Modern Greek Oral Narratives in Context: Cultural Constraints and Evaluative Ways of Telling Published in Text 14 (3), 1994 pp. 371-399
Alexandra Georgakopoulou Dept of Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies School of Humanities King’s College University of London Strand London WC2R 2LS Tel 071-873 2629 e-mail:
[email protected]
Modern Greek Oral Narratives in Context: Cultural Constraints and Evaluative Ways of Telling
Alexandra Georgakopoulou Abstract This paper focuses on personal (experience) storytelling in Modern Greek, a little explored discourse type, yet particularly vital and salient in the culture. Using as its data a corpus of naturally occurring stories in companies of intimates as well as a corpus of adults’ stories for children, the study presents their major evaluative resources. The aim of the discussion is to look into the contextualisation aspects of these resources, that is, to establish interpretive links between the stories’ formal choices and their situational and cultural context. At the textual level, it is shown that the category prevailing in the affective component of Greek stories between adults is what will be called the proximal evaluation. This serves the creation of a global performed mode which, contextually speaking, invokes and is shaped by the cultural agenda of functions underlying everyday narrative construction. By contrast, evaluation in stories to children proves to be less internalised, by heavily relying on "markers of intensity" and a specific case of audience-adaptation devices named "schema-driven". The motivations for this choice are traceable to the change of the stories’ narrative purposes shaped by their culturally constrained "recipient design". In addition to shedding light on the contextsensitivity of Greek stories’ evaluative "grammar", the above findings prove to be immediately relevant to the ways in which the society’s continuum of oral- and literate-based discourse practices is shaped. (Keywords: Discourse Analysis, Modern Greek storytelling, contextualisation, proximal evaluation - schema-driven evaluation, performance, orality-literacy)
1. Introduction Spoken discourse has been the locus classicus of the enquiry into the dynamic interrelations between language structures and their immediate and wider context of occurrence in areas such as Conversation Analysis, Anthropological Linguistics and Ethnography of Communication (e.g. Bauman 1984, Goodwin 1984, Sacks 1972, 1974, Schegloff 1972 and more recently papers in Duranti & Goodwin 1992, Hill & 1
Irvine 1993). The main analytic aim of these lines of tradition is to look into the contextualisation aspects of speech events for establishing explanatory links between linguistic choices and sociocultural integrative processes; in other words, for exploring how the former invoke and at the same time are shaped by the latter. Additionally, in the case of storytelling in particular, their research framework is characterised by the enquiry into the culture-specific aspects of narrative production; closely related to this is the investigation of the sociolinguictic and educational implications of culturally significant stylistic differences in the construction of narratives (e.g. Gee 1989, Heath 1983, Scollon & Scollon 1981). The above theoretical context informs the approach of the present paper which constitutes a discourse-analytic study of textuality choices in Modern Greek (MG) natural (i.e. non-literary) storytelling. In particular, the discussion employs the contextualisation of storytelling events in MG as the interpretive frame for elucidating their expressivity resources or evaluation devices (i.e. devices which show a story’s point or raison d’être, Labov 1972). These emerged in the analysis of two equally important types of MG storytelling: i. personal (experience) stories related between adults and ii. adults’ personal stories addressed to children. Exposure to the MG ethnography of interactions prior to the collection and analysis of the data suggested that personal storytelling is a most vital mode of everyday communication in Greece. It is recurrent in almost every conversational setting, coming across as an engaging activity which is thoroughly enjoyed and sought by the participants. Additionally, it embraces the gamut of socialisation and acculturation processes of the community, by constituting an indispensable component of adult-child interactions. However, despite its central role as a genre or discourse type (Cook, 1989: 50), it is relatively
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unexplored from a linguistic point of view, with the exception of Tannen’s work (1983) on a small sample of Greek women’s assault stories. In addition to the differences in scope and size between Tannen’s and the present data, there is a methodological difference as well. The stories at hand were not prompted but occurred naturally and spontaneously as part of ongoing conversations. Nevertheless, Tannen’s conclusion that the stories of her data were typified by an abundance of involvement features constitutes a linguistic description of MG oral narrative style which accords with our ethnographic participant-observations concerning the status of MG everyday storytelling as a "breakthrough into performance" (Hymes 1975). Additionally, two of Tannen’s list of involvement devices for her data are the building blocks of our category of proximal devices. These are the Historical Present and the Constructed Dialogue (see §3.1 below). Having reported the lack of systematic research into MG storytelling, it is hardly surprising that MG adult-child narrative communication, an admittedly more specific case, presents an even more serious and striking gap of research. This paper brings both types of storytelling to the fore and sheds light on their functions and status in the Greek social reality by looking into the non-textual connections and implications of their discourse. Specifically, the following discussion will illustrate how the choice of evaluative "ways of telling" in the data encodes and is motivated by situational and cultural constraints that underlie MG narrative construction in general and its "recipient design" (Schegloff 1972, i.e. in the case of stories for children) in particular. In this way, the study hopes to chart the culturally shaped and situationally emergent expressive resources of MG storytelling activity. In addition though, it aims at contributing to the line of ethnographically oriented cross-linguistic
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research into the form-function interrelationships and their culture-specific aspects in situated contexts of narrative construction.
2. Data and Method The stories on which this paper is based form part of the data of a larger research (see Georgakopoulou 1993) which aimed at identifying and interpreting the text-building mechanisms of MG personal narration and at investigating their context-sensitivity. For the purposes of that study, a wide corpus of oral and written personal stories (400 in total) was collected in Greece. However, this discussion is only based on a subset of 120 oral stories, of which 60 were related to adults and 60 to children (aged 7-8). These are spontaneous and naturally occurring intraconversational stories recorded in relaxed environments of narrative communication between intimates. The narrators of the stories were middle-class Athenians with University education which fall into two age-groups: young (22-30) and middle-aged (40-50). The recorded data were transcribed and qualitatively analysed. Of the stories discussed here only 40 (20 for adults, 20 for children) were quantitatively analysed. Specifically, each line1 of a story was coded for the evaluative devices that were identified by the qualitative analysis. The process of identifying a narrative’s evaluative devices has largely been in the literature data-driven, that is, interconnected with the nature of the specific stories examined, rather than regulated a priori. As a rule though, studies of evaluation in both adults’ (e.g. Polanyi 1989) and children’s narratives (e.g. Bamberg & DamradFrye 1991, Hicks 1990, Peterson & McCabe 1983) present the common denominator of breaking down Labov’s scheme of four (internally) evaluative categories (i.e. intensifiers, comparators, correlatives and explicatives) into more specific categories
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(e.g. references to negative states, salient changes in stress, causal connectors etc). The operationalisation of the act of evaluating for the data at hand led to a scheme of evaluative devices which resulted from i. teasing apart devices that are classified into the same category in the Labovian model, and ii. grouping together devices into the same category on the basis of their effects and discoursal functions. To be more specific, the category of "intensifiers" as postulated by Labov was dispensed with as too internally heterogeneous for the data at hand; instead, our intensifiers comprised only lexicalised markers of intensity (see 3.2 below). On the other hand, setting up the categories of proximal and "schema-driven" evaluation which are not catered for by Labov’s scheme was motivated by the data analysis.
