Discourse organization in Gorwaa narratives: An exploratory overview

Abstract

There are many ways in which a story can be told, and languages throughout time and across the world have developed strategies that work in tandem with their respective linguistic structure to create organized, coherent narratives. Gorwaa, a South Cushitic language spoken by around 133,000 people in the Tanzanian Rift Valley, also has a number of strategies included in a narrative structure, ranging from interjections, to complex referent tracking over long stretches of narrative, to discourse organization. In this article I will be specifically focusing on discourse organization, by which I mean the structuring of events as to create a coherent, understandable, sequence in a narrative using organizational tools such as interjections, discourse managing markers, and speaker-hearer interaction. All of these tools are employed frequently and in a plethora of different ways, creating an interesting narratival landscape while at the same time making sure the information flow remains coherent to the hearer. Additionally, Gorwaa shows a remarkable interconnection between lower-level discourse organizational elements, such as interjections and rhetorical questions, and the organization of a narrative as a whole – showcasing the importance of a broad perspective when analyzing narrative structures. The article first looks at the discourse organizing markers, interjections and conjunctions, and then looks at the construction of narratives in three major parts: introduction, intermediate speaker-hearer contact, and conclusions.
KEY WORDS: descriptive linguistics, Cushitic languages, discourse organization, discourse markers, pragmatics