- 36 - Often evaluations are imputed to the hearer or to other people referred to in the discourse.
Any participant in a discourse can be assumed to have his own opinions of things, and the speaker may feel that he knows what those opinions are sufficiently well to include
them. 1975:61 There is, however, a viewpoint constraint, which has to do with the speaker’s obligation to
“connect any evaluation that he gives with the possibility that he can give it legitimately”. The second kind of evaluation is that of the culture within which the speaker is speaking
and the conventions of the society she represents. The ancient Greek chorus served this purpose by indicating the values of society and including them in the play. It is perhaps
highly unlikely that we would discover some of these cultural norms overtly expressed in the narratives of young subjects, but it would certainly be noteworthy if we did The
nearest thing to it is the expectation in the minds of British children that Father Christmas will bring them toys at Christmas time if they are good, expressed here by Sheiba in her
Story A: 19
“And who is Father Christmas?” 20
he said. 21
“He’s the one 22
who gives little children some toys 23
and they be very good.”
2.4.3 Types of Evaluation
Evaluative devices are not easy to identify and categorize, for, according to Polanyi 1981a:165 “there are evaluation devices at every level of language structure and use”.
Labov identifies four distinct types, or levels of evaluation: 1. External evaluation
2. Embedded evaluation 3. Evaluative action and
4. Evaluation by suspension of the action. With external evaluation, the narrator turns to the listener directly and tells himher “what the
point is”, thus interrupting the flow of the narrative in order to do so. One of Labov’s examples is part of a secretary’s account of a hair-raising plane trip “in which the plane
almost didn’t get over the mountains”. Her narrative is punctuated with comments such as:
- 37 - gg
and it was the strangest feeling because you couldn’t tell
if they were really gonna make it hh
if they didn’t make it, it was such a small little plane,
there was no chance for anybody. We have no examples of external evaluation in our data; no child says, “This is a funny
story” or “I like Billy-the-Twit because he is so stupid”. But Sakander does say: 1
Billy-the-Twit was a cowboy. 2
He was a stupid cowboy. 3
Because he has a name 4
called Billy-the-Twit 5
they call him “The Twit”. Story C
The evaluation is definitely there but it is part of the setting or Orientation, an integral part of the narrative. A possible explanation is given for this in the evaluation section. See p. 39.
Embedded evaluation involves the narrator describing his 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. Labov’s examples include one of a narrator “quoting himself as addressing someone else”:
q I say, “Calvin, I’m bust your head for that’
Although she is not telling a story about herself, Shvinder’s Story B: 11
And Father Christmas said, 12
“I can’t keep them till next Christmas. 13
I must sell them to a worsest team 14
that never won before.” is also of this order. She could have said, “Father Christmas wanted to sell them to the
worst football team he could find”; but to put the words into his mouth brings the situation vividly to life and the listener right into the protagonist’s dilemma. Wierzbicka
1974 has the following to say about direct speech:
- 38 - The person who reports another’s words by quoting them, temporarily assumes the role of
that person, “plays his part”, that is to say, imagines himself as the other person and for a moment behaves in accordance with this counter-factual assumption. 1974: 272
Labov’s subjects, in their narratives of personal experience, imagined themselves back in the experience they were describing and so played themselves.
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. Labov gives an example of this from the story of the plane trip mentioned above though only a few
clauses are reproduced here: nnn
and when we saw that he was really over ooo
and then everybody heaved a sigh of relief ppp
and everybody came to qqq
and put away their prayer beads We have no problem visualizing the scene; the last clause is particularly telling. In her
version of Story A, Shvinder uses both embedded evaluation and evaluative action to indicate her protagonist’s amazement:
28 But when he saw it again
29 he dropped his bowl and his spoon
30 and he said,
31 “I didn’t know
32 rice could speak”
Evaluation by suspension of the action is where the narrator deliberately breaks off his story to “call attention to that part of the narrative” and indicate “to the listener that this has some
connection with the evaluative point”. This fourth kind of evaluation demands considerable verbal skill which is perhaps beyond that of young narrators. Shvinder gets
near to it in her version of Story A, in an “evaluation section” which includes the example quoted above. Without reproducing the whole story, the plot can be outlined as follows:
Mr. Wong from the Chinese Take-away runs out of rice. He discusses the situation with his wife.
They cannot find a solution.
- 39 - He sees a snowman at his front door but thinks he is a sack of rice.
He goes to get a bowl and a spoon. EVALUATION SECTION
24 Suddenly the rice started to talk
25 and Mr. Wong thought that
26 the rice didn’t talk
27 and he was talking.
28 But when he saw it again
29 he dropped his bowl and his spoon
30 and he said,
31 “I didn’t know
32 rice could speak”
There follows a long conversation where the two participants introduce themselves. The snowman tells Mr. Wong about Father Christmas
then he departs. Mr. Wong writes a letter to Father Christmas.
Father Christmas drops a bag of rice down his chimney. Mr. Wong’s customers are satisfied.
The action is suspended to explain the main point of the story, i.e. that Mr. Wong thinks the snowman is a sack of rice. The long conversation that follows the section we have
highlighted also continues to suspend the action to some extent, as the snowman then tells him exactly who he is.
Labov describes these types, or levels, of evaluation as “the large-scale, external mechanisms of evaluation”. Tannen 1982b draws the distinction between external
evaluation and the rest, which she groups together as “internal evaluation”. Internal evaluation is within the story frame; external evaluation is outside the story frame. She links
external evaluation with written discourse and internal with spoken. Oral storytellers use strategies which build on “interpersonal involvement to create the sense of identification,
or involvement, with characters and tellers of stories” and “internal evaluation contributes to” this “sense of identification, while external evaluation makes explicit what the point
is—a feature of literate-based strategies”. As indicated above, we have found no examples
- 40 - of external evaluation in the data. This is what we would expect, as the narration took place
in the context of a forty-five minute session, which included two other activities and plenty of free conversation. Thus, in such a setting, the focus was on interaction and
“interpersonal involvement” which influenced the narrators more profoundly than the semi-literary style of the original versions of the stories they were telling.
2.4.4 Evaluative Devices and the Labov Model
