ABSTRACT
Narratives typically involve a temporally-causally ordered sequence of events directed towards a goal and experienced by one or more protagonists. With this particular structure, narratives simultaneously effect two functions, identified as referential and evaluative by Labov and Waletzky (1967). The referential function is realized by a sequence of clauses that describe the events and actions constituting the story, and the evaluative function by clauses that refer to the mental states of protagonists, motivating circumstances, or consequences of those events. Bruner, with a more general focus on narrative thinking, has similarly underlined the dual levels of organization that inhere in narratives: a “landscape of action” constituted by a sequence of events and a “landscape of consciousness” constituted by the thoughts, beliefs, and emotions of protagonists (Bruner 1986:18). In short, the referential function corresponds to the plane of action and the evaluative function is particular to that of consciousness. In telling their stories, mature narrators move between the two planes and may adopt different perspectives in realizing these functions: that of the author and those of one or more of the protagonists. Such perspective shifts rest on the capacity to hold a theory of mind, which entails understanding the mental states of others and establishing causal links between those belief states and the world.
