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(-) and then (.) one day passierte FOLgendes; the following happened
Following these initiative remarks, three structurally diŸerent kinds of conversational sequences could be observed, constituting typical openings to oral fantasy stories in the given conversational context: First, some children almost
Fantasy stories and conversational narratives of personal experience
immediately took over to produce fantasy stories. Second, other children refused to proceed, usually by giving accounts (I don’t know or I can’t think of anything), thus — often successfully — attempting to bring this part of the conversation to an immediate end. For the purpose of our chapter, we will look at the third case, where children display some di¹culties in entering the story proper but are helped on their way by the adult interactants — sometimes successfully, sometimes not.
First moves into the stories: Signals of uncertainty and follow-up questions The children’s nonverbal behavior often re¶ects their problems at this ªrst stage of story initiation. It signals uncertainty, on the one hand, but also demonstrates awareness towards the job to be fulªlled on the other (looking around, looking at the table, playing with ªngers, etc.). Consequently, the adult partners regularly add follow-up questions reinforcing the conversational task to continue but — at the same time — encouraging the children to take over. In the following two examples the adult partners urge the children to proceed with the story by way of formulating a follow-up question. Example (2): 02m-2-1 E überleg mal wie kÖnnte die geschichte WEItergehen;= think about how the story could continue =WAS könnte passIERT sein; what could have happened Example (3): 26m-2-1 01 E al:so; (.) well (---) once there was a little boy und DER konnte FLIEgen; (---) and he could ¶y und EInes tages, (---) and one day 05 something happened> weißt du wie=s WEItergeht, do you know how it continues
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Sometimes, the children take over and ask a question themselves. In the next example, the adult answers by reformulating her last utterance in form of a question. Example (4): 10m-2-1 01 E .h und EINes ta:ges dA passierte etwas, (-) .h and one day something happened K
(--) what E kannst du mir sagen was dA: wohl pasSIEren kann, (---) can you tell me what may happen
The clear interactive function of these follow-up questions is to encourage the children to take over and help them on their way into the story. The shift of tense in the utterances from past tense to present tense in both Extracts 2 and 3 is extremely interesting, as it indicates a switch of activity on the part of the adult partners: Now they seem less concerned with the story’s thematic progress; instead they focus on giving interactive support. The activity frame shifts from ‘story-telling’ to ‘organizing the story-telling process’.
The children’s ªrst moves: Topic proposals After the adults’ supportive follow-up-questions, and before entering the story proper by elaborating the ªctional setting, many children produce short, often one-word utterances. They constitute the children’s ªrst conversational moves and their attempts to launch into the fantasy stories. Example (5): 02m-2-1 01 E überleg mal wie kÖnnte die geschichte WEItergehen;= think about how the story could continue =WAS könnte passIERT sein; what could have happened (1.5) K von=m DRAchen; about a dragon Example (6): 26m-2-1 01 E und EInes tages, (---) and one day something happened>
Fantasy stories and conversational narratives of personal experience
05 K
weißt du wie=s WEItergeht, do you know how it continues (6.0) ABgestürzt; (.) crashed (.)
Example (7): 10m-2-1 01 E .h und EINes ta:ges dA passierte etwas, (-) and one day something happened K
(--) what E kannst du mir sagen was dA: wohl pasSIEren kann, (---) can you tell me what could happen
K
K spielt wieder mit den Händen am Tisch herum Child plays again with his ªngers on the table
crashes
A close look at these ªrst moves reveals that they function as topic proposals: Several indicators show that the utterances constitute provisional attempts to establish a potential thematic follow-up to the story’s beginning. The children signal their lack of conªdence in their proposed topic by long breaks after the adults’ questions, and by their utterances’ elliptic syntactic form, which often corresponds to prosodic and nonverbal features, such as a soft voice and again gestures of uncertainty. Sometimes, more explicit interactive support by the adult partner is necessary before the child utters such a one-word topic proposal. See the following example, where the child narrator ªrst gives a rejecting response to the adult’s question. However, after further encouragement (or insistence?) by the adult in the form of a follow-up question, the child utters a topic proposal, this time its tentative state additionally marked by a lexical item. Example (8): 19m-21-1 01 E kannst du dir VORstellen; (--) can you imagine was da pasSIERT ist, (-) what happened kannst du die WEIter erzählen, (1.3) can you continue (1.3)
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K 05 E K
ich WEIß es jetzt nicht was passIErt ist; (3.7) I don’t know now what happened (3.7) , (--) do you have an idea vielleicht geSPENSter; (---) maybe ghosts
These patterns are very similar to the ones Becker found in her data (see Becker, this volume Chapter 3).
The adult listeners’ ªrst responsive moves: topic ratiªcation Next we will look at the adults’ responses to such topic proposals. In fact, they often repeat the children’s topic proposals to signal consent and thus oŸer interactive support. Additionally, the adults often repeat the children’s utterances in a particular — prosodic — way and do so for speciªc reasons. The following two extracts show how the adult listener signiªcantly changes her tone of voice to constitute a speciªc form of interactional support. Example (9): 26m-2-1 01 K ABgestürzt; (.) crashed E (---) Example (10): 19m-2-1 01 E , (--)
K vielleicht geSPENSter; (---) maybe ghosts E
The adult listener4 does not simply repeat the child’s topic proposals with falling intonation to signal her consent, but reproduces the child’s utterance with a particular intonation, namely whispering in a ‘mysterious’ tone of voice. Through the speciªc prosodic quality, she re-evokes a frame of fantastic or adventurous stories that are both constituents to the fantasy story genre. Thus, the function of responsive moves as a ratiªcation to the child’s topic proposal is signaled mainly through their prosodic form.
Fantasy stories and conversational narratives of personal experience
The next example demonstrates another form of repetition that fulªlls the same supportive function for the child’s topic proposal. Example (11): 24m-2-1 01 E [ein] KLEIner junge konnte ¶IEgen; (1.3) a little boy could ¶y und !PLÖTZ!lich EInes tages; (1.8) and suddenly one day (1.8) K äh=war er im URwald; (--) he was in the jungle E ah=!HA!. (-) uhum 05 er war im URwald; (--) he was in the jungle
As a ªrst response, the adult gives strong positive feedback through an a¹rmative exclamation in an emphatic tone of voice (line 4); she then repeats the child’s utterance with falling intonation to signal her agreement with the proposed topic. Through these verbal and nonverbal means, the adult reinforces the appropriateness of the semantic content of the topic proposal. Thus, the adults’ responses to the children’s ªrst moves clearly uphold their interpretation as topic proposals. Moreover, as we will see next, these responses seem to be decisive for the children to continue the story. Strong evidence for the importance of ratiªcations to signal consent and support for the child to continue can be found by looking at the following case, in which the child’s refusal to elaborate on the proposed topic may be a result of the adult’s interactive conduct. Example (12):13m-2-1 01 E und EInes tages dA passierte etwas; (3.6) and one day something happened K da stürzte er AB; (--) he crashed E hm=hm oh WEI; uhm=uhm oh dear (4.1) 05 NOCH was? any more (3.3)
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K
10 E
hm::: uhm:: (6.7) ‘hm=‘HM; (--) ‘hm=‘hm na (kuck) ist doch AUCH schon tOll; (1.0) well now this is already great (1.0) hm, uhm und dann kam er vielleicht ins KRANkenhaus oder so; = and then maybe he was delivered into a hospital or something =aber hAst du TOLL gemacht; but well done
In this sequence, the adult listener produces only a continuer to the child narrator’s topic proposal (uhm=uhm , line 3), followed by an evaluation (o wei; o dear) which the child possibly interprets as a closing signal, therefore falling silent. However, the child’s minimal response to the attempted elaboration question, and the long break that follows both suggest that he is still thinking about a possible continuation. Nevertheless, he ªnally makes an attempt to ªnish the sequence by giving a negative response to the adult’s follow-up question. A subsequent attempt to encourage elaboration remains unsuccessful. Neither the adult’s production of encouraging feedback (line 9) nor the oŸer of a possible continuation (line 11) lead to story elaboration. The position of the evaluative remark (line 4) makes the move structurally ambiguous: Is it an evaluative ratiªcation, which belongs to the mutual task of topicalizing a story, or is it rather a ªnal appreciation, which skips elaboration (see below) and thus can be read as a shortcut towards story ending? Obviously, encouraging topical ratiªcations should be given right after the child’s ªrst attempt to deliver a topic. A later encouragement does not have the desired outcome because the child may have already ‘given up’ on the story. Thus, this last example demonstrates the signiªcance of the sequential positioning of the adults’ moves. The examples so far show that many adult partners act sensitively towards their task to appreciate the children’s narrative attempts and encourage them further. Interactive support is constituted through repetitions and their particular prosodic stylizations. However, as will be illustrated in the next chapter, additional adult moves are essential to help the children on their way into the fantasy stories.
Fantasy stories and conversational narratives of personal experience
The adult listeners’ second responsive moves: Elaborative questions Consistent with the GLOBE model of narrative interaction, it has already become clear that the narrative jobs have to be fulªlled with painstaking thoroughness. After ‘topicalization’ is jointly achieved by giving topic proposal and ratiªcation, the child now needs support with the next narrative job, namely elaborating the story. This is accomplished by the adults’ second responsive moves to the children’s topic proposals, namely elaborative questions. The following examples show forms of such requests for more information on the chosen topics. Example (13): 26m-2-1 01 K ABgestürzt; (.) crashed E (---)
05 K 10
K nickt C nods und wie ist das pasSIERT, and how did that happen (1.0) vielleicht so da (.) kann=er (.) maybe there he can konnte er nicht mehr mit der (.) FLÜgeln (-) ¶attern;= he could not move his wings anymore
After the a¹rmative repetition of the child’s topic proposal and a short break, the adult adds a follow-up request for more procedural information on the now chosen topic. The child starts to elaborate: he complies with this obligation to continue by proposing that the boy could not use his wings anymore. Note that the child marks his answer again as tentative, this time by lexical means: He is still uncertain about his (new) topic proposal, thus marking his activities as ”inventing in progress”. In the next example, the adult acts likewise by producing an elaborative question to make the child develop the topic of ‘ghosts’. Example (14): 19m-2-1 01 E , (--)
K vielleicht geSPENSter; (---) maybe ghosts
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E
05 K
wie könnte DAS (---) how could that have happened wenn der dann RUM¶iegt in der nacht; = when he is ¶ying around during the night =da können auch geSPENSter ; (1.8) then ghosts could also come
In the following sequence, the adult formulates an elaborative question when the child shows no inclination to continue. Only then does the child proceed with the story. Example (15): 24m-2-1 01 E [ein] KLEIner junge konnte ¶IEgen; (1.3) a little boy could ¶y und !PLÖTZ!lich EInes tages; (1.8) and suddenly one day (1.8) K äh=war er im URwald; (--) he was in the jungle E ah=!HA!. (-) uhum 05 er war im URwald; (--) he was in the jungle K JA. (---) yes E da ist er HIN ge¶ogen; (--) he had ¶own there K hm=HM, (-) uhm=uhm E hm=HM, (-) uhm=uhm 10 und was hat er da geMACHT, (1.3) and what did he do there K da: (1.4) ist er erstmal durch den URwald gegangen; ªrst he went through the jungle
Alternatively, the adults may ªrst produce a continuer and then add a general elaboration question (and then…?), which the children usually comply with. In the following two examples, the adults use these question formats to successfully support and encourage the children to continue.
Fantasy stories and conversational narratives of personal experience
Example (16): 34w-2-1 01 K dann IST sie auf einmaland then she suddenly (2.0) auf=n buKA:N gestoßen; (--) met a bukan E ‘oh (.) oh (.) 05 und DANN, and then K dann ist da FEUer rausgespritzt;= then ªre was spat out =und dann ist das mädchen SCHNELL wEgge¶ogen; (-) and then the girl quickly ¶ew away Example (17): 02m-2-1 01 K von=m DRAchen; from the dragon E aHA, aha vom DRAchen was, from the dragon what K dann is (.) hat der drache ihn(.)verSPEIST, then the dragon ate him
The next example shows very clearly that continuers alone, given in the structural context of topicalization, are not su¹cient support to make the child continue the story. If no request for further information is demanded, no elaboration of the story will follow. Example (18): 10m-2-1 01 E .h und EINes ta:ges dA passierte etwas, (-) and one day something happened K
(--) what E kannst du mir sagen was dA: wohl pasSIEren kann, (---) can you tell me what may happen
K spielt wieder mit den Händen am Tisch herum C plays again with his ªngers on the table
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05 K
ABstürz;= crashes
10
K kuckt E an C looks at A = (--) uhm=uhm > (--) na is ja schon ne su:per iDEE,(--) well now this is a brilliant idea TOLL- (---) great kuck mal das WAR=S auch schon;= now look that was it for now
E
10
The absence of an elaborative question and the little time the child is given to think about a possible progression are very likely reasons for the discontinuation of the story and conversational breakdown. In such cases of failure, the necessity to encourage the child to elaborate on the chosen topic becomes obvious, and several supportive responses by the adults are necessary to ensure successful entry into the fantasy story.
Summary So far we have only looked at the openings of the stories, at which points topicalization and elaboration are the main tasks to be fulªlled. After taking over, the children manage the important structural and conversational job of coming up with a topic that qualiªes as suitable to a fantasy story and further elaboration. The results of our observations so far can be interpreted from a genrespeciªc and from an interactional point of view; both are, however, closely connected to each other. The speciªc requirements deriving from the structural characteristics of fantasy stories yet to be invented lead to particular interactional moves on the part of both participants. At this point, however, we have to keep in mind the various contextual conditions. Fantasy stories which are completely generated by the child (that is to say without a given topic or introductory sentence) show slightly diŸerent patterns as shown in Becker (this volume, Chapter 3).
Fantasy stories and conversational narratives of personal experience
In our data, children frequently have to be especially encouraged after the verbal trigger has been formulated. Further adult questions often have to follow to convince the children to take over. Here a change of the kind of activity can sometimes be observed: Some adults shift to focus on interactive support in terms of organizing the story-telling process, which may be perceived as an activity similar to teaching, and thus is described as being closer to institutional frames. Children may then produce a topic proposal that they clearly mark syntactically, prosodically and/or lexically in the sense of a try marker (Sacks & SchegloŸ 1979) as an oŸering. These are marked as potential story topics and thus are subject to negotiation. After the child narrators have taken over the narrator’s role, two more supportive conversational moves on the side of the adult seem to be essential. The ªrst responsive move constitutes a form of acceptance of the child’s topic proposal, which can be expressed lexically, and/ or prosodically. This ratiªcation completes the narrative job ‘topicalizing’. The second adult move involves a follow-up question guiding the child into an elaboration of the topic proposal. Both steps seem to be obligatory to the children’s successful handling of the conversational task to come, i.e. the telling of a fantasy story. Moreover, sequential order of the adult’s moves — especially her/his evaluative statements — is decisive for the development of the story-telling in the course of the interaction. In summary we can conclude from our data that the sequential organization of narrative interaction which has been developed on the basis of narratives of personal experience is generally applicable to fantasy stories. However, this seems to hold only with respect to conversational embeddings of the two genres, where listeners play an active role in the dialogic constitution of narrative interaction. In more experimental settings where the child is basically left alone in fulªlling the task of producing a narrative there are clear diŸerences (Becker 2001 and this volume). Even in our data the global sequential organization is realized by speciªc devices that adjust to the diŸerent conversational contexts: The ªrst job ‘display of formal relevance’ (cf. Hausendorf & QuasthoŸ 1996) for the narrative activity to follow is of course fulªlled by the standardized trigger in our data (Once upon a time . . .). The second job ‘topicalizing’ is completed in three steps: –
ªrst by adult support for the child taking the ¶oor and taking on the narrator’s role;
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– –
second by a topic proposal given by the child; and third by a ratiªcation of the child’s proposal given by the adult listener.
The third job ‘elaboration’ is typically entered by an elaborative question oŸered by the adult. The device ‘topic proposal‘ that is oŸered instead of an abstract — which is to be expected as an opening of narratives of personal experience — seems to be a genre-speciªc element.
The structure of openings in conversational stories of personal experience We will now look at conversational stories and their interactive structure in openings. After having read out the story the adults usually questioned the children about its possible climax. Later in the conversation, they asked the children if they had experienced similar events with pets themselves in order to elicit topic-bound conversational stories of personal experience. As will soon become clear in our data, the interactive construction of openings of conversationally embedded stories of personal experience diŸers from fantasy story openings. Interactional support from adults is comparable, but in many ways adjusted to the speciªc contextual conditions and requirements. Basically, two structurally diŸerent varieties of openings could be observed: unproblematic and problematic cases with respect to topic coherence. The main issue here is the thematic coherence between the two narratives: the story of personal experience and the read narrative.
Unproblematic cases: Topic continuation The ªrst job of narrative interaction, in this case the ‘display of thematic relevance’ for the story to be told, is largely provided by content aspects of the story read to the children. In unproblematic cases, the children connect to at least one of the given story’s main thematic aspects and link their own story with it. In this way, topic continuation can easily be established. What counts as reportable for the children in this sense becomes easily observable in the following example, where the child tells a story about his relatives’ dog.
Fantasy stories and conversational narratives of personal experience
Example (18): 02m08w-3-1 01 E .hhh ist euch sowas AUCH schon mal passIErt,= .hhh has something like this ever happened to you, too TO =[JAHA] [yes ] KR =[( )] 05 NEI=EIN, no=o [wenn WIR ( ) [when we ( ) TO [( ) urLAUB gemacht haben, [( ) were on holiday waren wir bei (trönie) und bess; ne,(-) we were at (troenie’s and bess’s house) da war=n HUND,= there was a dog 10 =DER hat Überall in die küche geschissen;(.) who shat all over the kitchen E , really>
The boy’s narrative corresponds to the two main thematic aspects of the read story: It is about a dog and the dog did his business in the kitchen. Obviously, the boy encounters little trouble to initiate his short report and to place it in the course of the interaction, as topic continuation is easily established. Not surprisingly, only few occurrences of such unproblematic cases of anticipated topical coherence and subsequent story initiation could be found. We will therefore turn to more problematic cases.
Problematic cases: Topic shifts In more problematic cases, a shift of topic has to be carried out by the child narrator in order to initiate his or her story. However, according to the general requirement of sequentiality at least partial thematic coherence has to be established at the same time. We will now focus on the children’s activities to achieve such limited topical coherence.
Children’s moves: account of insu¹cient coherence When the children encounter ‘problems’ to connect their own story with the
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thematic aspects of the read narrative, they usually mark theirs as somehow topically incoherent by using lexical devices similar to misplacement markers (cf. SchegloŸ & Sacks 1973). Such a device can be observed in the following example. Example (19): 26m28m-3-1 01 E hmhm;(0,8) uhm=uhm ist euch denn AUCH schon mal so was passiert,(1,7) has something like that happened to you, too TOB ‘hmhm‘;=
05 E TOB
10 E E TOB
To schüttelt Kopf To shakes his head =nee?(.) no mir ist NUR passiert, it only happened to me als ich mir die HÄNde waschen wollte,(-) when I wanted to wash my hands und KEIner war am früstückstis äh TISCH, and nobody was at the breakfast table äh äh da: HAT (-) .h VISsi und dErri einfach-(-) uhm uhm there Vissi and Derri simply .h hat er sich das knÄcke äh brot mit nuTElla get[ei:lt; he shared the piece of bread with nutella [((lacht)) [((laughs)) [wer is[who id [das war bei meiner OMma; that was at my granny‘s de die HUNde;(.) the dogs
The boy does not initiate his story right away; he ªrst denies having experienced an event similar to the one in the read story. However, he needs no further support from the adult listener to begin his own story; using the utterance it only happened to me (line 8) as a ticket (cf. Sacks 1992, 257f.).5 The
Fantasy stories and conversational narratives of personal experience
lexical item only, also marked prosodically, clearly functions as an account of insu¹cient coherence. In the next example the child uses a lexical device (but) twice as a similar marker to qualify his own story as diŸerent from the read narrative in some important thematic aspects. Example (20): 33m18m-3–1 01 E ist euch sowas AUCH schon mal passiert?(-) has something like that happened to you, too TH ich HAB keinen hund.(---) I don’t have a dog E ,(--) you don’t have a dog CH aber rönKARla;(-) but rönkarla 05 das ist MEIne-(-) that is my das ist papas SCHWEster;(--) that is daddy’s sister DIE hat nen hund;(-) she has a dog der heisst DArius;(-) he is called darius E aHA,(-) uhum 10 CH aber der (.) ha‘ ss nich=in=ne WOHnung;(--) but he has not done in the house der hat aber (.) schonmal in die HUNdehütte gemacht; but he has done his business in the dog kennel
The child ªrst mentions a diŸerence between the dog in the story told and the dog in his own story (‘his’ dog was not in the house). Only then does he ‘uncover’ the major similarity that qualiªes the event as reportable in the given context: ‘his’ dog had also once done its business in an apparently unsuitable place, namely the dog kennel. The examples clearly show that the children make an eŸort to tie their stories to the read story by using markers to signal topical incoherence being at least partial. At the same time, they pick up one or two main thematic aspects of the read story to establish limited topic continuation. This strategy works relatively well in those cases where the children come up with stories about
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dogs or — even more suitably — stories about dogs having done their business in unsuitable places. However, if the stories the children have in mind are not about a dog, the potential narrators face a major problem of lacking sequential implicature. We will now look at a few such cases, and the adults’ ways of dealing with them.
Adults’ moves: listing possible reportable cases The following example reveals the necessity of interactive support when the child’ s potential conversational narrative does not provide su¹cient topical coherence with the read story. Example (21): 13m12w-3-1 01 E ((lacht)) .hh !SAGT! mal; = ((laughs)) tell me =ist euch denn AUCH schon mal so was passiert; (-) has something like that happened to you, too mit so=m TIE:R; (--) with a pet DA [(… )] 05 RO [nee ich HAB ja nur ne;] (-) no I only have a RO ich hab ja nur ne KATze; (-) I only have a cat
Here the child obviously understands the adult’s rather general phrasing (with such a pet), which could potentially broaden the subsequent story’s potential thematic frame, as a reference to a dog. Consequently, he denies having experienced a similar episode on the grounds that he only has a cat (note again the use of only as a misplacement marker). In her subsequent move, the adult consequently encourages the child to tell a story about his cat. As can be seen in the following example, she even oŸers him possible events that may have taken place and qualify for reportability at the same time. The child ªnally launches into a story about his cat jumping on tables, knocking over ¶owerpots (not included in the transcript). Example (22) follow-up 01 E und ist mit der KATze schon mal so was passiert; = and has something like that happened with the cat =dass die was RUNter geschmissen hat [oder;] that it knocked something over or
Fantasy stories and conversational narratives of personal experience
RO [nein ] die geht nur no she only always immer auf=n TISCH; (-) jumps on the table 05 DA [((lacht))] ((laughs)) E [die geht ] immer auf=n !TISCH!- (-) [she always jumps on the table und das DARF sie nicht- (--) and she is not allowed to do that ((etc.))
