An Analysis of Nominal Reference Forms in English Conversational Stories

Abstract

This paper attempts to account for various uses of nominal reference forms in English conversational stories with special reference to the discourse-organizational and stance-marking functions. Focusing on references to persons introduced in conversational stories, I analyze cases in which a canonical distribution of reference forms is violated, e.g., cases in which a name is used when a pronoun is expected, by taking into account how the story is organized in terms of episodes and foreground/background distinction. I also attempt to explicate the interactional functions of reference forms like names, descriptive noun phrases, zero-anaphora, and demonstrative noun phrases by relating the organization of story-telling sequences to the speaker's stance toward the referent. The findings suggest that the uses of nominal reference forms often go beyond referring to a referent, and perform special interactional functions by conveying various types of non-referential information about the speaker's affective stance toward the referent and discourse structure in a given interactional context.