3. Results 3.1 Proximal Evaluatives in Stories for Adults The discussion will only present here the results pertaining to the categories of evaluation that proved to be of major importance in the stories both qualitatively and quantitatively. As already suggested, in the case of SA, the building block of their evaluative component was the category of proximal devices: specifically, on average 37.2% of the stories’ lines present the use of at least one proximal device.2 A twoway ANOVA testing the effect of the variables of the narrators’ gender and age on the use of evaluative devices suggested that there are no significant differences in the frequency of proximal devices as a function of sex, F(6, 228)= 1.89, age, F= 1.76, or sex x age, F=1.82. The devices that were classified as proximals in the data are as follows: the Historical Present (HP)3, the Constructed Dialogue (CD)4, certain uses of the
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imperfective past5, the "na+imperfective past constructions", and lastly deictic shifters such as tora (now), edo (here) etc.6 Of these, the na+imperfective past construction is language-specific and exclusively occurs in MG narrative. Thus, "na" will be kept untranslated when occurring in the examples of this paper, followed by the verb’s imperfective past. The only attempt to account for the structure’s discoursal function is found in Mackridge (1985: 285) who claimed that it is a dramatic device owing its effect to suggesting that the actions described are extended in time or iterative. Mackridge’s view, if translated into Labovian terms, is that the device is a correlative, since the main criterion employed for its characterisation is its aspectual character. It thus fails to incorporate the effect of proximity which is proposed here as an integral part of the device’s dramatic nature. The decision to include the above devices into the same category of evaluation was motivated by their strong co-occurrence and affinity in terms of patterns of use and evaluative effects. On the basis of the data analysis it can be argued that the essence of these effects is encapsulated by the creation of a sense of proximity between the "taleworld" and the "realm of conversation" (Young 1987) or immediate situation of telling. This was taken to be the criterial feature of the devices’ evaluative function. In other words, their contribution to showing a story’s point as well as the narrator’s subjective stance to it lies in their signalling a shift from the distant and "reminiscing" (Fleischman, 1990: 32) mode of the past tense in which the narrator reports her memories, to the proximal "visualising" mode of the "here and now" of the storytelling situation. This shift enables the narrator to present the events as if occurring and experienced at the moment of their telling, that is, in Lyons’ terms (1982: 68), to slip into "the experiential mode" which marks the narratorial
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subjectivity. The above description of the evaluative nature of proximal devices is compatible with the views of the bulk of the relevant literature at least with regard to our two major proximals, namely the HP and CD. These have been frequently characterised as devices of dramatisation and performance in narration due to their abolishing the distance between the taleworld and the moment of telling it (e.g. Schiffrin 1981, Silva-Corvalan 1983). However, the affinity of the HP and CD in the present data is much more forceful and notable than its standard descriptions in the literature. First, the percentage of co-occurrence of the quotative verbs with the HP is much higher in the former: 97.1% of the quotative verbs7 are in the HP (cf. 17%, 63% and 35% in EssDykema 1984, Schiffrin 1981 and Wolfson 1982 respectively). Second and more importantly, shifts to one device positively correlate with shifts to the other device in the same story. It follows that the use of one device in a story implies the use of the other too. On the whole, all proximal devices tend to co-occur and cluster together in the data. The locus classicus of their "evaluative" co-occurrence is the story’s peak part(s)8: their regular pattern of use here is that the onset of the climax is marked by a shift to the HP followed by CD instances. As a rule, the former emphasises the endpoints of the climactic turn while the latter either joins in the plot-forwarding task or slows down the narrative flow by filtering, interpreting and reflecting on the action in HP. Subsequently, the whole of the climactic part is constructed by means of alternating HP and CD instances. This co-operation of the HP and CD in building up the climactic part as a scene of "experiential iconicism" (Enkvist, 1981: 101) is corroborated by the use of the rest of proximal devices, which are intercalated into the HP-CD patterning. Below are two instances of "proximal" climaxes from our data
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which illustrate how the high point action can be evaluated by means of a "breakthrough into performance" signalled by proximal devices (boldfaced). The first example is from a sensational story about the death of the narrator’s sister. By contrast, the second involves the narrator’s eye-witnessing of a humorous episode involving a Greek satirist’s campaign advertising his show: (1) ... figane9 afti/ den ipane tipota tin ora ekini/ meta paei ke tu leei i mitera mu tu patera mu/ trekse tu lei Panayoti/ ya na rthei o Sotiris edo tu leei mazi me to Nikola paei na pei oti kati ehi yinei/ alla horis na kserume ti/ ute pu piyene to mialo mas stin Eleni/ pu etimazomaste ya gamo/ trehei o pateras mu/ de mboro na su perigrapso to meros/ ego inai sa na da vlepo sta matia mu tora/ ke tus ftanei sena orizmeno simio pu tus vlepame emis apo to spiti/ tu to ipane/ tu to ipane amesos/ ke yirnaei o pateras sto spiti/ den ipe kuveda/ katholu/ me pianei emena apo to heri/ me travaei mesa/ ke tis leei tis manas mu i Eleni pethane/ tipote allo/ tora katalaveneis oti mugathikame/ kanenas de boruse na milisei katholu/ i mana mu de boruse na vgalei foni katholu/ klinume ta parathira mesto spiti/ me pernun emena agalia/ me filagane me filagane ke de milagane/ tora i mana mu na kleei na htipietai na odiretai/ na kleei ke na prosefhetai ke na leei10/ panayia mu ti kako me vrike/ ... ... they left/ they didn’t say anything at that point/ after that my mother goes and tells my father/ run Panayotis she tells him/ for Sotiris and Nikolas to come here something must have happened/ but without knowing exactly what/ and we didn’t think of Eleni/ ’cos we were getting ready for the wedding/ my dad runs/ I can’t describe you the exact place/ but I can still see it in front of my eyes/ and he reaches them at a certain point/ where we could see them from the house/ they told him/ they told him straight away/ and dad comes back home/ he didn’t say anything/ not a word/ he takes me by the hand/ he pushes me inside/ and he tells my mum Eleni died/ nothing else/ now you understand that we lost our voices/ nobody spoke (imperfective past in the original)/ not at all/ my mum couldn’t utter a word/ we close the windows/ they take me in their arms/ they were kissing me they were kissing me and they were not speaking/ now my poor mum na crying na shouting na mourning/ na crying and na praying and na saying/ my God what kind of misery is this/... Athina H., SA
In this example, the shift to the motion HP verb (goes) immediately followed by leei (tells) marks the onset of the climactic turn. Subsequently, verbs in HP build up the story’s action to the climactic death announcement rendered in a CD instance. The results to the high point action are encoded by imperfective past and 8
na+imperfective past verbs which corroborate the creation of an experiential pace of narration. (2) ... ke stamatane brosta safto to dromo/ brosta i kafeteria to sale/ gnosto poli gnosto/ ke to megafono na leei afto to tragudi para ra ra ra tu ru ru rum/ ki o Zouganelis apo to mikrofono na leei papaaaares ipokofa/ (he he)/ ke na peftune i sokolates tora apo to fortigo/ ke na tis petaei kato se mas sta trapezakia/ ke pernei enas tis sokolates/ ke tis petaei piso/ emis imaste eki pera/ ke na yinetai tora enas polemos me tis sokolates/ ke na vlepume tis sokolates na peftune sto fortigo/ ke to Zouganeli na leei afto to papaaaares/ ke muuuuuuu sa vodi/ (he he) ... and they stop in front of us at the street/ in front the cafeteria (street coffee-place) the "Chalet"/ well-known very well-known/ and the (lorry’s) loudspeaker na playing this song "para ra ra ra tu ru ru rum" (humming the tune)/ and Zuganelis (famous Greek satirist) na saying over the mike papaaaares (word-play on the previous tune: the word "papares" is slang for testicles) in a deep voice/ (he he)/ and now chocolates na being thrown off the truck/ and he na throwing them at us at the tables/ and somebody takes the chocolates/ and throws them back (at the lorry)/ we were there/ and (we) na seeing a rain of chocolates falling on the lorry/ and Zuganeli na saying this "papaaares" thing/ and mooing like a cow (lit: muuuuu like a cow)/ (he he)/ Takis G., SA
Similarly, in the above example, the climactic co-operation of HP and na+imperfective past verbs with CD instances builds a scene of iconicism in which the camera zooms in and the events are being unfolded in an eye-witness fashion.
