Person shift at narrative peak

Abstract

Narrators like to highlight important events in their stories. In some languages, they may shift to first- or second-person pronouns to refer to third-person referents in order to do so. Such pronoun shifts show functional parallels with tense shifts like the historical present, as both highlight events through shifts in deictic categories. Longacre (1983:138–39) discusses the parallels between person and tense shifts in his account of narrative peak, that is, the formal marking of important narrative events. Labov (1972) analyzes similar strategies as internal evaluations. Person shifts constitute a phenomenon of the discourse-syntax interface and present a clear case of discourse structure influencing grammar. Both person shifts themselves and their motivation in narrative structure have been little investigated. The article reviews person shifts in a number of languages reported in the literature and analyzes in detail the characteristics of this discourse strategy in Saliba-Logea, an Oceanic language of Papua New Guinea. The study contributes to the growing body of research on pronouns and person markers, and on referring expressions more generally, by adding a new angle of investigation. Previous studies have tended to focus on the morphosyntactic choices of referring expressions and their motivations, that is, on the choices between lexical nouns, free vs. bound pronouns, and so forth. The present study focuses on the paradigmatic choices between different person forms within one and the same morphosyntactic expression type. In doing so it offers a new perspective on pronoun choice and the factors influencing it crosslinguistically. While some types of person shift appear to be rare, overall, the strategy of person shift at narrative peak seems to constitute a solid crosslinguistic phenomenon.

Transforming Transcripts Into Stories: A Multimethod Approach to Narrative Analysis

“…It emphasizes the turns and the important events within the story (Kurtz, 2014). Use of person shifts while telling stories is a good indicator of important narrative events, narrative peaks, and narrative evaluations that offer insight into the story plot (Czarniawska, 2004;Kurtz, 2014;Margetts, 2015). Narrative events are bits of information about an event that the storyteller wants to impart (Ko ¨ppe, 2014).…”

“…Narrative events are bits of information about an event that the storyteller wants to impart (Ko ¨ppe, 2014). Narrative peaks are conversations that evoke interest in the story such as critical incidents (Margetts, 2015). Narrative evaluations can facilitate a "personal touch" to stories that are unique to the individual experiences.…”

Learning the rules of the game: The role of generic “you” and “we” in shaping children's interpretations of norms

“…Generic you , we , and one allow speakers to seamlessly reframe their individual perspective as one that is broad and shared with others. Indeed, although our focus here was on English, generic‐you and ‐we also appear in other unrelated languages ( Creissels, 2013; de Hoop & Tarenskeen, 2015; Kitagawa & Lehrer, 1990; Margetts, 2015), suggesting their ability to function generically may reflect a common conceptual foundation in how language helps people coordinate their behavior. The results from the current studies suggest that by the time English‐speaking children enter school, one effective means of communicating is to shift their perspective to broaden it, thereby encompassing a larger group to which the children belong.…”

Generics in society

“…My collaborators and I have found that when English speakers in the US are asked to make meaning out of a difficult experience, they often take a generic perspective, by means of the generic pronoun ‘you’ (meaning ‘one’ or ‘anyone’) (Orvell, Kross, & Gelman 2017). (A variety of languages employ ‘you’ in the generic sense, including Dutch, German, Gulf Arabic, Hindi, Mandinka, Saliba-Logea, and Duna; for some examples, see Kitagawa & Lehrer 1990; Creissels 2013; de Hoop & Tarenskeen 2015; and Margetts 2015.) We employed an expressive writing task, in which participants were asked to write continuously for ten minutes about a recent personal experience.…”