The recent literature on discourse suggests four perspectives which may be applied in narrative analysis. Narratives may be viewed as suprasentential discourse units with underlying organizational rules or story grammars; as conceptual units which reveal the speaker's expectations about event sequences or scripts; as linguistic expressions requiring specific formal devices to bind them into coherent texts; and as communication events which demand thoughtful assessment of the listener's needs. This report reviews each of these perspectives on narrative, indicating pertinent theoretical issues and developmental trends. It concludes with a case study presentation that illustrates how these perspectives can be used to analyze the narratives of older language-disordered children.