3.2 Markers of Intensity and Schema-Driven Devices in Stories for Children By contrast to SA, proximal devices are significantly reduced in SC: only 6.6% of the stories’ lines encode at least one proximal device. Additionally, while all stories related to adults exhibit the use of proximal devices, only one fifth of the SC (i.e. 12 stories) do so. The evaluative devices activated in the place of proximals in SC are the (lexicalised) markers of intensity and the schema-driven devices: the former are on average met in 14.7% (cf 3.6% in SA) of the stories’ lines and the latter in 12.6%.
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Our markers of intensity comprise Biber & Finnegan’s (1989: 94) evidentiality and affect markers. The former base their intensifying function on encoding the speaker’s attitudes towards knowledge (ie mode of knowing, reliability of source, adequacy of linguistic expression: for a discussion of evidentiality see papers in Chafe 1986). Following Quirk et al (1985: 590-97), they can be divided into the following three semantic classes: emphasisers (also referred to as qualifiers: e.g. certainly, mainly, only), amplifiers (also referred to as quantifiers: e.g. very, too, absolutely, extremely, completely) and downtoners (or hedges e.g. rather, sort of, maybe). Affect markers are verbs, adjectives and adverbials which encode the speaker’s "personal attitudes, including emotions, feelings, moods and general dispositions" (Biber & Finnegan 1989: 94). They can be classified as positive (e.g. fortunate, amazing, happily, luckily, conveniently etc) or as negative (e.g. shocked, sadly, alarmingly etc) depending on the emotion encoded. Affect markers are also referred to more simply as instances of evaluative language (e.g. Tannen 1979). In the data, they form a very small and thus predictable corpus normally encoded in instances of references to characters’ mental states and/or emotive reactions: e.g. apesio/tromero/fovero (terrible/awful, also see examples 12 and 13 below). The category of schema-driven devices was specifically postulated for the SC to cover a set of (mainly) lexical and phrasal choices characteristic of the genre of MG storytelling for children or more generally of talking to children. They are associated with childhood and/or present an obvious intertextuality with texts for children (e.g. fairy tales, myths). Thus, their presence in stories for adults would by definition strike one as odd and out of place. In a nutshell, they fulfil and reflect stereotypes of the kind "this is a story for children". On the basis of the above, the
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term schema-driven devices was coined in an attempt to capture the schematic nature and significance of the choices in question, that is, their instantiation of the culturally determined schema of "telling stories for children"11. Schema-driven devices are comparable with Coupland et al’s (1991: 30) overaccommodative strategies: these were found to be an integral part of intergenerational contexts of communication with elderly people, indicative of an audience accommodation style which attunes to the communicative characteristics stereotypical of the group of the addressee (i.e. a form of elderspeak, in our case child-speak). The overaccommodative strategy of schemadriven devices presents in our data an expressive function: its role is to enhance the story’s tellability. The commonest schema-driven device is the use of diminutives normally formed by the suffix -akis (aki) and -ulis (ula): e.g. voltula ("little" walk) instead of volta (walk), skilaki (little dog/doggy) instead of skilos (dog). Except for cases in which diminutives act as politeness strategies in MG (Sifianou, 1992: 155-73), i.e. "tha parete ena glikaki?" (would you like a "little" sweet?), they normally characterise talk to and by children. Sifianou suggested that the extensive use of diminutives when addressing children in MG is a device for expressing affection as well as an "attempt to represent the world as a friendly place" (idem: 158). Both these motivations for using diminutives in SC are expressive-level considerations shaped by the audience awareness. The next popular schema-driven lexical choice is the use of what Anderson (1984: 62) called vocabulary "relevant to childhood" and what Coupland (1983: 40) referred to as "child-oriented" language. This involves the use of words which characterise children’s talk and reflect their interests. The major thematic areas to
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which schema-driven vocabulary belongs are school, animals and games. Part of it is also the inclusion of allusions to fairy-tales commonly taking the form of formulaic phrasing as in the examples below: (3) ...siga siga pernusan ta hronia/ kilusan i mines/ ke kapote ematha pos afti i kiria arrostise varia/ slowly slowly the years went by (lit: went by the years)/ the months passed/ and at some point I heard that this lady (term of endearment for adults associated with child-talk in the original) was very very ill/ Yannis B.
Though not immediately evident in the translation, the lexical choices of the above example constitute a straightforward allusion to the fairy-tale style of narration, particularly in the formulaic phrasing employed for the passage of the time. The schema-driven vocabulary of the following example draws upon the animal-theme which is common in fairy tales. As can be seen, the hare is typically presented as lover of freedom and referred to affectively by means of diminutives; the archetypal distinction between "the good life in nature" and "the bad life in cities" also comes into play. On the whole the good-bad dichotomy typical of the morality of folk tradition is a common schema-driven choice in the data, as reflected in the extensive use of the modifiers kalos-kakos (good-evil): (4) ... omos o lagos... den adehe ti filaki ti fasaria to vromiko aera tis Athinas/ ithele na yirisi sto dasos tu/ na heretai ti fisi mazi me ta alla lagudakia/... to agapimeno mas lagudaki psahnodas na vri tin eleftheria tu epese thima ton kakon anthropon tis megalupolis/ ... but the hare... couldn’t stand the prison the racket the polluted air of Athens/ he wanted to go back to his forest/ to enjoy nature with the other little hares/... (later on in the story’s coda): ... our beloved little hare in his search for freedom fell victim to the evil man of the city/ Bessi F.
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Overt references to famous fairy-tales and children’s books also form part of the schema-driven devices: (5) ... ki arhisa na kleo na kleo na kleo/ yati nomiza pia oti iha telios hathi/ ke mu rhondan sto nu mu ke ikones apo paramithia/ oti tha rhotan to vradi ki ego tha mena eki pera sto vuno moni mu/ sa da Psila Vuna tu Papadoni/ tetia pramata/ [tu Papadoniu]/ a ne ne ne tu Papadoniu/ ... and I started crying crying crying/ ’cos I thought I was competely lost/ and scenes from fairy-tales came to my mind/ that night would come and I’d be left alone up there on the mountain/ like the High Mountains by Papadoni (famous Greek children’s novel that was part of the national curriculum)/ and things like that/ [by Papadoniu] (interruption from the child-addressee to correct the name)/ ah yes yes yes by Papadoniu... Evi B. (6)... paei ki i fili mu na piasi to vazaki/ opote me ena dinato bam tis epese/ ke eyine sa di marmaromeni neraida tu paramithiu/ ta mallia tis san plokamia/ to forema tis lutsa... ... and my friend goes to grab the little vase/ whereby with a loud crash smashed on the floor/ and she became like the "marble fairy" of the fairytale (allusion to the "Sleeping Beauty"?)/ her hair like "octopus legs"/ her dress was soaked... Hariklia A.
