ABSTRACT
The distinction between discourse and narrative is, of course, based solely on an analysis of the grammatical features of two modes of discourse in which the “objectivity” of the one and “subjectivity” of the other are definable primarily by a “linguistic order of criteria.” Interest in social system, which is nothing other than a system of human relationships governed by law, creates possibility of conceiving the kinds of tensions, conflicts, struggles, and their various kinds of resolutions that we are accustomed to find in any representation of reality presenting itself to us as a history. The annalist of Saint Gall shows no concern about any system of merely human morality or law. Where moral sensitivity is lacking, as it seems to be in an annalistic account of reality, or is only potentially present, as it appears to be in a chronicle, not only meaning but means to track such shifts of meaning, that is, narrativity, appears to be lacking also.
