NARRATIONS ON DREAMS AND DREAM INTERPRETATION: RESPONDENT AND TEXT RELATIONS

The object of the work is narratives on dreams, dream interpretations, and beliefs on them. We seek to ascertain the way by which a respondent aims to convince his listeners of the reliability of the phenomena told, and to disclose his relation to the facts being presented. Comparative and interpretational methods have been applied. Any narrative springs up as a result of a certain event. Having experienced an event, an individual often wants to share it with other members of the soci­ ety. A particular wish is to share what a person is unable to explain himself or what seems to him especially meaningful. People see dreams practically every night, though not all night visions are told. A vivid, memorable dream also becomes an experience that seems to be worth telling to others. We would like to note that here we deal in fact not with an individual speaker but with two or more members of a conversation where the interactive sharing of opinions takes place [8, 279]. During a dialogue, not only information and opinions but also values are being shared. What is the aim of dream telling, and what is the relation of a dream narra­ tor and things told by him? We shall try to search for the answers to these questions. We shall study a person's standpoint and values reflected in his nar­ rations. We shall base our views on Sandra Stahl's attitude stating that stories about personal experience reflect man's approval of certain traditional state­ ments and beliefs or their denial [6, 270]. We shall begin with a story about the death of a relative: "In a dream moth­ er saw her golden tooth falling out, for making of which her aunt from America had given some gold. Mother understood immediately that her aunt had died. Some time later we received the news about aunt's death, which had occurred exactly on that day" (6/23).1