4. Discussion 4.1 Narrative Performance and the Group-Bonding Function of Cultural Affirmation The main evaluative effects of proximal devices suggest that their extensive use in SA aims at the creation of an atmosphere of dramatisation and performance. To use Gülich & Quasthoff’s adaptation (1986: 221) of Goffman’s term (1974: 503), they underlie a global replaying or performed narrative mode in which the events are put on stage and acted out by the narrator as if occurring at the moment of their telling. The implications of this narratorial mode for the teller-listener pact are significant: presenting the teller as just recording his experiences invites the addressee for co13
witnessing, thus establishing an addresser-addressee "community of rapport" which in turn secures the addressee’s "involvement" (Tannen 1989) in the story. The motivations for choosing the global replaying mode in SA as opposed to mitigating or banning it, in the case of SC, were unravelled only with reference to the stories’ context of occurrence. Specifically, thorough study of the stories’ situational context (i.e. participant observation, field-notes, coding for context components) suggested that proximal devices serve as a favourable generic frame or option for the realisation of culturally constrained functions of narrative communication. A most important and recurrent function is that of group-bonding in the sense of affirming the cultural identity and solidarity between the participants in a storytelling context. Thematically, this is succeeded by means of establishing reference to deeply rooted cultural values. As a rule all stories in a way or another function as "cultural texts" and carriers of traditions (e.g. Polanyi 1989). However, in the cases of stories discussed here, the "display of a cultural breakthrough into personal reality" (Stahl, 1989: 119) goes one step further. These are stories which essentially owe their telling and tellability (i.e. intrinsic worthiness of telling, interest) to the projection of traditionally established cultural values and attitudes. Thus, instead of fulfilling the criterion of unexpectedness which normally underlies a story’s tellability (see Labov 1972), they arise as opportunities for re-affirming the addressees’ cultural world-view. The set of values that is as a rule depicted in such stories is associated with the culturally defined notions of bravery (pallikaria/levedia), honour (timi), filotimo and magia12. The significance of all these concepts lies in the fact that they encode the traditional Greek tendency to indivisibly interlock "material concerns with concerns about honour (timi), bravery (pallikaria) and generosity (filotimo)" thus "integrating
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economic, social and emotional investment" (Doumanis, 1983: 28). Their common denominator is first that they are bound up with the male profile; thus, they frequently figure in men’s stories, underlying the narrator’s self-foregrounding. Additionally, when encoded in stories, they favour devices of the performed narrative mode instead of explicit modes of reference. In other words, in their case, the "secret agenda" of the pairing of the textual and cultural resources informs dramatised and engaging tellings whose main devices are the proximal devices. The above is illustrated in the following short and single-episode stories: (7) ego sti Batra sena estiatorio/ eki pu etroga sto estiatorio/ afina ena purbuar sekino to dipo/ mia mera eki pu pigena na pliroso me kovei kala kala/ mu leei re file se vlepo toso gero ke ti vgazeis me bira/ krasaki re pedi mu krasaki tu theu/ tu leo ime diskolos ego/ de bino oti ki oti/ bira omos dosmu oti thes/ mu leei katse na su fero ena krasaki ego mu leei na me thimasai/ tha se ftiakso ego mu leei/ piesto ke pezmu/ mu fernei tora ena bukali/ alla de sigratisa ti bukali itane/ trellathika na pume/ milame ya krasi/ mu to fernei eki pera/ to dokimazo/ afto itane/ epatha plaka/ de thimame ti bukali itane/ mu to fere eki pera/ tu afina kati ego eki pera/ po po/ milame ya krasi...
I in Patra (name of a town near Athens) in a restaurant/ I used to eat in this restaurant/ and I used to leave a good tip to this guy (probably the waiter or even the shop’s owner)/ one day as I was paying the bill he looks at me like that/ he tells me what’s gotten into you with beer beer beer/ why not have some wine (lit: little wine god’s little wine) for a change/ I tell him I’m a bit choosy/ I wouldn’t have any wine/ but I don’t mind beers/ he tells me let me bring you a "little" wine and you won’t forget me/ I will make your day he tells me/ drink it and then tell me (what you think of it)/ he brings me a bottle now/ but I didn’t keep its name or anything/ I got crazy you know/ we are talking about the (emphatic) wine/ he brings it over there/ I taste it/ that’s it/ I got crazy you know/ I don’t remember what it was/ he brought it over there/ in Patra/ I used to leave him a tip you know/ wow/ we’re talking about the wine/ Thomas H. (8) irthane se mia fasi semas kato kati Agli/ itane kana pedari atoma/ ke tora mas vriskune se mia katastasi emas opu ehume organosei trapezi/ ta pirunia tinga eki sena trapezi/ ta brizolika ta kreata/ tus leo ego/ mi mas pernane edo leo i anthropi/ na tus valume mia brizola na fane/ kseftila inai/ ne re lene kala les/ malakia lene/ na tus valume/ kitakste tus leo/ elate na fame/ ehume mia sigendrosula/ kathe Paraskevi sinithizume na kanume tetia/ xeris dropali
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stin arhi/ meta apo deka lepta arhizune tis agalies ta filia tis bires heineken/ tifla tifla/ mehri to allo vradi kimondusan/ at some point some English people came down to us ("down" refers to Crete where the narrator works and "to us" refers to his colleagues)/ they were around five people/ and now they land on us having set the tables for lunch (the colleagues had organised a lunch party)/ heaps of cutlery at the tables there/ steaks and meats/ I tell them (his colleagues)/ we don’t want the people getting the wrong ideas about us (i.e. about our generosity)/ let’s serve them some steaks/ it’s a shame (not to)/ they tell me yeah you’re right/ it’s a real pity/ we shall serve them/ I tell them (the English) look/ why don’t you join us/ we have a bit of a gathering/ we do have one on Fridays/ at the beginning (ell: they were) shy you know/ ten minutes later they start hugging and cuddling us and having Heineken beers/ pissed completely pissed/ they were in bed after that for a whole day/ Panayotis B.