Indeed, giving a list of cases that may qualify as reportable is the adults’ main supportive activity to encourage the child to tell a story of his or her own. In the following example, the adult ªrst lists a number of pets that the children may know or even possess themselves. By thus broadening the read story’s thematic frame, topical coherence is again made easy to establish for the children. Consistently, one of the children complies by mentioning that he owns a rabbit. Again, the use of a similar marker (höchstens, at the most) can be observed. At this point, the other child also mentions his friend’s rabbit. Example (23): 04m10m-3-1 01 E na habt IHR vielleicht- (.) well maybe you have KENNT ihr jemanden,= or you know someone =der n=HUND hat oder ne KATze, who owns a dog or a cat or maybe habt IHR sogar n=hund oder ne katze, you even have a dog or a cat 05 .h[h der Ü:B ] who G [wir ham höch]sten: kaNINchen; we have a rabbit at the most (…) Ha ich kenn=n DAvid; I know David der hat AUCH=N kanin- (.) who also owns a rabbit
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After ‘rabbits’ have been established as pets that are ‘worth a story’, the adult has to make one more move before one of the children ªnally comes up with a story: She produces a list of possible events with pets that may count as reportable in this conversational context. Example (24): (follow-up) 10 E [hm=HM,] uhm=uhm Ha [ two rabbits (…) E hat er dir schon mal was erZÄHLT? has he ever told you (1.0) 15 dass der schonmal Ü::Rgendwas schlimmes geMACHT hat, that he has ever done something bad aus=m KĪg gehopst isthopped out of the cage (1.0) oder=n stück KUchen gegessen hat;= or has eaten a piece of cake Ha =na sie ham sich schonmal GEgenseitig so (.) geBISSen; well they bit each other 20 E o:h [()] but that‘s not very Ha [je jetzt ] sind se an (-) geSCHIEdenen now they are in divorced käªgen. cages
Both examples show that and how the children may face diŸerent problems concerning the topical coherence of their potential stories. As a supportive move, the adults in both cases make an eŸort to broaden the thematic frame that was induced by the read story by producing lists of pets and/or possible events that may count as reportable. Thus, it could be shown that the adults have to give additional interactive support by listing cases that may qualify as reportable in the given conversational context if the children fail to come up with a story of their own. Through their speciªc moves, the adults demonstrate that they recognize an anticipated
Fantasy stories and conversational narratives of personal experience
lack of topical coherence and thus the children’s problem to come up with a story of their own.
Summary Interactional and structural (i.e. genre-speciªc) requirements of conversational narratives about real episodes obviously diŸer markedly from those of fantasy stories in our data. The reasons for this may be the following: 1. the transition from diŸerent story-telling activities seems to be more di¹cult, 2. fantasy stories to be invented online diŸer from the task of presenting a past event retrieved in memory, 3. the children are obviously more familiar with the genre of non-ªctitious narratives. In the speciªc interactional and conversational setting, the problem of transition from the activities that were going on beforehand (i.e. the adults’ reading of a story and the subsequent questions about the story’s possible climax) to the requested story-telling is a problem of interactive and conversational organization to be managed by the children. The children seem to be somewhat surprised that all of a sudden they have to take over after having listened to a story and discussed its possible ending. They attempt to overcome this sequential disturbance by ªnding ways to connect their story thematically as closely as possible to the read story. As it turns out, they pay primary attention to the main ‘character’ of the written story, which is a dog. Consequently, they try themselves to think of a story involving a dog. In fact, the children focus on the rather speciªc topic ‘dog’ more than to the broader topic ‘pet’ when producing a conversational story. The children obviously take the contextual requirements very seriously and make an eŸort to connect their own stories with the read story in a more rigid way than an adult might do. In sequentially ‘easy’ cases, the job ‘display of thematic relevance’ necessary for a narrative to proceed is su¹ciently produced by both the read story and the adult’s follow-up question (Did anything like that ever happen to you?). In problematic cases, however, the necessary thematic ªt has to be achieved by the children. They do this by tying the two stories together through marking them as ‘loose ªt’ with appropriate markers. These thus play an important role in creating structural space for the story to come.
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The looser the thematic links, the more supportive activities from the adults are in demand: Sometimes the children need further support, which is usually given in form of lists of pets and/or a series of possible events that count as unusual and therefore reportable in the given conversational context. The adults’ greater competence in story-telling is used in steering the children in accordance with the Discourse Acquisition Support System. The adults then implicitly instruct the children by producing lists of possible reportable cases, using their own narrative competence to provide the children with model events. Through this conversational activity, they also establish which kinds of stories count as sequentially adequate in the particular context. So the several proposals oŸered by the adults teach the children what qualiªes as reportable in this speciªc interaction. However, once the children have started telling their story about their pets, they need no further assistance to elaborate on the main topic. This indicates the easier accessibility of real events — as in contrast to ªctitious events — on the one hand, and the children’s general familiarity with the genre of conversational stories about personal experiences on the other. The reason why the children often continue with minimal discourse units that are not elaborated or evaluated is due to the speciªc conversational context. The adults’ questions do not have a clear global sequential implication into a story — some children obviously take it as a local question that can be answered locally by mere reference to a respective event.
Concluding remarks: The structure of openings in fantasy stories and conversational stories of personal experience In relation to the general questions of this article concerning narrative, interactive and developmental aspects of story telling, the data so far show that 1. in the given conversational context of both narrative genres, the interactive teams work on sequentiality and topic rather than on narrative structure; 2. the interactive support given by the adults is in tune with the speciªc organizational problems met by the interactive progression; 3. however, as the narrative genres diŸer with respect to familiarity and availability of a plot, support activities vary in line with the speciªc requirements of the narrative genre; 4. Thus, genre speciªc input for acquisition is provided (e.g. reportability of experienced events, appreciation of possible plots in fantasy stories).
Fantasy stories and conversational narratives of personal experience
Closings in diŸerent narrative genres The structure of closings in fantasy stories We will now return to the fantasy stories and look at their closings. Two subsequent moves can be observed that regularly occur; the ªrst taken by the child story-tellers, the second by the adult listener. Both moves constitute a typical closing structure of fantasy stories in the given conversational context.
Children’s closing moves: returning home Most children (and adults) make an eŸort to ªnd a proper closing to the fantasy stories — even in case they have obviously run out of ideas — to close the gestalt of the narrative genre. A look at the form of such closings reveals that children often rely on and use literary variations of the typical ”returnhome device” (JeŸerson 1978). In the following example, a variation of the return-home ªgure can be found: Example (25): 17m-2-1 01 K und DANN, (--) und then immer WEIterge¶ogen WEIterge¶ogen und he ¶ew on and on WEIterg¶ogen, (-) and on E ((nickt) ((nodds)) 05 K auf EINmal woll- (.) suddenly he wanted hat der=n STURZ¶ug gemA:cht; he did a dive und dann war (er) geNAU, (-) and then he was exactly im haus vom PApa; at daddy’s house
Often the adults do not co-operate in closing the story at this point but instead establish the conversational duty to continue with the story by follow-up questions. As a consequence the children use more explicit means to successfully close their story.
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Example (25b) (continued) E das ja TOLL. that’s great 10 ((lacht)) ((laughs)) und WAS hat der PApa dann gemacht? and what did daddy do then (1.0) K .h HAllo ju- (.) hi bo hallo KIND; hi kid 15 [.hh ich bin FROH dass du mich wieder mal besUchen KOMMST; I am glad that you came to visit me (1.0) E (-) uhm=uhm> K .hh und DANN,= and then [=ist die geschIchte JETZT zu ENde;= the story is ªnished now 20 E =das aber ne TOlle geschichte; but that’s a great story
The boy manages to close successfully only after saying that the story is over. Only then does the adult partner willingly join in the closing activities by praising the told story. As can happen when making up a story on the spot, some topics are not further elaborated, because the narrator runs out of ideas. The next example shows an interesting case where the child narrator draws on the return-home device upon not being able to complete the story events in a plausible way. Instead of breaking the story oŸ, the girl continues with a return-home device to bring her story to a proper ending, demonstrating her eŸort to structurally close the fantasy story. When the adult hesitates to join in the closing, the girl states the obvious: that her story is over. Example (26): 21w-2-1 01 K und die hatten dann so: blätter die MAlen konnten; (1.2) and they had pieces of paper that could paint ja- (--)
Fantasy stories and conversational narratives of personal experience
05 K E
yes und DANN, and then dann wurde es wieder nach HAUse geholt; (1.4) she was brought home [(das war die )] geSCHICHte. (--) [(that was the)] story ; (-) but that’s a great story
Other variations of closing devices reveal how children use known topoi of written tales to ªnd appropriate resolutions for their own extemporised fantasy stories. Example (27) 16m-2-1 01 K und DANN, and then .h DA kam so ein !BÖ!ser pi!RAT!; .h there came an evil pirate (2.0) und der heißt(e) DON pEpe; and he was called don pepe 05 wür wollte die !GAN!ze .h WELT behErrschen; wou wanted to rule the whole world Aber hm::: h .h but uhm der JUNge hat ihn AUFgehalten, (-) the boy stopped him und .h hat=hat hat die GANze welt geRETtet; and saved the whole world (2.5) E (.) great
In this sequence, the child narrates an adventure story as a variation of a classical theme: a good boy and an evil pirate have to ªght each other; the boy wins and thus saves the world. The ending and saved the whole world can be interpreted as a ready-made closing taken from children’s books or ªlms and thus re¶ects the boy’s media experience.6 Here, the adult almost immediately — at least without further questions — complies with the child’s signal to close the story and enters into her closing activities.
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Adults’ closing moves: compliment and praise As has already become apparent in the last chapter, the adults regularly give strong positive feedback after the children have closed the fantasy stories (or signaled their wish to do so). They verbally appreciate and praise the children’s narrative. Structurally, these assessments function as listener-speciªc closing activities, as can be seen in the following example. Example (28): 16m-2-1 01 K aber hm::: h .h but uhm der JUNge hat ihn AUFgehalten, (-) the boy stopped him und .h hat=hat hat die GANze welt geRETtet; and saved the whole world (2.5) 05 E (.) super DAS war ja eine KLASse geschIchte; .h that was a great story
In many cases, the adults praise the children’s stories rather enthusiastically, and use both prosodic and lexical means to do so. Example (29): 12w-2-1 01 K und da hat sie war es schön auf der KI:Rmes; (-) and then she it was so nice on the fair .h hat jemand auf=n FLÜgel getrEten und- (2.2) somebody stepped on her wings und dann konnte sie nicht mehr FLOgen; (1.3) and then she could not ¶y anymore E TOLL-> (--) fantastic> 05 DAS ist ja ne tOlle geschichte; = but that’s a fantastic story =die hast du dir mal so Eben AUSgedacht? (--) you have just invented K ja=A, (--) yes E DIE ist ja tOll; (--) it’s fantastic
Fantasy stories and conversational narratives of personal experience
In other cases, the adult ªnally closes the narrative interaction by explicitly thanking the child for the story after having it praised several times. Example (30): 17m-2-1 01 K .hh und DANN,= and then =ist die geschIchte JETZT zu ENde;= the story is ªnished now E =das aber ne TOlle geschichte; but that’s a fantastic story K [ja=a; yes 05 E [((lacht)) ((laughs)) E ne ganz LANge geschIchte; a really long story is ja KLAsse;(.) it’s great K geNAU. (.) precisely E vIElen !DANK!. (-) thank you 10 für die SCHÖne geschichte; (.) for the wonderful story
Some adults connect their praising activity — which may also refer to the process of story-telling — with personalized positive assessments such as in the following example — in which the adult ratiªes the child’s closing activity with a typical discourse marker (well). Example (31): 18m-2-1 01 E gut; good dann ªnd ich das totAl SCHÖN-= then I think it’s really nice =dass du mir so=ne schöne geSCHICHte erzÄhlt hast; (-) that you have told me such a nice story
In some cases, the adults hesitate to give positive evaluative feedback after the story has seemingly come to an end. As in the following example, the reason for the delay can be the particular ending of the child’s narrative: the boy from the story had fallen and has to be taken to hospital.
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Example (32): 26m-2-1 01 K =da wurde noch (.) so=n PFLASter drAUfgemacht; (--) then a plaster was put on
E
05
10 K
E
15 E
zeigt auf seine Handinnen¶äche shows his palm uhm=uhm (3.0) hm: (.) da hat er aber (-) uhm (.) but then he has TRAUrige geschichte eigentlich; ne,= sad story though isn’t it =wenn man sich sO doll WEHtut; (-) if one hurts oneself badly oder (-) passiert da NOCH was,= or (-) did some more happen =dass das BESSer ist,= that it got better = (.)
schüttelt den Kopf shakes his head , hm‘hm schOn zu ENde, already ªnished (1.0)
K nickt, E nickt zurück C nods, E nods back hm: (.) JA. (.) uhm yes aber ne sch (.) (--) schön erZÄHLT; but a actually nicely told ((lacht)) ((laughs))
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SCHÖne geschichte; (.) nice story mit=nem TRAUrigen ende; (-) with a sad ending so im KRANkenhAUs; (.) in the hospital beim ARZT; (-) with the doctor dann DANK ich dir für die geschichte, (-) then I thank you for the story
After a careful attempt to elicit more and the production of several hesitation phenomena by both participants, the adult gives positive feedback response referring to the activity of telling rather than to the content of the story (actually nicely told). After some laughter, she produces a ªnal appreciation in the form of a summary that is somewhat elaborated (nice story with a sad ending). This sequence, functioning as a pre-closing activity, is then followed by an expression of the adult’s thanks that puts a ªnal end to the conversation.
Summary In terms of the genre-speciªc contextualization of narrative interaction it has been shown that children adopt familiar devices such as the return-home ªgure to thematically and structurally close their fantasy stories. In addition, to accomplish structural needs of the genre, the children borrow ready-made thematic devices they are familiar with from written narratives or mediaadaptations thereof, and ªt them into their own stories. This ªnding supports the conclusion that at least some children have already acquired knowledge about the genre of literary fairy tales, and are moreover able to transfer it to the relatively unknown genre of oral fantasy stories (cf. Becker, this volume). It can be assumed that children who do not have at least a certain degree of familiarity with the written genre are the ones who do not produce a fantasy story in our data. Even though the type of closing (i.e. ‘returning home’) is not necessarily genre-speciªc but broad enough to be used as a general resolution device (cf. JeŸerson 1978), the children’s strong need to properly close the oral fantasy stories — as evidenced by their respective activities — seems to be somewhat genre-speciªc. This is shown by comparisons with — often not produced — endings from conversational narratives of real episodes (see below). However,
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the adult partners do not always comply with the children’s ªrst attempt to close their fantasy story. This is very likely due to the fact that those fantasy stories are constructed on the spot, so that many utterances are potential ‘last’ utterances. What ªnally counts as a concluding utterance and can thus close the story, is again subject to negotiation. As to interaction theory, the regular production of compliments and praise by the adult listeners as closing signals is a relevant issue. Appreciating others’ actions by praising (or indeed criticizing) is an activity typically carried out by caretakers, clearly indicating asymmetries in power and/or knowledge as is often the case in institutional settings (cf. Linell & Luckmann 1991). Thus, praising the children for their more or less successful production of a ªctitious narrative evokes a school-like teaching frame for a short period of time and thus is tantamount to acting out locally interactional dominance. This empirical ªnding again supports the view that fantasy-stories are closer to the institutional setting of the classroom than narratives of personal experience. Thus, in the closing movements of fantasy stories, the fourth and ªfth narrative jobs ‘closing’ and ‘transition’ also have to be accomplished by the interactants. Again, adults and children alike adjust to the genre-speciªc requirements their respective activities to achieve the jobs: A fantasy story that is potentially never-ending — especially as it is invented on the spot — calls for diŸerent closing devices than stories that are based on real events. Moreover, the adults pay tribute to the unusualness of the narrative task by using special verbal activities to express their gratitude for the children’s conversational engagement.
The structure of closings in conversational stories Many children close their conversational stories about pets by producing a ‘solution’ to the climax that had been presented as a complication, often also signaling through prosodic means that their story has come to an end (ªnal, step-down intonation in the last utterance). The following two examples demonstrate such cases of story closings. Example (33): 17m-3-1 01 K da kam so ein AUto,= then a car drove by =wollt ich DEN, (-) I wanted
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05
so an (.) am BAND nehmen, to take him on the lead is=er (-) hat er (-) wollte der (.) mich BEIßen,= he did he had he wanted to bite me -> =aber zum glÜck bin ich zuRÜCKgesprungen. but luckily I jumped back
Example (34): 28m-3-1 TOB mir ist NUR passiert, it only happened to me als ich mir die HÄNde waschen wollte,(-) when I wanted to wash my hands 10 E und KEIner war am früstückstis äh TISCH, and nobody was at the breakfast table äh äh da: HAT (-) .h VISsi und dErri einfach-(-) uhm uhm there Vissi and Derri simply .h hat er sich das knÄcke äh brot mit nuTElla get[ei:lt; he shared the piece of bread with nutella
The children often produce complete patterns of conversational stories and thus demonstrate that they have already successfully acquired some knowledge about the structural requirements of how to end a conversational story. However, as becomes obvious in the next chapter, the adults sometimes do not properly tune into the children’s closing sequences.
Adult closing moves: Evaluation After the children’s closing activities the adults regularly respond with evaluative remarks which somehow refer to the story events. In the following example, the adult displays her appreciation of the story by laughter, followed by a summarizing evaluative remark about the dog, which the child agrees with. Example (35): 05w01w 01 Pa lisa sollte raten welcher HAND,= lisa was supposed to guess in which hand =.h da hat er mir he die wurst ausser HAND .hh gegEssen; and then he ate the saussage out of my hand E [((lacht)) ((laughs)) Pa [dann hab ich LIsa die milchschnitte gegeben, (.) then I gave Lisa the chocolate bar
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05
.hh und ICH hab mir eine neue WURST (.) .h geholt; and I got myself a new saussage E ((lacht)) ((laughs)) na is ja=n gAnz schön FREcher hund; (.) well that’s quite a cheeky little dog Pa ja=a; (-) yes
After the child has ªnished her story, the adult utters an evaluative remark as a clear case of ªnal evaluation by means of its generalizing quality. Now, instead of changing the topic of conversation (which would be structurally possible here), the adult continues by asking the girl about her reaction to the dog’s trick. This ‘moving out of closing’ (Button & Casey 1984) is achieved through the production of a list of potential reactions to the dog’s behavior. Example (36) (35 continued) E UND?= and 10 =warste BÖse, were you angry oder haste geLACHT; (--) or did you laugh Pa AUCH gelacht;= also laughed E =AUCH gelacht; also laughed auch=n bIsschen BÖse, (.) also a little angry 15 Pa und !MA!ma AUCH gelacht; and mummy also laughed E AHA so; (.) uhum so nA dann ist GUT; well that’s good ((lacht)) ((laughs)) und der HUND war froh, (.) and the dog was happy
Fantasy stories and conversational narratives of personal experience
Only after the child’s response does the adult ªnally close the story-telling activity by uttering a ªnal positive evaluation that refers both to the positive reactions of the child and her mother to the dog’s behavior, and to the dog’s anticipated satisfaction after having successfully stolen a piece of sausage. Even though the adults use mostly positive evaluative remarks to proceed with the closing, the story events sometimes call for diŸerent kinds of evaluation, as the following example demonstrates. Example (37): 06w03w-3-1 (about a rabbit that died) 01 NI .h ein KL.h a lit.h ein GANZ kleiner schwarzer,= .h a very little black =war so KLEIN erstwas only this little und der ist dann geSTORben schon;= and then he already died 05 E =och ECHT?(.) oh really NI ja; yes E [das ist ja TRAUrig that’s sad (( )) E hm (1.1) uhm (1.1) 10 ja das pasSIERT ne, that happens doesn’t it dass [tIere dann STERben; that pets die
In this case, expressions of pity and regret are more suitable to evaluate the story properly, and this is exactly what the adult is doing. The same holds for the next example which also shows how the sequential positioning of evaluative remarks may interfere with the story production, and thus lead to conversational ‘trouble’. Example (38 ): 04m10-3-1 01 H na die haben sich schon mal GEgenseitig so ge!BIS!sen; (--) well they bit each other
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E
OH::- [(das ist aber;)] oh [thats not very H [JETZT sind ] sie ein geschIEdenen käªg; (--) [now they are in divorced cages E Oh DAS ist aber nicht schön; (.) oh that’s not very nice 05 H ein Oben ein unten; (--) one upstairs one downstairs E ja haben sie geBLUtet, (---) well were they bleeding H ‘hm=‘hm; (--) ‘hm=’hm E nee? (1.1) no? E [(na dann gehts;)] well that’s okay then
The adult oŸers an evaluative remark marking the highpoint of the twohamsters story. However, the child interrupts her because he obviously reads her remark as a ªnal evaluation (as is the case in the example above), and wants to bring the story to an end before he has to cede the ¶oor. So it is the structural ambiguity of the adult’s evaluative remarks that leads to the interruption. After the child has ªnished his turn, the adult again produces an evaluation, which — as a consequence of its sequential position — could now gain the quality of a ªnal appreciation. The following evaluative question, however, which still refers to the biting, reveals that the aŸective reaction was indeed meant to evaluate the complication.
Summary In a genre-speciªc perspective, the children’s closing activities in conversational stories are very diŸerent from those found in oral fantasy stories. The children oŸer ‘solutions’ to their stories’ highpoints as endings; literary ªgures or variations on the return-home device are not used as a resource for closing. So, by closing their stories as is required by narrative structure, the children show their own narrative competence and thus signal their better familiarity with the genre. Adult listeners, however, often produce ªnal evaluation and thus reestablish reportability, and — at the same time — act as caretakers and thus perform and establish interactional dominance throughout the conversation.
Fantasy stories and conversational narratives of personal experience
From an interactional perspective, it is highly relevant that the adults clearly refer to the stories’ contents and neither to its forms, nor to the children’s’ eŸort in having produced a story. Praise and compliments are not considered necessary. Instead, reactions to the story events are brought about in the form of appropriate evaluative comments that show the listeners’ involvement, and re-constitute and ratify the story’s reportability. Thus, again, the narrative jobs ‘closing’ and ‘transition’ are completed; the interactional and conversational means to do so, however, diŸer from those used for fantasy stories.
