Presentazione di PowerPoint

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Telling stories
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What is a narrative?

• A basic story or narrative consists of the
  following
• A plot - something interesting takes place
• Characters
• Chronological structure references made to time
• An opening
• An ending which provides some resolution
• A setting in time and place

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Lets work on our joke again

• right (.) three men sat in a pub (.) and er sat
  there having a quiet drink (.) and in walks this
  really drunken old man (.) and he staggers in and
  he's all over the place he's knocking drinks over
  (.) he's er standing on people's feet and (.) urn
  all the rest of it and urn he walks over to the
  bar this old man (.) and he orders a pint of
  lager (.) he er gets his pint (.) and downs it
  fast as he can in one (.) and then he staggers
  over to these three men (.) these three men are
  looking at each other nudging each other (.)
  right what does he want (.) and ur (.) this man
  walks over he says (.) I'vehadyermam
  I'vehadyermam and one of the men says (.) piss
  off! so (.) this this old man he staggers away
  and he goes to the bar and he orders another
  drink (.) another pint of lager and downs this
  even faster (.) he staggers back over to these
  three men (.) and he says I've had your mam I've
  put cream on her body and I've licked it off (.)
  guy stands up again he says look go away (.) so
  er this old man staggers back to the bar (.) all
  over the place he orders another pint (.) this
  one downs even faster and he comes and again
  again he comes back over to these three men (.)
  he says I've had your mam I've put cream on her
  body I've done things to her you wouldn't
  understand (.) well they've had enough so (.) one
  of the men stands up he says look dad you're
  drunk go home.

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Activity

• The joke displays the basic characteristics of a
  narrative.
• Can you identify the elements of the narrative in
  this joke?

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Activity

Now please suggest ways in which the speaker has
attempted to make his story more alive and vivid
for his listener.
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Linguistic elements which make an oral narration
more vivid

• Word choice plays a fundamental role. At the
  LEXICAL level we have vivid descriptions,
  sometimes through informal lexical items
• Knocking drinks over
• Standing on peoples feet
• Listeners nudging to each other
• The man stuggers

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Linguistic elements which make an oral narration
more vivid

• The storyteller tries to reproduce the way the
  drunk man talks through graphological
  expedients
• Ivehadyermam

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Linguistic elements which make an oral narration
more vivid

• Use of direct, realistic and in some cases vulgar
  expressions, which are nevertheless common in
  such a situation or which reproduce expressions
  typical of spoken English
• Piss off
• Look dad youre drunk

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Linguistic elements which make an oral narration
more vivid
The syntactic level plays its part too. The
switch from the past tense to the present tense
and the use of this man and these men contribute
to bring the scene alive. right (.) three men
sat in a pub (.) and er sat there having a quiet
drink (.) and in walks this really drunken old
man three men sat in a pub elliptical
dialectal expression three men were sat in a pub
three men were sitting in a pub

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The structure of narration

• The joke can be divided into 3 separated but
  repeated episodes which build to the final
  climax.
• Can you identify them?

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The role of repetition and structure

• The repetition of episodes allow the audience to
  share the joke more fully with the teller.
• Children enjoy the familiarity of a repeated
  episode in their bedtime stories and so in the
  same way a listener to this joke can predict
  the story.
• The listener knows whats coming next, until hes
  finally surprised by the unexpected end and
  therefore amused.

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The role of repetition and structure

• A certain structure is recognizable in our
  conversational exchanges.
• We need structure and predictability to a certain
  extent, so that the processing labour required to
  arrive to the intended meaning and to the
  intended effects does not exceed our strengths.
• The way we structure communicative events is
  partly cultural/conventional and partly cognitive.

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Oral Narration

• When we speak, we often tell stories, even when
  they are not jokes.
• Narration serves many purposes in conversation.
  In some cases it is used to reinforce ones
  opinion on a topic.

