Labov & Waletzky Narrative Structure

William Labov, Joshua Waletzky · 1972

Labov and Waletzky's six structural components of oral narrative for annotating how a story is told.

Labov and Waletzky showed that fully formed oral narratives of personal experience share a recurring six-part structure: an optional abstract previews what the story is about; the orientation sets the scene (who, when, where); the complicating action is the sequence of events that carries the plot; evaluation conveys the point and the narrator's stance on why the story matters; the resolution tells how the events turned out; and an optional coda returns the listener to the present.

This scheme is the standard instrument for annotating the architecture of a told story rather than its content. Tag each clause or span with the narrative function it performs. Evaluation is often woven through the other components as asides and intensifiers — code it wherever the narrator steps out of pure event-reporting to signal significance, and reserve complicating action for narrative clauses that advance the temporal sequence.

Domains (6)

AbstractABS

A brief preview or summary of what the narrative will be about.

Curated skill
OrientationORI

Setting the scene: the who, when, where, and situation.

Curated skill
Complicating ActionCMP

The sequence of events that advances the plot.

Curated skill
EvaluationEVL

The narrator's commentary on the point and significance of the story.

Curated skill
ResolutionRES

How the complicating action was finally resolved.

Curated skill
CodaCOD

A closing that returns the listener from the story to the present.

Curated skill
Labov W. The transformation of experience in narrative syntax. In: Language in the Inner City: Studies in the Black English Vernacular. University of Pennsylvania Press; 1972:354-396.

Conceptual framework — free to operationalize with citation. Category definitions are the author's own operational wording, not reproduced verbatim from a copyrighted manual.