Story and story-telling: communicative roles, social status and speech acts

Abstract

The article examines the communicative features of oral storytelling about prophetic dreams and communications presented within the story, involving its characters. The material consists of two versions of the story about the same dream recorded by the authors, heard in two different situations. The communicative structure of the series of stories is represented by interactions on three communicative levels: 1) among the participants of the interview – in this case between collectors of folklore and their interlocutor; 2) among the story characters – participants in the events represented; 3) among characters in “stories within a story” – for example, a retelling inside a dream. The scheme of communicative levels of V. Schmid’s artistic narrative has been adapted for analyzing oral storytelling in direct interpersonal communication situations. At each level we consistently examined the figures of communicants (their nominations and addresses) and primary speech genres of communication. One of the most notable features of internal communications is their “openness”, when the living and the dead, distant and close, spirits and people communicate freely. According to our assumption, the subject of stories about prophetic dream is the openness of communication between everyone and everyone. At the level of interpersonal communication between the narrator and the listeners, the story allows to express their metaphysical sensitivity and magical competence.