A Quick Definition of Sociolinguistics
"Sociolinguistics is a term including the aspects of linguistics applied toward the connections between language and society, and the way we use it in different social situations. It ranges from the study of the wide variety of dialects across a given region down to the analysis between the way men and women speak to one another. Sociolinguistics often shows us the humorous realities of human speech and how a dialect of a given language can often describe the age, sex, and social class of the speaker; it codes the social function of a language." (http://logos.uoregon.edu/explore/socioling/)
The site includes a discussion of politeness strategies.

• Abstract: a short summary of the story
  • The narrator states the substance of the narrative; this also may contains links to the conversation in which the narrative occurs.
• Orientation: time, place, persons situation
  • The orientation information is usually concentrated at the beginning of the story.
• Complicating Action: the events and the order in which they took place
• Evaluating: justification for the narrative
  • Those words and details which reinforce the purpose or point of telling the story
• Result or Resolution: final narrative event
• Coda (reportability): optional summary of the theme
  • “When a people tell narratives, they occupy a larger portion of social time and space than in most other conversational turns. […] After the narrative is finished, do listeners accept this occupation of conversational time as justified? If the response to a narrative is ‘So what?’ or ‘What are you getting at?’, it must be considered a failure” (Labov). The story is structured to avoid these responses.

Other Sources
See http://www.cs.ucsd.edu/~goguen/papers/story.html for an explanation of the structure in the form of a chart.
See http://www.cs.ucsd.edu/~goguen/papers/narr.html for an essay explaining the various aspects of the structure.