The historical present tense yet again: Tense switching and narrative dynamics in oral and quasi-oral storytelling

Abstract

The following paper is an attempt to extend the recent findings of discourse analysis in the area of conversational storytelling by supplementing the more narrowly (text-)linguistic approach with theoretical and structural considerations inspired by the literary discipline of structuralist narratology. Rather than analyzing a new corpus of oral stories and drawing yet another set of conclusions from this new material, I will follow the methodology of my own discipline, narratology, in (mostly) relying on available corpora and subjecting these to literary and theoretical criticism. In doing so, I will pretend that conversational narratives are as worthy of sustained interpretative analysis as literary' works of art.As Stanley Fish has noted in a recent response (Fish, 1990) to criticism of his 'Being interdisciplinary is so very hard to do' paper (Fish, 1989), interdisciplinary research usually fails to combine two disciplines into one; it usurps bordering areas into the magnetic field of its own theoretical and practical preoccupations. This portrait of interdisciplinary practice represents my own attitude towards linguistics, from which I keep receiving new ideas and models for the study of narrative. If I have decided to make my results availabe to linguists, it is because I hope some cross fertilization may take place for the other side as well. More liberal students of language who are willing to look at conversational narratives as narratives rather than texts will perhaps grant that oral storytelling might be determined by a more general narrative frame, a frame that determines the structure of stories and the functions of their linguistic properties.A word is here due at the very start about the wording 'oral and quasioral storytelling' in the title. Like many other roughly equivalent terms this has its drawbacks. My theses involve a recognition that present-day conversational stories share a structure (and therefore the use of the 0165-4888/91/0011-0365 $2.00Text 11(3) (1991), pp. 365-397 © Walter de Gruyter Monika Fludernik'historic' present tense) with certain 'literary' narratives. This structure can be defined as episodic, and it prevails in literary narrative up until the eighteenth century. Episodic structure dominates in medieval verse and prose tales and is common as late as the early eighteenth-century novel. During the eighteenth century, episodic structure is increasingly superseded by more discursive narrative forms and in English literature at least -only survives in oral storytelling and in imitations of oral narrative in fictional dialogue. This history of the replacement of episodic narrative -eloquently proposed by Ermarth (1981) -can be argued to coincide with the replacement of verbal style by nominal style (Wells, 1960), or `doric' by 'attic' prose (Halliday, 1987). In fact, Halliday makes an explicit connection between verbal and nominal styles on the one hand and the oral vs. the written on the other, linking 'verbal' done prose to the accumulative mostly paratactic language...

Towards a ‘Natural’ Narratology

“…The dynamics of experientiality äs it surfaces in the narrativity of narratives reposes not solely on the changes brought about by external developments or effected through the self-monitored (goaloriented) actions of a central intelligence or consciousness. This Brought to you by | University of Glasgow Library Authenticated Download Date | 6/27/15 12:00 PM dynamics is related, on the contrary, to the resolution effect of the narrative endpoint and to the tension between tellability and narrative point (Fludernik 1991). What is cognitively interesting here is that pure sequentiality or even causality do not figure at all.…”

“…Human experience typically embraces goaloriented behaviour and activity, with its reaction to obstacles encountered on the way. The appearance of such an obstacle in one's path also constitutes a major event experience, and one which is reflected in the central incidence Schema (Pollak 1988) of oral narratives (Quasthoff 1980;Fludernik 1991Fludernik , 1992a. This unexpected occurrence indeed dynamically triggers the reaction of the Protagonist, and it is this three-part Schema of 'Situation -event (incidence) -reaction to event' which constitutes the core of all human action experience.…”

“…In this Schema teleology combines the goal-orientation of the acting subject and the after-the-fact evaluation of narrative experience. I will have quite a good deal to say about this basic pattern when discussing natural narrative 20 but here refer the reader to Quasthoff (1980) and Fludernik (1991Fludernik ( , 1992a.…”

The chronological I

“…Similarly when she says things goes well (lines 5-6) and so I get to know (line 15). In earlier literature, and in linguistic narrative studies, the concept historical present is used when a narrator talks about the past in terms of the present in order to dramatise specific reported events (Adelswärd, 1996;Fludernik, 1991;Wolfson, 1978). This dramatisation serves as a rhetorical resource to convey one side of the story.…”

Narrative Schemata and Temporal Anchoring

“…I have, in a previous paper, analyzed the historical present tense in present-day English narrative (Fludernik, 1991). At that point I noted the functional importance of the shift out of the present tense -the resultative (Harweg's endogenic progredient) -, and I have noted the difference between the initial preterites in the story beginning and those of embedded orientation.…”