A Structural and Functional Analysis of Dream Narratives

This article demonstrates that elicited dream narratives use a differing narrative structural and functional framework, as proposed by Labov and Waletzky's (1967) narrative framework on elicited personal narratives. A quantitative structural and functional analysis of five male and female colle...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Dreaming (New York, N.Y.) N.Y.), 2008-03, Vol.18 (1), p.16-26
Main Author: Cariola, Laura Annamaria
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Dream Content
Dreaming
Female
Human
Male
Narratives
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Summary:This article demonstrates that elicited dream narratives use a differing narrative structural and functional framework, as proposed by Labov and Waletzky's (1967) narrative framework on elicited personal narratives. A quantitative structural and functional analysis of five male and female collected samples showed that dream narratives follow a homogenous structure of (1) Topic introduction, (2) Orientation, (3) Complication, (4) Evaluation, and (5) Coda, consequently reflecting the omission of Labov and Waletzky's (1967) proposed resolution unit, which confirms Labov's (1997) suggestion of the difficulty to distinguish between resolution and coda. Moreover, this article devotes attention to specific structural particularities, proposing that analepses and prolepses might indicate, firstly, the simultaneous processing of new spatial information and new protagonists, and secondly, reflecting indirectly the experience of dream bizarreness.
ISSN:1053-0797
1573-3351
DOI:10.1037/1053-0797.18.1.16