CHAPTER I I

Narrative Discourse Analysis

and Legal Texts

Gail Stygall
University of Washington

Narrative is much discussed in composition, but little studied.

Discussion of narrative as a linguistic discourse phenomena or genre
is almost altogether missing, yet it offers a potentially powerful
research methodology to composition studies. This reluctance to
engage narrative as a linguistic phenomena can be accounted for, I
think, by narrative's ke3rword status in both composition and rhetoric
and in English studies more generally. By keyword, I mean to invoke
Raymond Williams' sense of a term as one in which the term itself is
"inextricably bound up with the problems it was being used to dis-
cuss" (13). Keywords also cover broad ideological ground, leaving
those using the terms believing they share understandings of the
terms, when, in fact, they do not. Within English studies, the use of
the term narrative signifies hierarchies and privileging of certain
types of narrative over others (e.g., fiction over, say, social workers'
reports), although they are constructed of linguistically similar ele-
ments.
In composition and rhetoric, invoking narrative signifies cer-
tain positions within the field, perhaps a stance in support of the use
of personal experience in school-sponsored writing or an indication of
a preference for a writing curriculum based in personal experience,

257
258 STYGALL

and more recently, the need for underrepresented students to connect

their personal narratives and experiences to academic genres
(Guerra). It also often indicates a type of text genre with a develop-
ment schemata attached to it, as in description precedes narrative,
which is followed by exposition and then argument and persuasion.
Work in writing assessment in the public schools often first evaluates
narratives in the elementary grades, then adds exposition and argu-
ment as students age (Gearhart and Wolfe). Likewise, the National
Assessment of Educational Progress evaluates student work in these
three categories, with an underlying developmental perspective
(Applebee). As a research methodology, it is associated with qualita-
tive research, particularly ethnography and case studies, but the nar-
rative analysis is usually more associated with re-telling the story
(and how ethically to re-tell the story) rather than with the narrative
itself as an object of study (Newkirk; Sullivan). It also appears as a
more abstract form in work on the presence of narrative in profes-
sional genres (Battalio; Joumet).
With so many representations of narrative in composition,
narrative's status as ideological keyword rather than discourse arti-
fact and object of study is assured. Part of the ideological safety rep-
resented in the term is its association with literature. Narrative is
what brings many people to the study of English and it becomes a
term we can all be "comfortable" in advancing. Thus, although narra-
tive signifies story in a broad sense, narrative also simultaneously
signifies both literature and a particular branch of theorizing, narra-
tology. From the Russian Formalists' development of story grammar
(Propp), to European phenomenological narrative theorists
(Ingarden, Ricoeur, Poulet), from reader response approaches (Iser,
Jauss), from structuralists and semiotic approaches (Barthes,
Todorov, Genette) to Marxist views (Jameson, Lukács), narrative the-
orizing is dominated by literature. Discussion of literary narratives
often include reference to plot, character, events, point of view, time
and duration, narrator, and focalization, concepts only partially use-
ful in discussing narrative in nonliterary settings.
Even work in composition and rhetoric tends to invoke liter-
ary definitions for frame of reference. In Enos' thorough, useful com-
pilation of reference materials, the Encyclopedia of Rhetoric and
Composition, the entry on narration is primarily literary in orienta-
tion (Patnoe and Phelan). Although the entry includes a brief discus-
sion of narrative in folklore and anthropology, there is no mention of
narrative in composition and rhetoric, a curious lack. Penner, in her
entry on narrative theory in Theorizing Composition, also reports on
literary theories about narrative, while suggesting that narrative is
less well received in composition and rhetoric because of the institu-
 NARRATIVE DISCOURSE ANALYSIS 259

tional privileging of expository and argumentative forms of writing

(197). Although Penner makes reference to narrative analysis occur-
ring in a wide range of fields, including law, psychotherapy, and eco-
nomics, she does not connect this phenomena with studying narra-
tive forms in the writing of those disciplines.
Interestingly, in a reference source devoted to linguistic liter-
ary terms, Wales' A Dictionary of Stylistics, there is the clearest ref-
erence to narrative in rhetorical study, yet it doesn't have much to do
with linguistics. Most linguistic dictionaries and encyclopedias from
the United Kingdom, as Wales' does, ignore sociolinguistic or dis-
course analysis of narrative altogether. The second entry under nar-
ration reads as follows:

In traditional RHETORIC, narratio "narration" is that part of a

speech or discourse in which the facts are presented, or a story as
exemplum ("example"), before the conclusion or "moral." It is still
present in the law courts of today in the summaries of witnesses,
etc.

Not just limited to the narratio of the law courts' "Facts" section, a
variety of contemporary professional texts contain significant narra-
tive sections, history, psychology, and social work being obvious
examples. Legal texts provide a rich terrain for narrative analysis.
The "Facts" section of legal cases is not the only form of narration in
legal texts, as is seen in the case study presented here. Litigation
files, the trial court's record of all legal pleadings and responses, con-
tain a number of possible narratives. Legal narratives of procedure
are another form of narrative found in appellate court decisions.
Thus, the understanding of narrative most widely articulated in com-
position and rhetoric draws heavily on a literary conception, even
though such a conception masks the importance of narrative in pro-
fessional and everyday texts.

