coherence relations between large spans of text

[Wallace Chafe]

I've always felt disappointed, not to say annoyed, by the frequent 
references to the schema proposed by Labov and Waletzky (and why is the 
second author forgotten?). They very strangely left out the climax, which 
forms the nucleus of this very common pattern. It does indeed have a 
nucleus.

At the risk of sounding paranoid, I wish people would occasionally notice 
my revision in Discourse, Consciousness, and Time (Chicago, 1994), 
especially pages 128-132. The schema set forth there consists of 
orientation - complication - climax - denouement - coda. I provided what I 
thought was a very nice extended example from a conversational narrative.

I guess Labov and Waletzky entered the canon way back in 1967, and since 
then nobody has ever bothered to look further.

Wallace Chafe

> For stories, Labov proposed a schema consisting of:
>
>             Orientation^Complication^Resolution(^Coda)
>
> In this approach, there is no one nucleus to which other elements
> are optional satellites. Rather, we have a multi-nuclear structure, where
> each structural component has its part ot play in the whole.
>
> RST includes multi-nuclear relations, although they are generally
> more generic (e.g., sequence, joint, etc.)