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Abstract
This study uncovered the use and universality of Labov & Waletzky’s (1967) model
of the structure of narratives. This further investigated the presence of the types of
evaluations according to Labov (1972). This study is done locally and institutionally to
determine the individual intention and potential of the student-participants.
There were 114 written narratives collected from all the first year students enrolled
in English 1b (Grammar and Composition) subject during the First Semester of the
Academic Year 2015 – 2016. A 200-word fluency criterion was observed to determine the
final data to be included in the study. Out of 114, only 79 written narrative compositions
passed the criterion.
This research is qualitative-quantitative in nature and utilized the descriptive
method in presenting and discussing the data gathered. After the written narratives were
analyzed, the results were tallied, interpreted, and discussed. The results revealed that
the most commonly employed elements of the structure of a narrative by majority of the
students were evaluation, orientation and complicating action. The other elements
received a percentage of use, but the least employed is resolution. Moreover, evaluative
action was the frequent type of evaluation conveyed by most of the student-participants.
The universality of the elements of the narrative is evident, thus revealing that the
students employed these even if they do not have a background knowledge of the said
structure. Nonetheless, the analysis reflected the students’ potential in writing, which if
examined closely, would reveal avenues for development of English language and
literature instruction.
Keywords: personal narrative, structural analysis, evaluation, communication
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Introduction
Story telling has always been an integral part of our day to day living. Filipinos as
we are, our culture is intertwined with the magnificence of creating stories and telling
them. In fact, our history has been handed down from generation to generation through
telling stories, be it in oral or written form. Gordon Pradl (1984) says that the telling of
stories is such a pervasive aspect of our environment that we sometimes forget that
stories provide the initial and continuing means for shaping our experience. Indeed,
undifferentiated stream of events. Stories are the repository of our collective wisdom
about the world of social or cultural behavior; they are the key mediating structures for
our encounters with reality. In such functions, communication is being played well
Telling stories creates a wonderful means of sharing our experiences and making
people know about them. By sharing, people narrate these stories to others. Stories and
narratives always come together. Scholes et al. (1988) cites Labov (1972) who defines
of clauses to the sequence of events which actually occurred. Within this conception of
narrative, we can define a minimal narrative as a sequence of two clauses which are
temporally ordered: that is, a change in their order will result in a change in the temporal
sequence of the original semantic interpretation. As a review of events in the past, stories
and narratives are greatly incorporated in people’s quest for knowing the unknown. The
words "narrative" and "story" can both be traced back to an original meaning of "to know."
It is through story telling that people quite literally come to know - that is, to construct and
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maintain their knowledge of the world. Through a story, an individual creates meaning out
of daily happenings, and this story, in turn, serves as the basis for anticipation of future
events (Pradl, 1984). Labov (1997) expounded that narrative of personal experience is a
report of a sequence of events that have entered the biography of the speaker by a
sequence of clauses that correspond to the order of the original events. Because of the
meanings within each story that is being told, people make use of them as a basis of
The identity of the speaker and the meanings he or she wanted to convey are
defined in these narratives and stories. Analyzing them would mean delving deeper into
the processes of their minds. The textual and pragmatic richness of narratives follow a
certain structure when being told. Pradl (1984) says that it is not surprising that a great
deal of scholarly investigation has focused on both the nature of stories and their central
role in human affairs. Across many disciplines - including linguistics, literary criticism,
anthropology, psychology, and sociology - researchers have seen how the analysis of
First steps in narrative analysis taken by Joshua Waletzky and William Labov were a by-
product of the sociolinguistic field methods that had been developed in the survey of the
Lower East Side (Labov, 1966) and in the works that engaged them at that time which is
the study of African-American Vernacular English in South Harlem (Labov, Cohen, Robins
& Lewis 1968). Labov and Waletzky laid out a framework which has proved useful for
Different people are considered to have varied accounts of personal narratives and
stories. University students bear with them a variety of fields of experiences, from their
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childhood up to where they are now. Journeying through university mostly includes the
part where they communicate with each other; telling stories and narrating events which
have happened in the past. Therefore, in different ways and times, it gradually appeared
that narratives are privileged forms of discourse which play a central role in almost every
conversation (Labov, 1997). In this case, the researchers collected written personal
its structure. This study is anchored on Labov and Waletzky’s Model of Narratives (1967)
and Labov’s Types of Evaluations (1972). The researchers looked at each written
narrative by the students through the elements of narratives by Labov and Waletzky,
which, the researchers analyzed the evaluative types in each narrative, through the types
evaluative action.
