Download or read book Telling the American Story written by Livia Polanyi and published by Praeger. This book was released on 1985 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.