Concluding remarks: The structure of closing in fantasy stories and conversational stories A comparison between the structural and interactional features of fantasy stories and conversational stories of personal experience reveal that 1. adults and children work together on the progression of closing in both narrative genres; the closings are however diŸerently structured; 2. again, the adults’ interactive support meets speciªc structural and organizational requirements of the speciªc narrative genres; 3. as resources to construct closings of the diŸerent narrative genres, the children draw on media experiences, on the one hand, and familiarity with the narrative structures on the other.
Conclusion: narrative, interactional and developmental aspects Narrative theory Generally speaking, the descriptive GLOBE model, formulating ªve narrative jobs that have to be mutually fulªlled by the participants, could be shown to be relevant for the diŸerent narrative genres under investigation. The narrative jobs, however, are completed through changing interactive and conversational work across diŸerent narrative genres. Devices are thus modiªed in accordance with their varying requirements. The open plot of a fantasy story yet to be told results in particular di¹culties which the children face at their openings: they have to come up with and elaborate on a suitable plot that ªts into the given, rather unfamiliar, frame.
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The children regularly master this task by ªrst oŸering topic proposals that are then to be ratiªed by the adult listener. In other words, they ask for support. Follow-up questions may have to follow to help the children to master the next narrative job of ‘elaboration’. By comparison, the children face diŸerent problems in conversational stories: they have to achieve topic continuation with the read story regarding an experience they — or someone they know — actually had. The children regularly use markers to signal discontinuity before they tell their own stories. Sometimes the adults oŸer speciªc supportive devices such as lists of possible events, which help the children to link their own story up with the read one. Once an event has been established as reportable, the children need no further assistance to elaborate the story. So, in our data, the openings of fantasy stories demanded work on topic development, whereas conversational stories of personal experiences required the achievement of topical coherence. Similar observations could be made with respect to closing activities in both narrative genres. Again, the narrative jobs have to be completed by any of the participants; but these may face diŸerent problems on their way to doing so. To structurally close a fantasy story with a potential open end demands particular activities to signal closing. The children imaginatively use their knowledge of literary ªgures as return-home-devices to structurally ªnish their fantasy stories; sometimes, however, more explicit formulations have to follow to make the adult accept the closings. In the conversational stories, the children face only minor problems in signaling that story closing is on the way. They create narrative patterns that are structurally complete; moreover, closing utterances are often produced with ªnal intonation contours. However, as the adult partners often try to elicit more elaboration on the story events, they do not always immediately ratify the children’s closing moves interactionally.
Interactive theory It could be shown that distinct patterns of adult-child interaction emerge in fantasy stories and conversational stories respectively. These diŸerences are at least partly due to structural diŸerences between the two genres and must be considered with respect to them (this point is further exploited in Chapter 3). Other diŸerences may arise because of changing local conversational and interactional settings that require the mastering of other organizational problems.
Fantasy stories and conversational narratives of personal experience
In the triggered fantasy stories of our data, adults have to assist the children in particular ways to help them into the stories. Children display sensitivity towards the delicacy of the narrative work to be done (i.e. coming up with a suitable topic that ªts into the given frame) by formulating topic proposals that the adult partners usually accept by producing evaluations and using prosodic stylization as appropriate means. Through the use of conversational devices such as follow-up questions, continuers and elaborative questions at speciªc sequential positions, adults oŸer more invaluable interactive support. Note that Becker’s ªndings (Chapter 3) diŸer strikingly from these observations. Her data show a lot of formulaic openings as well as endings in comparable local contexts, which seem to make listener support super¶uous at this sequential position. Therefore, it is assumed that the diŸerent observations are due to diŸerent elicitation procedures in the data. It follows from this comparison that the higher amount of supporting listener activities found in our data is not necessarily to be explained by genre-speciªc requirements of fantasy stories, which the children cannot meet without the adult’s help but to the diŸerent situational context. In addition, it could be that the conditional relevances set by the introductory sentence in our data leads to the observed insecurities as to an appropriate continuation on the part of the children. This would be well in line with our ªndings concerning the other set of data: In stories of personal experience, problems occur at transition places from talking about the read narrative to making the children tell a story about their own experience. As a consequence, a lot of work on topical coherence has to be done by both partners. Whereas children use means such as markers to indicate insu¹cient coherence, adults may create lists of possible events with possible pets that are thus established as suitable topics for conversational stories of personal experiences. Closings of fantasy stories again are constructed by the use of locally adjusted conversational devices by both participants. The adults’ closing moves of praising and expressing gratitude are of special interest in this context as they are responsible for a partial shift towards an institutional frame. With conversational stories of personal experience, closing seems rather unproblematic, even though adults sometimes attempt to move out of closings to elicit more elaboration on the story events.7 Here, greater familiarity on both sides is displayed through the appropriate use of gestalt closure and closing devices such as emphatic evaluations on both sides. Thus, diŸerences in the course of the interaction in the opening and closing sequences re¶ect and — at the same time — reproduce genre-speciªc
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and structural diŸerences between fantasy and real life stories. In other words, by realizing systematically diŸerent genre-speciªc closing patterns, interactants establish systematically diŸerent activity types. These may be ‘inventing and placing a story as you go along’ and ‘teaching how to invent and tell a fantasy story’ in the case of fantasy stories, and ‘doing work on topic coherence’ as well as ‘establishing reportability’ in the case of everyday stories. Other shifts can be observed in closing sequences, where adults may evoke an institutional frame through particular activities (such as ‘praising’ and ‘expressing gratitude’) in fantasy stories, or may simply produce appropriate emphatic responses to the content of the children’s stories of personal experience. Thus, they treat the child’s activity either as an accomplishment to be assessed by them or as the sharing of a mutually interesting event. In this context, issues on asymmetries in role and knowledge and interactional dominance arise, which clearly shape adult-child conversations in most settings.
Developmental theory With respect to issues on language development, our present data do not yet allow empirical claims (see, however, Becker’s chapter for a more detailed elaboration). However, it has become obvious that a Discourse Acquisition Support System is of vital importance for the children’s successful achievement of diŸerent narrative genres and for the smooth embeddings of narrative discourse units in conversation. What seems to be interesting in this relation is not so much the extent of supportive activities, but rather the kinds that vary across diŸerent narrative genres in our data. As was mentiones above, the developmental eŸects of adults’ activities cannot be proven in our corpus so far, since the longitudinal data are not yet available. The supportive function of the patterns described can be made plausible, however, in terms of the following considerations: 1. The support that adults give especially in helping the children into the story has been shown to be genre-speciªc. Adults thus adjust their steering activities to the internal diŸerences among narrative genres and are oriented towards a ”zone of proximal development” (Vygotsky) which includes the child’s developmental task of diŸerentiating narrative genres. 2. Adults have been shown to establish diŸerent interactive contexts by either appreciating a child’s story in a communicative way by sharing or suggesting evaluative components of the event told, or by simply praising the
Fantasy stories and conversational narratives of personal experience
child’s telling activity. The latter, however, does not provide any structural input for the child’s developmental process such as: ”this part of your story is especially remarkable, funny, exciting . . .” Given the fact that the more formal type of evaluating children’s stories is typical for classroom interaction, one might doubt if this type of institutional pattern is really appropriate to fulªll its functions as a context for acquiring verbal competence. 3. Children have been shown to be familiar with the two narrative genres used in our data to diŸerent degrees. There are at least two strategies by which they obviously compensate a lack of familiarity with the discourse structural requirements at hand: – They ask for help by clearly only oŸering a proposal for a topic of a possible fantasy story, thus relying on the adult’s competence with respect to its appropriateness; – they opt for ready-made closing devices where more content adequate endings are not available to them. Both strategies are very eŸective devices, indicating that narrative development is a matter of interaction as well as cognition.
Notes 1. Becker (2001) systematically compared diŸerent narrative genres under developmental aspects and found striking diŸerences in development and interactive patterns. 2. The data are part of a larger corpus of adult-child interaction collected in a DFG (=German National Science Foundation) research project called ‘Discourse styles as verbal socialization’ at the University of Dortmund under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Uta M. QuasthoŸ. 3. Transcription conventions follow GAT (cf. Selting et al. 1998, see also ch. 5 and 12 of this volume); English translations are simpliªed. E = Erwachsene (adult) and K = Kind (child). Sometimes, abbreviations of names are used. 4. It is actually the same interviewer in both fragments. 5. See also Sacks (ibid., 764) on second stories and Ryave (1978). 6. This is in line with other ªndings concerning the use of a literal style in the diŸerent narrative genres, such as the use of speciªc temporal forms (cf. QuasthoŸ 2002) and the use of direct speech as a speciªc form of dramatization in fantasy stories (cf. Kern/QuasthoŸ 2002). 7. Again, Becker’s data (Chapter 3) show a diŸerent pattern here, which may be due to the children’s slightly diŸerent age-range and the diŸerent role of the listener.
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References Bergmann, J., & Luckmann T. (1995). Reconstructive genres of everyday conversation. In U. Quasthoff (Ed.), Aspects of oral communication. (pp. 289–304). Berlin: de Gruyter. Becker, T. (2001). Kinder lernen erzählen. Baltmannsweiler: Schneider Verlag Hohengehren. Button, G., & Casey, N. (1984). Generating Topic: The use of topic initial elicitors. In M. Atkinson, & J. Heritage (Eds.), Structures of social action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bruner, J. (1987). Wie das Kind sprechen lernt. Bern: Huber. (Original: Child’s talk: Learning to use language. New York 1983.) Cherry, L. (1979). The role of adults’ request for clarification in the language development of children. In R. O. Freedle (Ed.), New directions in discourse processing. (pp. 273– 286). New York. Corsaro, W. (1977). The clarification request as a feature of adult interactive styles with young children. Language in Society, 6, 183–207. Hausendorf, H., & Quasthoff, U. (1996). Sprachentwicklung und Interaktion. Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher Verlag. Jefferson, G. (1978). Sequential aspects of story-telling in conversation. In J. Schenkein (Ed.), Studies in the organization of conversational interaction. (pp. 219–248). New York: Academic Press. Jefferson, G. (1984). Stepwise transition out of topic. In J. M. Atkinson, & J. Heritage (Eds.), Structures of social action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jefferson, G. (1978). Sequential aspects of story-telling in conversation. In J. Schenkein (Ed.), Studies in the organization of conversational interaction. (pp. 219–248). New York: Academic Press. Kern, F., & Quasthoff, U. (2002). Constructions of highpoints in different narrative genres: Interactional, stylistic and developmental aspects. Paper presented at the International Conference on Conversation Analysis. Copenhagen, May 2002. Linell, P., & Luckmann, T. (1991). Asymmetries in Dialogue: Some conceptual preliminaries. In I. Marková, & K. Foppa (Eds.), Asymmetries in dialogue. (pp. 1–20). Hemel Hampstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf. Ochs, E. (1991). Misunderstanding children. In G. Coupland et al. (Eds.), Miscommunication and problematic talk. (pp. 44–60). Newbury Park. Quasthoff, U. (2002). Tempusgebrauch von Kindern zwischen Mündlichkeit und Schriftlichkeit. In C. Peschel (Ed.), Grammatik und Grammatikvermittlung. (pp. 179–198). Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Ryave, A. L. (1978). On the achievement of a series of stories. In J. Schenkein (Ed.), Studies in the organization of conversational interaction. New York: Academic Press. Sacks, H. (ed. by G. Jefferson) (1992). Lectures on conversation. Basil Blackwell: Oxford. Schegloff, E., & Sacks, H. (1973). Opening up closings. Semiotica, 7, 289–327. Sacks, H., & Schegloff, E. (1979). Two preferences in the organization of reference to persons in conversations and their interactions. In G. Psathas (Ed.), Everyday language. Studies in ethnomethodology. New York. Selting, M. et al. (1998). Gesprächsanalytisches Transkriptionssystem (GAT). Linguistische Berichte, 173, 91–122.
Chapter 3
The “Two Puppies” story The role of narrative in teaching and learning science* Richard Sohmer and Sarah Michaels
Science is a domain in which non-narrative modes of discourse tend to be privileged in analyses of talk and text. This chapter focuses on the role of narrative and narrative analysis in understanding scientiªc reasoning and argumentation. We will look at a particular set of narrative tools — stories which serve as bridging metaphors, mediating between concepts and actual situations. In an after-school science program (the “Investigator’s Club”), activity centers on group discussion of selected “discrepant events,” which engage and build on embodied experience and everyday ways of speaking. We document how students’ acquisition and use of speciªc narrative tools alter both their ways of seeing the world and their ways of seeing themselves.
Introduction Science is a domain in which non-narrative modes of discourse tend to be privileged in analyses of talk and text (Halliday & Martin 1993; Lemke 1990). In the Investigators’ Club (our research site, an after-school science program for school-disa¹liated middle-schoolers), we have found that narrative tools
* Many people have contributed to our thinking and writing of this chapter. In particular, we thank Jim Gee, Cathy O’Connor, Wendy Grolnick, Jaa Valsiner, Jasen Boyle and Sasha Henry, for their input and collegial support. And most importantly, we thank the students of the I-Club, whose words, stories and accomplishments help us make the case for alternatives to textbook science. This work was supported by a major grant from Spencer Foundation, and we gratefully acknowledge their support.
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play a far more important role in science apprenticeship than the literature would suggest. In particular, participants in the Investigators’ Club have been markedly successful in using a speciªc narrative tool — the “Two Puppies” story — to understand and explain the physics of air pressure. When we talk of the “Two Puppies” story, what do we mean by “story?” Our notion of narrative or story does not focus on personal narrative accounts — and the structured transformation of experience via narrative syntax in interaction with others (Labov & Waletsky 1967; Labov 1972; Ochs and Capps 2001). Instead, our notion of story draws on Bruner’s very general account of the “narrative mode” (development of the narrative mode cp. Chapter 4) vs. the “logico-scientiªc” or “paradigmatic mode” (the contrast between a good story and a well formed argument). In Bruner’s formulation, the narrative mode “strives to put its timeless miracles into the particulars of experience, and to locate the experience in time and place.” By contrast, the paradigmatic mode “seeks to transcend the particular by higher and higher reaching for abstraction…” (Bruner 1986, p. 13). The narrative mode makes use of Burke’s pentad, involving “characters in action with intentions or goals in settings using particular means” (quoted in Bruner 1986, p. 20). Consider these two cases: “You’re being a Judas.” “You’re being a pain in the ass.”
Both are metaphorical and relate one situation to another. However, the ªrst indexes a very speciªc and complex story with multiple characters, roles, and actions. The second references a decontextualized generality — pointing to a sensation (that can occur across multiple situations with a minimum of entailments) and ispresumed to be shared. It is the former — the metaphor that indexes a complex situation with characters and action — that we are focusing on. In analyzing the use of tools in the service of scientiªc explanation in the Investigators’ Club, we ask: What are the tools which help students see, speak, and reason in new and powerful ways? How do you get middle school students who hate school, and who (by and large) are failing at school to pick up these tools willingly and use them eŸectively? When a tool — especially a narrative tool, like the Two Puppies story — works extraordinarily well, we are especially curious. We observe that it works — but how does it work? We explore the aŸordances that the “Two Puppies” story has provided
The “Two Puppies” story
over non-narrative alternatives. We provide examples of the tool being used (taken up and practiced) by students, and examine the ways that students’ use of the tool transforms both the user and the accomplishment of scientiªc explanation. Here we draw on Jim Wertsch’s (1991) work on cultural tools (“mediational means”) as providing “the link or bridge between the concrete actions carried out by individuals and groups, on the one hand, and cultural, institutional and historical settings, on the other” (del Rio, Wertsch, & Alvarez 1995, p. 21). We theorize that this tool serves as a bridging metaphor, mediating between concepts and actual situations in the world, helping students resee the world and their place in it.
Background: What is the Investigators’ Club like and how does it work? The Investigators’ Club (“I-Club”) setting is an after-school program that meets three times a week for 15 weeks. Participants are inner city middle school students (7th graders) from a wide range of cultural and linguistic backgrounds, predominantly those who are struggling and/or failing in school. The I-Club recruits students’ everyday ways of speaking about the world — while gradually scaŸolding them into the use of new discursive tools (new ways of giving scientiªc explanations and using representational tools). In this program, the activities (“tasks” or “demos”) are designed to promote active theorizing, prediction, and argument about puzzling physical phenomena, often called “discrepant events.” In the process, having a well-argued theory is the name of the game. If a student’s prediction, or theory, or both are in the end disconªrmed by the evidence, that is OK: the job of the scientist is to make cogent predictions and theories so that they may be cogently disconªrmed. The goal is to make one’s claim as explicit and persuasive as possible. Everyone beneªts from seeing the (ultimately) best theory in the ªeld of contesting, less eŸective theories, and everyone can appropriate the results for their own use in the next task. The Investigators’ Club program presumes that students come to class with very well developed theories of how the world works. Students are, in our view, already successful investigators of the physical world — they know how to jump out of the way of an on-coming bus, transfer liquids, move heavy or clumsy objects around, deal with friction and force, etc.; they have (implicit) theories of invisible, underlying forces (suction, heat, pressure, gravity) in their
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environments. In contrast, what we call “Textbook Science” deprecates students’ already-existing knowledge. At one extreme, the existence, extent, complexity, and utility of students’ knowledge are simply not acknowledged. At another extreme, students’ knowledge is framed as comprised of baleful misconceptions which are to be removed and replaced — like getting one’s teeth swapped out for dentures — by canonical counterparts (Varenne and McDermott 1999). I-Club students (“Investigators”) use their diverse, culturally derived, everyday ways of speaking about discrepant events made from everyday objects (balloons, soda cans, drinking glasses, candles, water, ªre, etc.) but the phenomena to which they refer are — under a central assumption of physics — the SAME phenomena. In the process of explicating contesting predictions and theories with reference to shared observable physical events (i.e., in the process of doing physics), the students are scaŸolded toward the Discourse of physics, which is not anybody’s primary discourse.1 In the process of doing science, the students take on a new identity (scientist) — which does not con¶ict with and in fact builds upon (and transforms) their current understandings and ways of speaking as the basis for new ways with words (See Figure 1 for an example of a puzzling situation that you can try out, and theorize about, at home!).
Figure 1. Fill a glass with water, cover it with a piece of paper, then turn the glass of water upside down: the water does not fall out. What makes this happen?
The “Two Puppies” story
Investigators’ Club tasks are embedded in a set of participant structures and expectations which model the way scientists actually talk, think, and act. Students accomplish both identity work and cognitive work in the practice of these activities. A primary and recurring talk format in the I-Club is what we have come to call a “position-driven discussion.”2 Here, students focus on a single problem or question, often with a set of likely or even pre-selected choices as outcomes. In these position-driven discussions everyone is focused on the same phenomenon, situation, or problem, but encouraged (indeed required, at times) to commit to one position or another and to argue for their respective predictions or theories. At the same time, participants are free to change their position on the basis of another’s evidence or arguments, typically with the proviso that they explain what it is in the other’s position that they ªnd useful or persuasive. The teacher’s job is not to provide “right answers”. Put somewhat more positively, one of the I-Club teacher’s major concerns is to avoid prematurely shutting down the discussion by “telegraphing” (indicating in any way) which theory is closest to being canonically correct. Rather, in position-driven discussions, the teacher typically scaŸolds students by “revoicing” their contributions and pushing for clariªcation, so that everyone has access to everyone else’s reasoning. The teacher might say, “OK, so let me see if I’ve got your theory right. You’re saying that the volleyball will weigh less when I put more air into it because balloons are lighter when full of air?” Having a good “sayable” theory (conjecture, or position) is more important than having the right theory, until the ªnal phase of the discussion, where, for example, the science demo is run and there is consensus on the outcome. (At that point, the teacher’s role changes, and a focus on correctness, getting the right solution, and actively explaining to the students how to think about the situation takes place.) The teacher is primarily a coach, whose job is not to talk the students out of their home-based knowledge and the theories implicit in that knowledge, but rather to help them to explicate, clarify, and sharpen their theories.3 (See O’Connor 2001; Michaels & Sohmer 2001a, 2001b; Michaels, O’Connor, & Resnick 2001 for more discussion of position-driven discussions.) While we have coined the term “position-driven discussion”, we did not, of course, invent the genre itself. It has been described, discussed, and researched (in some degree) by others interested in what might be broadly thought of as collective sensemaking. Nicholas Burbules (1993) describes four diŸerent types of dialogue: dialogue as conversation, dialogue as inquiry, dialogue as debate, and dialogue as instruction. Position-driven discussions
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resemble Burbules’ “debates”: “The debating spirit of this form of dialogue is in its dedication to contrasting the merits of alternative positions from the strongest positions available. …[A] potential beneªt can be in observing the respective cases made for each view and gaining a better sense of the number and strength of arguments available to them, pro and con on each position” (p. 119). Burbules locates the precursors to this form in the teaching of the rhetoricians in classical Greece. Seminal research on this form of talk as “collective comprehension activity” was carried out by Hatano and Inagaki (1991), based on an approach to teaching science in Japan developed by Kiyonobu Itakura, known as the “Hypothesis, Experiment, Instruction Method” or HEI. In this approach, a theorizable situation is set up with a framing question such as: “If I immerse this ball of clay hanging from a spring half-way into a pitcher of water, will the spring get shorter, longer, or stay the same length?” Students vote, debate, and then revote. In the I-Club environment, where the teacher’s goal is to facilitate a genuinely “position-driven” discussion, heterogeneity of students’ experience and cultural background is a valuable resource. When the group evaluates competing theories in their most persuasive forms, in the shared context of the demo at hand, cognitive growth in the form of movement towards more eŸective (and canonical) ways of seeing and talking is self-motivated and selfenhancing, grounded in individual and collective experience (rather than a concern for the “right answer”).
What have we found? From a variety of perspectives and using a number of indicators, we have been able to show that students who were failing in school became capable, in the course of participation in I-Club activities, of demonstrating impressive intellectual abilities — in understanding di¹cult problems in physics, and in demonstrating that understanding to others. Evidence includes (but is not limited to): pre- and post-tests of science knowledge; questionnaires of I-Club students and matched controls’ motivation, participation, and sense of e¹cacy in school; teacher judgments of students in school; Investigators’ successful participation in the school science fair; Investigators’ demonstrated ability to present, conduct discussions about, and teach the physics of air pressure to younger (ªfth-grade) students.