Table 1 provides information on the linguistic forms that each component in the
Labov and Waleztky’s Model of Narratives (1967) typically takes. According to this model,
the elements are arranged in the sequence in which they could occur in a typical oral
narrative. However, this could exclude evaluation which tends to sit outside the central
pattern because it can be inserted at virtually any stage during a narrative. Evaluation is
the most fluid of the narrative categories stylistically: it may take a variety of linguistic
forms depending on what particular evaluative job it is doing (Simpson, 2004). In addition
to this model of narratives, Labov (1972) presents three types of evaluations in narratives:
1) external evaluation, where the evaluation is considered overt and the narrator stands
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outside the action; 2) embedded evaluation, where the narrator describes feelings at the
time, thus staying within narrative; and 3) evaluative action, where the narrator reports
extremely appropriate for illustrating the six structural elements: abstract, orientation,
evaluation, narrative clause, result and coda. She said that as stated by Labov, the six
structural elements except for one, are not obligatory, but instead provide a tentative
framework for the personal narrative. Labov's definition of the 'minimal narrative' is that
which contains at least two narrative clauses. This feature which defines Labov's minimal
experience narratives of Turkish university students in terms of the narrative structure and
evaluative language used in oral and written narratives. For this purpose, 60 fright
collected orally. The other 30 narratives were elicited in a written task. In the first part of
the analysis, all 60 personal narratives are examined in terms of Labov's (1972) narrative
categories, and are compared and contrasted in terms of written and oral versions. In the
second part of the analysis, evaluative language used in both narrative types is examined
using the evaluative categories presented by Shiro (2003). Written and oral versions are
also compared regarding the evaluative categories conveyed by the narratives. The
findings of the study suggested that although there are some differences due to the
with the use of politeness strategies and structure of a narrative which were identified in
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the written narratives of the students from Cebu Institute of Technology. She found out
that the elements of the structure of a narrative surfaced as the natural way of narrating
events and the type of discourse whether oral or written did not make any difference in
Similarly, Magno’s (2011) study on the oral interlanguage in the L2 (English and
students in their competence in using two (2) second languages namely Filipino and
English. Twenty (20) BSED CommArts Majors were gathered to narrate a mini-film they
have seen. Using Labov’s narrative elements, she identified orientation, complicating
action, evaluation and coda from the student’s narratives. She further said in her
conclusion that the identified narrative elements are universally present on the two (2)
languages used.
These studies by Eagles (2011), Ozyildirim (2009), Alcisto (2005), and Magno
(2011) are presented in relation to the application of Labov and Waleztky’s (1967) model
of personal narratives, thus, they serve as helping ground in determining the structure of
and listening to stories from different people, the researchers, too, became interested in
analyzing the way Education students construct the narratives they convey to others,
most specially that they are trained to become future educators. Consequently, instead
of having conversations and oral narrations, the researchers utilized the written narratives
of the students. The researchers intended to use writing as means of collecting data and
from there determined the structure of the narratives of the students and the elements
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that are found within them, since Labov and Waletzky’s (1967) research dealt mostly with
oral and conversational narrations, and see if these structures are present in the written
freshmen students of the College of Education because as future educators, they should
be able to utilize verbal and written narratives in documenting the progress and
effective teachers in the future. The use of narratives in their teaching can help them
child’s mind which they would touch. What they say is very important to the students; it
would either bring them growth or it would destroy them. Their narratives were chosen
because as Chafe (1990) puts, narratives are windows to both the content of the mind
and its on-going operations. Another reason is according to Emmott (1999) who cited
Hocket (1963) and Piaget (1955) that the ability to displace in time and space, including
seeing things from another’s perspective, is thought to be a key factor in linguistic and
cognitive development. Analyzing the written narratives of these students could determine
their ability to convey ideas, thus identifying their individual intention and potential. The
researcher further believes that analyzing the structure of narratives through Labov and
Waletzky’s (1967) model and Labov’s (1972) types of evaluation has a significant role in
both the areas of linguistics and education. To quote Chafe (1990), “In a variety of ways,
narratives provide evidence for the nature of the mind. I see narratives as overt
manifestations of the mind in action- windows to both the content of the mind and its on-
going operations.” Emmot (1999) also said that readers of narrative text manage to create
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a richly represented fictional world from mere strings of words. There is a significant
amount of inferencing involved simply in making sense which characters are being
referred to, keeping track of spatial and temporal information, and establishing causal
Methodology
utilized in this study to present, interpret, and analyze the data gathered, as well as in the
research used the purposive sampling technique, having all first year students of the
College of Education taking Engl 1b (Grammar and Composition) subject of the first
experience narratives were the main sources of data for this research. A 200-word fluency
criterion was observed. All the students enrolled in the English 1b classes were given the
task of writing a narrative essay on their personal experiences during the Intramurals
2015. Each class was given the whole period or one hour to finish their narrative essays.
Since it is Grammar and Composition subject, the students wrote their essays in English.
