Oral Narration in Modern French: A Linguistic Analysis of Temporal Patterns (review)

Janice Carruthers investigates temporal patterns in oral narration in modern French through the analysis of a corpus. Three types of oral narration are included: traditional storytelling (contes), new storytelling (néo-contes) and spontaneous conversational narration. Carruthers addresses a range of questions, including which tenses are used on the narrative line, how tense-switching is used and – this is a key innovation – how temporal patterning works. The author is working in a very fertile field, but this study stands out because of both the methodology and data that are used. The volume begins with a rich discussion of theoretical and methodological issues, illustrating the range of subdisciplines that this research draws upon. Work on oral storytelling such as Labov and Waletsky's 'Narrative Analysis: Oral Versions of Personal Experience' (1967) is combined with the details of tense and aspect in French and many of the methodological principles of research into French oral syntax. The analysis starts with a comparison of tense usage on the narrative line across the three types of narration. In particular, it is shown that the contes are more homogeneous in their tense usage, while the néo-contes display greater variation, attributable to differences in their composition and performance. The second part of the analysis focuses on tense switching and the results highlight its multifunctionality. Once again, the néo-contes differ because of such features as their use of the passé simple and passé composé alternation which seems to reflect literary influence. The final chapter is perhaps the most innovative, since it brings into focus what happens at temporal junctures in narrative. The author compares different structures such as subordination, adverbs, coordinators and connectors that mark temporal sequence to varying degrees. The most interesting finding in the light of previous assumptions is that all three genres make little use of structures that mark sequence explicitly and the author reasons that this is because in the context of a story sequence is the default order. The analysis brings out the similarities between the three different types of oral narration, which supports the general conclusion of the volume, namely that there are 'distinct temporal patterns in "oral story performance"' (p. 127). At the same time, the volume highlights the singularity of the néo-contes which are shown to be influenced by literary language to a greater extent than either of the other types of narration and thus to be characterized by an oralité seconde. A particular strength of this volume is the attention given to difficulties posed by the field: Carruthers balances critical problematising of terminology, concepts and methodology with clarity in explaining her own understanding and the decisions she takes. It would perhaps have been useful to give the reader more access to the numerical detail (used, for example, to determine which tense-switches are dominant in a particular genre); its absence, however, presumably reflects the difficulties involved in carrying out the calculations, as the author herself indicates in the first chapter. In sum, Carruthers' book is a genuinely original contribution to the field that puts the performed story on the map as a new genre for linguistic study and also improves our understanding of tense usage and temporal patterning in French.