Energized by seminal scholarship within narrative studies; communication studies of aging and dementia; and formulaic language, we examined a wide range of stories told multiple times within two different longitudinal collections of verbal interactions involving two women in their 80s (one US American; one French). Based on multifaceted analyses of these longitudinal series of stories, we identified a new type of narrative, the “narrative crystal”. We characterize the internal formal architecture of two illustrative crystals (one from each corpus) before illuminating how such crystals function for their speakers as reassuring interactional “stepping stones” within their larger discourse surroundings. Our findings sketch a possible developmental process regarding how meaningful personal experiences come to be transformed over the lifespan: from the inchoate qualities of first-time tellings shaped by the interaction, through incrementally increased stability over the course of many tellings, to reach the highly durable nature of narrative crystals.

受到叙事研究中开创性奖学金的启发；衰老和痴呆症的交流研究；和程式化的语言，我们检查了两个不同的纵向口头互动集合中多次讲述的故事，这些故事涉及两名 80 多岁的女性（一位美国人；一位法国人）。基于对这些纵向系列故事的多方面分析，我们确定了一种新的叙事类型，即“叙事水晶”。我们描述了两个说明性水晶（每个语料库一个）的内部形式结构，然后阐明了这些水晶如何为他们的演讲者发挥作用，作为他们更大的话语环境中令人放心的互动“垫脚石”。我们的研究结果描绘了一个可能的发展过程，即有意义的个人经历如何在生命周期中发生转变：