The analysis of narratives is being attempted by many sciences. This paper focusses on the historical and therapeutic approaches (in this issue) and differentiates their analyses from a socio- and psycholinguistic point of view. Several points are focussed on: there exists significant evidence that persons of different social status, sex, culture personality etc. realize different and systematic narratives - the knowledge about these variations helps to explain communicationconflicts and frameconflicts. Also, the meaning of a narrative is very complex - there are manifest and latent meanings, some are only to be arrived at through the context and other data available about the storyteller. Thus, socio- and psycholinguistic provide the researcher with many categories and criteria for a systematic analysis of empirical data, of spoken language, like narratives.