Labov's Model Research Articles

AN INTEGRATION OF LABOV'S NARRATIVE ANALYSIS MODEL TO CONTINUATION WRITING INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN

The modern Chinese educational framework increasingly prioritizes critical thinking, creativity, and practical communication skills, recognizing writing as fundamental beyond test performance. Continuation writing, which involves extending a given story, requires students to deeply understand the original text and develop coherent, stylistically consistent continuations. Traditional product-oriented writing instruction separates reading from writing, focusing on the final product and using scores to assess rather than instructing on revisions. This approach tends to lead to student disinterest and passive attitudes towards writing, with compositions revised only for grammatical errors instead of cohesive and coherent content organization. This study highlighted the development of a continuation writing instruction based on Labov's Narrative Analysis Model, guided by sociocultural theory. We implemented the model with 30 senior high school students in Heilongjiang province, China, and collected data to assess the students' needs in terms of complexity, accuracy, and fluency (CAF). The results indicated students' needs in four areas: understanding the article's theme and structure, extracting critical information, organizing and planning, and enhancing style and creativity. Pedagogically, the study offers valuable insights for teachers and students. Teachers gain guidance on integrating Labov's model to nurture students' narrative competence and writing proficiency. Students benefit from a better understanding of their continued writing needs.

Unearthing the art of storytelling: A closer look at Sir Arther Canon Doyle’s B24

Narratives play a crucial role in our understanding of the world, identity formation, empathy building and imparting moral lessons. The purpose of the study is to evaluate how Doyle uses Labov's model focusing on the narrative's elements. The intricacy of the story is revealed by the qualitative methodology which highlights Doyle's skill for writing captivating stories with vivid settings and multifaceted characters such as lady Mannering and even minor characters like the innkeeper. This study analyzes the structural and linguistic elements in Doyle’s “B24” using Labov’s sociolinguistic model. The central conflict revolves around the burglar's struggles and lady Mannering’s quest for freedom but the resolution remains uncertain, reflecting the complexities of truth and deception. Doyle uses narrative devices, literary techniques, grammatical elements and precise language to convey a moral lesson about trusting strangers and the importance of caution. These elements contribute to constructing a compelling narrative that captivates readers and heightens suspense. Future research could include a comparative analysis of Doyle’s works from the same era exploring the impact of structural and linguistic differences on reader interpretation, investigating the function of narratives and comparing narrative elements across different adventure stories. Labov’s model could also be applied to analyzing narrative poems and short films. This study is pertinent for people in the field of literature, teachers and authors who aim to improve their understanding of narrative techniques.

An exemplary scientist's storytelling in a high school students’ science internship

ABSTRACT With the rapidly increasing demand for STEM skills, many scientists, mathematicians, engineers, and technology professionals encourage students to pursue STEM careers. However, communicating science to lay audiences is challenging due to complex scientific terminology. This qualitative research aimed to demonstrate how an exemplary scientist, Dr. Reed, used storytelling to teach science in a 7-month internship for high school students. Data sources included real-time videos, field notes, and individual student interviews. Labov's model was used to analyze 75 stories. The analysis shows that Dr. Reed's stories mainly targeted eight teaching purposes. Telling such stories allowed Dr. Reed to relate scientific practices to what the students were experiencing in the science internship. Science educators can use this study's findings to build their storytelling practice with the goal of communicating science to students more effectively.

Narrative Analysis of the Iyezidi Chirok of Mir Mih : The Iyezidi Epic of Immortality

This paper aims at analyzing the Iyzidi religious narrative of ‘Mir Meh ‘ , which is an epic of death and immortality according to the Iyzidi faith , using Labov Model (1972) of Narrative Analysis . The study has found out that the story of ‘Mir Mih’ is an eminent element of the Iyzidi religion and culture treating the issue of death and immortality. In addition to the linguistic devices used in the narrative as reflected by Labov (1972) , the narrative has moral and religious implications . It highlights the fact that the Iyzidi religion believes in the reality of life and death. What makes this narrative distinguished is the idea of the return to the origin, which is one of the important aspects expressed in this narrative as ‘Mir Mih’ did not want to stay in Heaven but to go back to his people and home. The study has also found out that Labov Model (1972), which consists of the following elements: abstract, orientation, complicating action, evaluation, resolution and coda , applies to the narrative under study

Labovian Model and Analysis of The Bully as Representation of the USA

While applying Labov's model this study finds out the macro and micro features of the written text, i.e., The Bully by Roger Dean Kiser, an American fiction writer. Labov's model of narrative analysis has proven efficacy primarily in the exploration of the macro features. However, for the analysis of microfeatures, other elements of discourse analysis such as cohesive ties, discourse markers, substitutions, ellipses, contractions, exchanges, inversions, and some other attributes were used to explore the representative aspects of the writer's work. Macro analysis revealed that most of the different levels of Labov model, i.e., abstract, orientation, complicating actions, resolution, and evaluation were found in the story. Coda, which is the optional part of any story, remained absent. The findings establish that most stories adhere to the formulation identified by Labov. The analysis provides enough clues to establish the work as a typical way of American narration.

