Folkloristic theories employ concepts of the life story, the life history, and the family saga.
My examples will come from the rich body of autobiographies of Texans, from the family sagas of writers like William Owens to the confessional narratives of William Humphrey and Mary Karr. And recently, Chicana writers like Pat Mora and Gloria Lopez-Stafford have revived the family saga Chinook Jargon was spoken from Oregon to Alaska throughout the 1800s. Based on the language of the lower Chinook, who dominated the mouth of the Columbia and whose tongue was renowned for its difficulty, Jargon was a primary medium between natives and the lower echelons of the fur trade, first French-speaking voyageurs, later early settlers, eventually even anthropologists. Its scholarly narrative will be doubled in hypertext, alternative versions of the episodes in this elegiac drama being linked in multiple media. George Lang Department of Modern Languages and Cultural Studies Tom Priestly Department of Modern Languages and Cultural Studies Carinthia had a large Slovene-speaking minority 150 years ago, but this has diminished greatly, and now in some districts Slovene has died out or is dying out.