The main purpose of the telling of the above stories is to establish reference to the cultural weltanschauung shared by the storytelling participants by means of tales of "filotimia". In the first case the cultural substratum lies in the narrator’s ability to be "filotimos" (i.e. generous, likeable) which is returned by "filotimia". The notion is not explicitly mentioned but lurks beneath the events narrated: the narrator regularly leaves a tip to the waiter (indication of "filotimia" in Greece rather than a social obligation). Subsequently, the waiter returns the favour by serving him the best wine of the shop. This favouritism is a cultural value in itself (one’s ability to make acquaintances who do one favours); here it is combined with the value attributed to the expertise at discovering good wine. In story (8) the narrator’s enhancement of his "filotimia" is set in motion by his suggestion to his colleagues to treat the foreign guests hospitably which essentially is a reminder to their cultural duties. The projection of the most traditional and widely acclaimed Greek value of hospitality towards "foreigners" make his "filotimia" all the more notable. Both stories build up their tales of "filotimia" by means of creating immediate narrative deliveries which
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essentially revolve around instances of HP and CD: these form the main evaluative resources drawn upon to sweep the listeners along and lend the stories dramatisation. Their use enables the texts to present an overall elliptical mode, that is, a lack of explicit references to cultural values or of elaboration of the events’ cultural "given". Thus, the pleasure from the activity of such narration derives from the implicit reaffirmation of what is already accepted as a distinctive cultural identity. This narrative function predominantly relies on the performative and the dramatic as vehicles for enacting shared values and socially bonding people together. As a result, the communicative efficiency of culturally "loaded" stories such as (7) and (8) above consists in the activation of proximal evaluation to ensure a performance style in a brief and "snappy" pace of delivery. This is clearly exemplified in one of the most popular stories of the data judging from the audience’s uptake. The story is about a stagnight. After a boring premarital drinking evening the bridegroom and the best-man (the narrator) manage to escape and land in a "skiladiko" (culture-specific and loaded term, literally "the dogs’ house", which refers to a night-club involving belly-dancing and plate-smashing). The story’s peak part below concerns the act of "filotimia" by the bride’s brother, Dimitrakis. Its reportability is utterly culture-specific: in particular, it is regulated by the function of establishing reference to cultural values. Dimitrakis’s acts in the club are culturally appropriate, thus reportable: he fulfils his cultural obligation of showing generosity to his two relatives (best-men are treated as relatives in Greece) along with showing his wealth off: (9) Pame telika sto skiladiko/ ke pion les vlepume eki pera mesa/ ton aderfo tis Katerinas/ kala aftos ksereis ehei to blokaki/ den ehei lefta/ ehei to blokaki ton epitagon as pume/ etsi plironei o Dimitrakis/ triada hiliades taksi plirose ya na erthei sto gamo tis aderfis tu/ tipota allo de su leo/ fernei eki pera tin
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orhistra/ ke pare ta uiskia/ ke pare tis orhistres/ ki apo do ki apo ki/ ke na hume ta alla ta skilia sto trapezi/ ke dostu mehri tis eksi i ora to proi/ we finally go to the night club/ and guess who we bump into / Katerinas’s brother (the bride’s brother)/ (suspension of the climactic act for background information) well he’s "got the chequebook" (he is loaded) y’know/ he doesn’t carry cash/ he’s got the chequebook (proof of financial wealth)/ this is how little Dimitris pays/ he payed thirty thousand drachmas to come to his sister’s wedding in a taxi/ what more can I say/ (return to the climax) he brings the band there/ and there comes whisky and music to our hearts’ content (lit: and take the whisky/ and take the band/)/ and here and there/ and na having all the broads (dancing) on the table/ and on the fun goes till six in the morning/ Takis G., FSA
As can be seen, the point of the above climax is not explicitly evaluated. The main evaluative resources by which the narrator enhances his storytelling are the proximal devices. These ensure the audience’s co-witnessing of the events narrated.
4.2 Gender-Shaped Tellability and Proximity In addition to the "group-bonding" function discussed above, the two commonest narrative functions realised by means of a proximal evaluative component pertain to the stories’ gender-shaped tellability. Specifically, men’s stories commonly present the purpose of the narrator’s self-foregrounding while women’s stories that of selfexposure or self-sarcasm. The former typically lurks in the narration of men’s conflict stories and "kodres" (culture-specific term translatable as cock-fights, duels, contests mostly involving achievement in leisure activities). The latter comes into play in women’s stories of "gaffes", embarrassment, fear etc. Acts which become the butt of criticism or ridicule or failure to successfully complete a task and incidents of deception or hoax (e.g. over the phone) are the commonest candidates for the themes of gaffe stories which account for almost half of women’s narrative production in SA.
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Central in the realisation of both functions (i.e. self-foregrounding and self-exposure) is the creation of a performing narratorial mode which internalises the story’s point and leaves its decoding up to the addressee. In the case of men’s typical stories, the function of self-foregrounding is an inherently face-threatening act; it is thus best served by a self-effacing narrator who creates the illusion of co-witnessing the events along with the audience. The function of self-exposure in women’s stories is likewise threatening: therefore, an engaging delivery is opted for to sweep the audience along and save face for the narrator. In sum, while quite different in social indexicality and role-models and attitudes, both "kodres" and "gaffes" favour proximal evaluatives as the building blocks of their performed deliveries. This is illustrated in the two examples below: (10) ... eki pu ithele na diksei o Hristos ti diki tu/ pes de/ pu isuna esi me to Hristo ki ego me to Birbili me tis dio mihanes/ a ne/ leei vale ekti/ ke kala oti i mihani tu Hristu itane pio dinati apo hamila re pedi mu/ apo liga hiliometra/ vale ekti/ leo ego thes ekti/ tha valo ekti/ vazo ekti ego/ vazei ki o Hristos/ anigume to gazi/ ke kala ki o Hristos oti me to pu tha aniksei to gazi tha eksafanistei apo mena/ anigume ki i dio to gazi/ gazono ego gazonei ki o Hristos/ i mihani mu vuuuuu/ o Hristos/ na kitazei aristera deksia sa hamenos/ tu leo itheles ekti e/ itheles ekti/ pare ekti tora/ ti na pei tora/ endo metaksi ki i tris mas enothikame enadion tu sekini ti fasi/ ke ton dulevame oli mazi eki pera/ edaxi/ ta pire telios/ (a male friend asking for the story’s delivery from the narrator)... say when Chris wanted to show off with his bike/ say it/ when you were with Chris and I was with Birbilis with the two bikes/ ah yes/ he (i.e. Chris) says go into sixth/ you know Chris being convinced that his bike is faster than mine/ faster at low revs/ did you say sixth I say/ fine I’ll go into sixth/ I go into sixth/ Chris goes into sixth too/ we step on it/ you know Chris really thought that as soon as he’d step on it he’d disappear from me/ we both step on it/ I step on it/ Chris steps on it/ my bike "vuuuuu" (onomatopoeia accompanied by gesture suggesting that it left very fast) Chris (gesture suggesting that having been left behind, Chris is completely confused)/ na looking left right completely lost/ I tell him so there/ you wanted me to go into sixth/ you wanted sixth eh/ what have you got to say now/ what could he say now/ and at this point all three of us ganged up on him/ and we were all pulling his leg/ boy was he mad...
Kostas P.
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As can be seen above, the story of a "kodra" begins with an instance of CD which, reminiscent of the Homeric duels, encodes the "opponents’" verbal confrontation. Subsequently, the non-verbal confrontation is rendered entirely in the HP. A further instance of CD ends the "kodra" and the shift to the Aorist (perfective past) is only employed to mark the story’s closing segment: Chris is given a hard time by the narrator and his friends for his defeat. The two proximal devices of HP and CD13 cater for the narrator’s implicit self-foregrounding by means of presenting the episode of the contest in an experiential pace, thus inviting the audience to witness it by themselves and draw their own conclusions. In this way, the narrator’s victory as well as his self-enhancement do not need to be explicitly stated. Instead, they are brought to the fore by means of the story’s dramatisation. The same text-strategy of internalising the story’s point is manifested in the example of a "gaffe" narrative below: (11) afiste ti epatha prohthes to vradi pu nistevame/ efaga me ta pedia kana dio portokalia/ yati den ithela na fao ke poli/ ke kirios i Vivi more/ yirizo meta ke/ - e afu evala ta pedia ya ipno/ yirizo sti dileorasi/ ki ekini tin ora mepiase pina/ edeka i ora/ ti na paro leo na fao/ perno ligo psomaki ke tiraki/ ki etroga ego i hazi psomaki ke tiraki/ ke paei i nistia/ ute pu perno idisi oti iha nistia/ ki efaga ego i hazi kanonikotata mia kora psomi ke tiri/ vradi tora edeka i ora/ ki etroga eki ke parakoluthusa/ ki akuga ta polemika pu legane ekinos/ sikonete tuto apo to krevati ki erhetai etsi/ vlepo tin Gaterina dipla mu/ a kano/ pniyika/ de brolaveno na isihaso apo tin Katerina benei o Thomas mesa/ mu leei afti inai i nistia pu kanis esi/ leo ego ti efaga/ psomaki ke tiraki/ aaa leo/ ke tote thimithika/ ke mu rikse ena dulema o Thomas pu ithela na kano ke nistia/ listen to what happened to me two days ago when we fasted/ I ate a couple of oranges with the kids/ ’cos I didn’t want to eat a lot/ mainly because of Vivi (her daughter who is chubby)/ then I go to the/ - eh I mean I put the kids to bed/ and then I go and watch the telly/ and at this point I started feeling peckish/ it was eleven o’clock (at night)/ what should I eat I say (to myself)/ I get a bit of bread and a bit of cheese/ and I silly me was having bread and cheese/ and this is the end of my fast/ I completely forget that I was fasting/ and I ate unsuspectedly/ I had my bread and cheese/ and I was eating there/ and I was watching the news about the war (i.e. the war in Bosnia)/ that they were saying this guy rather/ this one (pointing to her young
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daughter who is an overhearer) gets out of bed and comes in/ I just see Katerina right next to me/ I go aargh/ and choked myself/ before getting a chance to get over the shock from Katerina Thomas comes in/ he tells me is this the way you fast/ I say why what did I have some bread and some cheese/ ooh I say/ and then I remembered/ and Thomas started pulling my leg that I was playing it cool about fasting/ Maria B.
