The structure of emotion discourse: from Labovian to socio-cognitive models

This paper focuses on how narrators convey emotion in the structure of oral narrative discourse in Spanish. To this end, the structure of personal oral narratives of highly emotional events in a sample of radio narratives is analyzed from two different approaches: Labovian and socio-cognitive. This work shows, first, how the Labovian approach to personal oral narratives of “vivid” events is applied to emotionally charged texts and, second, how the theoretical concepts of mental spaces and conceptual integration theory, as well as the latest developments within socio-cognitive theories, can help to better understand the processes that, on the one hand, enable speakers to create bonds with the listener, and on the other hand, enable hearers to make sense of the apparently chaotic information presented in these particular types of narratives.