The “Two Puppies” story
We thus have both quantitative and qualitative evidence that these students did in fact come to take on expanded identities as “Science Investigators”. They participated as members in a speciªc Discourse, the Investigators’ Club, which embodies skills, attitudes and knowledge valued by the Discourses of science and school. We can also show that the I-Club Discourse did not resonate with their previous negative experiences in school, and that it consisted of practices that allowed these students to voluntarily acquire and demonstrate competence in knowledge, skills and attitudes valued in scientiªc contexts (and schools).4
Background information about the science at issue and the narrative tool, the “Two Puppies” story A crucial feature of explanations in physics is that intentionality, desires, and emotions are not to be ascribed to physical agents or processes. Beginners mark themselves as not in the Discourse (Gee 1996) of physics by their use of anthropomorphic arguments: “The ªre needed oxygen so it had to get the egg out of the way,” or “The smoke rose up in the bottle because it wanted to get out.” Even the scientiªc sounding (and much resorted to) pseudo-law, “Nature abhors a vacuum”, is an example of this kind of reasoning — based on an understanding of physics as being like the human world in which emotions, promises, irony, desires, lies, and goals play a major role in our understanding and explanation of events. Because explanations in physics do not trade in these everyday, implicitly narrative forms of causality and explanation, one might expect that the process of inducting or apprenticing someone into the Discourse of physics would privilege the use of tools that are themselves decontextualized and non-narrative in nature. In the “Two Puppies” story,5 the “puppies” referred to are mythical or ªctional beings — “Air-puppies” — combining some of the properties of real, live puppies with the behavioral characteristics of air molecules. The airpuppies are the bumbling (mindless) agents in a modiªable story with a particular setting (always including two rooms separated by a moveable wallon-wheels), participating in a series of events, always resulting in some kind of lawful eŸect — that is, the wall moves as it must, given the air-puppies’ opposing impacts upon both sides. We typically introduce the Air-puppies story to the kids (in a 10- to 20minute session) by telling them the basic story, followed — always — by
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Figure 2. The view from above of the beginning of the “Two Puppies” story. In this version of the story there are equal (numbers and kinds of) air-puppies on each side of the wall-on-wheels.
several variations. As the story progresses, the situation and changes in it are illustrated with simple, freehand drawings (on whiteboard, paper, or chalkboard). We begin by asking the kids to imagine a big room divided into two smaller rooms by a wall on frictionless wheels (like roller skates). In each of the rooms on either side of the wall-on-wheels there are air-puppies — initially, equal numbers and kinds of air-puppies — mindlessly bumbling around. (Figure 2 shows a top-down view of the situation.) The dividing wall-onwheels moves6 whenever a puppy bumps into it (not intentionally, just mindlessly moving around). As the puppies bumble around and mindlessly bump into things (all the walls and each other), “What”, we ask the kids, “will happen to the wall?” Even at this point, in this ªrst session, one or more kids will conªdently “read” the situation to predict that “the wall [on wheels] will stay in the same place.” Once the scenario in Figure 2 is set in motion the wall-on-wheels (henceforth simply, as the kids say it, “the wall”) is pushed a little bit to one side or the other each time a puppy bumps into it. Because the wall gets, on average, the same number and kind of bumps from each side, the wall stays in approximately the same place, oscillating about the centerline (Figure 3).
The “Two Puppies” story
Figure 3. With equal (numbers and kinds of) air-puppies on each side, the wall-onwheels is continually bumped from side to side. The net impact of the puppies on one side of “the wall” (the wall-on-wheels) is, on average, equal to the net impact of the puppies on the other side, making the wall oscillate about the centerline.
A number of variations on this basic story are useful:
Story Variation #1 Storyteller: “What if we start out with the same number of air-puppies — twenty — on this [right-hand, e.g.] side of the wall, and more air-puppies — say, a hundred — on the other [left-hand] side? What do you think will happen to the wall-on-wheels?” Kids will say (something like): “The wall’s gonna move towards the twenty puppies side [i.e., the wall will move to the right] because there’s more puppy hits on the other [hundred-puppy] side.” Story Variation #2 Storyteller: “What if we start out with the same number of air-puppies on both sides of the wall, but we get the puppies on one side really excited — so that they bumble around much faster than the puppies on the other side… What do you think will happen to the wall-on-wheels?” Kids will say (something like): “The fast puppies are gonna bump into the wall faster and more times and harder so the wall is gonna be pushed away, towards the slow puppies.
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Figure 4. View from times 1, 2, and 3. As air-puppies in the right room “bumble” out the open door, there are fewer and fewer air-puppy impacts from the right upon the wall-on-wheels. Increasingly unopposed air-puppy impacts from the left push the wall away — to the right.
But if, say, some of the puppies on the right side of the wall leave the room (by a door), what will happen? Figure 4 illustrates this situation. In this case, the wall on wheels is pushed to the right, as puppy bumps on the left side are less and less opposed by puppy bumps on the right side. Most people see, use, and accept “suction” as a perfectly adequate explanation of ordinary actions, like using an Electrolux to clean a carpet or drinking a milkshake through a straw. An ordinary person who doesn’t know much physics sees sucking (or, what sounds more scientiªc, a “vacuum”) at work when they see a person drinking a milkshake through a straw. A physicist, in contrast, sees pushing. The actual forces of pulling and pushing are both invisible, but practitioners of physics see pushing: atmospheric pressure pushing the milkshake up into the straw. Here’s what Andy diSessa, physicist and science educator, writes about “suckers and sucking”: …Initially the overt agent, the person sucking on the straw, is viewed…as the direct cause of the liquid’s motion. … Later in development, at the level of a physicist’s informal description, an invisible, inanimate agent (i.e., air pressure pushing down on the liquid in the glass) becomes the direct cause of motion; it pushes the water up the straw. This happens when the balance of pressures (pressure on the water in the glass balances pressure on the top of the liquid inside the straw) is broken by the overt agent — the person sucking. It is notable that, at this stage, in contrast to earlier stages, a vacuum or partial vacuum can in principle never pull (suck) at all. Sucking is entirely gone as an explanatory primitive. In a bit more detail, the new analysis is: The person changes the geometry of the situation, for example, by increasing the volume inside his or her mouth in which a ªxed amount of air exists. This results in decreased pressure on the liquid on the straw-and-mouth side of the system. A decreased pressure on the inside of the straw and an undiminished atmospheric pressure on the other side cause the water to move. (diSessa 1993, pp. 144–145).
The “Two Puppies” story
The initial invention and use of the Two Puppies story stems from Sohmer’s observation that, in practice, novice physics learners simply do not retire or replace their good old “suction” as an explanatory tool after (repeated) reading or instruction in the details of a canonical account (like diSessa’s) of air pressure. By contrast, these same novices do take on the Two Puppies story — which encodes the canonical explanation in a narrative — to successfully “resee” the physics of air pressure.
Example 1: Students guided in the use of the “Two Puppies” story As an example of I-Club students working with this narrative tool, we draw on a segment of talk taken from the 1997 I-Club. Over a period of days, and through literally hundreds of turns at reasoning, Sohmer pushed and prodded and scaŸolded the students to work with the Two Puppies story, unpack it, model it on paper, and think about what it bought them. He also led them to talk about why scientists talk about air pressure the way they do and how it’s diŸerent from the way everyday talk works. This was always done in the context of applying the current topic of talk to old and new demonstrations, some present, some merely shared contexts of the mind (Cazden 1992). The following example7 shows one instance of a lengthy process of Sohmer scaŸolding the students in using the narrative tool. This discussion took place during the 5th week of the I-Club, long after the kids had ªrst been introduced to the Two-Puppies tool itself (which happened on the 4th day of the I-Club). This discussion occurred in the context of an experiment that involved a metal one-gallon can, full of water, elevated on a stand 8 feet high oŸ the ground. A tube attached to the can is, at the outset, clamped shut so that no water can run out. The bottom end of the tube leads into a large plastic bucket on the ¶oor. (Figure 5 is a sketch of the set-up for this experiment.) Sohmer required the Investigators to predict — using the Two Puppies story — what was going to happen when the clamp was removed from the tube. But, before they began, he reviewed with them how the Two Puppies story works. T:
We’re gonna run this experiment that the uh / that the girls set up / and- and then I’m gonna ask you to predict / what (…) / and uh and not just predict what’s gonna happen / but (…) explain it / and explain your prediction using the Two Puppies theory // even if your- even your prediction is wrong / you could gotta- if you use it here / inge-
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gallon-sized metal can, filled with water, & suspended 10 feet above the floor
distance from bottom of can to valve = 8 feet
red rubber tube (1/8 inch I.D.), filled with water, runs from a hole drilled in the screw-on cap (at the bottom of the upside-down can) to the valve below
valve (closed in beginning)
big plastic tub on the floor
Figure 5. The set-up for the can and long tube demo
The “Two Puppies” story
Mark: T: Mark: T: Mark: Phil: Mark: T:
Tyrone: T: Tyrone: T:
nious use of the Two Puppies theories / you get uh glory / uh of sorts // Cause it takes a while to ªgure out how to use this tool okay? / thisthis explanation you might- / might use it wrong // But um / but so I’m gonna / point to you / and ask you a qui- / few questions about the Two Puppies theory / remember that there’s the- there’s a / the original version of this / it’s a- it’s what we call a metaphor / it’s not really true / we’re not talking puppies / we’re talking about air molecules right? / really but / it’s- it’s convenient to talk about puppies / …(reviews the story with the rooms, wall and 100 puppies)… Now what I want just to / just to check out how we’re- how we we’re doing about /applying this- this uh / tool / the Two Puppies metaphor // I- I’m look / I’m now I’m entertaining suggestions as to how we could — / let’s say here’s / let’s say this is the wall right here / And this will be room A / and this will be room B / we know / we want this (…) / this wall / to move that way / towards room / th-this is room A / this is room B // We want to get / the wall to move towards room A // There’s about seven diŸerent ways we could do this // Just give me one way // push it // Okay // what- we can’t get in the room and push it cause only puppies are allowed in there // so how- / puppies push it // So why the- so pup- so pup- while it tries to push on this side / but puppies are also pushing on this side // Put all the puppies on this side // how are you going to get ‘em through the wall? shut up // Okay no / no I’m sorry / he’s got a (point) / we’re gonna- gotta expand our version of this // gonna have in- in each room / uh into each room / might have a door / that you can open or shut / okay? // so you can put more puppies in or you could take some puppies out // Okay? // Excite the puppies that are in the room / that- if you want to do all of them / that way you took the puppies that are useful // Excite the puppies in this room / yeah how? // and you could excite them by? // Heating ‘em up. Heating ‘em up right // Here’s where our metaphor crosses over into the air molecule / we’re- we’re ªghting that / if you heat the puppies up they’re gonna get excited and run around / if you cool down / they’re gonna / calm down not run around as much // So my […] / heat the 100 puppies up here // They’re gonna run around more / they’re gonna
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Phil: T: Phil: T:
Anna:
Mark: T:
Mark:
hit the wall more often / so the wall’s gonna go this way // It’s gonna go this- okay so what’s another way we can move the wall this way / if we heat the puppies up /(…) // What’s another way Phil? // Uh / yell food // Okay so / yelling food would- would do what? / get ‘em excited? // if they was / like / hungry / yeah // Okay so but that- that’s where this- this thing crosses over into where we’re really talking about / air / air molecules uh so uh // the puppies is just a metaphor // so we’ve got one way of exciting them which is to heat them up // get them to move around faster / in fact heat just means getting them to move around faster // but we’re gonna heat them up by putting heat in the ¶oor // so uh you have another way? // What’s another way? // [?: Uh] I’m sorry Anna / we’re I’m not [?many of them] // Because like um / cool them down on one side / and on the other side / the puppies would still be banging / on the thing / so [?it could get them to move] / on the thing // Um / you can likeWait- wait did you get that one? // [?: Uh huh] You cool down the puppies on this side / on the- on the side you want it to move towards / and the- and the- the puppies on the other side are still / running around normally / so they’re gonna bang the wall and [what’s another?] // You taunt ‘em by um / you put like / a slab of meat in like a container / and poke holes in it / so they can smell it / and you hang it from the ceiling /
This example shows how focusing on the narrative as tool involved both telling and guided practice. Sohmer reminds the students in lecture format (much of this turn is excerpted) and then gets them to work with it themselves. At this point, through positive and negative evaluations, revoicings (“Wait-wait did you get that one? …”) and follow-up questions (“But how…”), he guides them to see and work with the story his way. Here he combines elements of an authoritative stance (there are right and wrong, better and worse ways to say it) with occasional revoicing of students’ contributions, but only when they approximate what he’s looking for. In this way, a disparate set of conceptions and “voices” is being recognized but then shaped, regimented publicly, to sound more like him. This excerpt also shows just how complex a process this is. Over time, the students had to come to see what aspects of the story they could retain (getting the puppies excited by heating or cooling) and what aspects were
The “Two Puppies” story
irrelevant and distracting (getting puppies excited by oŸering them food “if they were hungry”). Over many, many instances of practice, combined with overt instruction (repeated reviewing of the story — in talk, on chart paper, and later in computer generated models), the students were guided, sometimes in a completely explicit manner, to theorize with a new set of discursive and visual/representational tools. Most striking was the evolving (and eventually regular) use of the term “air-puppies” in the students’ explanations. This usage served as a transitional conception for air molecules, as the Two Puppies story got taken up into their theorizing and into diagrams as a kind of inscription (using Latour’s 1986 term). The air-puppies were variously represented as dots on paper, numbers inscribed in a room, etc., and increasingly were used with only the relevant characteristics of molecules (constant motion, bumping force, no intentions, no desires, no sense of smell). Similarly, Two Puppies became an I-Club “technical term” — used by Sohmer and the I-Club members alike. It indexed the preferred air pressure tool, a de¶ating abstraction about molecules, whereby two sets of competing puppies could be used to represent, understand, and explain complex physical events in the world. Below are two photographs of students representing puppies in their drawn explanations of air pressure phenomena. In one case, the puppies are represented as dots; in another case, they are represented as a number and temperature (e.g., 100 puppies, calmed down) relative to puppies on the other side of the wall.
Juanita explaining the spud gun with puppies represented as dots.
Jesus and Carl show puppies in and outside a bottle as numbers (100 calm and 100 excited puppies).
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The Spud Gun example The following example shows the way the Two Puppies tool is taken up by the students, with support from the task, the teacher, and fellow investigators. The episode is taken from Day 6 of a diŸerent I-Club (Fall, 2000). It is only the second week of the I-Club and the norms for “Circle Up time,” the group discussion activity supporting argument and peer critique, are still being developed. Nonetheless, the group has already discussed, theorized about, and argued about a number of diŸerent air pressure demos. They have been introduced to the Two Puppies story and the notion that air-puppies represent air molecules. During this particular “Circle Up time,” the students are asked to give an explanation of any of the many air pressure demo they have seen thus far, giving their best “scientiªc” explanation of it. In addition, the game requires that “you’ve got to be clear enough that someone listening to your explanation over the telephone would understand it.” If the student’s explanation is deemed acceptable by the other students, the presenter gets to shoot the “spudgun” (itself an air-pressure demo), trying to shoot down as many ªlm canisters, stacked in a pyramid, as they can in 30 seconds. Although the game-like structure of this activity and the students’ excitement about shooting the spud-gun disguise it, the teacher has several pedagogical purposes for getting the students to present and for getting the audience to critique the presenter. In the words of Sohmer, the teacher: First, presenting to their peers helps prepare them for public presentations and questions from an audience, such as science fairs or teaching younger students [both valued activities the students work toward in the I-Club]. Second, giving
The spud gun
The “Two Puppies” story
presentations to the group helps both presenter and audience take on the identity of an expert — an expert investigator, far diŸerent from their identities in school, where many of these students are failing. The student presenting stands up as an expert, even if she has to try a couple of times to get it just right. The feedback, from peers and from me, provides the presenter with guidance and practice so that she can improve as an explainer. At the same time, the members of the audience are positioned as “expert enough” to critique the presenter. I’ve put them in the position of the coach or teacher. Now, in this excerpt, they’re just starting out, but because it’s a task shared by the entire group, no one of them has to do it all. I’ve shown them I know they can do it, but, at the same time, I haven’t given them a blank check. They have to do my job credibly in order to keep playing it, and I’m right there to step in to assist, if need be, either the presenter or her critics.
In the transcript excerpt below, Daheesha selects the spud-gun, itself, as the air pressure demo she’s going to explain.
Daheesha explains the spud gun and the teacher asks students for comments.
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Daheesha’s turn lasts 5 minutes. In summary, here’s what happens. Daheesha is called on. She stands up and says she’s going to explain how the spud gun works. She ªrst gives a step-by-step and somewhat stilted procedural account (with some help from her peers in naming the parts of the spud gun). She explains, in a sense “how you work it.” The other I-Club members are not satisªed with her account. They tell her she’s got to: explain why the spud gun works, be more scientiªc by using the Two Puppies. Daheesha demands a second chance, saying, “this time I’ll amaze you guys.” On her second try, she shifts from procedural to explanatory mode — saying, “now how it works…” She gives two explanations in succession. She begins her ªrst why-explanation by saying that the spud gun works “because there’s a little spring in it.” Laughter erupts and someone quickly points out that Richard had pointedly taken out the spring at the outset of the activity. Without missing a beat, Daheesha goes on to her second why-explanation saying that there’s air inside the chamber and that’s what makes the potato shoot out. Her peers are still not satisªed and again tell her she’s got to use the Two Puppies, explain about the wall, “how when you push [the piston] the wall comes up and squishes [the puppies] in so they run into the wall more often and the potato’ll go out.” Daheesha presents once again, this time using the Two Puppies story as an explanatory tool. Interestingly, in this third account, as she moves into narrative mode with the puppies, she changes her discourse style dramatically. She shifts into Black English Vernacular syntax and prosody in giving a fully performed narrative (Hymes, 1981 calls this kind of shift a “breakthrough into performance”), complete with dialogue and animated hand gestures.
The spud gun – disassembled
The “Two Puppies” story
Daheesha: right now the air-puppies are havin’ space // …now that / now I put it in [looks down and pushes the red piece into the black piece] / and they don’t have no space so they — so they’re like [high pitch, hands moving wildly] Oh let’s get out of here // So they .. push outta this hole thing // and they all sss-[¶ying motion] … [push out the potato] The students register the improvement in her account (“Better. Better.”) and vote that her account is good enough to warrant a turn at shooting the spud gun. Below, we provide a turn by turn account of Deheesha’s entire presentation, with interpolations (in italics) marking the changes in Daheesha’s discourse. Daheesha’s Wrst attempt: Daheesha: Student: Teacher: Daheesha: Teacher: Daheesha: Teacher: Daheesha:
I’ma explain how this thing works // What is this thing? // A spud-gun // Yeah // the spud-gun // A potato gun .. spud-gun // A potato gu:n // I ‘on know // Okay how’s it work? // Okay // [loud presentation voice] It works by / you / um inserting this black thing // Student: what’s the black thing? // Students: [laugh] What’s the black thing? Teacher: The piston // Daheesha: Yeah the piston // Insi:de // … the … the … Student: chamber Daheesha: the chamber // … and as you .. do that / you: …put your ªngers …where them things are / Frank: the grip // Daheesha: the grip… and then you put … this whole thing / … inside a potato / and you scoop it up // … and you can shoot it [wherever you want to // Frank: [What’s this whole thing? // What’s this whole thing? // Daheesha: The whole .. spud-gun //…Okay: // this little thing / that’s stickin’ out / … I mean- I mean / …I call it … the peanut / or / whatever // … Anyway / [laughter in background]….the thing sticks out of the spud-gun / … and then you scoop it .. into the um … the peanut [laughter] there // [louder laughter]
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Student: Potato // Students: [laughter and talking] Daheesha: Yeah [laughs and covers mouth] Student: Potato // Daheesha: And then it shoots out // and it shoots out // Teacher: Okay // is that your explanation? // Okay / so what do you think? // Students: Ba:d // bad // (lots of talking)
Commentary: Daheesha’s ªrst attempt is marked by numerous indicators of a procedural account (“How You Work It”). – sequentiality — indicated by “then” as a temporal sequence marker – recurring VP structure: It works by you doing X, you Y, you Z it – invocation of “technical” terminology: the pistons, the chamber, I call it the peanut Teacher: Daheesha:
How’s it work? It works by you inserting the piston into the chamber a:nd as you do that, you W, and then you X it, and then you Y, and you Z. … And this little thing, … I call it the peanut [stipulating a new technical term] … you X it and then it shoots out.
