| Summary: | Dialogues do not have the same function and prerequisites in narratives as in conversation. In narratives they occur when the narrator decides to use them to further the purpose of narration. It is also the narrator who decides on its content and form and the perspective taken. A number of speech reporting strategies occur in Kinnauri narratives. They are: (i) the quotative construction, (ii) sequences of exchange between participants, (iii) isolated instances of direct speech and (iv) non-direct speech. The aim of this paper is to examine the functions of these speech reporting strategies in Kinnauri narratives. It will be suggested here that these strategies display a gradual variation in the speaker's involvement and thereby also in their evidential interpretations. Further, there is a difference in the dramatization of the speech contents in the various strategies. In the quotative construction the narrator reports verbatim someone else's speech (retaining both the form and the content of an "utterance" by a participant earlier in the narrative), thereby retaining the responsibility for the speech with the original speaker and not with the narrator. The next strategy, i.e., direct speech, seems to have different functions when it occurs as an isolated instance ("isolated instances of direct speech") occurring one utterance at a time, and when it comprises an exchange between two or more participants ("segments of instances of direct speech"). Furthermore, among the sequences of exchange, there is a distinction between ritualized narrative exchanges and non-ritualized exchanges. The latter encode important episodes - episodes which have consequences for the story, e.g. in climax situations. Presenting this event as a verbal exchange between two participants provides an opportunity for the listeners to experience the event directly, to relive the experience. This adds to the dramatization of the event, increasing the tempo in story¬telling. There is, however, a gradual difference in the length of these exchanges and thereby also in their intensity. The ritualized narrative exchange, on the other hand, is a stylistic feature in some narratives (a sign of traditional oral narratives), where the repetition seems to have the same function as stanzas in songs. Finally, the non-direct speech reporting strategy is the neutral mechanism of narrating events which happened a long time ago. The last-mentioned strategy is lowest on the scale of dramatization and direct involvement.
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