"Personal narratives are one way people code their experiences and convey them to others. Given that speakers can simultaneously express information and define a soical situation, analyzing how and why people structure the telling of personal narratives can provide insight into the social dimensions of language use. In this study, Kristin Jean Mulrooney shows that accounts by Deaf person expressed in ASL possess the same characteristics and perform the same function as oral personal narratives."--Page [4] of cover.