OVERVIEW

Narrative is equally slippery in linguistics. Many linguists think first

of stylistics as the proper place for the study of narrative. The growth
of sociolinguistics and discourse analysis, however, produced new
nonliterary analyses of narrative. The rise in interest in study of nar-
rative in sociolinguistics is often attributed to Labov and Waletsky's
article "Narrative Analysis: Oral Versions of Personal Experience."
In that article, Labov and Waletsky provide a detailed method of
260 STYGALL

analyzing narratives, and this work was followed by a numher of

researchers who elaborated, revised, and reorganized the analysis,
including Deborah Schiffrin, Deborah Tannen, and Charlotte Linde.
Lahov's approach, of course, is not the only means of analysis avail-
able. Chafe's essay, "The Deployment of Consciousness in the
Production of a Narrative," and his more recent Discourse,
Consciousness, and Time, especially the chapter, "Discourse Topics,"
gives another model, though with similar basic elements of the nar-
rative included. Polanyi's Telling the American Story draws from
Labov's work, but uses the analysis as a starting point for developing
a framework for examining distinctly "American" narratives. Gee
developed a stanzaic analysis of oral narratives that sorts narrative
tellings into lines, stanzas, and sections, and differentiates between
"poetic" narrative performance and "prosaic" narrative performance.
Ochs provides an excellent overview, hoth of her own work in narra-
tive and of narrative in discourse analysis in her chapter,
"Narrative," in Discourse Structure and Process.
Anyone working with Lahovian sociolinguistics, as I am here,
should understand that most of Labov's work is primarily quantita-
tive in orientation and only rarely has he continued to analyze narra-
tive. In a retrospective collection of articles about the 1967 Lahov-
Waletsky analysis, he says that he pursued

quantitative studies of language variation and change, in which

cumulative theories can be built upon decisive answers to succes-
sively more general questions. The discussion of narrative and
other speech events at the discourse level rarely allows us to
prove anything. It is essentially a hermeneutic study, in which
continual engagement with the discourse as it was delivered
gains entrance to the speaker and the audience, tracing the
transfer of information and experience in a way that deepens our
own understandings of what language and social life are all
about. (395-96)

The preference for the "science" of quantitative sociolinguistics,

expressed hy Lahov, may put rhetoricians at odds with sociolinguists.
At the same time he describes narrative study as hermeneutic he
also points to the ambiguities of using linguistic analysis to study
narrative. On the one hand, we use linguistic features as a means of
identifying some features that narratives may share. On the other
hand, we use rhetorical specifications and conventions of particular
communities to enunciate the particularities of individual narratives.
The tension between identifying linguistic structure as a part of the
analysis and the post-structuralist distrust of identified structure
 NARRATIVE DISCOURSE ANALYSIS 261

becoming the equivalent of universal meaning is a constant compan-

ion for contemporary narrative research. I like to think that the close
analysis of linguistic structure gives me a platform from which a dif-
ferent view of the narrative text can be gained. I notice patterns that
otherwise would be invisible to me, and these patterns allow me to
make connections between single narratives and larger cultural dis-
courses. In the case study that follows, I begin my analysis with a
version of Labovian narrative, enhance that version by attention to
legal discourse conventions, and finally move to connections with cul-
tural discourses.
Narrative in legal settings is not the drama of film and televi-
sion. In the prototypical legal scene—the trial courtroom—the narra-
tives of witnesses are highly restricted (cf. Barry; Merry; O'Barr;
Phillips; Walker). As discussed in Stygall (Trial Language), the
restrictions on narrative are a function of legal procedure and the
rules of evidence. These restrictions are encoded so thoroughly that
the use of an improper evidential, such as hearsay or conclusion, is
usually enough to draw an objection from the opposing attorney,
interrupting the normal flow of the narrative. Attorney practice
hooks often include the advice that one's own witnesses should be
given a good deal of narrative license, whereas opposing witnesses
should be interrupted as often as procedurally possible. Thus, the
ordinary witness on the stand can only tell the story in terms of what
he or she saw, touched, heard (although not the words of others
unless they, too, will testify), or smelled. Labovian narrative, in
which some evaluation is expected, is excluded from the scene of tes-
timony. The ordinary witness cannot say, for example, "and he was a
real fool for doing that," even though such conclusory remarks are
normally part of the evaluation clauses of conversational narrative.
Even the common clause "I think" may be considered out of bounds
when applied to thinking about people's motivations and reactions.
Ordinary witnesses do not have graduate degrees in medicine or psy-
chology, so what they "think" is not "evidence." The expert witness
can draw conclusions about the narrow area in which her or his
expertise is drawn, but is also restricted by the hearsay rule. As
Chafe reports in "Evidentiality in English Conversation and
Academic Writing," academics use hearsay evidentials heavily to
refer to the work of others in their written texts, but in legal testimo-
ny, the invoking of the work of others can be dangerous. If the work
of the others is so important, so the legal community's folk wisdom
says, it can diminish the credibility of the expert on the witness
stand.
Attorneys have three opportunities to tell "stories" in trial,
but as with witnesses, those opportunities are restricted by legal pro-
262 STYGALL

