Remembering and Forgetfulness in Conversational Narrative

Abstract

This article investigates a range of verbal behaviors surrounding remembering, forgetfulness,and uncertainty in the oral performance of personal narratives. Tellers construct remembering differently in oral narrative performance than in other sorts of discourse, in order to follow the conventions of narrative and keep the story progressing while they hold the floor. A description of remembering for personal conversational narrative is sketched in terms of cognitive models with potential gaps. As tellers retrieve information, they get back in touch with scenes from the past, and they comment on the clarity of the images recalled. This clarity is recognized as a special feeling of rightness; the conditions on its occurrence and particular forms are described. Storytellers display uncertainty in several ways; speci.c language units provide ready resources for expressing uncertainty and eliciting help from listeners. Paradoxically, when tellers register uncertainty in personal stories, it tends to authenticate the story rather than to raise doubts about it. This paradox of forgetfulness in personal narrative and the sudden clarity of memory both receive natural interpretations in the description of remembering developed here based on complex cognitive models with gaps. The investigation of forgetfulness and remembering in conversational narrative leads to a more complete account of remembering in verbalization.