ABSTRACT
What exactly is a narrative? Although definitions differ in detail, all agree on central properties. Primarily, a narrative is a verbal representation of events that follow one another in time. Some consider a narrative to be any recounting of temporally sequenced changes in reality (e.g., Labov, 1972; Labov & Waletzky, 1967; Peterson & McCabe, 1983). Others refer to an additional property. According to Polanyi (1985), a story must include not only main line event clauses, but also contextualizing state clauses. Main line event clauses, which have been frequently described as the backbone or “bare bones” of a narrative, what happened, whereas contextualizing clauses include identification of participants, setting, explanation, evaluation, and collateral information (Peterson & McCabe, 1991). Longacre stated that a narrative “involves a distinction between on-the-line or backbone material and supportive, explanatary, tributary or what-have-you material in the balance of the discourse” (1983, p. 99). Bokus (1991, 1992a) distinguished between narrative line and narrative field in the narrative text. A narrative line reflects changes in referenced reality over time, whereas a narrative field reflects the state of reality at a given moment within a given spatial area to which the narrator is attending.