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Talk show story

• Handout A
• The following transcription is an extract from
  the TV programme This Morning, hosted by Richard
  Madeley and Judy Finnigan. This magazine
  programme appears regularly on weekday mornings
  and is divided into several sections that deal
  with items such as fashion, cookery, advice
  giving and interviews with TV personalities. In
  this transcription, the hosts are talking to
  their expert psychologist Raj Persaud. They have
  been discussing how parents should deal with
  children asking questions. Raj has already said
  that parents should praise children for asking
  questions even if they don't know the answer to
  them.

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• RAJ and another good answer is I don't know the
  answer and let's go and find out together
• RICHARD I'll tell you one thing when we moved to
  London and we'd been here for about a month and
  we were just driving around looking at the sights
  and we were driving past Buckingham Palace right
  and Chloe's in the back of the car right this is
  so funny urn and she said there it is there's
  Buckingham Palace woah woah oh we should open the
  window oh and the Queen lives there oh look the
  flag's up the Queen's in there now and she said
  is that the Queen's house then? and we said yeah
  she said ooh fancy building a palace next to the
  main road
• RAJ, R J (laughter)
• JUDY on the main road (laughs) which is logical
• RICHARD which is very observant absolutely why
  did they do that she said and actually I couldn't
  think because the road was probably there when
  they built it although there wouldn't have been
  cars on it
• RAJ I hope you praised her for making a good
  point
• RICHARD well we fell apart

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Some questions

• How does Richard signpost to his listeners that
  he is about to tell a story?
• With standard expressions such as
• Ill tell you one thing
• He signals that hes going to interrupt the
  discussion and take a longer turn than usual to
  tell a story.

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The metalanguage of narration

• Certain expressions in English signal the shift
  between humorous narration and serious narration.
  They act as special brackets (Goffman 1974).
• Narration is rich in formulae. Some other
  expressions, for instance, are common openers.

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The metalanguage of narration

• Kidding aside
• Now, Im not really serious about this
• Just kidding/joking
• Have you heard the one about
• Have you ever stopped to think why
• Did you know that
• Ill always remember the time
• Did I ever tell you about
• Then there was the time we
• I must tell you about
• Youll never guess what happened yesterday
• I heard a good one the other day
• I had a funny experience last week

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Back to Richards story

• What function does the word right play in the
  telling of this story?
• Richard gives background information to the
  story the who, what, where and when. This
  background information is separated from the rest
  of the story by the use of the word right.
• The rest of the story is told in rapid dramatic
  dialogue building up to the climax, i.e. Chloes
  unanswerable question.

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Back to Richards story

• How does Richard want us to evaluate the story?
• Just before the dialogue, Richard prefaces the
  story with the words this is so funny, which
  tells the listener how he wants them to interpret
  it.

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Back to Richards story

• Why does Richard tell the story?
• Richard explains that he couldnt answer Chloes
  question and Raj picks this up, relating back to
  the previous discussion on childrens questions.

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Narration to support ones ideas

• Richards reason for telling this story is to
  support his opinion. The general topic of the
  discussion triggered him into remembering a
  specific story and this illustrates how often
  narration provides specific examples to
  illustrate a general point, a way to make the
  general point more personalised and
  understandable.
• Narration creates EMPATHY among the speakers.

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Speakers collaboration

• The fact that Raj picks up Richards point means
  that he is collaborating with him to show the
  relevance of the story.
• Speakers collaboration can be expressed by
  several linguistic expressions

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Speakers collaboration

• Laughter
• Acknowledgement yeah, mmm, thats right
• Relevant comments
• I hope you praised her for making a good point
• which is logical

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Narration and argumentation

• In many cases narration provides a
  light-hearted/serious way to learn and reinforce
  ideas on a topic.

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• Labov's theory of narrative structure (1972).
• According to Labov, in an essay entitled The
  transformation of experience in narrative
  syntax, narrative is natural to both written and
  spoken language and its structure can be divided
  into the following
• abstract (signals that a story is about to begin
  is a brief explanation of what the story is
  about)
• orientation (context in which the story takes
  place, the who, what, where and when of the
  story)
• action (the 'what happened' element of the
  story)
• resolution (what finally happened)
• coda (signals end of story and can link back to
  the present situation)
• evaluation (comments, gestures running throughout
  the story to show how this is interesting).
• All these elements are not always present, but
  this is a useful framework for evaluating oral
  stories. The elements usually occur in the order
  given, but evaluation can occur at any point.

