Maintaining Tradition: Thematic and Structural Coherence in Personal Stories by Upper Kuskokwim Athabaskans

This article examines personal stories told in English by representatives of the last bilingual generation speaking the Upper Kuskokwim Athabaskan language, investigating how far formal and thematic features of the storytelling tradition persist despite the language shift. Coherence in stories of personal experience in this community depends on the linguacultural models needed for their interpretation and Alaskan Athabaskan cultural traditions of storytelling, determining both the structure of stories and the dynamics of storytelling situations.