Narrative illocutionary acts direct and indirect

The pragmatics of narrative can approach functions of narrative in context from the outside in or from the inside out. In this short essay, I will take an outside-in perspective, considering what speakers accomplish in telling stories in interaction. When we take an outside-in approach to conversational stories, we find them functioning not just to entertain or to illustrate a point, but with illocutionary forces like confessing and indicting, even apologizing and warning, albeit indirectly, but seemingly not with the illocutionary force of commissives or declarations, either directly or indirectly. When the data come from natural everyday conversation, and the stories analyzed are just a few moves long rather than the extended products of written literary fiction, it becomes natural to see stories as fulfilling (direct and indirect illocutionary) speech act functions.