Positioning Between Structure and Performance

Abstract

There are two possible interpretations of what the term narrative implies in Labov and Waletzky's original 1967 (this issue; henceforth L&W) framework in terms of how narrative is linked to personal experience in particular and to sense-making in general. The first, more simplistic reading implies that narratives-particularly those of personal experience-are representations of something that on,:e happened and what this past happening meant (or "now" means) to the narrator. The second, more indirect reading requires the act of telling-or "representing" at a particular occasion in the form of a particular story-to intervene, so to speaK, between the actual experience and the story. It was the first reading of L&W that originally fascinated me and lured me into exploring narratives as a window to people's experiences. However, in the course of having worked with narratives overthelast two decades, I have moved more and more to adopt the second reading. Other contributors to this issue have commented in one or another way on this tension between a traditional, structural approach and a more performance-based, pragmatic approach to narrative and narrative analysis. Whereas the first takes its starting point from what was said (and the way it was said) and works toward why it was said, that is, its meaning, the second focuses more strongly on how it was performed as the main index for what the narrative as an act of instantiation means to the performer. It also should be noted that within this second reading the audience is much more of a factor that impinges on the shape of the narrative and its performance. What actually is being said is one of the many different performance features in what the speaker aims to achieve in the act of narrating.