As soon as Daheesha ªnishes, the students critique her performance on two grounds, (1) vagueness and (2) the lack of an explanatory mechanism. Arrows indicate these points in the transcript, with indicating vagueness and indicating lack of explanatory mechanism. Teacher:
Andrea: Daheesha:
What’s wrong with it // as a — as a .. s-scientiªc explanation // as a … day-to-day explanation / if you were just tellin’ somebody / …you know / what to do / … it’d be ªne // if you were just tellin’ somebody how to use the spud gun // but we want to know what makes the spud gun work // so: … um: …OK we’ve got three people here // so: / uh … let’s see what Alysha has to say // What do you got to say Alysha? // …What’s — what didn’t you like about this as a scientiªc explanation? // Andrea: She kept using thi:ng // Student: and that // Teacher: Okay / so it’s a little — a little — a little — little vague to be a really good scientiªc explanation // ==And she didn’t mention anything [about == [If you want I can explain it over // [T: Okay]
The “Two Puppies” story
Teacher: Teacher:
Daheesha: Teacher:
Teacher: Anthony: Daheesha: Teacher:
Daheesha: Teacher: Daheesha: Bill:
Andrea: == how it pushes the potato out // Okay // Andrea:She didn’t mention any / air-puppies or any molecules // Okay // Do you have something to add to that? // I think that’s right // Bill: Yeah like um / … she didn’t tell us / ho:w / .. how / it pushes the potato out / like with the wall movin’ over and the puppies goin’ out // I – I -- I messed up on the ªrst time so I’ll do it over and I’ll== ==Okay / wait-wait-wait // let’s see what these people have // You got something to add? // Anthony: I think she needs to use like more nouns and pronouns / instead of usin’ thing and this and like // Okay so you’re picking up on what Andrea had to say? // Yeah // == ==Okay I’ll do it over // Wait one second / it’s hard to be criticized but / it’s…it‘s not about you really // it’s just about how to do this // Go ahead // David: I think you — you like — you like ..explained all the things about .. what it does but you didn’t explain like how it w — works // like — you — you — we know it pushes out all the tomatoes — I mean the.. potatoes but not — … but how does it — how does it push it out though? // By there’s like a little spring in here // Oka:y? // What do you think? // Bill: She needs to do more about like / …scientiªc / ..air-puppies and the wall // This time I’ll amaze you guys // All right // do it again //
In response to Daniel’s question “But HOW does it / how does it push it [the potato] out though?” Daheesha responds: “By there’s like a little spring in here,” as she looks down at the spud gun in her hand. The spud gun comes with a spring inside it, which functions to move the handle (piston) back to its original position after the gun has been shot, recocking it as it were. But this has nothing to do with how it shoots potato pellets, and is not essential for the spud gun to work. Indeed, the teacher had at the outset made a show of opening the spud gun and removing the spring. The spud gun that Daheesha was holding was known by most of the students to have no spring inside. Daheesha’s comment is evidence that she has not understood the role of the Two Puppies story in explaining how the spud gun works. But the fact that Daheesha oŸers
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the spring as an explanation suggest that she HAS understood that she needs to shift from a procedural to a causal account. This is signaled by her emphatic stress on “Now how it works” and is further conªrmed in the course of her second attempt. Daheesha’s second attempt Daheesha:
[All right // …Okay // this is called a s — …a spud-gun // Okay // …now ho:w it works / … is that .. there is a little spri:ng … in it / Students: [laughter] Daheesha: For real // I’m not jokin’ // Student: There’s a spring in it // Student: Stop laughin’ Daheesha: It’s like a thing that’s round // Bill: There’s not a spring in it // …He took it out // Student: If you open it up [Daheesha: Oooh] there’s no spring //==
In suggesting that the spring is what makes the spud gun work (again), Daheesha is indicating that although she recognizes the need for a causal explanation, she does not yet know what actually counts as one. Instead, she makes a rhetorical move common to school science, adducing a “black box” mechanism, that is, oŸering up a putatively causal mechanism without explaining how it works (“It’s because of X”). To someone who doesn’t know what’s actually happening, the black box explanation sounds scientiªc and smart. Daheesha has, no doubt, picked up this move from many years of school science. In typical school science, it’s su¹cient to name the black box, even if you don’t know what it does. A big part of school science in the US, in fact, is just memorizing the names of black boxes: density, volume, area, mass, weight, buoyancy, vacuum, pressure, inertia, force, acceleration, velocity. In this particular case, everyone else knows there is no spring, and more importantly, everyone knows that a genuine explanation is available in terms of the two puppies story. Thus it can be inferred that Deheesha has not yet come to grips with what the parameters of a good explanation are. Daheesha:
[Noticing there’s no spring] Oooh //Yeah // Okay // and then what it does is that / when you push it / like this / … there’s a little / there’s air in here / … so like when you push it / you can feel like air comin’ out of this / [T: Uh huh] [holds gun up to her face] [laughter] and then / …and that’s what makes the um / .. when you scoop the potato / that’s how — what .. makes it fall / just like.. so when you push it / the air / goes tshooo / and it pushes [laughter]
The “Two Puppies” story
Daheesha is a quick study. Her initial attempt at a causal explanation has gone awry, immediately giving the lie to her claim “I’ll amaze you guys.” Nonetheless, she infers correctly from her peers’ criticisms that while the speciªc mechanism she’s adduced (the spring) cannot be right, the explanatory genre (“how it works”) has not come in for criticism, and has thus (implicitly) passed muster. Rather than acknowledging failure and asking for another try, she frames what is essentially another turn as a simple continuation. This happens in the course of 4 words. She acknowledges her mistake (“Yeah”), shifts gears while holding the ¶oor (“Okay”), uses a discourse marker of continuation (“and then”) and marks the continuation of explanatory mode “what it does is that …”. She identiªes air as a likely candidate for the role of causal mechanism. The notion of air as an invisible but powerful agent that is everywhere is “in the air” (so to speak) in the context of the on-going I-Club investigations. It’s therefore something that is inside the gun (as the spring turned out not to have been). Daheesha locates the air (“there’s air in here), makes a temporal link to pushing in the piston (“when you push it”), demonstrates the movement of air (“the air goes tshoo”), and claims air as a causal agent (“so…it pushes”). But she does not explain how or why air pushes. This too is a kind of black box explanation. Some might prefer to think of Daheesha’s entire “second attempt” as two diŸerent attempts. We think of them as one because she deftly marks her “air explanation” as a continuation, not a new beginning (as each of the other attempts include). Moreover, we think of this move as a demonstration of her brilliance as a Discourse acquirer. She is evidencing change and development right before our eyes. Marking her shift as a continuation of the same kind of explanation indicates (to us) that Daheesha is thinking deftly on her feet, minimizing her mistake by adjusting her explanation quickly in response to her peers, changing her candidate causal mechanism (from the spring to air), but not her discourse mode. That is, she indeed did learn from her ªrst attempt that a causal, and not a procedural, mode was called for. In spite of the fact that both causal agents (spring and air) are ultimately found to be inadequate, they represent a radical shift in scientiªc genre from a temporally based (then, and then, and then) procedural account to a timeless mechanistic account. Daheesha signals this shift in genre using contrastive emphasis on HO:W it works at the outset of her second attempt. And, in addition, this shift is marked by a number of discourse features which contextualize her talk as “causal explanation” rather than “procedural account,” explaining the internal, causal mechanism of the spud gun:
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– – – –
Contrastive stress on HOW it works… Timeless “When” (“When you do X, Y happens”) Present tense verbs of causality: What it does is…. That’s what makes… Conclusory So..
These features are bolded in the transcript excerpts below: Okay // this is called a s — …a spud-gun // Okay // …now ho:w it works / … Yeah // Okay // and then what it does is that / when you push it / like this / … there’s a little / there’s air in here / … so like when you push it / you can feel like air comin’ out of this / … and then / …and that’s what makes the um / .. when you scoop the potato / that’s what wh — makes it fall / just like.. so when you push it / the air / goes tshooo / and it pushes [laughter] This second attempt, then, is a diŸerent kind of scientiªc genre — an account of “how IT works” rather than “how YOU work IT.” Interestingly, in this second attempt, Daheesha’s talk is halting, with more false starts, hesitation, use of ªllers, repetition, and syntactic infelicities: … so like when you push it / you can feel like air comin’ out of this / and then / …and that’s what makes the um / .. when you scoop the potato / that’s how — what .. makes it fall / just like.. so when you push it / the air / goes tshooo / and it pushes.. A number of the kids still don’t like her account. Bill: Ariel Bill: Yamaris: Student: Yamaris: Daheesha:
But she — [she – you still ain’t usin’ the air-puppies and the wa:ll // how when you push it // == [she said this // she said the air pushes out this // ==the wall comes up and squishes ‘em in / so they run into the wall [more often and the potato’ll go out // [so there’s less /… room for them to run around (and bump into the wall) / Yeah // You didn’t say anything about [that // [Okay // …
Daheesha’s third attempt: Daheesha:
Okay // …well // the wa:ll // right now the air-puppies are havin’ space // …now that / now I put it in / [looks down and pushes the red piece into the black piece] and they don’t have no space so they
The “Two Puppies” story
Bill?: Daheesha: Students: T: Students:
— so they’re like [high pitch, hands moving wildly] Oh let’s get out of here // So they .. push outta this hole thing // and they all sss[¶ying motion] thing? // peanut? (¶y) out // Yeah / it ¶ies outta the peanut // [lots of laughter] Okay // so / [laughter continues] uh …what do you think? // Better / better /
Daheesha’s third attempt can be thought of as opening up the Black Box, using the preferred Two Puppies tool, contextualized as both story and causal mechanism. Daheesha is no longer using a formal science register as she did in her ªrst attempt (“You do this by inserting the piston into the chamber…”). In contrast, she uses elements of black dialect syntax and prosody (viewers of the video have commented that she has shifted into “preaching mode”). Her talk takes the form of a performed narrative (Wolfson, 1978), with elements such as direct speech or performed dialogue, use of the conversational historical present tense, animated hand gestures, evidencing ¶uency and an air of conªdence. Beyond invoking the air-puppies tool, she animates the air-puppies, bringing them to life with a high pitched, frantic voice. The technical-sounding vocabulary or black boxed scientiªc terms (used in her ªrst two attempts) drop out of her account altogether, but other elements of causal explanation (“so,” present tense verbs) remain. Daheesha’s I-Club peers ªnd her account to be improved (“Better. Better. Better.”) But some note that it is still not perfect (someone says, “better but no cigar”). One student points out that molecules can’t want or decide or plan anything. The teacher reinforces this point, saying “they’re running around so much // but they’re running in a sm-smaller space // so they’re gonna hit the walls more // …whether they want to or not / doesn’t matter. Daheesha, without a pause, ªnishes the teacher’s explanation, saying, “They’re gonna have to.” In this utterance, Daheesha displays her understanding of this important aspect of scientiªc explanation. In the end, Daheesha’s peers vote that her account is good enough to warrant a turn at shooting the spud gun. Daheesha, beaming, goes on to shoot the spud gun and knocks down nearly all of the ªlm canisters, to a rousing round of applause and cheers. In the course of this brief segment, we see a dramatic transformation in Daheesha’s discourse. Daheesha gives three diŸerent, and progressively better, types of explanations. She begins with a scientiªc sounding, highly articulate
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procedural account. As she shifts into causal explanation, her discourse is marked by dys¶uency, and yet, at the same time, shows many elements of timeless, causal explanation. But she resorts to black boxed causal agents, a standard move in school science, that don’t really explain anything. In her last attempt — making full use of the Two Puppies story — she provides a fully mechanistic explanation, combining narrative and causal modes with elements of African-American performance style. Other students’ comments serve as scaŸolds and models, modeling for her a new set of contextualization cues (which she immediately takes up), enabling Daheesha to move from a procedural account (“how you work it”) to a an account focusing on the internal causal mechanisms (“how it works”). This episode lasts all of ªve minutes and takes place on the 6th day of the IClub. At this point, the students have only had 3 days of exposure to the Two Puppies tool. This is the ªrst time that this student has been asked to go “on line” and actually use the tool in giving a scientiªc account of an air pressure phenomenon. What’s remarkable to us is that her performance is accomplished in a short time (3 tries) with relative ease. In her ªnal attempt, she displays her understanding that there can’t be intentionality involved, that things happen the way they happen because they must happen that way, not because molecules decide or want to go somewhere; additionally she moves beyond her initial view of what scientiªc discourse is (her stilted, pseudoscientiªc account using stilted syntax and black box science-babble) to give her explanation in terms of the canonical physics of air pressure.
Signaling that the tool is being used correctly The notion of contextualization cues — as a means of both creating and interpreting contexts, meanings, and social identities — has been central to John Gumperz’ theoretical and practical work, and has in¶uenced a great many scholars from many diŸerent research traditions. Much of this work has looked at the ways that diŸerent systems of contextualization cuing interact (leading to breakdowns, misunderstanding, or misinterpretation of intent) in interethnic encounters. Less attention has been focused on how it is that newcomers to a practice (who come with highly developed “ways with words”) come to take on new ways of signaling and interpreting meaning, so as to be seen and heard as competent “members” of the new practice. This is especially critical in educational arenas, where how one presents oneself with reference to
The “Two Puppies” story
the collective endeavor and how one signals competence is carried largely in language. In these contexts, learning and/or intelligence is often evaluated on the basis of structured discursive performances (whether oral or written). How one comes to signal competence in new ways, and the role of contextualization cuing in this process, has been understudied. Using the case of Daheesha, we’ve been able to chart the participation of students and teacher showing how the practice (guided by the teacher) positions them as thinkers, theorizers, and critics — and how, in the process, participants take up new discursive moves that presume membership, identity, and competence. New cultural tools are not enough. You have to know what tool to pick up, when to use it, and how to use it well. You have to signal to others that you are using the right tool in the right way, by contexualizing your talk appropriately. Competence (mastery of the tools) is a dialogic, “intersubjective” accomplishment. Like carrying a piano up a ¶ight of stairs, both parties neither do nor experience the same thing, but when successful, they are attuned to one another and coordinated.
Discussion These transcripts of students using the Two Puppies tool are examples of something we’ve experienced in the I-Club practice hundreds of times and with a number of other audiences (ranging from ªrst graders to audiences of school superintendents, public school teachers, and principals). In each case the Two Puppies story has enabled members of these various audiences to understand and explain, in eŸect, to “see” air pressure phenomena which were minutes before completely opaque to them. And, it’s worth noting that until we developed the Two Puppies story, we had nowhere near this kind or degree of success in moving people to an understanding of the physics of air pressure. The success that people have had using this tool has made it a model for us in trying to design more tools like it. What is it about this tool that is so powerful, accessible, and transformative? Is the success of this tool saying something primarily about the way people think? As Bruner (1986) and many others (Gee 1986, 1996; Morrison 1994; Hymes 1981) have said, narrative is a fundamental means by which we make sense of the world and our place in it. In a related but diŸerent vein, scholars interested in intrinsic motivation (Lepper et al. 1982; Cordova & Lepper 1996) have claimed that there are several teaching strategies which positively aŸect
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intrinsic motivation and the process of learning academic content. One is what they refer to as “contextualization.” “Presenting learning activities, even those involving abstract operations, in meaningful contexts of some inherent appeal to children should have signiªcant beneªcial eŸects on children’s intrinsic motivation and learning” (Cordova & Lepper 1996, p. 715). The strategy of embedding cognitive activity within highly appealing (game-like or personalized) contexts may have something to do with the success of the two Two Puppies story. Kids and adults know about and like puppies. They don’t feel intimidated by them and know that in some way they are not predictable. You can’t tell puppies what to do, so the idea that they are mindless but in constant motion is a graspable, familiar idea. There is enough overlap between the characteristics of puppies and the characteristics of air molecules that puppies have the potential to serve as a model or metaphor for air molecules. And of course, as the ªrst transcript shows, there are some characteristics of puppies that do not overlap with those of air molecules and this is something that needs to be addressed and worked on. As we’ve shown, the kids are able to diŸerentiate and rule out aspects of puppies that don’t apply to air molecules. They learn readily that these are not puppies but rather “air” puppies. Part of what is going on here relates to the claims of Cordova and Lepper (1986). Puppies make the tool initially appealing and accessible. But this cannot be the entire explanation. The cuteness of puppies soon recedes as the focus shifts to air-puppies and the two rooms divided by a wall on frictionless wheels. These air-puppies are not cute or cuddly. They never stop moving to sleep. They don’t eat or poop. No one has ever seen them and they are represented by dots. What in our opinion is more crucial than the familiarity of puppies is the dramatic contest they are embedded in. The puppies are divided, separated by a wall. What takes place is a battle between two opposing camps, or forces (referred to in dramaturgy as the “agonistic”). It is the plot in time, the beginning, middle, and end of the contest that is critical in the Two Puppies story. Thus what is carried by the Two Puppies story is: – – – – –
the opposing camps of air-puppies; the wall that separates them and moves in response to their impacts; the on-going, continuous movement of the puppies on both sides of the wall; the non-intentionality of all these physical processes; the indication (symbolized by the external walls) that everything outside this story world is irrelevant to the motion of the puppies and the wall; – and hence the law-like predictability of the movement of the wall as outcome.
The “Two Puppies” story
This list of characteristics doesn’t fully specify the e¹cacy of the story. Simply telling people these points doesn’t work as well as telling them the story. And yet, it is all of these characteristics that are carried by air-puppies. And that is why “puppies” are not a simple substitution for the word “molecules.” Airpuppies carry with them the setting (rooms and wall) and plot (the contest). Molecules do not. Interestingly, this story does an eŸective job of replacing the black box notion of a vacuum as an explanation of air pressure phenomena. In any given case of the Two Puppies story, it is the presence of puppies (the greater number and force of the bumps of the puppies) on one side of the wall, not the absence of puppies on the other side of the wall that accounts for the wall’s motion. Even though this story is abstract, represented by lines and dots on chart paper or a whiteboard, and not something anyone has ever physically experienced, it becomes a kind of template for new embodied knowledge for the students. They can think with the story, and run the contest in their minds — once, of course, they have located the wall and the two opposing camps of puppies. In fact, it’s quite easy for staŸ members of the I-Club to recognize that students have taken on the Two Puppies story as a way of seeing into new air pressure situations (a new demo, for example). They start out by saying something like, “OK well where’s the wall here?” What they are trying to locate in this question is the point of contest — the wall — between the two opposing camps of air-puppies. Having located the wall, they can specify the states and conditions of each of the two sets of air-puppies and the size and characteristics of their respective “rooms,” and the probable eŸect of any transformations undergone by either or both sets of air-puppies. It appears that air-puppies becomes a kind of abstraction (in Latour’s terms, a de¶ating inscription), but unlike molecules, the term carries with it (inextricably) a set of abstract relationships and changes in time and space. The story carried by the term “puppies” automatically indexes setting, contest, and plot; it is thus a more complex “concept” than simply a set of puppies or molecules in isolation.
Conclusion In our research on the Investigators’ Club, we are concerned with the “architecture of intersubjectivity”, the way that a shared world is established — largely through talk. The after-school program we examine stands in stark contrast to
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school, where many of these students are actively failing. In the I-Club, as discussed above, scientiªc activity is organized around group discussions and student presentations8 about a set of carefully selected discrepant events. Tools such as the Two Puppies story transform the perceptions of the tool user, the way people “see” the world. The Investigators’ Club, is an environment where students make use of their embodied knowledge and home-based ways of speaking. At the same time, they are introduced to a new set of tools which become a new template for embodied knowledge, giving increased purchase on a complex set of relationships. In carrying out our analyses of the acquisition of new mediational means, we have used transcripts of selected group discussion to document how the teacher scaŸolds (implicitly and explicitly) and participants take up the Two Puppies story and new forms of contextualization cuing that signal both membership and competence. The markers of intersubjectivity are often carried in what “goes without saying”, what can be left implicit, via ellipsis or signaled deictically via intonation, gesture, or a reduced reference to what has now become a shared context of the mind, such as “the wall” or “the puppies”. In these I-Club transcripts, we can trace microgenetic and longitudinal changes as the Investigators come to use their embodied knowledge and experience in the world — to build new transitional models to re-see and retheorize their experience. The notion of “puppies” becomes more than insider I-Club jargon for molecules. “Puppies” carry with them an entire situation: the room, the wall, and diŸering forces on each side of the wall that make it move. This, in part, explains why the I-Club students persist in referring to molecules as puppies when they use the notion as a tool to think about air pressure or water pressure, in spite of the fact they know full well that puppies are molecules. These students don’t give up their embodied knowledge in favor of decontextualized memorized concepts or new vocabulary — as is typical in school science. The I-Club practice supports the acquisition of new kinds of embodied knowledge, new mediational means that make it possible to re-see the world. Here, successful learning can be conceptualized and charted as a function of the Discourse itself coming to be shared.
Notes 1. In this work, we draw on Jim Gee’s notion of a “Discourse” (with a capital-D) as a key construct (Gee 1987, 1989; 1992, 1996). By a Discourse, Gee refers to the ways in which
The “Two Puppies” story
people align language with ways of acting, interacting, thinking, valuing, and feeling, as well as ways of coordinating (and getting coordinated by) people, objects, tools, and technologies, so as to display diŸerent socially-situated identities. We are all members of many, sometimes compatible, sometimes con¶icting, Discourses. 2. Similar approaches in the US include Jim Minstrell’s programm in high schools physics (1989); Eric Mazur’s approach to college level physics (1996), referred to as “the Peer Instruction” approach. Each of this programs puts central emphasis on teacher-led, position-driven discussion with active student theorizing, debating, and voting for candidate positions. This kind of group discussion activity also bears a striking resemblance to work in some constructivist mathematics pedagogies that center on group discussions of a single problem (e.g., Victoria Bill 1993; Maggie Lampert & Deborah Ball 1998; Cobb, P. & Wood, T. & Yackel, F. 1993; O’Connor 2001). This approach to whole group discussion around a single rich “mathematizable situation” is also common in Japanese math classes (as described by Stevenson & Stigler 1992, and demonstrated in the TIMSS video tape of Japanese eigth grade math lessons in geometry and algebra). 3. One component of being a good coach — being able to support, scaŸold, expand, or unpack the culturally speciªc ways with words that students bring — is domain-speciªc knowledge. The I-Club tasks are designed to be sites for teacher learning, so that teachers, as they plan for and enact the tasks, will themselves be scaŸolded into a deeper understanding of physics. In short, the teacher does not have to know everything there is to know about physics, but is her/himself positioned as a learner (an Investigator). The I-Club practice is an apprenticeship for both students and teachers; it does not require that either students or teachers begin with the skills that the practice is designed to develop. This program puts “identity” in the place of pre-requisite cultural or linguistic strengths — and makes taking on the identity of an investigator a natural part of the practice. 4. We asses the language use and development of scientiªc explanations over time from video tapes of all I-Club sessions (coding participation structures, individual participation, and looking closely at transcripts), but we also administer pre- and post-tests of science learning (multiple choice and open-ended answers). We make extensive use of self-report questionnaire data — about motivation, academic e¹cacy and engagement — after each session of the I-Club, as well as administering general questionnaire surveys about school, home, academic e¹cacy, theories of intelligence, parents, and teachers twice a year. We have questionnaire data from teachers of the students, how their perform in school. And we have a randomized, matched control group for all I-Clubs students and we follow all of the students over two years after their I-Club semester to assess both durability and transportability of I-Club eŸects. This more controlled, longitudinal study includes three diŸerent cohorts of I-Club /controls, taught by three diŸerent I-Club teachers. 5. “Two Puppies” is the the abbreviated name for an otherwise impossibly clumsy story title: “The Room that ’s been divided by a moveable wall-on-wheels into 2 rooms in each of which there is a group of constantly — bumbling-around Air-puppies, so that there is always a pushing match going on between the Two sets of Puppies, even though the Puppies are never thinking about anything, never trying to do anything, and never even aware of anything at all”.
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6. The wall-on-wheels can move to the left or to the right, but is constrained so that it always maintains its orientation perpendicular to the long walls of the room. 7. The notations used to indicate intonation and prosody in this transcript were developed by John Gumperz and his collaborators, based on the work of John Trim. Speech is chunked into tone group units (i.e., segments with a continuous intonational contour). These units are then designated as minor tone groups (signaling “more to come,” akin to a comma — indicated as “/”) or major tone groups (ending with some indication of utterance closure, akin to a period in writing — indicated as “//”). Within a tone group, only a few of the many prosodic features are indicated: pausing: “..” indicating a break in timing, “…” indicating a measurable pause ; “ — ” indicating a false start or self-repair; “:” indicating vowel elongation after the elongated vowel; and emphasis, indicated by bolding of the emphasized syllable or word. Uninterpretable speech is indicated by (…), with the transcriber’s comments indicated by […]. 8. Elsewhere we have described in more detail the nature and characteristics of these group discussions and shown how they socialize students to see one another and themselves as smart while also providing opportunities for students to take on new ways with words and new cognitive tools (Michaels & Sohmer 2001).
