numerous narrations) and we should go through the process of
quantifying the occurrences of the variants and dealing with statistical
tests, a procedure we shall not follow in this book because it goes beyond
the scope of the objectives set for this chapter.

7.2.3. Further discussion on Narrative Analysis

Some authors have pointed out (e.g. Cortazzi and Jin, 2003) that Labov’s
model does not take into account the relationship between teller and
listener, that it does not pay sufficient attention to context, or that it does
not fully consider features of narrative performance or culture. Thus, they
argue in favour of the analysis of narrative in the light of wider socio-
cultural dimensions.
In effect, as was noted in 7.2., narrative and the broader field of
storytelling have become the focus of attention of many scholars, not only
within linguistics but also in many other academic and literary disciplines.
The storyteller is seen as someone who can make something out of
nothing, who is capable of a fascinating elaboration of detail that is
entertaining and amusing, who is, in short, a gifted user of the language.

5 However, see comment on Mishler’s (2006) work in 7.2.3.1.

Thus, narrative analysis is acknowledged to be an “empowering” social
science, for it gives the narrators the opportunity to present their own
viewpoints and evaluative standards. During interviews, the respondents
make an effort to organize their temporal experience into meaningful
wholes, using the pattern of narrative form as a means to make sense of
the events of their lives, and that is the reason why the analysis of
narrative is taken by many scholars as a useful tool for the study of the
construction of identity, a topic to which we now turn.

7.2.3.1. Narrative and identity

Discourse practices such as narrative have a central role in social practices,

as Foucault (1984) has pointed out. Both social and discourse practices
constitute a frame within which individuals and groups present themselves
to others, and in so doing they find themselves in the process of building
their identity. Thus, narrative discourse has proved to be a very fertile
ground for the study of the construction of both individual and/or
social/cultural identity.
One basic way of looking at the phenomenon of identity is through the
prism of social constructionism (e.g. Zimmerman and Wieder 1970, Hall
1996, Kroskrity 2000), whose main assumption is that identity is neither a
given nor a product. This perspective conceives of identity as a process
that presupposes discursive work and takes place in concrete interactional
situations, and as a process that comes out as the result of negociation and
entextualization (Bauman and Briggs 1990).
Narrative analysis provides a systematic way of understanding how
people make events in their lives meaningful and how they engage in the
ongoing construction of their identities. Through this type of analysis, we
can see how interlocutors build their identity by assuming stances not only
towards ideologies, but also with respect to each other or to absent third
parties. Numerous scholars have committed themselves to this enterprise.
One of them is Susan Bell (2006), who analyzes how a woman positions
herself in relation to the dominant ideology of intensive mothering, as well
as how she produces herself as a mother. Another one is Mike Baynham,
who, in his study of Moroccan narratives of migration and settlement,
shows “how different kinds of narrative, personal and generic, imply
different kinds of speaking position and corresponding identity choice”
(2006: 395).
Some authors have drawn on Goffman’s work (1981) on participation
frameworks and the deconstruction of the notion of speaker into more
subtle distinctions 6 for their analysis of narrative. These studies show, for
example, how speakers may make use of a variety of linguistic means (e.g.
reference, quotation, use of pronouns) to assume an authoritative identity
with respect to interlocutors, by claiming expertise in certain fields of
knowledge or experience (e.g. Schiffrin 2006, Ribeiro 2006). Other studies
(e.g. De Fina 2006, Kiesling 2006) show how speakers are able to
implicitly convey their position on social problems such as gender, race or
ethnicity by resorting to narratives of personal experience in which they
play a protagonistic role.
Bakhtin (1981) showed how the narrator’s voice could be separated
from that of the speaking character, thus obtaining a blend of different
voices (which are sometimes very difficult to distinguish) within the same
narrative. Bakhtin’s views on voice and dialogism 7 have been used by
other authors (e.g. Wortham and Gadsden 2006, Moita Lopes 2006) to
argue in favor of the idea that narrators can borrow the voices of others in
order to construct their own identity. In fact, the study of narrative allows
us to understand and see how both individual and global identities are
constantly intertwined in discourse. Global identities may emerge from
local, individual identities or they can be constructed simultaneously in the
ongoing discourse or interaction.
An interesting contribution to the study of narrative is that of Mishler
(2006), because it defies the dominating and prevailing view of narrative
as a chronologically-ordered set of clauses. This author takes a critical
look at the privileging of linear time in the structure of narrative and the
formation of identity by arguing that many narratives do not represent
temporal and causal chains leading toward the present. On the contrary,
our constructions of identity may flow recurrently between the present and
the past.
In short and to conclude, this section has tried to show and to call the
reader’s attention to how recent scholarship in linguistics has proved that it
is largely within discourse, and in particular, within narrative, that we find
the answers to many questions about the construction of local and global
identities.