After, the essays were collected and the 200-word fluency criterion was used to determine
The written narratives which passed the criterion were analyzed through Labov
and Waletzky’s (1967) model of narratives and Labov’s (1972) types of evaluation. The
unit of analysis was per sentence in each of the narratives. The analyzed data collected
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from the narratives were tallied and summarized, according to its frequency and
distribution. Afterwhich, the results elicited from the data were arranged from highest to
lowest in terms of the frequency of their occurence and with such, the results were
analyzed. No statistical treatment was applied to this study, only frequency counts and
A. The Narrative Elements Used in the Structure of the Written Narratives by the Students
Table 2 shows the frequency and percentage of the occurrence of the narrative
Table 2. The Narrative Elements Used in the Structure of the Written Narratives by the
Students (N = 79)
Evaluation 77 97.41
Orientation 76 96.20
Coda 63 79.75
Abstract 50 63.29
Resolution 36 45.57
As can be derived from the table, the most commonly used narrative elements in
the written narratives by the participants are evaluation (97.47%), orientation (96.20%)
and complicating action (94.94%). The narrative elements less used are coda (79.75%),
abstract (63.29%) and resolution (45.57%). It can be observed in the written narratives of
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the students that the evaluation and orientation are scattered and dispersed in many
locations throughout the narrative. These two variables are very fluid in their occurrence
along with the complicating action which is considered as the most important part, since
it is considered the ‘narrative clause’. This implies that the student-narrators justify, in
many means, the actions happening in the stories; create an illustrative background for
the readers to know the setting of their stories through utilizing the orientation; and
proceeds with detailing the various experiences that have happened to them in the
complicating action. Moreover, though not all students utilized the abstract, resolution and
coda, the results still imply that a significant number of the participants are able to offer a
beginning or introductory statement for their narrative, make a conclusion on the details
that they have presented in the complicating action, and transmit their readers from the
world they have spun in their recalling of past experiences back to the reality of the
present world. Furthermore, the representation of the last three narrative structures
stands evident that the students, who wrote the narrative essays in their composition
classes, utilized these elements in writing a complete essay with an introduction, a body
and a conclusion.
The high frequency (77) of the occurrence of the evaluation structure in the written
narratives of the students goes with Scholes et al. (1988) who cited Labov & Waletzky’s
(1967) claim that it is perhaps the most important element in addition to the basic narrative
clause, with 97.47% of the students employing the structure. As mentioned in Magno’s
(2011) study, evaluation bespeaks the emotional side of the narrative and indicates what
the story means, which eventually highlights appealing and remarkable points of the story
because of the narrators’ personal input sometimes due to influences from the cultural
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refers to the comments made by the speaker on the events he/she experienced
narrator has on certain events in the narratives. It can be noted that as stated in Magno’s
(2011) study, Squire (2005) mentions that Labov implied that the evaluation element, like
orientation, is scattered anywhere in the story. This result further goes with Alcisto (2005)
wherein evaluation is employed among most of the participants of her study who could
retrospect on how they performed in their experience and justified their actions. In the
essays, it can be observed that the evaluation structures by the student-participants are
inserted in various parts throughout the narrative which mentions and describes
participants, times and places. It can also be seen that the narrators illustrate these things
in the narration and evaluate them immediately. This element alongside with the
Basing on the result of the first sub-problem, orientation comes next in rank to
evaluation with a frequency of 76 (96.20%). Though not employed by all the participants,
the result still goes to show that most of the narrators or writers provide necessary
knowledge so that the reader can have prior knowledge before the succession of events
happened in the complicating action (Alcisto, 2005). Alcisto (2005) further observed in
her study that in the orientations of her participants, the characters, setting and the current
situation are properly illustrated. The results of the study go with this observation, and as
such, Labov and Waletzky (1967) states that the orientation is a section of a narrative
that contains the statements that provide the setting or context of a narrative and it serves
to orient the listener in respect to person, place, time and behavioral situation. Magno
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(2011) mentioned in her study that a storyteller who allows the audience to create a
mental picture of the situation and captivates their attention based on the given
Magno (2011) also found out in her study that all the narrators, regardless of the language
they used, helped the listeners identify the time, place, characters, and activities or
actions. Though Magno’s (2011) study dealt with oral narrations, the result in the written
medium used in this study reflects the universality of the orientation element.
