Sociolinguistic Analysis of First Person Narratives in Selected Philippine Contemporary Short Stories in English

This study was an attempt to describe the sociolinguistic properties of first person narratives of Philippine contemporary short stories. It aimed (1) to analyze the narrative structure of first person narratives of Philippine short stories and (2) analyze the linguistic form each story has. the corpus of the study consisted of 16 short stories written by various Philippine contemporary writers. the narrative framework devised by William Labov was adopted by this study. The Labovian Narrative Framework includes the narrative structure and the respective linguistic forms in which each component can be distinguished. Findings of the study include the following: (1) all short stories which were analyzed follow the Labovian narrative Framework though they have different manners of presenting each component; (2) there is no single pattern on how each component can be presented as far as linguistic form is concerned; 93) some of the components overlapped with others because on component may serve the function of the other; (4)the evaluation may not be explicitly shown in the story because the other components of the narrative provided clues to understand why the speaker thinks the story is worth telling. Based on the findings of the study: (1) reading teachers should know the functions of each component to provide the necessary information needed to interpret short stories; (2) make the students understand the author's intended meanings and apply those meanings to their lives; (3)study the characters, dialogues, and their actions because they play an important role interpreting short stories; and (4) future researchers should continue the same study for more solid results which may provide proofs for any validation.