6 See 4.1.2.
7 See 9.5.
15118
Choose the answer that best suits the information given in Chapter 7.

:
1) The origins of Variation Analysis are found…
a) in Anthropology and Psychology.
b) solely in Linguistics.
c) both in Linguistics and Anthropology.

2) Variation Analysis is concerned with the language changes observed…

a) between different speech acts.
b) within the same community.
c) along different speech communities.

3) The most prominent figure within Variation Analysis is…

a) Dell Hymes.
b) William Labov.
c) Deborah Schiffrin.

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4) The vernacular language is…
a) the standard variety.
b) the most grammatically correct variety.
c) the variety which is first acquired and perfectly learned.

5) Variation Analysis…
a) combines both qualitative and quantitative techniques.
b) is only concerned with qualitative analysis.
c) is only interested in the quantitative results.

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6) Variationists study linguistic change…
a) only at the semantic level.
b) at both the semantic and syntactic levels.
c) at all linguistic levels.

7) According to Labov, narrative is a privileged area of discourse

because…
a) it is closer to the vernacular than any other type of discourse.
b) it is the most grammatically correct type of discourse.
c) it does not contain any mistakes.
8) Through the sociolinguistic interviews…
a) the researchers analize the interviewees’ social lives.
b) the respondents speak about their private lives.
c) conclusions about the social distribution of variants can be drawn.

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9) Labov argued in favor of the idea that…
a) black children were verbally deprived.
b) white children were genetically superior.
c) black children were not verbally deprived.

10) The observer’s paradox has to do with …

a) the effort made by researchers to observe how speakers talk when they
are not being observed.
b) how to make observants speak while the observer is not speaking.
c) the contradiction between speaking and observing at the same time.

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11) A narrative is a discourse unit…
a) surrounded by other, dependent units.
b) that contains smaller units and has a fairly regular structure.
c) with an irregular structure.

12) According to Labov, the basic characteristic of all narratives is…

a) their temporal structure.
b) their descriptive structure.
c) their evaluative structure.

13) Which are the elements of the following short narrative?

Melissa was in bed when she felt everything was moving and realized it
was an earthquake, so she jumped out of bed, rushed down the stairs, and
managed to get to the street before the building collapsed.

a) abstract – orientation – resolution – coda

b) complicating action – resolution
c) orientation – complicating action – resolution

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14) Reportability in a narrative has to do with…
a) how long the narrative is.
b) the interest it elicits from the audience, so as to justify its telling.
c) how interesting the speaker thinks the narrative is.

15) In narratives of personal experience…

a) credibility and causality are closely related.
b) no causal relations can be found within the sequence of events.
c) it is not important whether the hearer believes the story or not.

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16) According to Labov, the more objectively the events in a narrative are
presented …
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a) the more credibility they will receive from the audience.
b) the less credibility they will receive from the audience.
c) the more subjective the point of view of the narrator will be.

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17) The analysis of narratives and their functions leads to the basic
assumption in both variation and narrative analysis that…
a) syntactic equivalence implies functional equivalence
b) syntactic equivalence does not imply functional equivalence.
c) equivalence in function presupposes equivalence in form.

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18) Narrative discourse has proved to be a fertile ground for the study of…
a) all kinds of social practices.
b) personal opinion.
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c) individual and social/cultural identity.