ABSTRACT
In narrative presentations of personal experiences, it is often assumed that narrators relive their past emotional experience, i.e., that they feel parts or shades of the originally felt emotion, and that these feelings are expressed in the act of performing the narrative. In such situations, it may be said that the presentation of the narrator reflects an involved attitude towards his or her original experience. 2 However, the issue of involvement is not unique to self-experienced events. The emotional significance of a sequence of events for another person is usually also presented with a certain amount of feeling or involvement in the narrative performance. Again, the narrator can signal an affiliation with or a distance from the way the protagonist in the story felt at that particular time. This affiliating or distancing stance usually is marked by particular evaluative devices. This way the audience learns and is educated about who are the "good guys" and who are the "bad guys." In the same breath, the narrator legitimates — or might try to challenge — basic moral and educational values that are assumed to be shared with his/her culture and society.