cedure. Many attomeys use the voir dire, or jury questioning period,
as the first chance to produce a narrative (cf. Uehara and Candlin).
As they ask prospective jurors questions about the suitability to
become jurors, attorneys may insert brief narrative segments of
"their" case. In opening statements, attomeys give an overview of
their case, listing witnesses and their relation to the gist of the case,
but rules of procedure require that these overviews not become argu-
mentative. Only in closing argument can the attomeys relate the
narrative of the case, but even there, the attorney cannot go beyond
the evidence actually presented in the case.
If narrative forms are unusual in the trial setting, they are
also unusual in the text world of law. The dominant narrative of
written legal texts is that of the legal process. In memos, trial briefs,
and appellate court decisions, the careful accounting of chronological-
ly sequenced legal events become the privileged narrative. If the
reader is not familiar with the appropriate sequence of legal texts, he
or she will have difficulty understanding the texts as narrative in
structure. To lay readers of appellate decisions, the "facts" section, a
brief summary of the relevant events leading to litigation found at
the beginning of opinions, seem curiously stripped of relevant narra-
tive detail. Recent work within composition studies on judicial opin-
ions—the dissertations of Conway, Ranney, Parks, and Stephan—
examine the rhetorical, language, and ideological aspects of these
opinions in important and productive ways, but they do not focus on
features of narrative found in those opinions.
The text world of the legal discourse community is immense.
As argued in Stygall ("Texts in Oral Contexts"), even the oral presen-
tation in the courtroom of jury instructions is deeply interlaced with
a large body of written legal texts, making legal discourse typically
more oriented to text than it is to the spoken language. The commu-
nity as a whole produces volumes of text in legal opinions, statutes,
governmental regulations, and pleadings. If at least part of the work
of compositionists includes understanding the production and con-
sumption of texts in the professional world, the legal community
seems an ideal community in which to study that production and con-
sumption, and the effects of both. Yet studies of legal texts are rarely
seen under the banner of research in composition. Concurrently, the
use of narrative analysis has been limited to either early school-spon-
sored assessment or as a part of a case study or ethnographic
research (cf. Newkirk). Thus, typically, we have studied neither legal
discourse nor narrative in professional settings. What we know about
how texts function in those settings in which there are high stakes
and consequences for the writers can be augmented by narrative dis-
course analysis, as I suggest in the following case study.
 NARRATIVE DISCOURSE ANALYSIS 263

CASE STUDY

Finding the Materials

For my analysis, I draw from the texts that are a part of my larger
project on textual narratives of divorce drawn from the clerk's
records of King County (Seattle, Washington) from 1992 through
1994. This 300 file sample of family law litigation includes about 60
contested files and from that group of 60 contested cases 32 highly
contested files. By highly contested, I mean that the litigants argued
up through the start of a full trial, sometimes completing the trial,
pursuing a full judge's adjudication of the marital assets and care
and custody of the children (if any). In these cases, litigants typically
produce extensive witnesses, and the pleadings come not only from
the litigants themselves but also from their friends, neighbors, social
workers or psychologists and psychiatrists, police, accountants, and
other relatives. Some of the files grew to 2 and 3 feet in height.
All of the narrative materials I selected were from public
records held by the King County Clerk. That means anyone can ask
for the files, but selecting a large enough sample meant that having
more extensive access was necessary. After clearing my project with
our Human Subjects Committee (which found no human subject
involvement in using only the public records), I wrote to the King
County Clerk and asked for an appointment to come in and explain
the project and what sort of access would be useful. All of the most
recent files were held on a single fioor of the multistory administra-
tion building. With the Clerk's assistance, I became a "bulk user" of
files, allowing me to have multiple files checked out at the same time,
giving me a bar-coded identification allowing me direct access to the
files, and began photocopying multiple files.
The narratives in these files, sometimes written entirely by
the litigants, and sometimes written in conjunction with a lawyer or
paralegal, are notable for attempting to find fault in a no-fault world
of divorce. From the legal framework, only three elements matter:

• Did you live in King County long enough to qualify as a res-

ident?
• Where and when were you legally married?
• And does one of you declare the marriage to be "irretriev-
ably broken"?
None of these questions requires a narrative response. None of these
questions requires the finding of fault or the affixing of blame. But,
264 STYGALL

inevitably in highly contested cases, blame and fault drive the narra-
tives told. Thus, paradoxically, in a legal system that spends enor-
mous resources on identifying causal factors in most other areas of
legal practice, in family law fault disappears in the actual pleadings.
Instead of identifjáng the person who is to "blame" for the end of the
marriage, the requirement is simply for someone to declare the mar-
riage ended. Moreover, the no-fault framework dismisses narrative
completely, leaving no opportunity for the litigants to tell their sto-
ries. And, even in cases in which children or property are at issue,
"blame" is replaced with adjudication about which party is legally
entitled to property and about which parent will serve the "best
interests of the children." Narrative, nonetheless, manages to reap-
pear in the attachments to the legal pleadings.
Beginning the Analysis

One of the most striking characteristics of the highly contested files

was that in each file there was at least one crucial narrative incident,
and sometimes several such incidents, related by the litigants them-
selves, with iterations from other observers of the actual incident and
those who have opinions about the incident, whether lay or profes-
sional. It is to one of these multiply narrated incidents that I turn
now for my case study. This feature, the multiple narrations, allows
me to compare "tellings" of the same story. It can make evident dif-
ferences in narrative strategies, as well as make clearer the rhetori-
cal strategies to which the narrative is put in the legal setting.
My analysis proceeds from the single narrative analysis out-
ward, to the multiple narratives in the case to the cultural discourses
in which they participate. I begin with analysis of the initiating nar-
rative, analyze it for typical narrative structures, turn to the next
text in which the narrative is present, identify key differences in the
narratives, and then evaluate how the narratives adapt to the rhetor-
ical demands of the legal context and the cultural stories we tell
about marriage and divorce.
In this case, both litigants were Filipino Americans. In the orig-
inal case, a divorce by default had been granted. Default dissolutions
are typically granted when one of the parties has disappeared and
efforts made to find him or her were unsuccessful. They usually take
place after notice of the pending dissolution or other family law action
has been published in a local legal newspaper, a newspaper no one but
lawyers reads (or even knows about). In the pleading that follows,
Madelle Langulj has returned from her period of being unreachable
and, although agreeable to the divorce itself, wants to change the terms
of the decree of divorce granted in her absence. Paul Langulj has been
 NARRATIVE DISCOURSE ANALYSIS 265

the sole caretaker of his 5-year-old stepdaughter since her mother's dis-
appearance and he was granted custody. In their initial filings with the
court, both refer to an incident at the moment of the relationship's final
failure. Madelle accuses Paul of domestic violence; Paul relates a differ-
ent story. They don't even agree on the date of the incident.

