textThis dissertation is a meta-analysis of the narrative analysis
methodologies of Labov and Waletzky (1967), Labov (1972, 1997,
2001, 2002), Polanyi (1985) and Ochs and Capps (2001) using data
from the Minnesota Corpus (Barnes, 1984) to test the usefulness of
these methodologies. Conversational narrative was first a subject
of analysis in the late 60's when Labov and Waletzky, working
under the influence of structural linguistics, decided that in order
to better understand narrative, one must understand its most
basic form, which they felt resided in oral versions of personal
experience. Since their groundbreaking 1967 study, the field of
conversational narrative analysis has been dominated by
structural approaches to narrative that seek to define the
structural components of a narrative and formulate an analysis
based on these components. Only recently with the introduction of
Ochs and Capps' methodology in 2001 has an alternative which
values both the context and the interactive nature of narrative and
seeks to describe the co-participant's influences on narrative been
put forth. This meta-analysis suggests that there are positive and
negative qualities to each of the methodologies at issue and that
different methodologies are more or less appropriate for different
types of data. While the structural approaches to conversational
narrative suggested by Labov and Polanyi do not provide an
adequate means to analyze interactive narratives, Ochs and Capps'
methodology requires more extensive ethnographic information
than what were available from the Minnesota corpus data. While
the Ochs and Capps' approach seems overall to be the best suited
for the type of data at issue in the Minnesota corpus, there are also
clear benefits to be derived from applying a more structural
approach. Specifically, an analysis of a narrative's Non-Storyworld
clauses (as defined by Polanyi) seems to provide important
insights. Moreover, these clauses can help the analyst address
how interlocutors make sense of the relevance of narrative in
coversational discourse, something hinted at by both Labov and
Polanyi. I suggest that a combination of elements from both
structural and ethnographic approaches provides a more complete
methodology with which to analyze interactive narrative data.French and Italia
