Telling the American story: A structural and cultural analysis of conversational story telling. By Livia Polanyi. Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1985. Pp. xii, 158. 29. 50.

This book explores the complexity of story text. Its thesis is that one can elicit the world view of a people from a close structural analysis of their narrative discourse. It is the first methodological explanation of how stories can be used as a source of cultural data and an illustration of how to do a rhetorically close analysis of a story text. A theory of narrative structure is presented which leads to a conversationally based definition of what can properly be called a story.