As can be seen, the narrator’s "silly me" kind of behaviour (i.e. her unintentional violation of fasting) above is put forth by a dramatised telling which caters for a humorous self-exposure. Its performing qualities are traceable to the shifts to instances of HP and CD. These succeed in conveying a sense of immediacy that sweeps the listeners along into the "taleworld" from the point of the narrative turn which leads to the narrator’s gaffe up to the gaffe’s revelation. The former is marked by a shift to the HP (I go and watch the telly) followed by a CD instance (what should I eat I say to myself); comparably, the latter is signalled by a verb in the HP immediately preceding another CD instance (he comes in/ is this how you fast he tells me).
4.3 Change of Narrative Purpose in Stories for Children: Didacticism and Modes of Narratorial Control The above discussion showed how proximal devices typify the global replaying mode which acts as the all-embracing frame of everyday MG narration between intimates. As already suggested, this mode is systematically avoided in SC, as reflected in among others-the reduction or absence of proximal evaluation. Thus, by contrast to the involvement by mutual sense-making that characterises evaluation in SA, the evaluating act in SC appears to be more explicit and guides the addressee’s decoding of the story’s point. This difference is due to the degree of internalisation of
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evaluation that the evaluative choices entail in each case. As Labov’s scheme of evaluation suggests, the internalisation or embeddedness of evaluation in a story is not an all-or-nothing issue. It is rather a cline with numerous distinctions. The argument here is that the same cline also applies to the devices in question: though all internally evaluative in a Labovian sense, proximal devices are more internal than both markers of intensity and schema-driven devices. The former encourage a "scene-internal" viewing of the events, thus establishing a mimetic discourse. However, the latter do not completely efface the narratorial interpretation. This is evidenced in their common use in utterances which encode the narrator’s emotive reactions to the climactic action; in this way, they constitute the "raw material" of externally evaluated or embedded evaluative lines.14 On the whole, instead of suggesting that the narrator immediately verbalises and records the experience as if witnessing it, that is, without any time for narratorial judgement, they instantiate a case of a "second-order interpretation" (i.e. interpretation requiring a thought process on the part of the narrator, see Maynard, 1985: 376). With regard to our markers of intensity, this view is congruent with their common treatment in the literature as literacy-associated devices from the point of view of their explicitness and decontextualising ability (e.g. Tannen 1982, Chafe 1985, Biber 1986, Zellermayer 1991). As for schema-driven devices, it can be argued that the basis of their evaluative function is to prescribe and offer guidance to the addressee’s decoding of the point by means of an overaccommodative strategy. The above suggests that while the main aim of evaluation in SA is the creation of a mimetic discourse, evaluation in SC implicates a diegetic discourse. The contextualisation of storytelling events suggested that this difference is motivated by
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a difference in narrative functions. To be specific, the function which proved to be recurrent and dominant in SC is by definition incompatible with dramatic and involving devices such as the proximal evaluation. This is the function of didacticism. No matter how disappointingly close to stereotyping this may be, personal storytelling for children in MG narrative contexts was found to exhibit a compulsively didactic character, that is, to act as a teaching device. Fairy tales are no longer appropriate for 7-8 year-olds, which is the age of our addressees in the data; thus, the task of acculturating the child into the codes of morality has been taken over by the narrativisation of personal experience in the shape of a moral lesson. Interestingly, the manifestations of didacticism in the stories’ texture are not reducible to the prototypical case of constructing a narrative with a moral point explicitly expressed. Instead, they vary in terms of overtness. Cases of relatively explicit and overt didacticism account for roughly one third of the SC. These are typically encoded in stories with the general motto-like caveat "this is what happened to me; make sure it does not happen to you" which culminate in a moral coda. Furthermore, they foster a comparison of the type "the old good times" vs "today’s life that falls short of the past". The rest of the stories are characterised by forms of subtle and covert didacticism highly reminiscent of the didacticism often detected in children’s literature: this gives rise to modes of narratorial control and of a dominating narratorial presence that explicates rather than shows the material narrated (e.g. Stephens, 1992: 41, Hunt, 1988: 179). The basis of such modes is the narrator’s perception of his relation to the child-addressee as a power relation. In terms of evaluative choices, they implicate the systematic avoidance of devices that invite the addressee to relive and witness the events narrated along with the narrator. Hence,
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proximal devices are not suitable vehicles for the modes of didacticism in SC. By contrast, markers of intensity and schema-driven devices are opted for as part of a less internalised evaluative discourse. The following extracts from two stories for children exemplify this didactic mode of narratorial guidance which subverts the atmosphere of dramatisation and involvement that typifies SA. The didacticism of the first extract consists in sanctioning codes of conduct through the I-character’s "mistake", while that of the second makes use of the contrast between the old times and the present: (12) ... ego horis na rotiso piga na do apo koda to oplo ke na to piaso sto heri mu/ den iksera omos oti den eprepe na patiso ti skandali/ ki otan ti batisa akusa ena dinato kroto/ ki ida tis katsaroles tis kuzinas na yemizun para polles tripitses/ fisika thimamai oti imun panikovlimeni/ alla fovithika pio poli otan ida ti mitera mu na fonazei ke tin aderfula mu na kleei/ yati ta skaya ihan katastrepsei tin guklitsa tis/ akoma thimamai to batera mu agriemeno na me kitaei/ ke na inai etimos na me varesei/ yati iha kanei kati poli poli kako/ kati pu de ganun ta kala pedakia/ kati pu eprepe na don rotiso/ alla ke yati ihan kindinepsei na skotothun oli ma oli osi vriskodan sto spiti/ apo tote kathe fora pu vlepo to batera mu na piyenei ya kiniyi to thimamai/ thimamai oti para ligo me mia mu hazi aperiskepsia na ha skotosei oli tin ikoyenia mu/ ... and I without asking first went to look closely at the shotgun and touch it/ but I didn’t know that I shouldn’t pull the trigger/ and when I did I heard a loud noise/ and I saw the saucepans being full of little holes/ of course I remember that I was dead scared/ and I was even more scared when I saw my mother shouting and my little sister (diminutive) crying/ ’cos the pellets had destroyed her little doll/ I also remember my dad looking at me furiously/ and being on the verge of hitting me/ because I did something very very bad/ something that good kids (diminutive) don’t do/ something that I shouldn’t have done before asking him/ and all all my family had been in danger because of me/ since then every time I see my father going hunting I remember it/ I remember how I almost killed my whole family at a moment of foolish behaviour/ Stella A.
