narrative ordinary events labov.pdf

Ordinary events

William Labov, University of Pennsylvania

In most sociolinguistic studies of the speech community, narratives of personal

experience play a prominent role. Within the sociolinguistic interview, narratives are

one of the primary means of reducing the effects of observation and recording. In

dissecting the stylistic shifts within the interview, narratives consistently show a shift

towards the vernacular—that is, towards the first-learned style of speech that is used in

every-day communication with friends and family (Labov 2001). Many of the results of

this concentration on narrative are incorporated into the figures on style shifting of

linguistic variables (Trudgill 1974, Cedergren 1973). Because the elicitation of narrative

is such an important methodological step, attention turned to narrative structure (Labov

and Waletzky 1963, Labov 1972). The distribution of linguistic features in the

construction of narrative has been the focus of a number of studies (e.g., Schiffrin 1981,

Silva-Corvalan 1973). Several recent publications have focused on the narratives as a

whole (Laforest 1996, Butters 2001).

More than anyone else, Ron Macaulay has brought to the forefront the emotional

and social dimensions of personal narrative (1991). In his exploration of the discourse

features of the Ayrshire dialect, narratives play the most prominent part—not only in the

discourse particles that are tied to narrative structure, but in the way that linguistic

constructions are used to convey the full emotional impact of the events being

recounted. The impact of his work is considerably heightened by the quality of the many

narratives that he cites in full. From the outset, Macaulay realized the importance of the

central themes of human experience in his sociolinguistic interviews; as an interviewer,

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he was able to draw forth the full eloquence of the Scots speakers of Ayrshire and

Glasgow.

The narrative.

This report will deal with a single narrative recorded by Macaulay. It was

originally reported in his paper on “Polyphonic monologues,” dealing with the role of

direct quotation in narrative (1987), and then incorporated into his1991 book in Chapter

11 on “The Use of Quoted Direct Speech.” I have been thinking about this narrative since

I first read Macaulay’s paper, re-telling it to various audiences, and re-analyzing it from

several points of view. It is told by Ellen Laidlaw, whose narratives are cited at many

points in Macaulay’s work. Laidlaw was 69 when she was interviewed in 1978. She was

from a solidly working-class background: the daughter of a coalman, who left school at

16, and was twice married to men who held manual jobs at a local factory. The narrative

concerns her father’s death. Laidlaw’s mother had been taking care of him in his final

sickness. Though it is a narrative of personal experience, the experience is her mother’s,

as retold by the daughter. It was introduced by an abstract: “He just lay doon on the settee

and turned over and that was him gone, and then told in detail.

The story is reproduced below in the transcriptional style that is useful for the

narrative analysis to follow. Each independent clause is lettered as a separate line, and all

finite clauses dependent on it are indented below.

(1)

Ellen Laidlaw: An account of her father’s death

a And it was an exceptionally good afternoon,

b and she put him out in a basket chair, sitting at the window ootside in the

garden.

c She went in on the one bus

d and came back on the same bus,

because the conductress says to her, "Thought you said

you were going for messages [shopping]", she says.

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e "So I was."

f "Well," she says, "I'm awful glad I'm no waiting on you," she says.

g "You coudnae have got much

because you've got the same bus back."

h "Ach well," she says, "I don't like the idea of leaving him too long,"

i and she went up the road.

j She noticed his basket chair was there,

k but he wasnae there.

l She never thought anything aboot it,

because it was too warm.

m She thought he'd naturally gone inside,

n and when she went in,

he was lying on the settee.

o And she's auld-fashioned, very tidy, very smart.

p Everything had to go in its place.

q She took off her coat,

r hung it up,

s put away her shopping bag,

t and she says, "It's rather early for wer tea—wer dinner,

so I'll go and ask him if he wants a coffee."

u And she made the coffee,

v and she went through

w and shook him to ask him if he wanted tea.

x And he dropped off the settee in front of her.

y And she just--her mind just broke,

z and she's never known what it is since.

Macaulay points out that this extraordinary story must have been reconstructed from

Laidlaw’s mother’s account, even if her mind had been disordered as a result of the

events. We find several indirect quotations from her mother (j, l, m) but also direct

quotation (e.h, t). The quoted exchanges with the conductress (d,e,f,g,h) might have

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been from her mother, but they also could have been from the conductress. It is this

reconstructed conversation that is the focus of Macaulay’s analysis. The dialogue, and

particularly (h), provides a dramatic anticipation of the tragedy.

By the use of quoted direct speech Laidlaw has transformed what

would otherwise have been a straightforward third-person account of her

mother’s actions on the day that her father died into a dramatic narrative in

which the perspective varies with different speakers. (1991:192).

In what follows, I would like to pursue Macaulay’s insights further by considering the

relation of this dialogue to the central problem of polarization and integration of the

participants. Though we begin with the assumption that the events reported did in fact

occur, the account is indeed “constructed,” as Macaulay points out. Following the

model of Labov 1997, I will attempt to show that this construction is best understood

as built upon the skeleton of causally-linked events that is required for the creation of

any narrative structure. The “reportable” events form a selection of the events that we

can infer did occur but also include a variety of events that are not in themselves

reportable and are not part of the causal chain required for a coherent narrative. These

“ordinary events” will be the main focus of this account: how they relate to the

central narrative task of conveying the narrator’s experience to the listener.

Temporal organization and evaluation

Following the method of Labov and Waletzky 1967, we can first examine

the temporal organization of the narrative. The Orientation is confined to a single

clause (a), which establishes the time. The place and the participants are incorporated

in the first narrative event of the complicating action, (b), which introduces her

mother, her father and the situation: a sick man left alone on the front porch of the

house. The action continues to the final resolution (x), the negative evaluation of that

resolution (y), and the coda (z) which brings us back to the present with the present

perfect clause modified by since [that happened]. The analysis is not so simple,

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however, since the sequence of temporal junctures is broken by a series of clauses

with extended temporal ranges, as shown in Figure 1.

This series plainly forms an evaluation section. It deals with the perceptions,

thoughts and character of the protagonist, and is marked nu irrealis predicates. Clause

(j) reports the perception of a negative situation. Clauses (k-m) continue in an irrealis

mode, reporting misperceptions that prevailed through w, and terminated only with

the tragic event ( x). Clause (n) is another restricted clause, reporting the situation that

continues again through (w)—her father’s location on the settee in the living room.

There follow the two free clauses (o,p) that describe her mother’s general

character—material that might have been placed in an orientation section. A glance at

(2) makes it plain that this evaluation section delays the advancement of the action, a

delay that would normally precede and evaluate the main point of the narrative. 1

However, there can be no doubt that clause (x) is the central point of the narrative,

and the evaluation section is separated from it by a long series of less important

events (q-v). What follows in the analysis will attempt to account for this

displacement of the evaluation section.

The displacement of the orientation clauses (o-p) downward in the narrative is a not

uncommon device for evaluation, postponing information that interprets events to the

place where they are most relevant. Whether or not this characterization of her mother

continues to the very end of the narrative, beyond the death of her father, is not known.

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