References Bakhtin, M. (1981). The dialogic imagination. Austin: University of Texas Press. Bakhtin, M. M. (1986). Speech genres and other late essays (translated by Y. McGee). Austin: University of Texas Press. Bernstein, B. (1996). Pedagogy, symbolic control and identity: Theory, research, critique. London: Taylor & Francis. Bourdieu, P. (1990). The logic of practice. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Bourdieu, P. (1991). Language and symbolic power. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bruner, J. (1990). Acts of meaning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bruner, J. (1986). Actual minds; possible worlds. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Cazden, C. (1992). Whole language plus: Essays on literacy in the United States and New Zealand. New York: Teachers College Press. Clement, J. (1987). Overcoming students’ misconceptions in physics: The role of anchoring intuitions and analogical validity. In J. D. Novak (Ed.), Proceedings of the second international seminar on misconceptions and educational strategies in science and mathematics. Mahway, NJ.: Lawrence Erlbaum. Cole, M. (1998). Cultural psychology: A once and future discipline. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Cordova, D., & Lepper, M. (1996). Intrinsic motivation and the process of learning: Beneficial effects of contextualization, personalization, and choice. Journal of Educational Psychology, 88(4), 715–730.
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Del Rio, P., Wertsch, J. & Alvarez, A. (1995). Sociocultural studies of mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. diSessa, A. (1993 ). Toward an epistemology of physics. Cognition and Instruction, 10(2& 3), 105–225, 144–145. diSessa, A. (2000). Changing minds: Computers, learning, and literacy. Cambridge: MIT press. Erickson, F. (1984). Rhetoric, anecdote, and rhapsody: Coherence strategies in a conversation among black american adolescents. In D. Tannen (Ed.), Coherence in Spoken and Written Discourse. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Foucault, M. (1966). The order of things. New York: Random House. Foucault, M. (1969). The archeology of knowledge. New York: Random House. Gee, J. P. (1987). What is literacy? Teaching and Learning, 2 [Reprinted in C. Mitchell, & K. Weiler (Eds.) (1992). Rewriting literacy: Culture and the discourse of the other. (pp. 3– 11). New York: Begin & Garvey. And in P. Shannon (Ed.) (1992). Political approaches to literacy. (pp. 21–28). Portsmouth, NH.: Heinemann.] Gee, J. P. (1996). Social linguistics and literacies: Ideology in discourses. London: Taylor & Francis. Gee, J. P. (1989). Literacy, discourse and linguistics. Essays by J. P. Gee. Journal of Education, 171(1). Gee, J. P. (1991a). A linguistic approach to narrative. Journal of Narrative and Life History, 1, 15–39. Gee, J. P. (1991b). Memory and myth: A perspective on narrative. Introduction to A. McCabe and C. Peterson (Eds.), Developing narrative structure. (pp. 1–25). Hillsdale, NJ.: Lawrence Erlbaum. Gee, J. P. (1992). The social mind: Language, ideology, and social practice. New York: Bergin and Garvey. Gee, J. P., Michaels, S., & O’Connor, M. C. (1992). Discourse analysis. In M. LeCompte, W. Millroy, & J. Goetz (Eds.), The handbook of qualitative research in education. Orlando, FL.: Academic Press. Gee, J. P. (1999). An introduction to discourse analysis: Theory and method. New York: Routledge. Gillyard, K. (1991). Voices of the self: A study of language competence. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. Gumperz, J. J. (1982). Language and Social Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gutierrez, K., Rymes, B., & Larson, J. (1995). Script, counterscript, and underlife in the classroom: James Brown versus Brown v. Board of Education. Harvard Educational Review, 65(3), 445–471. Halliday, M. A. K. (1978). Language as social semiotic: The social interpretation of language and meaning. London: Edward Arnold. Halliday, M. A. K., & Martin, J. R. (1993). Writing science: Literacy and discursive power. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. Hymes, D. (1996). Ethnography, linguistics, narrative inequality: Toward and understanding of voice. London: Taylor & Francis. Hymes, D. (1981). “In vain I tried to tell you”: Essays in native american ethnopoetics. Philadelphia, PA.: University of Pennsylvania Press.
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Illich, I. (1970). Deschooling society. New York: Harper & Row. Kohl, H. (1991). ‘I Won’t Learn From You’: The role of assent in learning. New York: Milkweed Editions. Kohl, H. (1995). ‘I Won’t Learn From You’: And other thoughts on creative maladjustment. New York: New Press. Latour, B. (1986). Visualization and cognition: Thinking with eyes and hands. Knowledge and Society: Studies in the sociology of culture past and present, 6, 1–40. Lave, J. (1988). Cognition in practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lee, C. D. (2001). Is October brown Chinese? A cultural modeling activity system for underachieving students. American Education Research Journal, 38(1), 97–141. Lee, C. D. (2000). Signifying in the zone of proximal development. In C. D. Lee & P. Smagorinsky (Eds.), Vygotskian perspectives on literacy research: Constructing meaning through collaborative inquiry. (pp. 191–225). New York: Cambridge University Press. Lemke, J. (1995). Textual politics: Discourse and social dynamics. London: Taylor & Francis. Lemke, J. (1990). Talking science: Language, learning, and values. Norwood, NJ.: Ablex. Lepper, M., & Gilovich, T. (1982). Accentuating the positive: Eliciting generalized compliance from children through activity-oriented requests. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 42(2), 248–259. Michaels, S., O’Connor, M. C., & Resnick, L. (2001). Accountable talk: Classroom conversation that works. CD-ROM. University of Pittsburgh. Michaels, S., & Sohmer, R. E. (2001). “Discourses” that promote new academic identities. D. I Li (Ed.), Discourses in search of members. (pp. 171–219). New York: University Press of America. Michaels, S., & Sohmer, R. E. (2001). “Re-Seeing Science”: The role of narratives in mediating between scientific and everyday understanding and explanation. In B. Cope, & M. Kalantzis (Eds.), Transformations in language and learning: Perspectives on multiliteracies, Melbourne: Common Ground. Minstrell, J. (1989). Teaching science for understanding. In L. B. Resnick, & L. Klopfer (Eds.), Toward the thinking curriculum. (pp.133–149). Alexandria, VA.: Association of supervision and curriculum development. Morrison, T. (1994). The nobel lecture in literature: 1993. New York: Knopf. The New London Group (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures. Harvard Educational Review, 66(1), 60–92. O’Connor, M. C. ( 2001). “Can any fraction be turned into a decimal?” A case study of a mathematical group discussion. Educational Studies in Mathematics, 46, 143–185. Polanyi, M. (1962). Personal knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Rodriguez, Richard. (1982). Hunger of memory: The education of Richard Rodriguez. New York: Bantam. Rommetveit, R. (1992). Outlines of a dialogically based social-cognitive approach to human cognition and communication. In A. Heen Wold (Ed.), The dialogical alternative: Towards a theory of language and mind. Oslo: Scandinavian University Press.
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Schmidt, W., McKnight, C., & Raizen, S. (1997). A splintered vision: An investigation of U.S. science and mathematics education. Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Schmidt, W. (1996). The need for a national focus amidst local diversity. U.S. National Research Center, Press release, http://ustimss.msu.edu/releases.htm Sohmer, R. E. (1997). The architecture of intersubjectivity in an after-school science program. Paper presented at the American Educational Research Association Meetings. Chicago, IL. April, 1997. Sohmer, R. E. (2000). “A Page So Big No One Can Fall Off”: Apprenticeship as the architecture of intersubjectivity in an after-school science program for inner city middle school students. (Unpublished Dissertation, Clark University). Stigler, J., & Hiebert, J. (1999). The teaching gap. New York: Free Press. Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) (1996). Boston College, TIMSS International Study Center. Chestnut Hill, MA: International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement. Varenne, H., & McDermott, R. (1999). Successful failure: The school America builds. Boulder, CO.: Westview Press. Voloshinov, N. N. (1929, 1986). Marxism and the philosophy of language. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Volosinov, V. N. (1976). Freudianism: A critical sketch. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Vygotsky, L. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Vygotsky, L. (1992). Thought and language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wertsch, J. V. (ed.) (1985). Culture, communication, and cognition: Vygotskian perspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wertsch, J. V. (1985). Vygotsky and the social formation of mind. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Wertsch, J. V. (1991). Voices of the mind: A sociocultural approach to mediated action. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Wittgenstein, L. (1953). Philosophical investigations (translated by G. E. M. Anscombe). Oxford: Blackwell. Wolfson, N. (1978). A feature of performed narrative: The conversational historical present.
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Chapter 4
The role of narrative interaction in narrative development Tabea Becker
In recent years several studies have helped to undermine the role interaction plays in the development of narrative structure in children. Without disputing the validity of other mechanisms (e.g. cognitive), interactional processes have been ªrmly established as a basic motor for the development of textual structures. What is still in discussion is the exact nature of this process and its relation to other developmental mechanisms. In this chapter I want to focus on the development of textual structures, particularly narratives. We will see that while a certain type of narrative is tied to an interactionally motivated development others are not. Only at a rather late age does the child integrate diŸerent narrative genres into one contingent structural concept.
The interactional approach to language acquisition From the infant’s earliest years interaction plays an important part in the acquisition of language. It was L. S.Vygotsky who paved the way for this conception when he described the child — in opposition to Piaget — as primarily socially oriented, progressing from an interactional intermental exchange to an intramental developmental process (1934, 1986). The interaction between child and parents is the basic drive which brings about learning and development, but the processes underlying it are multicausal, nonlinear and complex (Fogel & Thelen 1987, Thelen & Smith 1994). They can be seen as a dynamic system where developmental processes are the result of the interaction of related elements. “It is not the child’s existing set of competences alone, nor the adult’s sensitive framing of those skills, but the task-speciªc dynamic interaction of all these elements that creates the emergent skill.“ (Fogel & Thelen 1987, p.752)
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The child’s development is induced by the interaction of the child’s own competencies with parental intuitive didactics which produce phase shifts leading to new skills within the system. This concept is applied to phonological acquisition (e.g. by Papousek & Papousek 1989) as well as to all other aspects of language acquisition whether concerning semantic (e.g. Tomasello & Kruger 1992, Tomasello et al. 1993) or syntactic ones (for this aspect the in¶uence of “motherese” is often stressed, cp. Moerk 1991, Tomasello 1992, 2000).1 Within this context a dominant role is ascribed to the mother child dyad. These dyads form the basis for a structured dialogue which is realised from the infant’s ªrst weeks onwards. The mother’s crucial behaviour lies in the attribution of intention and meaning. The idea was expanded by Bruner (1978) into the conception of a “scaŸolding” which is provided through the communicative contribution of the adult. I have used the expression scaŸolding to characterise what the mother provides on her side of the dyad in one of the regularised formats — she reduces the degrees of freedom with which the child has to cope, concentrates his attention into a manageable domain, and provides models of the expected dialogue from which he can extract selectively what he needs for ªlling his role in discourse.” (1978, p. 254f.)
This paradigm used by Bruner to explain language development in the early years and for the lexical and syntactic level was also applied by Hausendorf & QuasthoŸ (1992, 1996) at the textual level. They found that adults systematically supported children in acquiring conversationally embedded narrative structures. Telling a story in conversation means going through a certain sequence of “jobs” such as thematising, elaborating, resolving, etc. In this the infant narrator is supported by the adult listener through several strategies. With very young children the adults often take over some of the jobs altogether, thus modelling an “ideal story”, or they can simply give hints and indications which job is required for the next step in the story. These child/ adult interactions are qualiªed as a discourse acquisition support system. In taking up this conception of a discourse acquisition support system and combining it with textlinguistic analysis tools, I would like to contribute to a more diŸerentiated and detailed description of narrative development in children. More speciªcally, I want to shed light on the role narrative interaction plays within this developmental process and to which conditions it is linked. The results will show us that children only eventually gain an adult like concept of narrative in gradually bringing together a diversity of linguistic abilities and communicative situations to form what is termed narrative ability.
The role of narrative interaction in narrative development
Narrative development In recent years a number of theoretical attempts has been made to explain narrative development in children. Since several detailed discussions of these approaches can be found elsewhere (Boueke et al. 1995, Becker 2001) I will only mention them brie¶y. The cognitive approach tries to correspond successive types of narrative structures with certain cognitive phases (KarmiloŸSmith 1985, 1987, Scinto 1983, 1984, Bottvin & Sutton-Smith 1977). The so called high-point-anaylsis (Peterson & McCabe 1983) incorporated the criteria for “narrative” initially developed by Labov & Waletzky (1967) according to which a true narrative demanded a “high point” between complication and resolution. To delineate a developmental process, they deªned six diŸerent structural patterns culminating in the pattern “classical narrative” satisfying the demands of the Labov & Waletzky narrative. The story-grammar approach divides the story into “episodes”, which must consist of representations of the protagonist’s goal-directed behaviour and the consequent attainment or nonattainment of this goal (Stein & Glenn 1979, Stein & Trabasso 1982). Finally the interactional approach which has already been brie¶y described above. All these approaches were compared, evaluated against each other and mutually criticised (e.g. Berman & Slobin 1994, Boueke et al. 1995, Bamberg 1997), yet always disregarding one point: Whether the data on which the theories were founded were comparable or not. The aim of the study presented here was to determine the in¶uence of the various mechanisms by controlling a decisive variable: the narrative genre. Until now studies on narrative development indiscriminately have used whichever genre was best suited for the theoretical concept or promised easiest availability of data. The genres predominantly used were picture story, retold narrative, fantasy story or personal narrative. Accordingly, the following hypothesis formed the basis of the study presented here: DiŸerent narrative genres re¶ect diŸerent patterns and processes of acquisition.
Developmental study of diVerent narrative genres More than 200 narratives were elicited from children in three age groups: on average they were 5, 7 and 9 years old. Each child produced a story in four diŸerent narrative genres: picture story, fantasy story, retelling of a fairy tale
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and a personal narrative (personal experience or a “real”, non-ªctitious event). The setting for the elicitation was as near a natural communicative situation as the design of the experiment permitted in that the child was asked to tell the story to the experimenter and another child. The communicative relevance was enforced by presenting the child with “reasons” to tell the story to the other child (e.g. the other child is ignorant of the story but must be told the story in order to participate in a reinactment of the story). No restriction was put on the two “listeners” to interact with the narrator. The ªrst task was to tell a story on the basis of a picture story consisting of ªve picture-cards. These were placed in front of the narrator but invisible to the listeners. The second task was a fantasy story, where the child was instructed to tell something of his or her own invention (nothing they had seen on TV or read in a book) and was given su¹cient time to “make something up”. The third task consisted of telling a personal experience. To give, especially to the younger children, an example of what a personal narrative could be like, a story was read to them which contained a personal experience. The children were instructed to narrate an event where they had hurt themselves. Pre-tests had shown that without any kind of cue hardly any oral data can be elicited. The last story was the retelling of a fable-like tale about an eagle and a sparrow. This story had been read to them several times to insure their understanding and exclude any negative eŸects from memory problems since memory for stories was not part of the test-design . The data were transcribed according to a simpliªed form of the GAT2conventions. The stories were than analysed by diŸerent criteria, such as cohesion, narrative structure, length and tense. We will now focus mainly on the interactional aspects. All the children had been very eager to participate in the study. Nevertheless the test-design brought about a situation were the children were quite selfconscious although they did not know they were being tape recorded. They knew that some performance was expected of them to which some children reacted with shyness. In most cases this was overcome once they started talking.
Quantitative results A ªrst impression of the data in respect to the interactions taking place conªrms general expectations. The child posing as a listener almost never interacts with the speaker while the narration is going on.3 Nearly all the interactions take place between adult interlocutor and speaker child. Also the amount of interactions
The role of narrative interaction in narrative development
decreases with age. Since the adult was the same in all elicitations we had reasonably good control over the variable of diŸerent communicative behaviour. In a ªrst step all the interactions that took place were measured quantitatively. As a marker to indicate interactions, “listener activities” were deªned. Every verbal utterance of the listeners counted as a listener activity. Excluded were those activities that were either non-verbal (gestures, mimics) or supporting behaviour (back channels or continuers cp. Sacks) like “mhm”, “yeah”, etc. Listener activities occured mostly as “and then” questions (German: “und dann”), usually after a pause or a stop in the narration. Only two or three listener utterances in the entire data set of over 200 narratives were purposely initiated by the speaker. They were clariªcation requests such as “what was the name of the girl again?” This re¶ected the communicative strategy of the listener, who interfered only to ensure the continuation of the story and seldom gave any content based hints. The following Figure 1 shows the percentage of stories which contain listener activities. percentage of listener activities 40 30 20 10 0
1 2 3 1
2 age groups
3
Figure 1. (age group 1 = 5 year olds; age group 2 = 7 year olds; age group 3 = 9 year olds)
First of all, we can trace a considerable development comparing the three age groups. In the youngest age group (5 years) the listener participates in almost one third (31 %) of the elicited stories. The 7 year olds by contrast already show a considerable reduction of listener activities to only 16 %. The oldest age group related almost all the stories as monologues, thus reducing listener activities to 4 % only. The interpretation of these data is obvious: With age the child is seconded increasingly less by the listener in constructing a narrative. Moreover, it shows that the division of speaker/listener is only gradually established. The ªve year olds still grapple with accepting or fulªlling the role of speaker, but when reaching nine years the children fully realise the listener/ speaker tasks. This then raises the question of when and where listener activities occur and what functions they fulªl.
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Genre
picture
fantasy st.
personal
story
Retelling
exp.
% of narratives
0
23%
65%
20%
average amount
0
2,3
2,4
7
Figure 2. Amount of listener activities 5 year olds
Separating the diŸerent narrative genres reveals that listener activities are not distributed equally over the four genres but show diŸerent occurrence rates depending on age group and genre. The 5 year olds develop all their narratives with partial help of listener activities, except for the picture stories. While these activities only occurred in every ªfth retelling and fantasy story, almost two thirds of the personal narratives are co-constructed. At ªrst impression the high frequency of activities in the retelling seems surprising. A closer analysis of the stories concerned revealed that we generally ªnd two types of retellings in this age group. The ªrst group has considerable trouble in understanding the task demanded of them and di¹culties in recalling the narrative in orderly sequences. The listener has to “urge the child on” throughout the narration which results in these stories having a very high incidence of listener activities. The second group within this age category, much greater in number, grasped the task and has good control over story contents, thus no joining in by the listener is necessary. The personal experiences by contrast contain fewer activities in average but are distributed over a much greater number of stories. Genre
picture st.
fantasy st.
personal
retelling
exp. % of narratives
0
0
65%
0
Average amount
0
0
2,2
0
Figure 3. Amount of listener activities 7 year olds
The role of narrative interaction in narrative development
With the ªrst graders listener activities in retelling and fantasy story drop to zero. Only personal narratives retain listener activities and — surprisingly — at the same rate as the 5 year olds had shown, namely two thirds. Likewise the average amount of activities per story remains about the same. Genre
picture
fantasy st.
story
personal
retelling
exp.
% of narratives
0
0
14%
0
Average amount
0
0
1
0
Figure 4. Amount of listener activities 9 year olds
Although now at a very low rate of 14 %, listener activities are still found in the personal narratives of the 9 year olds. Notwithstanding the average amount of activity is reduced. In those narratives where listener activities occur, only one activity takes place. These signiªcant diŸerences suggest a strong dependency between the amount of listener activities and the speciªc narrative genre. Only after a closer look at the functions these activities involve, can we decide which signiªcance can be ascribed to them in regard to the developmental process.
Qualitative analysis The structural analysis for the entire corpus is mainly based on the structural categories developed by Boueke et al. (1995), these in turn evolved to a great part from the classical Labov & Waletzky pattern (1967). Thus I will retain the Labovian terminology for this chapter, which is better known and well su¹cient for the purpose. As we have seen, particularly the kindergarteners construct many stories with the help of listener activities. Below is a typical example of a 5 year old. Example 1 (3-A-12) 01 K: ich hab mich schon mal, (Once I have , 02 ich bin schon mal vom krokodi:l gefangen ( ) I was once caught by an alligator ( )
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03 04
05 V:
06 K: 07 V: 08 K: 09 10 V: 11 K: 12
dann hat die, hat- dann hat die mama und ich und der papa uns die gefre:ssen, die krokoDILens; (- -) (then she has, has, then mommy and I and daddy they ate us, the alligators) die haben euch geFRESsen? aha. (they ate you? mhm) und wo war das? (and where was that?) im wa:sser.(-) (in the water) und dann, was habt ihr DANN gemacht? (And then, what did you do then?) und dann wollten wir wieder HOCH. (and then we wanted to get up again) dann hammer=s net geSCHAFFT. (- -) (then we couldn’t do it) und dann? (and then?) dann wollten wer noch mal hOch, (then we wanted to get up again) aber dann, dann hamm=er uns net- dann hamm=er uns net mehr verle:tzt.(2.5) (but then, then we didn’t, then we didn’t get hurt again)
A major part of the personal narratives of all age groups begins with an “abstract” (cp. Labov & Waletzky 1967). Only rarely it is found in the other three genres. In the abstract the narrator summarises brie¶y (usually in one sentence) the story which he means to present. This strategy insures the narrator’s right to speak, since the listeners are in this way able to assert the relevance of the topic. Conversations as in the above example must be grouped among asymmetric types. Not only do we have the child-adult asymmetry, the adult is also the interviewer who initiates the conversation. Most children respond to this by ªrst waiting for ratiªcation of what can be seen as a topic suggestion. The importance and validity of this introductory phase for establishing thematic relevance for the further story-telling is also documented in greater detail in QuasthoŸ & Kern (Chapter 2). In the above example the narrator starts his story in this way by stating the thematic relevance. Thus the event is established which gives the story or rather the child’s contribution to the interaction its relevance. The child continues —
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without waiting for a reaction from the listeners — with a temporal sequence which in structural terms can be seen as the complication of the story (lines 3 and 4). By this sequence the event which has been announced in the abstract is elaborated and at the same time dramatised. This is followed by a pause, whereby the narrator indicates that his contribution is terminated. The listener indicates in his turn (line 5) that the story ªrst needs elaboration in respect to place. This information is duly given in line 6, again followed by a pause. The listener responds with another request for further elaboration, this time regarding the temporal continuation of the action (line 7). The devouring by the alligators presents the thematic high-point which must — according to the structural requirements of the narrative — be resolved. The narrator tries to meet this request by elaborating on the complication: the struggle with the alligator in the water, but again without resolving events. This makes a third intervention on the part of the interlocutor necessary. Line 10 is again a request for temporal continuation. After further elaboration the story is — at least partially — resolved in line 12 (then we didn’t get hurt again). On the whole it is to some extent due to the listener’s questions and contributions that example 1 presents a rather well structured story. Thus, it is not surprising that the picture stories or even the retellings produced by the same age group, but containing fewer or no listener activities, are structurally much more inferior. Regarding all genres it must be noted that especially the 5 year olds have considerable di¹culty in building and maintaining a narrative structure in their texts. These structural insecurities make it di¹cult for the child to ªnd an adequate beginning and even more so to terminate the story. If the story lacks a proper complication the resolution does not follow as naturally either. A second example even more strikingly represents a structural function of listener activities. Example 2 ( 3-A-1) 03 K: da bin ich mit der kla:ra ihrem fahrrad HINgefallen(There I fell with Klara’s bike) 04 und da hat des angefangen zu ei:tern. (- -) (and then it started to fester) 05 V: und dann? (and then?) 06 K: und dann NIX mehr; (- -) dann hab ich n=verBAND gekriegt. (and then nothing (- -) then I got a dressing.