Narrative Analysis. My analysis begins with breaking the rel-

evant affidavits into clauses. Researchers into narrative typically use
the clause as the appropriate unit of analysis. With each clause, I
include the clause's modifiers as well. I numher the clauses so that I
can make reference to them in my analysis. With written documents,
as is the case with this analysis, medial clauses may appear, clauses
that interrupt a main clause, in the middle of a sentence, perhaps as
a relative clause. When that type of clause appears, I separate and
number the main clause first, with ellipses to indicate the missing
clause and then include the medial clause as the next numbered
clause. Sometimes clauses need to be partially reconstructed. The rel-
ative pronouns, especially that, are often deleted, and when that
happens I use brackets to indicate a deleted element. Similarly, when
a clause appears to have multiple verb phrases, I may reconstruct
these into separate clauses. In legal cases, in which each separate
verb may relate to a separate claim, it is useful to reconstruct a full
clause when the verb phrases indicate different actions semantically.
In Madelle's narrative, for example, in line 2, Madelle indicates Paul
"yelled, screamed and called me names," all of which seem to he quite
similar, as common actions in an argument. However, as will be seen
in Madelle's first declaration in lines 31 and 32, leaving and fleeing
have important legal distinctions, so I have separated them.
The next task is to divide the document into its narrative com-
ponents. From research in sociolinguistics and discourse analysis, the
narrative typically is divided into an introductory segment, which may
overview the coming narrative in an abstract, and which gives the
place, time, and context for the narrative in an orientation or setting
constituent. Sometimes elements of setting are delayed until they
become necessary in the narrative, so not all details will necessarily
appear in the initial orientation or setting segment. After this intro-
ductory segment, a numher of clauses follow, primarily in temporal
order, in which an event or series of events move toward a key element
or complicating action. As Ochs puts it, "All characterizations of stories
specify a key event that disrupts the equilibrium of ordinary, expected
circumstances" (197). At the moment of the key event or complicating
action, the tense of the verbs may shift from forms of the past tense
into the historical present tense. The historical present tense (HP) is a
specialized narrative tense signaling the replacement of the
266 STYGALL

speaking/telling of the narrative with the narrative itself. Verbs move

fi-om past tense to present tense and are oft»n associated with verbs of
saying and telling. From this key event, an evaluation segment may
follow, often itself in HP (Schiffrin 59). Sometimes an account or expla-
nation justifying the actor or narrator's actions may be interspersed
into the narrative structure. A coda may conclude the narrative, per-
haps by indicating the next topic, as in "and the next thing was. . . ."
The coda may also end the narrative by "stepCping] back from the nar-
rated events to provide a metacomment on them" (Chafe, Discourse
132). This type of coda may repeat a key comment from a previous seg-
ment, or provide a new general comment on the events.
I have separated Madelle Langulj's declaration in support of
her request to set aside the original dissolution into clauses, and
assigned relevant segments. Madelle's declaration begins with an
abstract and orientation in lines 1 through 6. She asserts: "I have been
in a very abusive relationship with my husband Paul" in line 1. She fol-
lows by fixing "fault," in lines 2 through 5, which sets the context of
domestic violence: yelling, screaming, name-calling, and hitting. "He
has kept control of the monies of the community" is Madelle's first
signal of adjusting her narrative to the setting in which her narrative is
to be read, the legal community, with laypeople being unlikely to refer
to family assets in this way. Here also Madelle initiates what Labov
calls the causality theorem, by Madelle having selected her reportable
event—the night that Paul threatened her life—and then she identifies
prior events—his ongoing emotional and physical violence and control—
that answer the "How did this happen question?" (Labov). In Madelle's
narrative, Paul's prior actions are to blame for what occurred in March
1993—fieeing Paul and leaving her daughter behind.

Narrative 1
Declaration of Madelle Langu^

1 I have been in a very abusive rela-

ABSTRACT/ORIENTATION
tionship with my husband Paul
Langulj.
2 He has not only yelled, screamed
and called me names
3 but he has hit me as well
4 He has kept control of the monies of
the community
5 and [he] generally [has] been very
controlling.

6 On March 12, 1993, Paul exploded.

 NARRATIVE DISCOURSE ANALYSIS 267

He, in afitof rage told me to leave

the house right then
8 or he would kill me.
He repeatedly screamed death
9 treats [sic],
"you, w h _ _ e, if you don't get out
10 ofhere right now
KEY EVENT/COMPLICATING ACTION 11 I will kill you.
12 "If I see you again
13 Your [sic] dead."
14 I was afraid
15 and [I] fled.