Furthermore, Magno (2011) also mentioned Alcisto’s (2005) findings which signified that
even if the writer of the narrative is not exposed to Labov and Waletzky’s (1967) model,
the narrator’s objective of setting the parameter and adjunct of the narration for the
describes the setting of the story. This description leads the narration into the most
important part of the narrative (Labov & Waletzky, 1967) which is the complicating action.
The result shows a high percentage of the use of complicating action by the
coincides with Labov’s (1997) claim that the chronologically ordered clauses, or
complicating actions, provide the referential function of the narrative, reporting ‘a next
event’ in response to the potential question ‘what happened [then]?’. Labov (1997) further
said that this variable provides the backbone of the story and is the ‘most reportable
event’, and without the complicating action, there is no narrative. It can also be observed
that in the sample above, evaluative remarks are inserted in several locations. It is either
fused with the narrative clause or is provided in a separate statement after the actions. This
further proves that the student-participants provide the evaluation element in almost every
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way in their written narratives. The observation is also like Alcisto’s (2005) wherein she
commented in her finding that justifications follow each event in the writer’s actions to
provide an explanation of the certain action. The justifications made by the narrator
greatly takes part in the employment of evaluation in the narrative. There are, however,
some instances of written narratives by the students wherein the participants have not
made use of the ‘narrative clauses’. Instead of recounting and answering the question
‘what happened?’, the student-participants just made use of a series of orientations and
evaluations, and described only the settings of the stories and provided evaluative
remarks after each orientation structure. Furthermore, the evaluation element is inserted in
almost all the parts of the narrative structure. Thus, it can be viewed that these can be
classified under the orientation element since there was no progression in the event, only
Another element employed by the students in their written narratives is the coda.
This variable attained a frequency count of 63 (79.75%). This implies that the 79.73% of
the student-participants give a proper closure to their narrative essays. Labov (1997)
mentioned that the coda is a functional device for returning the narrative perspective to
the present moment. Technically, the coda can be easily located since it is, at most times,
found at the end of a narrative. As the end of the story, the coda transports the reader of
the narrative from narrative world to the present world (Wu, 1995). Alcisto (2005) further
supplied in her study that according to Labov & Waletzky (1967), the coda is counted
though it is expectedly the least in presence than any other element. This claim by Labov
(1967) that the coda is the least in presence compared to the other narrative elements is
being contended by the result of the study since an average percentage of the student-
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Magno (2011) cited Labov (1999) who said that a coda serves not only to close off the
series of complicating actions but may also contain a general observation or explain the
effects on the narrator, which can be totally disconnected from the main narrative. Some
student-participants were not able to give a clear ending of their narratives. Instead,
descriptions were used to give an illustration of what they have experienced. In such
cases, the reader of the narrative is left hanging because there was no bridge provided
for them to be transported from the story or narrative perspective and back to the present.
This is because no coda has been used thus leaving the reader of the narrative
written narratives. Alcisto (2005) cited Labov (1967) who claimed that a narrative is still
considered complete even without the abstract since it is an additional element that
It can then be inferred that though the abstract is the second to the last in rank of the most
some still present an introduction to pre-empt the happenings presented in the story. As
mentioned by Magno (2011) that before a story unfolds, it is not unusual for narrators to
provide a summary of the story to give the audience a sneak peek of the main event(s).
