ABSTRACT
The narrator is often implicated in the narrative itself which, in the corpus, is frequently in the first person; at the very least, it is based on the narrator's own experience. In some, narrative discourse is the only type of discourse found, and is usually interspersed with quotations from direct speech. Length too varies, and the boundaries of the narrative sections can be very unclear, especially where narrative blends with other types of discourse. The educational background of the neo-conteurs is very different from their traditional counterparts; they are usually highly educated speakers who have come through the French education system; again, the means that written, literary models are likely to play some role. Ideally, one would wish to compare the patterns with other corpora of traditional storytelling in French, but the rarity of authentic high-quality recorded material makes this very difficult.