16 Now my parents are here in Seattle

17 And I left Mary with my mother to
look after.
KEY EVENT/COMPLICATING ACTION 2 18 I was afraid
18 [that] he would kill me
19 I asked them
20 what I should do
21 and they said
22 [that] they would take care of Mary
23 and [that] I should leave.
KEY EVENT/COMPLICATING ACTION 3
24 Paul knew
25 [that] I kept in contact with my
parents.
26 Paul knew
27 that if he had to get in touch with me
28 [that] he could through my parents.
29 Paul not only knew
30 but Paul demanded
31 that I leave the house
32 and [that I] flee from him.
REPORT
33 Right after he drove me out of the
house
34 and I went into hiding
35 because of these death threats
36 he ran down
37 and [he] saw a lawyer
38 On March 16th he claimed
39 [that] I had heen "acting strangely"
40 and then I just disappeared.
41 Nowhere did he tell the court
42 that he had driven me into hiding
43 because [he made] death threats.
44 Hefileda petition for legal separation
268 STYGALL

EXTERNAL EVALUATION
45 On March 24th Paul signed a decla-
ration for service by publication.
46 In these he also neglected to say
anything about the prior assaults
or death threats,
47 Or the fact that I had been calling
my parents to check on Mary
48 and [to check whether] Paul was
still so furious
49 that he was still a danger to me.
EVALUATION
50 What I heard was
51 That he not only was still mad at
me,
52 But he was still looking to get me
53 And I had better stay away from
him in hiding.

In the analysis of the three key events that follow, I am particularly

interested in where the HP appears. The HP's value as a pointer to
the key narrative action provides a useful comparison between narra-
tives about the same set of events. As is seen, Madelle and Paul use
the historical present to emphasize quite different parts of their nar-
ratives.
Lines 7 through 15 in Madelle's written affidavit give the
first version of the key narrative event in the Clerk's file for this case.
In a classic discourse analysis of narrative, lines 6 through 10 mark
the point of key event or complicating action—the threat against
Madelle's life—and it is highlighted by the switch into historical pre-
sent, as in line 10 "if you don't get out," and lines 12 and 13, "If I see
you again, your dead." In this complicating event, Paul is quoted
directly, threatening Madelle's life if she doesn't leave immediately.
This segment has its own mini-abstract and orientation: he. in a fit of
rage, told me to leave the house right then I or he would kill me, with
the causal relation between Paul's being in a fit of rage and his mak-
ing a threat established. The reason for the fit of rage remains
unknown, as Madelle does not provide an explanation for the fit of
rage, and the file contains no other mention of any other incident of
domestic violence. Unusual behavior, as Paul's appears to be in this
incident, requires explanation and Madelle does not provide it. The
issue of domestic violence is a point to which I return later in dis-
cussing the cultural discourses shaping these texts.
A second key event or complicating action follows: Madelle
left her daughter Mary behind. The event is marked, however, by the
 NARRATIVE DISCOURSE ANALYSIS 269

historical present, in the clause my parents are here in Seattle.

Arguably, although perhaps not typically analyzed as such, Madelle's
use of are should be analyzed as historical present: As I found later
in the file, Mary's parents had actually returned to the Philippine
Islands, shortly after she left Paul, and before the writing of this affi-
davit, so this shift is indicative of a state only factually correct in the
historical moment. Mary's unstated rhetorical problem is that she
left her daughter behind and that fact requires both legal and com-
monsense explanation. Overtly, she identifies her problem as some-
one needing to take care of her daughter if she leaves, so Mary con-
sults with her parents—I asked them I what I should do—and they
offer to take care of Mary while Madelle leaves. The legal problem is
one of custody: If Mary is the child of this marriage, then Madelle's
abandonment of her is a factor in child custody issues.
In lines 24 through 32, Madelle provides a further account of
her actions immediately after she left the house, explaining that Paul
did know that she kept in contact with her parents and that meant
that he knew how to get in touch with her, but in a nonsensical fash-
ion demands that she leave and stay in touch at once. This particular
paragraph takes on the form that Gee calls a poetic narrative perfor-
mance (as opposed to prosaic), as the parallel structuring of "Paul
knew . . . Paul knew . . . Paul not only knew . . . " and then closes the
stanza with a return to the historical present. The use of the poetic
strategy at this point in the overall story can be taken as an indica-
tion of the importance of Madelle's providing a reason why her legal
request—to set aside the original divorce decree—should be granted.
In the explanation/account that follows, Madelle begins to
draw her causal reasoning together, although her explanation never
makes explicit the "legal" reason adequate for setting aside the origi-
nal decree of dissolution: Paul's fraudulent petition. Labov argues
that causality is a key part of narrative, suggesting that narratives
answer the question "How did this happen?" (408). Legal narratives
further privilege causality, although certain causes are preferred
over others. Knowing which ones to emphasize increases the plausi-
bility of the narrative in the legal framework. The framework for
Madelle's causal reasoning embedded in the narrative events is dis-
played in Figure 11.1.
The action in lines 33 through 44 shifts away from Madelle
herself and on to Paul. "He drove her out of the house" and so
Madelle "went into hiding/ because of those death threats." Paul "ran
down" and "saw a lawyer." In Madelle's version, Paul sees the lawyer
on the fourth day after their confrontation and Madelle points to
what she considered to be the missing elements in Paul's petition: he
had driven her from their home, he made death threats, and then "he
 270 STYGALL

1-6 Because I was abused, [I left].

7-15 Because Paul threatened my life, I fled.
16-23 Because my parents said they would take care of Mary, I left without
Mary.
24-32 Because Paul knew how to contact me and didn't, [he can't claim that
I disappeared and his petition is fraudulent].
33-44 Because Paul drove me out of the house, [his petition is fraudulent].
45-49 Because Paul did not say he had abused me or
Because he knew where I was, [his petition is fraudulent].
50-53 Because Paul was still furious, I stayed in hiding.

