Introduction to Private Verbs

I have also examined "private verbs" in the dialogue. I have based my list of private verbs on Douglas Biber's definition of them: "Private verbs express intellectual states (e.g., believe) or nonobservabable intellectual acts (e.g. discover)" (242). In my listing, however, I have also included nonobservable emotional acts and states, such as "love" and "like," since Biber also writes, "Private verbs...are used for the overt expression of private attitudes, thoughts, and emotions" (105). In my investigation of these lexical items, I look at how certainly each character expresses her own condition. Expressing uncertainty about one's "private attitudes, thoughts, and emotions," through such constructions as "I don't know" or "I forget," I believed, would reveal a certain amount of weakness in the character. The data, however, provide very little evidence to support my hypothesis. Rather, they reveal something about the language Norman has given Mama and Jessie in order to differentiate them as characters.

The table below presents the "private" verbs that Mama and Jessie employ in their conversation. In compiling this table, I ran KWIC concordances for each of the terms so that I could observe their use in "I"-statements and record only those (e.g., "I know," but not "you know"). The two columns on the left list private verbs that are common to both characters while the two on the right list verbs that only one or the other uses in her speech. I have also included some of the auxiliary verbs and adverbs that modify the main private verb to show how Mama and Jessie differ in their use of these items. A detailed discussion of my findings follows the table.

(Bernardy 84-5)


Use of Private Verbs in 'night, Mother*
Shared Private Verbs

 Distinct Private Verbs
Jessie Mama Jessie Mama
know 14 know 15 feeling 3 hate 4
think 11 don't know 10 liked 3 don't remember 1
thought 10 think 10 wonder 3 don't understand 1
want 10 guess 9 don't care 2 forget 1
didn't/don't think 11 didn't/don't think 6 hope 2 never liked 1
guess 6 don't want 5 waited 2 waiting 1
don't want 5 like 5 believe 1
didn't know 4 mean 5 hurt 1
don't know 4 thought 5 never understood 1
loved 4 want 5 understood 1
don't like 3 didn't know 4 wait 1
mean 3 don't like 3 wish 1
remember 2 (I)'d like 2
(I)'d like 1 love 2
like 1 loved 2
love 1 remember 1


Totals 58


68


21


9



*I have not included speech words, such as "said" and "asked" in this table as I discuss them in my section on semantic fields.

(Bernardy 85)


Shared Private Verbs

Looking at the left half of the table, I see that Mama and Jessie use the clause "I know" almost equally. However, Mama expresses her doubts verbally by employing the clause "I don't know" more frequently than Jessie. Mama uses this clause 10 times, while Jessie uses it only four times. Mama expresses certainty/agreement 15 times with "I know," but she also expresses doubt/ignorance through "I don't know," and "I didn't know" a total of 14 times, which undermines the certainty she expresses in describing her condition. Jessie, on the other hand, expresses certainty/agreement 14 times and doubt/ignorance only eight times, a ratio that signals less doubt on her part. The verb "don't know," highlights the difference between them: Mama says "don't know" 10 times, while Jessie says it only four. Thus, Jessie's language is slightly more confident in than Mama's, or at least that she is less likely to openly express doubt about her perceptions and make herself vulnerable.

Another interesting difference in usage is the verb "thought." Jessie uses the verb "thought" 10 times, while Mama uses it only five times, which tends to correlate with Mama's assertion that she does not like to think about things nearly as much as Jessie. Table 21 shows yet another difference between Mama and Jessie: Jessie expresses her desires more frequently; Mama expresses her approval/pleasure more often. Both Mama and Jessie express their desires through the clauses "I want," "I don't want," and "I'd like." Jessie, however, expresses these sentiments 1.3 times as often as Mama, using "want" ten times; Mama uses it only five. As for expressing approval/pleasure, Mama uses the clauses "I like," "I love," and "I loved" 1.5 times as often as Jessie. For example, the clause "I like" appears five times in Mama's speech and only once in Jessie's. The differences in use of these shared private verbs establish that Jessie is more reflective and slightly more interested in expressing how she wishes things could or would be, while Mama's language reveals that she is more comfortable with and accepting of her current situation.

(Bernardy 85-6)

Distinct Private Verbs

More important are the distinct private verbs each character employs. The right column shows that Jessie and Mama employ several distinct private verbs, though Jessie's speech contains a greater variety of them. Jessie's verbs also contain a broad range of connotations, including positive, neutral, and negative. For example, she uses the verbs "feeling," "liked," and "wonder" three times, "hope" twice, and "believed" and "wish" once. Of course, she also uses some rather negative verbs, such as "don't care," "hurt," "never understood," Mama's private verbs, though, are uniformly negative. To illustrate, her most frequently used verb is "hate," and she uses "never liked" once, and the majority of Mama's other private verbs point to a private shortcoming, such as "don't remember," "don't understand," and "forget." When considered alongside the shared private verbs, Jessie's language reaffirms that she is concerned with how things might be, while Mama's language reveals that she is actually quite negative in her descriptions of her own state.

I find it quite intriguing to note that although Mama's focuses less frequently on herself (e.g., she tends to use many more "you"-statements than "I"-statements), her use of private verbs is greater than Jessie's. Therefore, when speaking of herself, Mama is more likely to use private verbs and reveal more about her mental state. I am uncertain of what to make of this observation. As more of Mama's verbs than Jessie's express self-doubt (e.g., "don't know," "guess," "didn't know," "hate," "don't remember," "don't understand," and "forget"), I want to assert that Mama's language reveals her as the less confident and less authoritative character. I am unaware of anyone having done research on comparative usage of private verbs among characters and how that relates to the audience's perception characters, but, because characters disclose their vulnerability, biases, authority, or lack thereof through private verbs, I believe these could prove valuable to the study of readers' perceptions of characters.

(Bernardy 86-7)


--->>The information contained on this page comes from the following source: Bernardy, Maria Lee. "Beyond Intuition: Analyzing Marsha Norman's 'night, Mother with Concordance Data and Empirical Methods." M.A. Thesis. Ames, IA: Iowa State University, 1996. 84-7.<<---

Maria Bernardy is responsible for the content, design, and production of these pages. You may mail questions or comments concerning this site to the following address:
595 Hatch Ave.
St. Paul, MN 55117.