PAUSES IN ORAL AND WRITTEN NARRATIVES

This thesis studies the role of pausing in narratives as indicators of the organization of narratives. Subjects viewed a short film and were asked to give a written and oral account of the film. The pauses in both accounts were measured, and the contents of the material following each pause were matched to an independent thematic analysis of the film. In the oral narratives, subjects paused significantly longer before narrative discourse units predicted by the film analysis than before other clauses that did not begin narrative units. In the written narratives, while subjects did not pause significantly longer before narrative units, they did pause more often at predicted narrative boundaries than within narrative units.; A qualitative analysis revealed the presence of more narrative units than those predicted by the film analysis. These units were preceded by relatively long pauses and were often indicated by linguistic discourse markers (such as "and then") and preposed subordinate clauses (dependent clauses that come before independent main clauses). They also were characterized by patterns researches have identified as indicating narrative boundaries.; The results of the study confirm that pauses reflect narrative organization, and they have implications for views of the on-line planning of narrative discourse and for testing theories of narrative sturcture (e.g. story grammars).