Figure 11.1. Madelle's causal reasoning

filed a petition for separation," although it's unimaginable that Paul

would write a legal petition in which he says that he drove Madelle
from her home, threatened her, and then accused her of virtual
desertion. Suggesting that Paul should have done so indicates
Madelle's distance from the legal arena in which these narratives are
being told. Lines 45 through 49 gives the external evaluation, the
evaluation or lesson of disappearing in the legal system: Paul isn't
really required to search for Madelle. He can "serve" her his petition
for dissolution hy publication, in a venue that Madelle was unlikely
to ever read. Here she repeats her reasons for remaining unavailable:
she called to check on Mary and to see if Paul was "still a danger."
Madelle's own evaluation, in lines 50 through 53, is that it was safer
to continue to stay away.
Madelle's narrative of the demise of the marriage is incom-
plete without reference to Paul's story, so the next stage is to conduct
the same sort of analysis with Paul's story, as follows:
Narrative 2
Declaration of Paul Langu^'

1 Madelle LangulJ, the respondent

herein, has asked the court to set
aside the Decree of Dissolution
entered on July 8, 1993 on the
grounds of "fraud on the court,"
among other things.
 NARRATIVE DISCOURSE ANALYSIS 271

2 In substance, my ex-wife chUms

ABSTRACT/ORIENTATION
3 that I made threats of physical
abuse against fier, including death
threats, causing her to flee the mari-
tal home
4 She argues
5 that because her absence was
induced by these alleged threats,
6 the Order of Default... was defective
7 which preceded entry of judgment
in this case
8 and the Order should therefore be
vacated.
9 I deny categorically
10 that I made any threats of physical
abuse against my ex-wife, including
death threats.

REPORT
11 The simple plain fact of the matter is
12 that she got tired of me
13 and she got tired of our marriage
14 and she tired of our daughter
15 and [she] ran away with another
man
16 who she had been seeing on the
side for several months.

EVALUATION
17 Sir months or so later, when the
affair petered out
18 and she found herself high and dry
without any money in Texas,
19 She decided to come back home
20 and [she decided] to see
21 what she could get out of me.
ABSTRACT 2
22 Without going into great detail, the
events. . . were as follows
23 which preceded her departure
ORIENTATION 24 On Saturday, March 6, she disap-
peared without explanation.
25 At that time, her mother and father
were living with me as well as her
daughter Mary
26 who was bom during the time
27 [that] we were married
272 STYGALL

28 b u t who is not m y biological daugh-

ter.
29 When my ex-wife disappeared,
30 she had her car,
31 hut [she had] no other personal
belongings.
32 Both her parents and I were greatly
fearful for her safety
33 and we suspected
34 that she had heen the victim of foul
play.
35 A Missing Persons Report was
ñled.
REPORT
36 On the Monday following the
Saturday that she left,
37 I received word
38 that she had heen seen in her car in
the neighhorhood.
39 I went looking for her
40 and I saw her parked on the side of
the road not far from our home.
41 I spoke to her,
42 and she retumed home with me.
43 Although I attempted to get her to
tell me
44 where she had been
45 and who she had heen with,
46 she would not speak to me.
47 She stayed at home for the remain-
der of Monday and all of Tuesday.
48 There were no fights, arguments, or
threats.
49 On Wednesday morning, I went to
work,
50 and when I came home from work
at approximately 6:00 on
Wednesday evening, the 10th of
March 1993,
51 her father told me
52 that she had packed a couple of
suitcases
53 and [she] left in a taxicab
54 and that she would not be returning.
55 I asked him
56 where she went,
57 and he told me
 NARRATIVE DISCOURSE ANALYSIS 273

58 that she had gone to be with another

man.
59 She did not take her daughter
Mary.
60 Over the next four or five days, she
did call twice
61 and she spoke to her mother,
62 but she did not disclose her where-
abouts.

63 Afler that, there was no further

contact
64 until she called collect from Texas
approximately seven months later.
65 / made repeated inquiries to friends
and acquaintances of hers in an
attempt to locate her.
66 Nobody knew
67 where she went,
68 and her friend and confidante,
Rosalda Schreiner, told me
69 that Madelle had been running
around with this man for quite
some time,
70 and that when she left,
71 she left to be with her new bo3rfriend.
72 Please see the Declaration of
Rosalda Schreiner.
73 which also states
74 that when Madelle got back to the
state of Washington,
75 she contacted Rosalda
76 and she told Rosalda
EVALUATION
77 that her goal and motivation was to
take advantage of me financially.

I make two observations here, which I see as key to understanding

Paul's version. First, although Paul's version has the same general
shape as that of a classic narrative, he has produced a report, rather
than a story, and this positions him better rhetorically in the legal
discourse setting. It also moves Paul closer to the legally sanctioned
forms of "telling" in a divorce-related action. Polanyi makes a useful
distinction between narratives and reports, when she observes that a
report often presents exactly the same events and states, but does so
when elicited by a recipient or "in response to circumstances which
require an accounting of what went on" (20). In Paul's case, it is the
274 STYGALL

initiation of legal action by Madelle that calls forth his report, pro-
duced in response to the legal system's demands for a response and
by Madelle's own narrative.
Second, Paul's version is structured inside a legal framework.
In identifying and analyzing the clauses of Paul's version, I noted
that the initial segment, lines 1 through 10 (italicized in Narrative 2)
relate a superordinate legal narrative. If the narrative is defined by
the complicating action or event and shift to historical present tense,
then lines 1 through 10, although functioning as the abstract and ori-
entation to the events leading up to the separation, is also function-
ing as a legal narrative in its own right.
ABSTRACT/ORIENTATION Madelle has asked the court to
change the original decision
KEY EVENT/COMPLICATING ACTION She claims I had abused her
She argues that the Order was
defective
I deny it.
EVALUATION T h e simple fact is s h e got tired of me