Though a significant number of participants utilized the coda in the beginning of their
narratives, some student, however, only immediately started their narration through
providing information as to when and where the event happened, who the participants
are and how did the characters act in the story in the first sentences of the narrative. This
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is just like what Magno (2011) found in her study that majority of her participants recount
the state of being of the character (in the video she used to be narrated) without supplying
further information. Most of the responses of her participants concern clauses with the
prompt of ‘about’. Going along this finding by Magno (2011), some of the student-
The narrative element which was least likely used by the student-participants in
their written narratives was resolution. In here, the narrator of the story gives closure to
the series of events established in the complicating action (Magno, 2011). Based on the
utilized this narrative structure. It can be observed in the written narratives of the students
that mostly the resolution element is not utilized due to the recurrence of orientations and
evaluation. Since these two goes along with the complicating action, no resolution is
usually presented. Instead, the narrators immediately make a ‘timeless’ statement of their
whole experience during the Intramurals 2015, thus making it directly the coda, which
B. The Types of Evaluation Most Commonly Conveyed in the Students’ Written Narratives
Table 3 shows the frequency counts and percentage of the types of evaluation
Table 3. The Types of Evaluation Most Commonly Conveyed in the Students’ Written
Narratives (N = 79)
External Evaluation 0 0
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As revealed in the table, the most commonly conveyed type of evaluation in the
written narratives by the students is evaluative action, with 60.62%. This type of
evaluation is identified when the narrators report actions in their narratives which reveal
feelings and emotions. This is followed by embedded evaluation with 30.38%. Embedded
evaluation is signaled by the narrator through describing his or her feelings during the
time the event happened and thus, staying within the narrative. The non-presence of
external evaluation could be because of the medium wherein the narratives are
when the narrator interrupts the flow of the narrative and turns directly to the listener to
tell him or her “what the point” of the story is, which can obviously be done in a verbal
narration of a story.
Evaluative action was obviously the most commonly conveyed type of evaluation
by the students. It can be clearly inferred that the students are able to report events,
happenings and actions which bring with them emotions. Mason (2008) said in her study
that evaluative action is where the narrator describes “what people did rather than what
they said”; in other words, the evaluation is dramatized. This includes “actions that reveal
the tensions of the actors” as well as any less serious but reportable emotions.
describes feelings at the time of the happening, thus staying within the narrative. To quote
again Mason (2008), she said that embedded evaluation involves the narrator describing
his or her sentiments as if they occurred at the time of the happening, rather than at the
time of the telling, or attributing them to a third party who acts as observer. Furthermore,
Mason (2008) cited Labov (1972) who found out that the narratives of personal
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experience of his subjects imagined themselves back in the experience they were
describing.
It can be noted that one type of evaluation presented by Labov (1972) has not
been utilized by any of the students in their written narratives. The absence of external
evaluation could be related to the medium wherein the narratives were elicited. Since the
students wrote their narratives according to ‘what’ their personal experiences were, they
stood within the parameters of their own recalling of this experience and each one
Conclusion
Labov & Waletzky’s (1967) model of a narrative is proven useful in analyzing and
examining written narrative compositions. Even though the medium of gathering the data
is different than that of Labov (1967 & 1972), the narrative elements are still proven to be
narrative elements in the structure of a narrative by Labov & Waletzky (1967) were not
introduced and discussed in the subject of the participants, yet the elements are evident
and structurally present in their written narratives. Therefore, it can be said that the
structures come naturally in the narratives and are “universally present”. The high
elements signified that majority of the student-participants could justify, set and narrate
action in their narratives, this means that the narrators, in justifying the points in their
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narrations, were able to create an illustration of the emotions depicted in the actions
presented in their narratives; the essence of reporting well the actions were evident. The
absence of one of the types of evaluation which was external evaluation could be related
to the medium wherein the narratives were elicited. Since the student-participants wrote
their narratives according to ‘what’ their personal experiences were, they stood within the
parameters of their own recalling of this experience and each one ‘personally
Recommendations
Based on the findings and conclusions of the study, the researchers recommend
that using this research, a comparative study could be done through having other
through utilizing the same framework in analyzing narratives in the Filipino and Cebuano
languages. Third, a qualitative research can be done on the number of written narratives
that follow the syntactical order of the structure of narratives presented by Labov &
Waletzky (1967). Fourth, other researchers can make a sociolinguistic’ analysis on the
relationship of narratives and other social variables, like age, ethnography, and social
class. Fifth, future researchers can do a stylistic research through the same manner to
reveal the writing styles, for example, of students, teachers and others. Lastly, language
and literature teachers could make use of this study and of the Labov & Waletzky’s (1967)
model of the structure of the narrative to develop and enhance the teaching of Engl 1b
(Grammar and Composition) subject to Education students. This can also be used in
teaching and discussing effective writing in English language and linguistics subjects,
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such as Writing in the Disciplines, Pedagogy of Expository Other Forms of Writing, and
other subjects. Furthermore, this can also be used in analyzing genres of literature in
literature subjects such as epics, short stories, and novels in the Filipino, Cebuano, or
English language.
References
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