The Anecdote as a Symbolic Expression of the Social and Cultural Milieu of Journalists

Folklore, Annual, 1999 by Martha Blache

Roberto's performance contains several of the type of feature that Barbara A. Babcock has defined as metanarrative signs (Babcock 1977). It is noteworthy that in lines 24-25, the sole function of the sentence "Suppose this guy's name is Benavidez" is the metanarrational business of setting up the situation so that Illia's farewell to the staff may be given in direct speech. The narrator does not appear to recall the journalist's name, but he must provide one so that the can have Illia call it out at the end of the story(6)--"Benavidez! But what are you doing here?" (line 28). As Charles Briggs points out:

   The use of quoted speech allows the narrator not only to invoke the words
   used by the characters but to represent (through prosody, voice quality,
   gestures, etc.) the ideological basis of what was reportedly said (Briggs
   1988, 194).

Judging from the findings of studies of anecdote, direct speech quoted as closure is usually part of the narrative structure of this type of story (see, for example, Bauman 1986). Although it can also be found in initial and middle position, in which case it functions as a cue directing the audience's attention to the story climax.

Either explicitly or implicitly, Roberto provides a series of cues that signal how his message should be interpreted and, by establishing narrative boundaries through the introduction (lines 1-6) and the closure (lines 11-30) of the story, he indicates the specific type of narrative he is performing. This allows the participants to check whether the narration corresponds with their patterns of expectation. By means of these procedures, the speaker calls attention to the presence of generic features and his competence in manipulating them for his own expressive purposes (Babcock 1977, 70).

The implicit resources also help to provide the frame for the interpretive context. Sometimes, Roberto uses onomatopoeic expressions (line 26) or interjects personal evaluative comments ("Clever man, this journalist"; "unintentionally, he gave him away"). At other times, he uses self-referential expressions, such as: "I don't know" (line 17), which have no relevance for the structure of the narrative but are interactive elements pertaining to the relationship between the narrator and his audience. Usually, the communicative requirements of their job mean that journalists must use language--particularly written language--precisely. But in informal conversations they may use idioms or inaccurate expressions. These are part of the dynamic of oral performance and serve to establish a clear difference between polished written accounts geared to what is said rather than how it is said. This is why verbatim, or almost verbatim, transcriptions of oral narratives are necessary. If the text is expurgated, the communicative process triggered by the narrative is lost: the interactions between the participants are omitted, and the plot is emphasised at the expense of the narrator, the narrative event and the way it is received.