So Paul begins by relating the most important narrative in the legal

framework: Madelle filed a legal action in which she claims abuse
and argues that the procedural parts of Paul's action were "defec-
tive," and he, Paul, in legal response, denies what she claims. Only
in the brief segment immediately following the legal narrative, in
lines 11 through 16, does Paul break away from the legal framework,
with the repeating parallel lines, "she got tired . . ." similar to
Madelle's "Paul knew. . ." sequence. Given the lack of narrative focus
in lines 11 through 21, the level of generality about Madelle's leav-
ing, I consider it to be a report rather than a narrative.
At line 22, Paul returns to the legal framework, with the
opening: Without going into great detail, the events which preceded
her departure, were as follows: On Saturday, March 6, she disap-
peared without explanation. This functions as the second abstract of
Paul's declaration and in lines 25 through 28, Paul gives key orienta-
tion material, including the oddly phrased "her daughter Mary, who
was bom during the time we were married but who is not my biologi-
cal daughter." The switch to stative is marks an important legal fact.
In family law, because Paul and Madelle were married when Mary
was bom, Paul is her father presumptively unless proven otherwise.
Here, Paul declares that he is not Mary's biological father. His orien-
tation here is longer than Madelle's, explaining that Madelle left
with her car, but without "personal belongings," so someone filed a
missing persons report. Keeping in mind that Paul is being accused
 NARRATIVE DISCOURSE ANALYSIS 275

of having filed a fraudulent petition for dissolution and receiving a

decree hy default, Paul's version must emphasize that he never knew
where she was and what her plans were. So in the first separation,
Paul asserts that he didn't know where Madelle was and that he and
her parents were so concemed that a report was filed.
The next part of Paul's version corresponds to Madelle's
narrative, and in it, Paul establishes that he did not know where
Madelle was after she left the marital home. In Paul's version, he
"received word" that Madelle "had been seen" and he went to look
for her, finding her. The next two clauses—I spoke to her I and she
returned home with me—comprise one of two puzzling arguments
appearing in Paul's report segment. Notice that the key event here
takes place outside the marital residence, while in Madelle's nar-
rative, the argument takes place at home. Madelle, in Paul's ver-
sion, appears to return because Paul spoke to her, but Madelle
doesn't speak to him then or for two days after. The second argu-
ment—I went to work . . . so she left—seems to imply that because
he wasn't in the marital home, she left, an explanation consistent
both with his claim that he didn't know where she was and her
claim that she needed to ñee him. Paul asserts twice more that he
didn't know where she was, she did not disclose her whereabouts in
line 62, and / made repeated inquiries to friends and acquaintances
of her in an attempt to locate her in line 65. Paul closes his version
with two moves. The first is to bring in the legal declaration of a
mutual friend, Rosalda Schreiner, who will say that Madelle left to
be with another man, and the second is to provide the evaluation,
that her goal and motivation was to take advantage of me finan-
cially.

Cultural Discourses

These two litigants, Madelle and Paul, present quite different narra-
tions of the scenes of the end of their marriage, and I am providing
only a small portion of the available texts in the clerk's file here. In
the narratives analyzed here, Madelle presents a dramatic narrative
of abuse, with a scene in which Paul threatens Madelle's life if she
doesn't leave. Paul presents himself as consistently seeking Madelle's
whereabouts, with no dramatic scenes. So one aspect of my analysis
is narrative staging, described in the previous section. But I also
want to connect those narratives to cultural discourses about mar-
riage and divorce, gender, assimilation and class, and race. One of
the criticisms of empirically oriented analysis of narrative has been
the extraction of the narrative from its relevant context, and dividing
276 STYGALL

it into a collection of features. Connecting the narratives analyzed

into their larger community allows me also to examine and to ana-
lyze the value of the narratives in the multiple communities in which
they are generated. For the purposes of this analysis, I focus primari-
ly on gender and assimilation to U.S. culture, drawing from the other
narratives and reports in the court's file. In expanding this analysis
toward cultural narratives, I move away from the identification of
linguistic features toward theoretical analyses of how gender or
assimilation "works" in the larger society. Thus, although an abun-
dant literature of linguistic differences across gender exists, for
example, I am most interested in how the actual narratives in the
court files connect with ideologies circulating culturally.
As the court file eventually revealed, Madelle's most serious
crime against Paul and the larger Filipino community was not just
that she left Paul for another man, but that she left with a "black"
man, a discussion that takes place only in the documents of the nonliti-
gants. Although I discuss more fully the issues of race and colonialism
in my larger work on the discourse of divorce, it is relevant to know
that the intersection of colonialism with Filipino cultures left behind a
Western schema of "color," with the lighter the skin, the more valued
the person. 1 In the eyes of the immigrant community, Madelle has vio-
lated the "color" schema.
One of the ways in which Paul's version of events differs fi-om
Madelle's is in its ability to better fit the legal discourse. Paul frames
his story around the key legal aspects. In one sense, Paul better match-
es the legal discourse. With one brief exception, he stays on point, sim-
ply answering the legal question of whether he knew where Madelle
was when he filed for divorce and petitioned for a default judgment in
Madelle's absence. Madelle, on the other hand vividly reports the
offensive speech of her ex-husband, "you wh__e," provides a pointer to
Paul's characterization of her as "acting strangely," and talks about
what Paul didn't do in his own petition to the court, almost none of
which is relevant in the legal setting. She doesn't provide specific dates
and times at which she can prove that Paul knew where she was. The
legal narratives most similar to Madelle's early narrative are con-
tained in the "Facts" sections of various legal documents, but these are
not the narratives that do the "work" of law. The procedural narrative
is the narrative with the most importance and Paul has adapted his
narrative to it.2 Ultimately, however, Paul's defense against reopening

Rafael and Atkinson and Errington.

