Stylistics routledge English Language Introductions

Activity

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Now go through the story again, this time underlining the Evaluation devices the
narrator uses. How much variety is there in the linguistic forms that are used for
narrative Evaluation? And what would be lost from this story if Evaluation was 
not there?
Stylistics and natural narrative
Stylisticians have made much of the Labovian model, not least because it enables
rigorous comparisons to be drawn between literary narrative on the one hand and
the social stories told in everyday interaction on the other. However, the model’s
simple six-part structure tends to make it best suited to literary narratives that are
(literally) short, which is why stylistic applications have tended to concentrate either
on narrative texts of only a hundred words or so (eg. Simpson 1992a) or on ‘narra-
tives within narratives’ such as the sorts of stories told by individual characters within
a longer novel or play (eg. Toolan 2001: 150–9). Although the general application of
the Labovian model to a full-length novel is theoretically viable (see Pratt 1977:
38–78), the replication of its six basic components, sometimes over many hundreds
of pages of text, means that the results of a direct analysis can be less than exhila-
rating. However, the seeking out of shorter literary texts for natural narrative analysis
is, it has to be said, rather like the drunk man who loses his keys on the way home
one evening and who, on retracing his steps, looks for them only under lamplight.
So with a theoretical disclaimer duly delivered, what follows is a practical narrative
exercise based around a short ‘narrative within a narrative’.
The passage below is from Eugene Ionesco’s absurdist play 
The Bald Prima Donna
,
a play which satirises, after a fashion, its author’s perception of the social and 
intellectual sterility of the English middle classes (see Burton 1980: 24). In this
episode, two couples, Mr and Mrs Smith and Mr and Mrs Martin, engage in a bizarre
story telling round in which Mrs Martin is encouraged to recount a narrative of
personal experience about something ‘interesting’ that befell her. Read the passage
through, concentrating particularly on the story told, across several speaker turns, by
Mrs Martin:
MR MARTIN: [
to his wife
] Tell them, darling, what you saw today.
MRS MARTIN: Oh no, I couldn’t. They’d never believe me.
MR SMITH: You don’t think we’d doubt your word! [. . .]
MRS MARTIN: [
graciously
] Well, then! Today I witnessed the most extraordinary inci-
dent. It was absolutely incredible [ . . .] As I was going to the market to buy some
vegetables, which are still going up and up in price . . .
MRS SMITH: Yes, where on earth’s it going to end!
MR SMITH: You mustn’t interrupt, my dear. Naughty girl!
MRS MARTIN: In the street, outside a restaurant, was a gentleman, respectably dressed
and about fifty years old, perhaps less, who was . . . Well, I know you’ll say that I’m
making it up: he was kneeling on the ground and leaning forward.
MR MARTIN:
MRS SMITH:
冧
Oh!
MR SMITH:
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A S O C I O L I N G U I S T I C M O D E L O F N A R R A T I V E
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