Terminology - Discourse and Narrative

Question 1

What are additional events?

Answer 1

Secondary events that are not necessarily crucial to the overall story but, through being included, may have been highlighted as important

Question 2

What is analepsis?

Answer 2

A literary device in narrative, in which past event is narrated at a point later than its chronological place in a story (similar to a flashback)

Question 3

What is an antagonist?

Answer 3

Anything - person, creature, or force of nature - that advances the story through conflict with the protagonist, presenting barriers or obstruction to the protagonist’s desires

Question 4

What is an audience surrogate?

Answer 4

A character who functions as a surrogate for the audience in terms of asking questions or reacting to another character’s narrative

Question 5

What are central events?

Answer 5

Main events that are crucial to the overall story

Question 6

What is defamiliarisation?

Answer 6

Presenting common things in an unfamiliar or strange way in order to enhance our perception of them or make us question our assumptions

Question 7

What is external deviation?

Answer 7

Breaking a pattern which is understood to be a key part of language use in general

i.e. using made-up words, using a feature not expected in a particular genre

Question 8

What is external evaluation?

Answer 8

Expressing an attitude to events outside the time frame of the narrative

e.g. “it makes me angry when people do that”

Question 9

What is a first-person/homodiegetic narrator?

Answer 9

The narrator of a story who is also the protagonist or another character in the story

Question 10

What is foregrounding?

Answer 10

Drawing particular attention to an aspect of a story

Question 11

What is internal deviation?

Answer 11

Breaking a pattern which the text has set up

i.e. meter, form, viewpoint

Question 12

What is internal evaluation?

Answer 12

Expressing an attitude to events in the same time frame as the narrative

e.g. “I was angry”

Question 13

What is irony?

Answer 13

A state of affairs or an event that is contrary to what we expect, which is often wryly amusing or emotionally shocking as a result

Question 14

What is abstract (Labov’s five narrative elements of anecdotes)?

Answer 14

Indication that the speaker wants attention and is beginning the story

“You’ll never believe who I met…”
“Oh, I’ll tell you something funny…”

Question 15

What is orientation (Labov’s five narrative elements of anecdotes)?

Answer 15

The who/what/when/where/why of the story

“I was in town at the weekend…”

Question 16

What is complicating action (Labov’s five narrative elements of anecdotes)?

Answer 16

The actual meat of the story, what happened

Question 17

What is resolution (Labov’s five narrative elements of anecdotes)?

Answer 17

The ending of the narrative, explaining what happened

Question 18

What is coda (Labov’s five narrative elements of anecdotes)?

Answer 18

Signals the story has ended

Question 19

What is a narratee?

Answer 19

The person to who a narrative is told

Question 20

What is a narrative?

Answer 20

Writing or speech that presents a series of events, characters and places in a coherent form

Question 21

What is narrative discourse?

Answer 21

The shaping of the story through choices in language and structure

Question 22

What is a narrator?

Answer 22

A person responsible for writing or speaking a narrative

Question 23

What is poetic justice?

Answer 23

A literary device in which virtue is ultimately rewarded or vice punished, often in a way which provides emotional satisfaction for the audience

Question 24

What is prolepsis?

Answer 24

A literary device in narrative in which a future event is narrated at a point earlier than its chronological place in the story (flashforward)

Question 25

What is a protagonist?

Answer 25

Character at the centre of the story, makes the key decisions, and experiences the consequences of those decisions

Question 26

What is retrospective?

Answer 26

A viewpoint where the narrator looks back on past events, often providing commentary on the significance of those events

Question 27

What is a story?

Answer 27

The building blocks of a narrative in terms of events, characters, time and place

Question 28

What is high tellability?

Answer 28

The feature of a story that make it worth telling to an audience

Question 29

What is low tellability?

Answer 29

The characterisitcs of a narrative that presents uninteresting material in an uninspiring way

Question 30

What is a third person/heterodiegetic narrator?

Answer 30

Describes the experiences of a narrative in the past, present and future

Question 31

What is a time frame?

Answer 31

The positing of a narrative in the past, present or future

Question 32

What is an unreliable narrator?

Answer 32

A narrating character or storyteller who provides inaccurate, misleading, conflicting, or otherwise questionable information to the reader or audience