2For a further discussion of narrative in legal settings, there are a variety of
resources. Useful recent linguistic and discourse oriented resources include
Conley and O'Barr and Tiersma.
 NARRATIVE DISCOURSE ANALYSIS 277

the original divorce case fails, not because he didn't successfully

approximate the appropriate legal discourse, but because trial court
judges routinely reopen default dissolution cases.
Madelle's accusations become more relevant once the original
case is reopened, especially her accusation of domestic violence.
Madelle's claim resonates with contemporary public discussion about
domestic violence and its effects. But it also resonates contrastingly
within the Filipino community in which this marriage was situated.
Several of those community members also contribute their texts to
this file. In one text, the male president of a Filipino community
organization, and professional worker, Joe Cordova, relates the fol-
lowing:

50 I was a confidante of Madelle prior to her leaving the State

of Washington.
51 She never told me of any death threats by her hushand.
52 I helieved
53 [that] she left to he with another man
54 and she never contacted members of the Filipino community
55 as far as I am aware.
56 During her absence, she never contacted anyone
57 The Filipino community is traditional
58 and it is law abiding.
59 We would have helped her if necessary,
60 we would have protected her against violence,
61 if such threats had heen made.

Because Madelle did not try to contact members of the Filipino

American community, she isolated herself from that community. As
spokesperson for the community, Joe Cordova asserts that Madelle
would have been protected inside the community, thus keeping the
domestic violence issue inside the community and outside the vision
of the Anglo legal community. The community become the enforcer of
"traditional" culture, which in this case turns out to also be patriar-
chal in nature. Here, for analyzing the complexities of the relation
between the immigrants, colonialism, and gender issues, I turn to the
literature of American ethnic studies and sociology to identify the
stakes in the narratives told.^
Both discussions are only remotely relevant to the actual out-
come of the case: Both Madelle and Paul lost. When Madelle's accu-
sations of domestic violence proved unable to remove Mary from

*rhe resources in footnote 1 are useful here as well, and to those I add Root's
collection and the recent discussion of the commodifícation of Filipina women
in mail order bridal economics, especially Tolentino.
278 STYGALL

Paul's custody, she responded with charges of Paul's sexual abuse

against Mary and more assertions that Paul was not Mary's biologi-
cal father. iUthough a court-appointed psychologist found the sexual
abuse accusations unfounded, the assertion that Paul was not the
biological father proved potent. Although Paul was also found by a
court-appointed psychologist to be the "psychological" parent, a rele-
vant legal categorization in determining child custody, his hiological
relation to Mary was more important. The law's presumption is that
any child bom during a marriage is a product of that marriage, but
with contemporary means of scientifically determining paternity,
Madelle proved that Paul was not Mary's father. The court's response
was automatically to award Mary's custody to Madelle, because step-
parents are "strangers" to their stepchildren in law. They cannot
inherit from a stepparent unless specifically named in a will, they
have no right to postdissolution support even if their stepparent has
been custodial for years, and even in an intact marriage, they cannot
sue for wrongful death in the event of a custodial stepparent's death,
a right all minor biological children enjoy, custodial or not.* Paul lost
all access to the child who considered him to be her "true" parent;
Madelle lost access to any child support for Mary and Paul's success-
ful claim that the marital assets were quite limited meant that there
was no substantive division of property.
These relevant cultural discourses resonate with the narra-
tives found in the court files, making narrative analysis richer and
more complex by the alternation between careful linguistic analysis
of narrative and larger cultural discourses. The discourses of domes-
tic violence, race, sexual abuse, the primacy of biology, and the rela-
tions of immigrant community's discourse to the dominant discourses
combine here to produce narratives beyond "he said/she said" divorce
stories.

IMPLICATIONS

My proposal here is that we take narrative seriously, removing it

from ke3^word status, and begin to closely study the narratives avail-
able in everyday settings, inside both social and professional commu-
nities, the narratives that are part of the broader study of texts in
rhetoric and composition. Assigning narrative to keyword status has
meant that we ignore all the places in which our students will write
their own narratives and participate in the writing of narratives,

*See Mason and Mahoney for an extended discussion of the legal problems of
"step" relations.
 NARRATIVE DISCOURSE ANALYSIS 279

sometimes with enormous personal consequences. Arguably, the

study of narrative discourse analysis in legal settings could simply
remain confined to discourse studies. But composition studies is
always about the writing, its production and consumption, its con-
texts. Narrative discourse analysis brings a sophisticated tool of
analysis into that examination of production and consumption, allow-
ing researchers to observe closely the common strategies of textual
persuasion and response. Legal narrative and discourse analysis
allow us to do even more—to examine the attempt to produce a per-
suasive narrative, study the response made to that narrative, and to
make some judgment about its impact on an adjudicator.
Again and again, as I read and analyzed the divorce files in
the larger study, I was struck by the strategic and rhetorical uses to
which narrative was put and the conventions of the legal setting that
constrained traditional ways of telling stories. In school settings, we
tend to treat narrative as if it only takes place in terms of fiction,
thus eliminating the need for teaching the writing of nonfiction nar-
ratives, when those narratives are put to rhetorical purposes. Yet we
and our students compose those narratives routinely in our lives. We
narrate our illnesses to doctors, our family lives to therapists, our
educational history to students, and our accidents to police and
claims adjusters. Bringing the analysis of narrative into the reper-
toire of research methodologies makes deliberation about strategic
uses of narrative more accessible to us and to our students.

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