The above extract is from a story about the narrator’s accidental firing of her father’s gun when she was a child. Its narratorial tone can be summarised as a didactic "voice
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of experience" talking about a lesson that has been learnt. The events narrated are thus communicated as being clearly part of the past that is retrieved for didactic purposes. This subverts the sense of proximity between the taleworld and the immediate storytelling situation which is an indispensable element of the performance of SA. As can be seen, the reprimanding adult narrator’s discourse is channelled through markers of intensity (bold) evaluating the I-character’s deeds. Additionally, the extract’s schema-driven devices (also bold) help establish the story’s tellability for the particular audience. In the following extract, the image of a naughty child is replaced by that of a "little" hero who copes with the adversities of "the old times" with wit, maturity and responsibility. The purpose here, too, is didactic: the story sets up a comparison between the children of the "old times" and today’s "spoilt" children who "despite the fact that they have everything they want to" frequently misbehave. Thus, the addressee is invited to appreciate the privilege of living in today’s world and is reminded of his duties towards it: (13) ... ke sto skets pu epeza ego ekana kapio agori/ pu na nai etsi kapos zoiro/ ki eprepe lipon na foreso padeloni/ alla tote den itan opos simera/ de vriskodusan etsi ta lefta/ pu pame tora ki agorazume padelonia ya ta pedia ya psillu pidima/ ki etsi i mana mu mu to ksekopse katigorimatika/ ke foresa to padeloni tu megalu mu aderfu/ de horaye adirrisi/ omos itane para poli megalo eos terastio/ ke veveos mu pefte/... ke i atihi stigmi pos irthe/ ke distihos piye ke lithike ke mu pese sti bio krisimi fasi/ pu an yinotane simera se pedi tha sparaze sto klama/ telios/ tha ekane sa drello ki alloparmeno/ alla ego de da hasa katholu/ mas ihe mathi i anehia/ ke imuna apolita psihremi/ ke piga i atimi ke vrika olokliro kolpo/ ya na do kalipso oso pio eksipna borusa/ ke gia na glitoso apo di xeftila/ prosthesa lipon dika mu loya ya na fani fisiko/ ke vrika ke dikioloyia oti eprepe na pao mesa na fero karidia/ ya na figo apo ti skini fisika/... ... and in the sketch I was acting in I played a boy/ who’s gotta be kinda lively/ so I had to wear these trousers/ but in those days it wasn’t that easy/ money didn’t come by easily/ not like now where you go buy trousers for the children at the toss of a hat/ and so my mum said it wasn’t on/ not at all/ and I wore my big brother’s trousers/ there were no two ifs about it/ but it was
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too large/ it was huge/ and it kept sliding down/... and finally the unfortunate moment came/ and unfortunately it came undone and slid off at the absolutely crucial time/ if this happened to a child nowadays it’d burst into floods of tears/ absolutely/ it would go totally mad/ but I was extremely composed/ and handled it very well/ hardship had made us all tough/ and I was such a clever little thing that I got myself out of trouble/ to cover the whole thing up/ and I started ad libbing/ to make the thing look natural/ and I also made an excuse that I had to go and fetch walnuts/ to make a quick exit from the stage/... Dina G.
As can be seen above, the extract’s didacticism goes hand in hand with the intense presence of the external narrator’s voice which is in turn served by intensifiers embedded in externally evaluated lines. This narratorial mode clearly works at the expense of a dramatised and performed telling which would show rather than tell the story’s point in an equal-to equal relationship between addresser and addressee.
4.4 The Literate Bias of Evaluation in Stories for Children The major evaluative choices in SA and SC as described above can be argued to readily fit the definition and features of the communicative strategies labelled in the literature as "orality" or "oral-based" and "literacy" or "literacy-based" respectively (e.g. see Gee 1985, 1989, Heath 1983, Michaels 1981). Despite what the terms may suggest, in this line of research, the distinction between oral and literate strategies is not treated as a rigid dichotomy necessarily associated with oral and written language respectively. It is rather viewed as a continuum of discourse practices which cuts across oral and written modes and reflects differences "growing out of communicative goals and context" (Tannen, 1982: 18). As Gee appropriately suggested (1985: 10), shifts along the continuum of orality and literacy strategies are calibrated by context and task demands; they are also integrally connected with the particular world-view 26
and values of particular social and cultural groups. The features characteristic of an oral-based as opposed to a literate-based narrative style are commonly described in terms of a variety of different continua among which the involvement continuum and the explicitness continuum. Valuing style that lies towards the involvement and implicitness end of the continua is characteristic of the orality-strategy discourse. Applied to our data, the above suggests that proximal devices instantiate an oral-based narrative style: they show rather than tell the story’s point being the internal evaluative devices par excellence; additionally, their evaluative effects heavily exploit dramatisation techniques which have been found to typify oral style (e.g. the "topicassociating" narration in Michaels’s terms: 1981: 429). By contrast, the nature and function of schema-driven devices and markers of intensity as evaluative devices in SC allow us to suggest that they are exponents of a literate-strategy style. The interpretive frame for the above finding lies in the investigation of its relation to the cultural envelope regarding the orality and literacy discourse practices in Greece. As Heath (1983: 108) claimed, "all peoples have their uses of literacy in the context of their societal needs". By analogy, the fact that MG personal storytelling to children proves to be a marked case of narration in terms of the literate bias (of its evaluative make-up can be treated as an adjustment of discourse goals motivated by sociocultural factors. In particular, if viewed in the light of the orality-literacy question as shaped in MG society nowadays, it can be aligned with the following two factors: a.
The latest resurgence of the orality-literacy question in Greece which is inextricably bound up with the phenomenon of diglossia, otherwise known as the "glossiko zitima" (language question), that has tantalised the country throughout its modern history in various forms and shapes.
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b.
The vital role of children’s achievement and success in school in MG post-war culture which is extremely school-oriented.
To take each issue separately, orality and literacy historically exhibit an impressive symbiosis within the Greek culture in that they are both carriers of equally strong traditions (see Tannen 1980: 51-87). As reported by Greek linguists, lately there has been a revival of interest in the purist essayist school-based tradition (i.e. Katharevousa) as part of the nation’s integration into the United Europe and of its
aspiration about the role that the Greek language and the great tradition may play in the evolution of the European civilisation as it has done in the past when it contributed to the shaping and expression of the western (European) civilisation Babiniotis 1992: 117
Frangoudaki (1992: 378) suggested that this revival of the argument questioning Demotic Greek (i.e. home register) reflects a crisis of national identity mostly prompted by the syndrome of national inferiority towards the rest of Europe; in her view, the roots of this increasingly defensive complex within the framework of the European community are to a great extent traceable to the totem of the glorious ancestors. The above can be argued to form a frame of interpretation for the finding that SC in many ways function as "literacy events" (Heath 1983: 93). Specifically, it can be argued that, due to the sociocultural factors presented above, MG personal storytelling to children has incorporated a literate strategy in its repertoire of "ways of telling", as a means of consolidating the children-addressees’ literate skills.
