Interactional and cognitive aspects of storytelling in English language acquisition

The study investigates the relationship between Bruner’s (1996) nine universals of narrative realities and the explicit knowledge of the phases of oral narratives (Labov & Waletzky, 1967; Labov, 1972) in the context of English Second Language (ESL) learning. We based our analysis on the collection of stories told and transformed by 32 upper-intermediate college students. Informants were asked to tell a personal anecdote before and after being lectured on the phases of storytelling. Data showed that abstract and coda appear mostly in the second versions. Evaluative sections are extended, and forms of embedded evaluation are developed. Conversely, the narrative content in orientation, complicating action and resolution stays almost unchanged. This leads to arguing that Bruner’s universals mainly address those phases of Labov & Waletzky’s oral narratives comprising the bulk of the story, rather than the more interlocutor-oriented ones, namely abstract, coda, and – to a different degree – evaluation.