The Function of Self-Aggrandizement in Storytelling

It has often been pointed out that narratives (of personal experience, specifically) are ordinarily told with the prime intent of revealing the narrator's meritous qualities (Labov & Waletzky, 1967; Labov, 1972; Møler, 1996; Quasthoff & Nikolaus, 1982). Although this claim has often been criticized, the debate on this issue is still remarkably peripheral. The hypothesis of this paper is that the function of self-aggrandizement is always at work in the process of storytelling, even if this doesn't seem to be the case. In an attempt to test this hypothesis, two narratives told in Portuguese by different Brazilian speakers are analyzed using a discourse analytic approach.