What Makes Funny Stories Really Funny

Abstract

In previous studies of Japanese oral narratives, the use of evaluation devices for making storytelly more effective, such as negation (Yamada, 2000), (soshi) tara “…and …” (Katoh, 2003) and historical present (Kodama, 2011), has been analyzed individually or specifically focusing on some parts of narratives. This research qualitatively analyzed a celebrity’s experiential narrative recounted on a TV program. Longacre’s analytical narrative framework was used, in addition to a reconsideration of Labov’s narrative structure and concept of evaluation. The aim was to clarify the kinds of evaluation and how and where these kinds of evaluation are combined in narratives holistically and comprehensively. As a result, various types of evaluation were found to contribute to making the storytelling more effective as follows: 1) intensive and cumulative use of syntactic internal evaluation devices for emphasis of unexpectedness and vividness, 2) insertion of external evaluation and embedded orientation clauses to navigate listeners’ interpretation and understanding of the narrative, and to create distinct gaps between story characters’ images/thoughts and actual utterances, 3) evaluative actions and quotations of speech and thought to extend the climax or the peak of the story, 4) minimize the length of the climax or punchlines.