The book inscribes into an already rich collection of works inspired by textology
and linguistic genology. The aim of the work is to analyse colloquial stories
appearing in everyday conversations, or, more specifically, present linguistic
realizations of structural models of this genre.
The initial chapter shows various understandings of the notion of a story and
a narrative in contemporary humanistic studies.
Chapter one presents a story as a component of a conversation that is the
effect of a natural face‑to‑face
cooperation between its participants. The analyses
presented prove that colloquial narratives are texts dynamically created,
marked by an imprint of a characteristic exchange of sending‑receiving
roles
thanks to which they are generally not monologue, but interactive texts, which
also influences building interpersonal bonds.
Chapter two brings a detailed description of a genre model of a colloquial
story in its four aspects: a structural, pragmatic, cognitive and stylistic one. Presenting
a structural aspect of a story, the author discusses the attempts to arrange
the fictional schemes on the grounds of the theory of literature, narrative
grammar and psychology. A description of the pragmatic component defines
the parameters of a model communicative situation of a story, a picture of a sender
and receiver, as well as the aims of communication (an illocutionary potential).
Describing a cognitive component, the author shows the components of
a colloquial image of the worlds manifested in the very texts. Cognitive values
of the history from an everyday life can also be seen in their exemplary overtone:
colloquial stories show ways a narrator or a character deals with problems.
A stylistic level covers genre determinants of a text and linguistic means such
as morphological, lexical and syntactic realizing them. Thus, the very chapter
gives a description of the features of a colloquial language being the result of
the spontaneity of an oral communication.
The subject of interest in chapter three is structural models of colloquial stories.
The first stage of the analysis constituted differentiating the basic structure
composed by constitutive components being semantic equivalents of the
elements of a full fictional structure. Next, a description of a five‑component
maximum structure of a colloquial story, linguistic realizations of particular
components, that is an abstract, orientation, complication, solution and coda was given. In the part describing ways of introducing a narrative to conversations,
the author analyses a meta‑textual
frame dividing a narrative from
expressions preceding and following it, indicates typical initial delimiters. Next,
she presents a detailed analysis of the orienteering part, paying attention to
ways of defining the time of the events and locating them in a space, as well as
discusses ways of describing the background of the events and characters and
avoiding descriptions, as well as the role of a commentary in the form of margin
remarks coming from a narrator. The analysis of the material collected shows
that complication and a turning point of the action in a colloquial story can be
signaled on a lexical, syntactic, inflectional and phonetic level. In the next subchapter,
typical forms of action resolution are discussed while a description of
the elements of a maximum structure of a story is closed with the analysis of the
end which is to explicitly express the coda of a narrative situation, and signalize
a return to the situation defined by a communicative here and now, constituting
a borderline element of the text, and a component of a meta‑textual
frame. At
the end of the story, often the evaluation of the events presented I the form of
a moral, proverb or saying is given.
Chapter three gives a description of alternative structures of a story, namely,
structures situation‑related
and characterized by a change of the quantity or
subsequence of the composition elements typical of a given genre. The very
structural changes appear as a result of the impact of the element of colloquial
speech, a wide variety of reconstructed events, as well as under the influence of
a particular communicative situation in which the story develops.
Chapter three closes a description of adaptation structures of a story, that is
those that refer to other genre models existing in the speech universe. On the
example of narrative jokes and advertisements using the form of a story, the author
shows that a story, in contamination with other genres, is a stronger form: it
does not undergo adaptations on its own, but becomes the source of adaptation,
or the basis for transformations of other genres. Form adaptations under the
influence of a story scheme can be global in nature which is seen in e.g. jokes
taking on the form of a narrative, can also appear in partial adaptations, which
can be observed in e.g. advertisement messages