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Hands on work

• Analyse Richards story according to Labovs
  theory of narrative structure.
• Then analyse this passage taken from About a boy.

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• Where are your shoes? she shrieked when he came
  home. (Will had given him a lift, but it was
  November, and wet, and during the short walk
  across the pavement and up the stairs to the
  front door of the flats he had soaked his socks
  through again.) He looked at his feet, and for a
  moment he didnt say anything he toyed with the
  idea of acting all surprised and telling her he
  didnt know, but he quickly realized she wouldnt
  believe him.
• Stolen, he said eventually.
• Stolen? Why would anyone steal your shoes?
• Because He was going to have to tell the
  truth, but the problem was that the truth would
  lead to a whole lot more questions. Because they
  were nice ones.
• They were just ordinary black slip-on shoes.
• No, they werent. They were new Adidas
  trainers.
• Where did you get new Adidas trainers from?
• Will bought them for me?
• Will who? Will the guy who took us out to
  lunch?
• Yeah, Will. The bloke from SPAT. Hes sort of
  become my friend.
• Hes sort of become your friend?
• Marcus was right. She had loads more questions,
  except the way she asked them was a bit boring
  she just repeated the last thing he said, stuck a
  question mark on the end of it and shouted.
• I go round his flat after school.
• YOU GO ROUND HIS FLAT AFTER SCHOOL?
• Or
• Well, you see, he doesnt really have a kid.
• HE DOESNT REALLY HAVE A KID?
•  

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• Fiona Marcus! What happened to your shoes?
• Marcus They stole them.
• Fiona Why would anyone want to steal your shoes?
• Marcus I could see I had to tell the truth. The
  problem was, the truth would lead to a lot more
  questions.)
• They were nice ones.
• Fiona They were just ordinary brown lace-ups.
• Marcus No, they weren't. They were cool new
  trainers.
• Fiona Where did you get cool new trainers?
• Marcus (She had loads more questions.)
• Will bought them for me.
• Fiona Will? The guy who took us to lunch?
• Marcus Yeah. He's sort of become my friend.
• Fiona He's sort of become your friend?
• Marcus (She kept repeating the last thing I
  said. Except she shouted it.)
• I go round to his place after school.
• Fiona You go round to his place after school!
• Marcus You see, he doesn't really have a kid.
• Fiona He doesn't really have a kid?

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• WillI have a 2-year-old. Ned. He's got blue eyes
  and sort of sandy-coloured hair...
• ...and he's about 2'3. And his mum left.
• -Really?
• WillYeah. Yeah, I mean, obviously it was a very
  big shock... because we were so happy, you know?
  Sandra's neurology practice was just up and
  running... and then one day her bags were packed,
  and my best friend was waiting outside... in his
  Ferrari. Yeah. You know, the Modena? The one with
  the supercharged engine, where you can see it
  through the back back window?
• SpatYou got dumped then?
• WillYeah.
• SpatMay I ask, does your ex see Ned at all?
• WillSorry, I didn't catch your name.
• SpatSuzie.
• WillSuzie. She doesn't see much of him, no.
• SuzieHow does he cope with that?
• WillYou know, he's a very good little boy. Very,
  very brave. They've got amazing resources, don't
  they? Just the other day I was thinking about my
  ex. He came crawling up, put his little pudgy
  arms around my neck, and he said "You hang in
  there, Dad."
• SuzieGod, that's amazing for a 2-year-old!
• WillIs it? Yeah, well, he's very special. Very,
  very special. Sometimes I think, you know, he's
  the one taking care of me. Teaching me the ways
  of the world. Oh, sorry. Thank you.
• (My God, what a performance! I was even fooling
  myself.)
• SuzieThere you go. You okay?
• WillYeah. Perfect, thanks. Trust me?
• SuzieOf course.
• (By the end of the evening, I had a date lined
  up.)