Binding and unfolding: Towards the linguistic construction of narrative discourse

Abstract

In order to explore the relationship between the linguistic and conceptual structuring of narratives, this article focuses on linguistic markings that identify transitions in the structure of a text. Comparing and contrasting the specific linguistic devices that are used by American and German narrators to differentiate between the initiating event of the theme of a 24‐page picture book, subsequent reinstantiations, continuations, and the final outcome, two types of narrative orientations are identified and outlined: (a) differentiating events referentially along the horizontal axis of narrative organization; and (b) integrating events into the vertical, hierarchical organization of the overall theme of the narrative. A constraint on the specific ways that narrators use to establish these orientations derives from the linguistic devices available within particular languages. In the final section, these concurrent processes are discussed in terms of the language‐specific activities of binding and unfolding narrative events.