‘Oral versions of personal experience’: Labovian narrative analysis and its uptake

William Labov is known across the human and social sciences for his work on oral narratives about personal experience. This article provides an overview of that research and discusses its uptake and influence in linguistics and in other fields. Subsequent scholarship on narrative has critiqued Labov's model on the grounds that it privileges a certain genre of personal‐experience narrative and underplays the role of interlocutors and other contextual features in shaping oral narratives, but such scholarship inevitably borrows Labov's insight that the form of narrative is linked to its interactional functions. Narrative research in psychology and other fields often cites Labov without actually making much use of Labov's model, but Labovian narrative analysis has nonetheless had an enormous influence in making possible and legitimizing the study of everyday, vernacular narration.

Talking about fear of violence in public space: female and male narratives about threatening situations in Umeå, Sweden

Geographers may benefit from a narrative approach as it permits insights into both meanings and how stories are permitted and controlled by social conditions. The aim of this article is to discuss methodological aspects of studying fear as a restriction on mobility and use of public space. We have used examples from a study on fear of violence in the city of Umeå, Sweden at the time of threats from a serial rapist, the Haga Man. We employed Labov's model to analyse female and male narratives about fear. Women from all backgrounds reproduced a shared story of experiences of fear. Male stories were fragmented and diverse, especially in terms of ethnicity. The Haga Man was described in the media as a man of ‘normal Swedish appearance’, which put a focus on Swedish hegemonic masculinity and ‘normality’ rather than on commonly reproduced fear of the racialized other. Labov's model was useful in clarifying how narratives differed in their structural components and completeness, but limited in terms of how to interpret the evaluative component: the model needs to be combined with theory in order to understand relations to changing political, institutional and media discourses on crime and fear in public space.

Visual evaluation in film trailers

This article explores how the persuasive purpose of film trailers is attained through specific visual features. The multimodal analysis of 12 comedy film trailers also reveals how these visual features enter into multilayered relationships with verbal and aural ones when creating evaluative meanings. The author proposes an interdisciplinary model of analysis in which several means of interpretation are combined. Based on Labov's understanding of narrative evaluation, this article attempts to show through Kress and Van Leeuwen's multimodal framework how Labov's model of narrative analysis can be extended to a wider analytical context, namely to multimodal promotional texts.

Narrative clause organization of Catalan and English storytelling

This paper presents a comparative analysis of Catalan and English narrative clause organization based on Labov (1972) structural pattern of oral narrative. The study aims to specify the regularities present in the storytelling of past personal experiences in both languages, thoroughly discussed through examples taken from a corpus of Catalan and English oral narratives elicited from native adult speakers. The segmentation of the narratives following Labov's model makes it possible to observe the similarities and differences in terms of clause and segment organization in the two languages. Although the hypothesis held at the beginning of the study is that in both languages a narrative will evolve similarly, the results show that in terms of pure and combined segments this is not the case: English narrators tend to embed their evaluation combined with action clauses, whereas Catalan narrators do it in separate chunks mostly. In addition, data show that, in terms of external and internal evaluation, English presents a much higher rate of combined internal evaluation segments than Catalan.

Modeling the speech community: Configuration and variable types in the Mexican Spanish setting

ABSTRACTThis article proposes a comprehensive model of the SPEECH COMMUNITY in sociolinguistics that reworks Labov's model, which has been criticized as being restrictive. Fieldork in non-metropolitan Mexico demonstrates the utility of our model, which can be applied across both urban and non-urban domains. It is compatible with the Milroys' central mechanism for the description of individual speech usage and group cohesion or susceptibility to change in terms of the social network. Based on linguistic variable types, this model has a hierarchy of four nested fields (speech community configurations) into which each individual is placed, according to his/her demonstrated recognition of the social evaluation associated with the variables. At the most local configuration, speakers demonstrate no knowledge of generally stigmatized variables; in the second, speakers register an awareness of stigmatized variables; in the third, an awareness of stigmatized and regional variables; and in the fourth, speakers model standard variants over regional ones. This model classifies the kinds of sociolinguistic variables that are pertinent in this social setting and also provides a structured manner for dealing with dialect contact dynamics. (Speech community, social network, Spanish, Mexico, dialect, diffusion, variables.)

Labov's Model of Narrative Analysis as an Emerging Study in Discourse

Labov's Model of Narrative Analysis as an Emerging Study in Discourse

Labov's Model of Narrative Analysis as an Emerging Study in Discourse

Labov's Model of Narrative Analysis as an Emerging Study in Discourse

Three Models of Narrative Comprehension in William Stafford's “Traveling through the Dark”: Some Relations between Schemata and Interpretive Context (Part 2)

This article discusses the mechanisms involved in accounting for William Stafford's poem “Traveling Through the Dark.” Part 1 presented the narrative models of Teun van Dijk and William Labov, while Part 2 continues the discussion of Labov's model, introduces Stanley Fish's view of narrative, and relates all three models to Roger Schank's and Robert de Beaugrande's theoretical work on stories. In the conclusion, a number of criteria for the evaluation of narrative theories are suggested.

Three Models of Narrative Comprehension in William Stafford's “Traveling through the Dark”: Some Relations between Schemata and Interpretive Context (Part 1)

This paper discusses the mechanisms involved in accounting for William Stafford's poem “Traveling Through the Dark.” Part 1 presents the narrative models of Teun van Dijk and William Labov, while Part 2 continues the discussion of Labov's Model, introduces Stanley Fish's view of narrative, and relates all three models to Roger Schank's and Robert de Beaugrande's theoretical work on stories. In the conclusion, a number of criteria for the evaluation of narrative theories are suggested.