Chapter published in:
Pragmatics and its Interfaces
Edited by Cornelia Ilie and Neal R. Norrick
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 294] 2018
► pp. 121–142

Narrative studies versus pragmatics (of narrative)

| Saarland University, Germany
This chapter considers the interface between pragmatics and narrative studies, initially with reference to Labovian, conversation analytic (CA) and psycholinguistic approaches to narrative, where common ground is found between these and more properly pragmatic approaches in such topics as tellability and telling rights, along with a shared interest in micro-analytic matters of how tense shifts signal perspective, how discourse markers and repetition mark narrative boundaries and the like. Then it introduces a specifically pragmatic perspective on narrative, considering recurrent functions of stories roughly at the illocutionary level, including both direct and indirect speech acts. This constitutes a top-down, macro-pragmatic perspective on narrative, significantly distinct from CA considerations of epistemic justification for telling or psycholinguistic matters of identity construction.
Keywords: bottom up – top down, discourse marker, formulaicity, macro – micro, narrative, slot, speech act, tellability
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Getting the story told: The bottom-up perspective
  • 3.What stories do: The top-down perspective
  • 4.Stories in story slots
  • 5.Direct and indirect force for stories
  • 6.Tentative conclusions
  • Note
  • References
Published online: 07 September 2018
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.294.06nor
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