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Again the narration stops after the complication (a wound has been in¶icted which starts to fester). The listener does not accept this as a complete story and asks for temporal continuation without explicitly demanding a speciªc structural part. The implicit request su¹ces to prompt the structurally relevant part, even though the narrator at ªrst refuses to give it and only in repairing his turn provides it. The next example comes again from a 5 year old. In this case we ªnd listener activities throughout the narrative. Example 3 (3-A-9) 01 V: dir is bestimmt AUCH schon mal so was passiert ne?(-) (didn’t something similar happen to you, too?) 02 K: ja, an de lippe deblu:tet; (- -) (yes, bled on the lip) 03 V: .hh und wie is des passiert? (.hh and how did this happen?) 04 K: da bin ich draußen auf die steine geFALLen beim chri:stopher sein ho:f-(2.0) (I fell on the stones outside in christopher’s yard) 05 V: oh je: und wie genAU is des passiert? (oh dear and how exactly did this happen?) 06 K: da, da, [da wollt ich=n] FANgen (there, there I wanted to catch him) 07 V: [beim spie:len?] (at a game?) 08 K: und dann auf einmal wollt ich um die ECke rennen, (and then suddenly I wanted to run around the corner) 09 da hh bin (-) ich (-) auf (-) die LIppe defallen.(- -) (there I fell on the lip) 10 V: o je: und dann? (o dear and then?) 11 K: ha=hat dann die Lippe deBLUtet.(-) (then the lip bled) 12 V: und was habt ihr dann gemacht? Seid ihr zum ARZT? ( and what did you(plural) do then? Did you go to a doctor?) 13 K: ’m’m (5.5) 14 V: is=es einfach so wieder geheilt? (did it heal just like that?) 15 K: war schon LANge he:r. (was a long time ago)
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In line 2 the child establishes an event which is relevant to the story (the lip was bleeding), similar to Example 1. All further contributions are more or less elaborations of this event. All the questions asked by the listener are meant to urge the child on to the next structural phase but they only result in further elaboration of the relevant event, never going beyond it. When it comes to the fall and to the injury, the child repeatedly breaks oŸ. Obviously, for him the conversational demands are fulªlled in describing the event which has been given as relevant in the beginning of the narrative interaction. Furthermore in line 3 as the listener for the ªrst time asks for elaboration, the child does not respond with a structured narrative, a reaction typically following an abstract in adult speech (cp. Labov & Waletzky 1967). Instead he gives a direct answer, treating the listener’s remark not as an invitation to tell a narrative but as a question. Thus the child reveals that he is unaware of or unwilling to respond to conversational conditional relevances. Likewise, in line 12 the listener asks a question which is intended as a suggestion regarding the direction the story should take. The child does not realise this function and again refuses to meet this demand on a structural or global level. Instead he treats this listener activity as a request for information on a local level. This example shows that personal narratives are not simply acquired by gaining control over an increasing complexity of narrative structures. Rather they are constituted, in the case of the younger age groups, along conversational patterns typical for children of this age (cp. Hausendorf & QuasthoŸ 1992, QuasthoŸ 1995). On the whole, the structural analysis revealed an intriguing fact. While the other three narrative genres (retellings, fantasy and picture story) showed a similar developmental process in regard to the narrative structure (though with temporal diŸerences) over the three age groups, the personal narratives lacked a resolution in most cases, ending after the complication. The group of the 7 year olds shows this most clearly: As we have seen in Figure 3 above, the listener activities have disappeared at this age in all genres except the personal experiences. Still most of the listener activities occur toward the ending of the narrations. 61 % of the personal experiences in the age group 7 years reveal listener activities after the complication. This means the child stops or pauses in his narration with a falling intonation, causing the listener to respond with a request for continuation. Only 22 % of the personal experiences are resolved without any intervention of the listeners.4
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However, while the personal experiences are unique in regard to their narrative structure and their interactional patterns, fantasy stories show an entirely diŸerent pattern. First, structural complexity and linguistic means develop at a much earlier age in the fantasy stories. The personal experiences of the 9 year olds are still structurally rather simple. By contrast, the fantasy stories of the 7 year olds have a quite sophisticated structure and are already very elaborate. The example below is a fantasy story of this type. Example 4 (2-B-10) Da war so=n KÖnig, (- -) der hat ga:nz gerne geLEsen, der hat jeden tag NUR gelesen — und auf EINmal hat er keine bücher mehr zum LEsen gehabt, und dann ha:t er KEIne mehr gehabt; und dann (-) mußte der schriftsteller wieder IMmer wieder welche schreiben; und auf EINmal hat er keine blä:tter mehr gehabt, und dann isser mal WEG — und dann war dem könig ganz LANGweilig; dann mußt=n anderer SCHRIFTsteller die bücher schreiben, der hat dann AUCH kein papier mehr gehabt — und dann war der ANdere wieder da (2) und hat n=SCHÖnes buch geschrieben. There was this king, and he liked to read, and he was reading every day and suddenly there were no more books to read, and then he didn’t have any more and then the author had to write some more again and again and suddenly he didn’t have any more paper and then he went away, and then the king was very bored, then another author had to write the books, he didn’t have any more paper either and then the other one returned and wrote a very nice book.
Nevertheless the fantasy stories can be contrasted with the personal experiences in that they never break oŸ after the complication. Of course the resolutions which are given by the ªrst graders are not always complete or elaborate. In several cases the narratives end explicitly on the local level, e.g. by the word “fertig” (“done” or “over”). Thus only 6 % of the fantasy stories are without any kind of resolution. Often the resolution has a rather formulaic character, clearly revealing the in¶uence of other narrative texts. …und DANN lebten sie glücklich und zufrie:den. (2-B-1) (and then they lived happily and contentedly.) …und dann wurde ihr traum wahr, (-) und dann waren se GANZ glücklich; ende. (2-C-16) (and then their dream came true and then they were very happy, end.)
The beginnings as well show typically narrative patterns as “es war einmal”
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(once upon a time) or “einmal war” (once there was). Several stories appear very much like a conglomerate of narrative fragments. Even though these formulae are freely and extensively used in the fantasy stories they never occur in the personal experiences of the two younger age groups. The role of verbal narrative input becomes even more important in the retellings. The youngest age group of the children focuses on reproducing those elements of the original story which have a particular repetitive or formulaic character. They also overextend these forms on a word or phrase level (among the younger children) or on the structural level (among the older children) by expanding on the repetitions given in the original text. It is only the third graders who transfer narrative formulae or structural aspects to their experiences. This is shown in the example below, which even in the oldest age group is very infrequent. Example 5 (3-C-17) 00 im WINter, da sind wer KUtsche gefahren, also (-) (in winter we drove with a coach) 01 mi=m schlitten hintendran und mit nem pfe:rd; (with a sledge behind and with a horse) 02 u:nd (-) da sind wer galoppIERT, (and then we galloped) 03 da dann wollt=ich meiner schwester die ZÜgel geben, (-) (there then I wanted to give the reigns to my sister) 04 und aufeinmal ähm schießt das pferd los — (and suddenly the horse dashes of) 05 und auf- und dann isses auf die STRAße gerannt (and on and then it ran into the street) 06 und da is n=AUto gekommen (and a car came) 07 und des hat ga:nz DOLL(and it did very-) 08 also des auto hat ga:nz DOLL gebremst; (so the car braked very hard) 09 u::nd des pferd wär fast überFAHren worden; (and the horse was almost run over ) 10 aber dann is alles gu:t geworden; (but then all went well) 11 und dann sind wir je:den tag wieder gefahren; (and then we drove out again every day)
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12
und dann is NIEmehrwieder so was passiert. (and never again did anything like this happen.)
The entire story is told without any outside support on the linguistic level (although non-verbal support may take place) and yet the resolution is elaborated on. In lines 10 to 12 the listener is informed how the dramatic experience ended in a positive way. Though this is done rather implicitly it is nevertheless emphasised by strong evaluative comments (but then all went well (…) and never again did anything like this happen). In this the last lines of the story can be deªned as what Labov & Waletzky (1964) call a coda. By the use of deictic elements (like this) and a shift in tense the speaker’s perspective is brought back to the present, thus marking the story as a structurally and semantically coherent whole and setting it oŸ from the conversational ¶ow as a distinct unit. In this last example the child has now clearly realised the narrative function and character of personal experiences. In mastering the structural demands this 9 year old can break free of listener support and apply the adequate linguistic narrative patterns.
Comparison to written narratives The structural speciªcs which the personal experiences have revealed in the oral data could certainly be due to a number of uncontrolled variables, unavoidable in a near-authentic setting. To gain further evidence a second study5 was conducted on a smaller scale focussing on two genres and one age group only. This time a group of twenty 7 year old children were asked to compose a personal experience and a fantasy story in written form. Thus all the in¶uences that listener activities can have on the story structure and production process are eliminated. The children’s writing ability is only just developing at that age but it was su¹ciently advanced for composing short texts. There was — as to be expected — a number of diŸerences in the comparison between the children’s oral and written narratives. For now, I will only point out one phenomenon which was particularly striking in shedding new light on the oral data. Similar to the oral narratives a considerable structural contrast could be found between the fantasy stories and the personal experiences. While the children resolved their fantasy stories usually in a very standardised and genre typical way, the personal experiences revealed the same premature endings as can be seen in the oral data.
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The fantasy stories ended in sentences like “und sie lebten glücklich bis an ihr Ende” (and they lived happily ever after) or “und sie haben geheiratet” (and they got married). In this they again clearly demonstrated that the children use narrative patterns which they have acquired through reception of other narrative texts. On the whole, their structural features are comparable if not identical with the oral stories. By contrast, the personal experiences again show — as the oral data predicted — narrative structures as seen in the following example: Example 6.6 (32. f) Es war beim Ohrlaub, da hat die Oma hat uns in Portugal ein Haus gemitet es war ein dopel haus wir wan unten oben wahr auch ein Kind. In der Nacht sind wir die Trepen runta gegangen. Auf ein mal ist das Kind im Aufzug steken gebliben. It was on vacation, there grandma rented us a house in Portugal. It was a double house. We were downstairs, upstairs there was also a child. At night we went down the stairs. Suddenly the child got stuck in the elevator.
Even though we do have a fairly elaborate orientation and even an obvious complication marked by a typical adverb (auf einmal, suddenly), the resolution is missing completely. While 96 % of the written fantasy stories contain a more or less elaborate resolution, it is only the case for 50 % of the personal experiences. This clearly shows that the children realise diŸerent structural patterns for the two genres, fantasy story and personal experience. Comparing this ªnding now for the written texts with the oral data where we had found even more diverging percentages (75 % of fantasy stories contain a resolution opposed to only 22 % of the personal experiences), we can conclude that the structural diŸerences are independent of the channel oral/ written and not in¶uenced by diŸerent processing. Moreover, these diŸerences can be seen as an indication that the two genres fantasy story and personal experience are dominated by two diŸerent mechanisms. On the one hand the fantasy stories are to a large extent formulations of narrative patterns and phrases acquired earlier through the reception of narrative texts. The personal experience on the other hand show structural patterns which can be traced back to interactional processes. A marked interactional construction suggests strong in¶uences interactions have on the developmental process within this narrative genre.
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Conclusion: developmental functions of narrative interaction From an interactional point of view the personal experiences prove to be the more interesting genre, in that they not only rely mostly on interactional strategies of construction but also show a decidedly systematic constructional pattern. In this they contrast with other narrative genres, as we have seen, not only in the oral but also in the written modality. How can this be explained? As I have already suggested it is the developmental process underlying the genre of personal experiences which diŸers from other narrative genres (for personal experiences in adolescents cp. Chapter 5). In summarising the results of the above studies it is possible to determine diŸerent stages within this process. Central to this process is the concept of a relevant event as the core part of the personal experience. In summary of my data analysis I propose the following model for the developmental process of structuring personal experiences (relevant-eventhypothesis). 1. Local Relevance: In the ªrst stage the child is unaware of the structural or interactional demands of higher textual units such as narrative. He/she only responds locally to remarks of an interlocutor. The interactions are structured as question/answer or as prompt/reaction. The child perceives only the local relevance within the overall interaction. 2. Central Event Relevance: The child realises in the second stage through interactional demands the necessity of a dramatisation or a “high-point” in the form of a central event. This central event has been made relevant by the conversational demands. The interactions thus start to conform to a speaker/listener pattern. Still, orientation and especially resolution are only incompletely given (they are not yet perceived as “relevant”.) 3. Global Relevance: And ªnally, in stage three the child gives the narration a global structure, especially by adding a resolution to the narrative. The central event is now embedded in a narrative structure. The speaker/ listener roles are clearly divided. These stages are only salient for personal experiences and must be seen against a background of experiencing personal narratives as interactionally relevant. One may ªnd phenomena comparable to these developmental stages in other narrative genres, but so far we can not determine whether this stems from cognitive and linguistic transfer from one narrative genre to another or whether
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we ªnd the same mechanism at work only in a less signiªcant fashion and overshadowed by more prominent mechanisms. Furthermore, the relevant event hypothesis is well comparable with a general acquisition paradigm of learning mechanisms, where relevant information is focused upon. From early on personal experiences occur within the context of conversations. In fulªlling the task of “telling an experience” children shift into the “conversational mode” drawing and relying on conversational scaŸoldings. Fantasy stories by contrast draw on the resources of previous encounters and experience with other narrative texts.7 Interactional processes certainly contribute a considerable amount to narrative development (cp. also QuasthoŸ & Kern, Chapter 2). However, in attributing a developmental function to these processes one must diŸerentiate narrative genres. It is mainly the narrative genre of personal experiences which the child masters increasingly with the support from interaction with an (adult) listener. If we remember that this is also the genre with the most frequent occurrence in natural conversation this seems only logical. Other genres such as fantasy stories depend more on genre speciªc knowledge which the child gradually obtains through text reception. While for fantasy stories the child reproduces textual patterns, in personal experiences it is conversational patterns the child must learn to master.8 In summary, narrative interaction plays an important role in narrative development. However, due to diŸering conversational saliences this dominant role is related to speciªc genres, namely personal experiences. For other narrative genres this mechanism of acquisition can be overpowered by other mechanisms and in¶uences.
Notes 1. These are just a few of the more recent studies. The last years have seen an increasing number of research and approaches in this direction. C. Snow for instance investigated the relation of input and language acquisition (Snow 1977, Snow et al. 1987, Sokolov & Snow 1994). 2. The conventions for the transcription used are listed at the end of Chapter 5. They are taken from Selting et al. 1998. 3. The tables below accordingly present child/adult interactions. The child/child interactions are statistically insigniªcant (less than 5 %).
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4. Peterson & McCabe have come across a similar phenomenon in their data of childrens narratives. In their categorization of diŸerent types of narratives they identiªed one type as “ending-at-the-high-point“ (1983). 5. A more detailed description of this study can be found in Becker 2002. 6. The german example is represented in the child’s original spelling, containing several non-standard forms. The translation is adapted. 7. A further explanation for the marked diŸerence between the two genres may lie in diŸerent treatment of holding the ¶oor and in diŸerent “competence”. It seemed that for the fantasy stories children had an increased right for the ¶oor taking on the role of primary speaker since an increased competence was attributed to them (cp. QuasthoŸ 1980). For fantasy stories only the narrator himself has accession to the narrative world. For the experiences both narrator and listener share the narrative world and consequently the listener has increased competence. Unfortunately the conversational context of the data was not documented broadly enough to be able to clearly demonstrate this (cp. therefor Kern & QuasthoŸ, Chapter 2, for further suggestions). 8. The fantasy stories in QuasthoŸ & Kern’s data (Chapter 2) show some marked diŸerences particularly in their introductory phases. These must be mainly attributed to a diŸerent elicitation procedure involving prefabricated introductory sentences as triggers.
References Bamberg, M. (Ed.) (1997). Narrative development. London: LEA. Becker, T. (2001). Kinder lernen erzählen. Baltmannsweiler: Schneider Verlag Hohengehren. Becker, T. (2002). Mündliches und Schriftliches Erzählen: Ein Vergleich unter entwicklungstheoretischen Gesichtspunkten. Didaktik Deutsch, 12, 23–38. Berman, R., & Slobin, D. I. (1994). Relating events in narrative: A crosslinguistic developmental study. Hillsdale: Erlbaum. Botvin, G. J., & Sutton-Smith, B. (1977). The development of structural complexity in children’s fantasy narratives. Developmental Psychology, 13(4), 377–388. Boueke, D. et al. (1995). Wie Kinder erzählen. Untersuchungen zur Erzähltheorie und zur Entwicklung narrativer Fähigkeiten. München: Fink. Bruner, J. S. (1978). The role of dialogue in language acquistion. In A. Sinclair, J. R. Jarvella, & W. J. M. Levelt (Eds.), The child’s conception of language. (pp. 241–256). Berlin. Fogel, A., & Thelen, E. (1987). Development of early expressive and communicative action: Reinterpreting the evidence from a dynamic systems perspective. Developmental Psychology, 23, 747–761. Hausendorf, H., & Quasthoff, U. M. (1992). Patterns of adult-child interaction as a mechanism of discourse acquisition. Journal of Pragmatics, 17, 81–99. Hausendorf, H., & Quasthoff, U. M. (1996). Sprachentwicklung und Interaktion. Opladen. Karmiloff-Smith, A. (1985). Language and cognitive processes from a developmental perspective. Language and Cognitive Processes, 1(1), 61–85. Karmiloff-Smith, A. (1987). Function and process in comparing language and cognition. In M.
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Hickmann (Ed.), Social and functional approaches to language and thought. New York. Kern, F., & Quasthoff, U. M. Fantasy stories and conversational narratives of personal experience: Genre-specific, interactional and developmental perspectives. (Chapter 3 in this volume). Labov, W., & Waletzky, J. (1967). Narrative analysis: Oral versions of personal experience. In J. Helms (Ed.), Essays on verbal and visual arts. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Moerk, E. L. (1991). Positive evidence for negative evidence. First Language, 11, 219–252. Papousek, M., & Papousek, H. (ed. by H. Keller) (1989). Stimmliche Kommunikation im frühen Säuglingsalter als Wegbereiter der Sprachentwicklung. (pp. 465–489). Peterson, C., & McCabe A. (1983). Developmental psycholinguistics. Three ways of looking at a child´s narrative. New York: Plenum. Quasthoff, U. M. (1980). Gemeinsames Erzählen als Form und Mittel im sozialen Konflikt oder Ein Ehepaar erzählt eine Geschichte. (pp.109–141). In K. Ehlich (Ed.), Erzählen im Alltag. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Scinto, L. F. M. (1983). The development of text production. In J. Fine, & R.O. Freedle (Eds.), Developmental issues in discourse. Norwood: Ablex. Scinto, L. F. M. (1984). The architectonics of texts produced by children and the development of higher cognitive functions. Discourse Processes, 7, 371–418. Selting, M. et al. (1998). Gesprächsanalytische Transkriptionssystem. Linguistische Berichte, 173, 91–122. Snow, C. E. (1977). The development of conversations between mothers and babies. In Journal of Child Language, 4, 1–22. Snow, C. E., Perlmann, R., & Nathan, D. (1987). Why routines are different: towards amultiple-factors model of the relation between input and language acquisition. In K. E. Nelson, & A. van Kleek (Eds.), Children’s language, 6. Hillsdale: Erlbaum. Sokolov, J. L., & Snow, C. E. (1994). The changing role of negative evidence in theories of language development. In C. Gallaway,& B. J. Richards (Eds.), Input and interaction in language acquisition. (pp. 38–55). Cambridge: University Press. Stein, N., & Glenn, C. G. (1979). An analysis of story comprehension in elementary school children. In R. O. Freedle (Ed.), New directions in discourse processing. Norwood: Ablex. Stein, N. L., & Trabasso, T. (1982). What’s in a story? In R. Glaser (Ed.), Advances in the psychology of instruction, 2. Hillsdale: Erlbaum. Thelen, E., & Smith, L. (1994). A dynamic systems approach to the development of cognition and action. Cambridge, MA, London. Tomasello, M., & Kruger, A. C. (1992). Joint attention on actions: Acquiring verbs in ostensive and non-ostensive contexts. Journal of Child Language, 19, 311–333. Tomasello, M., Kruger, A. C., & Ratner, H. (1993). Cultural learning. Behavioral and Brain. Sciences, 16, 495–552. Tomasello, M. (1992). The social bases of language acquisition. In Social Development 1, 67–87. Tomasello, M. (2000). Do young children have adult syntactic competence? Cognition, 74, 209–253. Vygotsky, L. S. (1986) (orig. 1934). Thought and language. Cambridge: MIT Press.
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Chapter 5
Humourous disaster and success stories among female adolescents in Germany Rebecca Branner
This chapter examines humourous strategies and sociolinguistic functions of girls’ disaster and success stories. Whereas humourous tellings of personal trouble and embarrassment among women and girls is a relatively well known phenomenon (Coates 1996; KotthoŸ 2000), little attention has been paid to the rare instances of narratively presented successes. My analysis of disaster and success stories shows how humour is linguistically produced and how it shapes and re¶ects group culture. The data are drawn from a corpus of informal conversations among a group of white, middle-class teenage girls in Germany. Since the understanding of the stories demands social background knowledge ethnographic and discourse analytic methods are combined.
