| Chapter 2: | Narrative and Its Structures |
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TABLE 1. Narrative dimensions and possibilities.
| Dimensions | Possibilities | ||
| Tellership | One active teller | → | Multiple active co-tellers |
| Tellability | High | → | Low |
| Embeddedness | Detached | → | Embeddedness |
| Linearity | Closed temporal and causal order | → | Open temporal and causal order |
| Moral stance | Certain, constant | → | Uncertain, fluid |
Source. Ochs & Capps, 2001, p. 20.
measure the narrative proclivities of both conversational narrative and literary genres of narrative.
The review of earlier studies of narrative structures can be summarised as follows. On the one hand, the studies by Propp (1968), Dundes (1965), and Georges (1970) showed various methods of identifying a story structure in folk tales. The studies by Hasan (1996) and Hoey (2001), on the other hand, took a generic approach and focused on the level of discourse or textual realisation of the story. Labov (1972), Sacks (1992), and Ochs and Capps (2001) studied the structural framework of oral narratives from sociolinguistic perspectives. Toolan (1988), alternatively, proposed the grammaticalisation of core narrative clauses as a method of highlighting basic story structure. His method can be regarded as a stylistic approach to narrative, which is a counterpart to the structural analysis of narrative (Lüthi, 1982).
From the review of literature, a structural analysis of narrative can be performed in relation to different aspects, such as text (story structure), texture (concrete level of textual realisation), and context (actual social situation of narrative). Dundes (1971)