Discourse Patterns in Lord Randall, a Traditional English Ballad: Storyline and Information Structure

Abstract

This paper discusses selected discourse patterns in the English ballad Lord Randall (LR). From a discourse analysis perspective, there are lots of words and so little narrative information so the natural question is: “How does the listener follow the storyline” This paper is an inquiry into how the information is patterned in relating the storyline events in the eight stanzas of closed conversation in this ballad. After a quick survey of the ballad’s structure, the storyline, the information structure, participant reference and the Peak of the ballad are described. Rather than following Longacre’s typical English storyline schema (e.g. Longacre 1996:24-26 ), in this ballad the listeners must infer and build their own sequential line of events from questions and answers in a dialogue between LR and his mother. The traditional English simple past tense is only marginally helpful in constructing the ballad’s storyline. The repetitious stanza (and information) structure is an indicator of where the audience must find its clues of new information in building the storyline. The break in information pattern at the Peak is a signal that the information crucial to constructing a coherent narrative is concentrated at the end of stanza seven. This ballad is another example of how the discourse analyst must look beyond a typical canonical storyline to arrange the sequential events of this narrative.