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5. Conclusions The aim of this article as set out in its Introduction was to identify and interpret the main devices by which Greeks evaluate their everyday personal stories in two common cases of narrative communication contexts: in the case of stories told in companies of intimates and of intergenerational stories, that is, adults’ stories to (school-age) children. This aim is served best by naturally occurring stories rather than by prompted stories which inevitably reduce the spontaneity of the storytelling activity as well as obscure vital elements of its situational context. Thus, the data of this study was a corpus of spontaneous stories with "real-world" functions and purposes. The interpretation of these stories’ main evaluative choices was traceable to their immediate context of occurrence and to the cultural "agenda" underlying the narrativisation of experience in Greece. The influence of the immediate context was mainly evidenced in the recipient-design of evaluation for the audience of children. Thus, while in the "unmarked" case of stories among adults, the evaluative choices were found to underlie the creation of a global performed narrative mode, in SC, they promoted a diegetic and didactic discourse. This difference proved to be informed by the functions of the stories’ telling in each case of audience. Specifically, the culturally constrained functions of group-bonding, male self-foregrounding and female self-exposure called for full narrative performances between intimates. By contrast, the cultural etiquette of adult-child narrative communication dictated the purpose of didacticism and the creation of a power code in the addresser-addressee relationship. The above findings clearly illustrate the variability of formal choices due to contextual influences. In particular, they suggest that the features of performance and dramatisation do not by any means constitute fixed generic "givens" of the Greek
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narrative style. Instead, they are culturally shaped interactional elements, negotiated in everyday narrative contexts. Further research into intergenerational storytelling as well as into more varied storytelling settings could shed additional light into the contextualisation aspects of the dramatic style in MG narration. Comparably, the findings of the present study regarding the literate bias of stories to children can serve as a standpoint for further enquiry. In particular, they can potentially form valuable sociolinguistic evidence about any possible "re-shuffling" or "re-casting" of discoursetypes in Greece along the orality-literacy continuum. It is worth looking into the dynamics of the relationship between discourse practices and oral- or literate-based styles at a time at which MG society witnesses an upheaval of its essayist tradition as a means of "westernising" its discourse for achieving parity in the United Europe.
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Zellermayer, M. (1991). Intensifiers in Hebrew and English. Journal of Pragmatics 15: 43-58. 1. The unit of "line" was selected as the low-level unit of our analysis. Its definitional criteria were adopted from Gee according to whom a line forms an intonational and syntactic unit that is roughly one clause long (1985: 14). As Gee suggested, his lines are nothing more but idealised "idea units" (Chafe 1980). This means that false starts and hesitations are not treated as separate lines. Likewise, the few cases of clausal pieces such as adverbial phrases, subjects etc which, when introducing new information, count as separate idea units in Chafe’s analysis, are "collapsed into the clauses they belong to" (Gee 1985: 14). 2. To put this figure into perspective, it suffices to mention that the next two popular evaluative devices in SA are the salient changes in the stress and tone of voice and the reiteration patterns covering 19.1% and 16.8% of the stories’ lines respectively. 3. The term refers to the use of the present tense for past events in a narrative context so that the events are understood as having a reference time which is prior to the time of speaking (also called Narrative Present: e.g. Fleischman 1990).
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4."The term "Constructed Dialogue" is adopted from Tannen (1989) as an umbrella-term for instances of dialogue, direct speech and thought animation in a narrative. The idea underlying the term is that the inclusion of characters’ speech (and thoughts) in narration does not imply their factuality, i.e. that they have actually been uttered. 5. The evaluative use of the American English past progressive in narratives was in the Labovian model (1972) classified in the category of correlatives which base their evaluative function on aligning an event with other ongoing events. However, the treatment which best suits the situation in the data requires an explicit recognition of the relation of the device’s evaluative function to the effect of proximity. A highly comparable view is found in Wright’s work (1987, 1992) who argued that (present and past) progressive forms frequently function in literary narration in exactly the same way as the Historical Present, that is, as devices which establish a phenomenal (subjective) mode of presentation of the events as opposed to a structural (temporal, objective) presentation of events. In other words, they emphasise in subjective (emotional) rather than in temporal terms the connection between the speaker and the event as a proximal relation. 6. These are commonly referred to as "proximates" or as "displaced/empathetic" deictics (e.g. Lyons 1982), that is, as deictics which are empathetically disengaged from their natural source of reference and located with reference to the storyteller’s position in the immediate storytelling situation. 7. The predominant quotative verb in the data (97% of the verbs) is the verb leo introducing instances of both direct speech and thought (as a rule self-reported thoughts). This finding corresponds with Tannen’s (1986) report that in her data only 6% of the quotative verbs were other than leo. 8. In addition to their evaluative function, the HP and CD were found to exhibit an organisational or discoursestructuring function as well, but this is beyond the scope of the present discussion (for details see Georgakopoulou 1992, Georgakopoulou 1993: 277-309). 9. The transliteration from Greek is based on the system developed by Bien & Loomis for the Modern Greek Studies Association, with few minor changes. Following are some of the conventions: g= /γ/, the Greek letter ghama (γ), a voiceless velar. y= /γ/ before front vowels (i, e) d= /δ/, the Greek letter delta (δ), a voiced interdental fricative. th= /θ/, the Greek letter theta (θ), a voiceless interdental fricative. h= /χ/, the Greek letter chi (χ), a voiceless velar fricative. Like English "h", but with more restriction in one’s throat. ks= /ks/, the Greek letter (ξ). u= /u/, the Greek letters omicron upsilon (ου). i= /i/, used to represent all five Greek orthographic variants for this vowel sound, namely iota (ι), eta (η), upsilon (υ), epsilon iota (ει) and omicron iota (οι). ei= /ει/ for verb endings The main transcription devices employed in the examples are as follows: /: Indicates end of line [ ]: Denotes hearer’s turn, contribution from the audience ( ): Editorial comments - : Correction phenomena (he he): Laughter Bold highlights forms under examination. 10. Notice the use of na+imperfective past for the quotative verb leo. Imperfective past and na+imperfective past quotative verbs are ways of increasing the immediacy of a CD instance in the data, alternative to the use of HP. The co-occurrence of present progressive with verbs introducing direct speech has been reported as an evaluative device in American English narratives (e.g. Schiffrin 1981). Since there is no grammaticalised distinction
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between perfective and imperfective aspect in the present tense of MG, it can be argued that the proximal use of the past progressive verbs of saying in the data acts as a device similar to the "experiential" present progressive of English or as an alternative language-specific resource of vividness. 11. The term is used for lack of any other better term and is not intended to suggest that the devices in question are the sole instances of evaluation deriving from the schema of storytelling (to adults or children); it should thus be interpreted in a restricted rather than wide sense. At a general level, all evaluative ways of telling ultimately reflect schematic choices. Schema-driven devices only cover a special case of audience adaptation devices strongly determined by the schema of storytelling to children. 12. Both notions are highly culture-specific and impossible to accurately translate into English (see Triandis & Vassiliou 1972: 305). Filotimo can be conventionally rendered as generosity; magia covers a set of qualities characteristic of what is defined in Greece as a "brave/cool/generous man". 13. For more details about the contextualisation aspects of the use of HP and CD in MG stories see Georgakopoulou (forthcoming). 14. Additional evidence for their degree of internalisation is provided by the fact that they positively correlate with instances of embedded and external evaluation in SC (r=.4579, df=19, p