Introduction Stories play an important role in everyday conversations. We constantly tell stories or listen to stories of others. Researchers in communication have therefore chosen narratives as one of their primary research ªelds. This longstanding interest in narration has however only rarely included humourous stories. The research here has been mainly conducted by conversation analysts and social scientists who previously pointed out the high frequency and substantiality of humourous stories (humourous stories cp. Chapter 11) in casual conversation (KotthoŸ 1996, 1998; Lampert 1996; Ervin-Tripp & Lampert 1992; Coates 1996; Sanford & Eder 1984; Sacks 1978, 1989). Additionally, gender oriented research identiªed diŸerences in women’s and men’s as well as girls’ and boys’ speech styles. These styles diŸer in some aspects concerning narrative presentations as well as conversational humour practices. The following cited studies were mainly conducted in the United
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States and refer above all to western, white, middle-class women/girls and men/boys. Women and girls in these studies tend to tell stories about personal experiences (Johnstone 1993; Tannen 1990a, b), especially things going wrong (Coates 1996; Eggins & Slade 1997), men’s stories center around acting alone in contest situations (Johnstone 1993) and being the hero (Eggins & Slade 1997). The narrative interaction between speaker and audience diŸers, too. Groups of women and girls reveal a much more cooperative narrative mode in same-sex interactions than boys and men do (Maltz & Borker 1982; Fine 1987; Sheldon 1993). Humour research also reveals links between gender and humourous behaviour. Early research in — mostly — social-psychology and sociology ªnds boys and men to be active humorists and women and girls to be responsive (Coser 1959, 1960; McGhee 1979). Furthermore women following traditional gender roles displayed a strong tendency towards self-directed humour (Cantor 1976; Barrecca 1991; Zillmann & Stocking 1976; Ziv 1984; Levine 1976) whereas women and girls adopting less traditional gender roles did not demonstrate this behaviour (Galivan 1992; Chapman & Gadªeld 1976; LaFave 1972; Cantor 1976; Grote & Cvetkovich 1972; McGhee & DuŸey 1983; Lampert 1996; ErvinTripp & Lampert 1992). Explanations of this phenomenon point to the lower status and power of women in society as well as to the violation of traditional gender roles by women trespassing into the male dominated humourous domain (Coser 1959, 1960; Apte 1985; Lampert 1996; McGhee 1979; Ziv 1984). Newer research diŸerentiates these early ªndings. Dichotomies like “men as active” and “women as responsive” were important for a ªrst investigation of the phenomenon, but they now give way to a more context speciªc and detailed data driven analysis. Ervin-Tripp and Lampert (1992) in accordance to the above ªndings found a higher rate of humour at one’s own cost in allfemale groups than in all male-groups. They also detected that Euro-American men produce more self-directed humour in mixed-sex groups than women (Lampert 1996). This appears not to ªt the theory mentioned above, but Lampert’s and Ervin-Tripp’s data revealed diŸerent functions of self-directed humour for the sexes. Men seem to protect themselves through self-directed humour, thereby minimizing socially unacceptable behaviour such as bragging, etc. In contrast to that the self-directed humourous narratives of women are self-disclosing and increase social vulnerability and intimacy (Lampert 1996, 585). KotthoŸ (2000) also added new facets to the phenomenon of female stories at their own expense. Through detailed conversation analysis she
Humourous disaster and success stories among female adolescents in Germany
was able to show how women invite listeners to laugh with the narrator in their funny stories, and not to laugh at her. Concerning age diŸerences, research on narratives, as well as research on humour was mainly focused on language, humour development and humour appreciation of children and adults. The explorations of adolescence are not quite as numerous. It demands consideration of a signiªcant socializing institution: the peer-group. Adolescents here develop a communicative group culture e.g. by negotiating social norms and values. Verbal humour plays an important role within this group culture (Fine 1977, 1987). The above ªndings support the need of a context-sensitive, gender and age speciªc approach on humourous stories. My larger study on humour among a small group of teenage girlfriends in Germany was conducted using such an approach (Branner 2003). The goal of the conversation analytic and ethnographic study is to investigate the question of how humour is linguistically produced by adolescent girls and the way it shapes and re¶ects their group culture. Humourous narratives turn out to play a central role. These narratives do not primarily transmit information, moreover they are an important tool for constructing a social world and social identity, negotiating social norms and displaying relationships and intimacy. Nearly everything can be told in a narrative format, but the analysis shows that certain aspects are more relevant to the teenage girls than others. This is why humourous narratives can be seen as a key to subjective relevance structures of groups. In a wider sense, they show what being a girl in a special time in a special cultural group is about. This allows cross-cultural and cross-generational comparisons. My speciªc target in this chapter is to compare two relevant story types in the adolescent girl group: disaster stories and success stories. Two aspects will play a central role: 1. Which sociolinguistic functions do the stories have especially for a group of adolescent girls regarding identity construction and group-cultural emotion and body politics? 2. What are the formal aspects that can be found concerning participation structure and humourous conversational strategies?
Methodology and database To gain insight into humourous communicative processes mentioned above, background knowledge as well as detailed recordings of girls’ talk are needed. This is why the study draws upon an interactional sociolinguistic framework
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combining discourse-analytic and ethnographic methods. The ªeldwork was conducted in a peer-group of four German girls over a period of three years. The girls were 14 years old at the beginning of the study. 50 hours of recorded casual conversations accompanying the girls’ everyday leisuretime activities have been selected out of the larger corpus. These taped conversations are drawn from the ªrst two years (14–16 years). In combination with transcripts and ªeldnotes they build the corpus of this study. This corpus of natural discourse provides the basis for a detailed sociolinguistic analysis of humourous strategies. I obtained the general agreement of the group to tape their conversations. The tape recorder was therefore unobtrusively placed and did not center the girls’ attention. Background knowledge plays a central role in understanding group cultural conversational humour. Everybody who has ever entered an unfamiliar new group knows how di¹cult it is to understand their humourous remarks, their joking and teasing. Much of the humour is based on inside knowledge, on the shared (communicative) history of the group. It is not possible at all to analyze that kind of humour without ethnographic information. My status and my knowledge as a friend of the group provided the setting to obtain a deep insight into such group cultural processes. I organized the collected data and identiªed humourous episodes. Humour research agrees that laughter represents the most prominent marker for conversational humourous activities. This is why — in accordance with the line of research — laughter is seen as the main criterion for the selection of humourous episodes. The second criterion focuses on participant categories. All sequences in which the girls ethnocategorized the stories they told as funny are included. These criteria does not cover all humourous instances in my data. Therefore I decided to include utterances spoken in a humourous interaction modality also.1 My knowledge of the group’s humour and the girls’ speciªc framing strategies facilitated this classiªcation. The humourous instances were then assigned to several humourous activities (e.g. telling funny stories, teasing, parodies). Even though jokes are the most prominent object to study in humour research, they were not at all an outstanding humourous activity in the adolescent girls’ group. The telling of jokes was minimal compared to the telling of humourous stories.
Humourous disaster and success stories among female adolescents in Germany
The group of girls The group consists of the four girlfriends Samantha, Clara, Gesine and Karina.2 They reside in a small town in a wine area near Frankfurt. Since childhood they have lived in the same neighborhood, played together, and became friends. They went to the same kindergarten, school, and now attend secondary school. All the girls are good pupils. Two of these girls are the best pupils in their class. They all come from white, “intact” middle-class families, with employed fathers and mothers with part-time jobs. During their free time, the girls are active church members, play instruments or take dancing lessons. Gesine plays basketball. The girls spend most of their remaining time together talking, often combined with a couple of other activities like visiting local events, playing games, meeting at the ice-cream-parlor or pizzeria, etc. They are also part of an extended peer-group, which is composed mainly of girls and a few boys. This group mostly meets in the youth club of the church or on festivals and parties, but even here the girls ªnd ways to withdraw and spend some time alone. The girls’ friendship group has grown naturally. They have known each other for all of their lives. Shared memories — both good and bad ones — tie them together.
Humour in adolescent girls groups Over the last years, the number of mostly sociological girls studies has grown. Concepts of the girls’ symmetric, cooperative and intimate group culture have played an important role in this process.3 For good reasons, the more visible — or at that time more interesting — groups of girls, such as: working class, antischool culture or violent girls (Campbell 1987; Davies 1984; McRobbie 1978, etc.) have been objects of previous investigations. Current studies like this or Hey’s (1997) ethnographic study begin to turn their attention to normal, unobtrusive and socially-adapted middle-class girls and ªnd that presenting oneself as “normal and nice” needs as much negotiation as presenting oneself as “diŸerent.” The girls must constantly manage what “being and acting nice” means (Hey 1997; Branner 2003). This is an important part of their identitypolitics. Humour plays a major role within this process. In reading over the transcripts of adolescent girls’ talk in these ethnographic studies, I found an enormous amount of laughter and humour which was not targeted by researchers, because other aspects were for good reasons
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more central for their analysis. Still, some of them recognize having fun and “having a laugh” as a central feature of girls’ friendship (Gri¹ths 1995, 1988a, b, 1987; Gri¹n 1985; Meyenn 1980; Lees 1986; Lambart 1976). With the exception of these studies humour research clearly concentrates on children’s and adults’ humour (mainly jokes and riddles) in experimental settings (McGhee 1974, 1976; Shultz 1972, 1974, 1976; Shultz & Pilon 1973; Shultz & Scott 1974; Shultz & Horibe 1974; Pien & Rothbart 1976, 1977; Chapman 1973, 1975, etc.). I am convinced that a context-sensitive and highly interactional phenomenon such as humour can not be adequately grasped in laboratory studies. The understanding of the incongruency in riddles, jokes and cartoons, for example, as it is tested in laboratory studies with children is an important feature of humour, but it is by far not the only one. Context plays a major role as well. Context-factors such as setting, relationship and status of participants, grade of formality, etc. are highly in¶uential on humour production and reception (even the humour of the same person diŸers from situation to situation). A relaxed and familiar context, e.g. children playing at a friend’s house or adults having dinner with friends, does not restrict humour production as much as artiªcial settings. The wide range of diŸerent humour activities and humour types produced in these situations is not covered by these basic test categories. To seize the interactional ¶uency of humour, naturalistic studies of spontaneous humour are needed. Recent studies like Ardington’s (this special issue), Eder’s (see below) and those presented in this chapter, begin to explore the speciªcity of girl’s humour during the particular period of adolescence. Eder conducted a study on relationships and socialization of early adolescents in an American middle school. Data (ªeldnotes and some tape recordings) was collected mainly during the lunch breaks. Sanford and Eder (1984) studied several types of humour in predominantly female peer groups, like memorized jokes, funny stories, practical jokes and humourous behaviour. They found humourous activities to depend on group structure and the relationships of group members. If groups were newly formed or varied concerning sex or age, memorized jokes were more likely to be told. One main topic in mixed sex groups as well as in all-girls groups was sexuality.4 Through telling sexual jokes the pupils transferred information, showed maturity and enjoyed the breaking of norms.5 Practical jokes, funny stories and humourous behaviour were in contrast to that, typical for small friendship groups, where these types of humour occupied 80% of the humourous activities. Funny stories functioned mainly as negotiation of group norms in contrast to adult norms. Practical jokes were handled as a sign of
Humourous disaster and success stories among female adolescents in Germany
sympathy or antipathy depending on who was being tricked, and humourous spontaneous comments and remarks were used to treat taboo-topics. Teasing also played an important role in the all female groups (Eder 1991, 1993). It functions to transfer sympathy, negotiate social norms and release feelings of embarrassment and tension. During such teasing activities adolescents also learn to use and detect paraverbal cues signaling a playful mode (1991).6 A special type of teasing refers to relationships with boys and is called by the researchers romantic or sexual teasing (Schoªeld 1982; Eder 1993; Eder, Evans & Parker 1995; Davies 1984). Even though the girls tease their friend, they show a high degree of sensitivity (Eder, Evans & Parker 1995; Davies 1984), group bonds are strengthened and traditional gender roles partly transformed (Eder, Evans & Parker 1995).
Disaster and success stories A comparison of the topics of the girls’ humourous stories in my data showed that misfortunes and painfulness stand out in the frequency and amount of laughter they draw. Such humour at one’s own expense has been shown by researchers to be typical for adult women as summarized above. Coates (1996) mentions that not only adult women but also adolescent girls have a great tradition in creating humourous narratives out of misfortunes. My data basically conªrm Coates’ ªndings. What I want to do in this article is to give a detailed analysis of especially humourous stories during the special stage of adolescence. The adolescent girls’ humorous talk will be related to their group culture and identity politics. In this context I have analyzed trouble stories in a frame of identity construction as following: The girls predominantly demonstrate an egalitarian group culture in the sense of diŸerent variations on a continuum. This is illustrated in detail by Branner 2003, but can also be shown in some of the following transcripts. This egalitarian culture promotes a narrative presentation of the self as not perfect. Presenting a perfect image or bragging about triumphs is group-culturally critical. Misfortunes are therefore better suited as a topic for humourous stories. Others can join in and tell likewise humourous stories at their own expense. That, of course, creates in-group. Similar to Coates (1996) I also found many stories in my corpus that are ethnocategorized by the girls as “peinlich/embarrassing”. It seems everything can be made embarrassing in the group of girls, even other people’s inadequate behaviour. The girls present themselves in line with their group-culture as
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always wanting to make a good impression by being nice, tidy and accommodating. This is part of their identity politics. But their environment does not follow these norms, which the girls narratively present as a threat to their own positive face-work. One “embarrassing” story, for example, is about a boy in their dance class who is a very bad dancer, regarded as being ugly and having bad breath. The girls are good dancers, but this is not central to the dancestories. The point is, they want to be seen positively by others, which means they need competent dance partners. Dancing with this particular boy is narratively presented as torture for them. In their funny stories, they portray themselves as incapable of changing embarrassing situations. They promote a self-image of being in line with their group norms, stressing the value of appropriate behaviour and physical sensation within the group. Having good breath is of good value due to the high hygienic standards of the girls, and proper movements are part of their norms of body politics as well. Both elements play a central role in the girls’ narratives and show with their high mode of involvement the group’s struggle for group-cultural standards and the negotiation of bodily phenomena. While some events are told as just embarrassing, there are situations that also turn dramatic. These I call “disasters” with reference to Coates (1996). In these disaster stories, the girls recreate psychologically di¹cult events, thereby negotiating shared emotions. The interesting thing is: the worse the disaster, the more laughs it will evoke. This ªts the psychological and psychoanalytic theory of humour as a release of tension or energy (Freud 1905/1992; Berlyne 1972; Rothbart 1976, 1977). Second, the therapeutic and healing aspect of humour also plays an important role (for the therapeutic eŸect of story telling cp. Chapter 6), because humour is an important tool for distancing one’s self from negative experiences (Jenkins 1985). While those disaster stories seem typical for female conversations, success stories are predominantly found in male groups (Fine 1987; Johnstone 1993). This is conªrmed in my data. In contrast to stories about misfortunes, stories about successes are very rare in the girls group. Coates (1998) describes adult women experiencing success mainly in the domestic world. The successes of the adolescent girls in this study are especially set in their adolescent girl world. In the domestic area success mainly mean to be successful in arguments with parents. In the outside world the girls are also successful. They are good students, good dancers and one is the wine princess of the town (explanation below). In any event, success stories are fragile and not easily handled in the egalitarian culture of girl groups. Telling girlfriends about personal success
Humourous disaster and success stories among female adolescents in Germany
could therefore be interpreted as bragging and arrogance, which is not socially acceptable.7 To maintain equality in the group, the girls distance themselves from their successes by playing them down and emphasizing insu¹ciencies. This is why (humourous and non-humourous) triumph stories (as Coates (1996) calls them) appear seldom and the reported triumphs are weak. I therefore prefer to call them “success-stories”. These success-stories are mostly short and are typically transformed into other story types. It is remarkable that the girlfriends do not support degradation strategies of the narrator, as the following example illustrates. Samantha is the wine princess of the town, which means that she has to travel to wine events in the whole region, representing the wine culture of the area she comes from. She wears a beautiful, traditional German skirt, people are interested in her, and pictures and interviews of her can be found in the local papers. This gives her a special position in the group. Samantha very seldom speaks about her positive experiences and prefers to break her success by telling how full of stress the position is and how unbecoming the skirt is, because it makes her look “fat” etc. — this brings up the point that weight is a central theme in the group. The other girls do not join in; on the contrary, they protest and tell Samantha how good she looks in the skirt and how much they envy her for getting so much positive attention. This complex strategy allows Samantha to recreate the social norms of the group, maintaining equality by presenting a modest and imperfect image. Ensuing Samantha’s group-culturally acceptable identity politics, the girlfriends also follow the rules and support their friend in whatever she is doing. Group norms are hereby negotiated in reciprocal alignment. Most successes, however, are usually not exploited humourously, because the typical (humourous) story breaks are missing (QuasthoŸ 1980a). Stories about disasters or misfortunes contain these breaks per se. Prominent success stories in the girl group are for these reasons (group culture and humourous breaks) primarily stories with broken heroines (as the story mentioned above). We do not ªnd the unrestricted hero here which we ªnd in male stories (Fine 1987; Johnstone 1993). Still, also unbroken success-stories can be told in special contexts. Stories about events in which the whole group participated (in contrast to the broken wine-princess-story, in which only one girl experiences success) strengthen group boundaries. When all the girls share success, nobody stands out and an unbroken boand and perspective on success is possible. Other prominent humourous stories deal with successes over group-culturally not accepted persons. Such persons are disliked class-mates and teachers.
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Parents are also discussed regarding their educational methods as the analysis will show. The narrator takes no risk by telling those triumphs, since she knows the group will join in, and the other girls will have similar stories to tell. Because of missing humourous breaks in these unbroken success-stories humour has to be generated by other means (stylized voices etc.). I chose one broken and a series of unbroken success stories — meaning that the success is held up to the end of the story — about arguments with parents to show how successes in girl groups are performed and what they tell about the group culture. I start, however, with examples of disaster stories.
Disaster stories: The vomit and stair stories Since it is not possible to present a detailed analysis of a whole story in this article, I will focus on selected aspects: the humourous re-enacting of disgust and the identity construction and emotion/body politics of the girls.8 A very dramatic disaster story is set in the school bus. The four girlfriends were sitting near each other in the bus when another girl whom they did not know suddenly vomited on Samantha’s hair. The event took place some time ago and has been discussed and retold by the group again and again. It is part of their communicative culture. This day the researcher is the only one who does not know the story. So the girls tell the story (as always) as a group story and in addition they narrate it to the researcher. All the girls were present when the incident happened. This is why the narration is not performed as a monologue (co-constructed stories are also presented in Chapters 7 and 8). They all feel entitled to tell the story, and we therefore ªnd a complex and co-constructed story-telling format. Samantha as the protagonist — respectively the victim — could be seen according to QuasthoŸ (1980b) as the primary speaker, but she often relinquishes the ¶oor to the others, who then tell whole sequences of the story. The climax for example is told by every girl out of her individual spatial perspective and (emotional) stance. The microstructure also reveals high emotions, active participation and “high involvement” (Tannen 1984, 1989). The girls’ turns show an extreme orientation toward each other. The following transcript gives an example of this. Samantha describes how she ran her hand through her hair and suddenly realized what had happened:
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Transcript 1 1 Sa: [and than>> 3 a: [HAHAHAHAHA= ((hysterisches, hohes Lachen)) ((hysterical giggling)) 4 Cl: [ [ 5 a: = [HAHAHA= ((hoch)) ((high pitch)) 6 Cl: [ehj ehj 7 a: =[HAHAHAHA 8 Kr: [mir wirds immer wieder schlecht; [it always makes me sick again; ((Lachpart.)) ((integrated laughter particles)) 9 Sa: =to realize it was puke.> ((Lachpart.)) ((integrated laughter particles)) 12 a: HAHA[HAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA= ((sehr hohes Lachen)) ((tittering)) 13 Cl: [ehj ich fands ehj immer, [ehj I always found it, 14 des war eklig, it was disgusting, 15 weil ich bin dann mit ihr heimgefahrn; because then I rode home with her; 16 und ham werdann[ganz hinne gesessen and we sat [way in the back
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17 Sa:
[und der ganze Achter war leer. [and the whole bus eight was empty. 18 und des hat so gestunken. and it reeked. 19 ?: [HAHAHAHA ((sehr hoch)) ((very high pitch)) 20 Cl: [und dann ham wer mit Taschentüchern, [and then with Kleenexes, 21 ehj mit Taschentüchern ham wer des dann noch so weggewischt gä, ehj with Kleenexes we did wipe it oV, ugh,
The above transcript starts while Samantha has already told the story orientation and climax (laced with comments, evaluations, details and laughter by the others) as well as ªrst reactions of the participants (e.g. Gesine who ªrst started laughing). Now she develops a disgusting scenario by describing and enacting how she ran her hand through her hair. All the girls display their aŸects. They already burst out in high-pitched laughter in the course of Samantha’s starting description, thereby contextualizing drama through their reactions. Samantha is immediately interrupted by Clara, ªghting for the ¶oor with Karina, which is typical for high involvement. Clara starts an a¹rmation with “ja/yes” (4) and Karina transforms former emotions of disgust to the present (8). On the lexico-semantic level, she states that the memory of the event still makes her sick, but at the same time she is laughing and thereby distancing herself from what is said. This shows that the disgust is re-enacted as a dramatizing strategy. Samantha gets the ¶oor again to close her scenario with the central word “Kotze/puke”. The girls burst out in pent-up high-pitched laughter again, which is a classical instance of improper talk (JeŸerson/Sacks/SchegloŸ 1987) and of arousal followed by release through laughter. Clara then changes from a general basis signaled by “immer/always” to an explicit categorization of the event as disgusting in the past using past tense (13, 14). In the context of this disaster story, the girls constantly signal their emotional alignment by positioning their utterances in direct relation to each other. In lines 16, 17, 18 and 20, two girls construct one paratactic sentence connected with the conjunction “und/and”. They hereby strengthen cohesion and signal togetherness and shared attitude toward the narration. Eder (1988) ªnds this strategy typical for girl groups and labels the phenomenon as “collaborative storytelling”. The coconstructed story shows a high grade of detailing, a sign of increasing involvement (Gülich/QuasthoŸ 1986a), which in this case also works as a strategy for
Humourous disaster and success stories among female adolescents in Germany
generating disgust as well as humour. In spite of that, we ªnd a lot of other strategies in the following transcripts which function in this special context to produce entertainment through calling up disgust. Such strategies are exaggerated emotional outbursts (2.5), parody (2.7), comparisons (3.1), repetitions (3.11, 3.12), and ªctive scenarios (4.1Ÿ).9 Exaggerated emotional outbursts as in the transcript below are a perfectly ªtting humourous strategy in this context because emotions are high and outbursts are frequent. Transcript 2 1 Ge: ((legt Kopf in Nacken)) ((Lachpart.)) ((puts her head back) ((integratedlaughter particles)) 4 a: HAHAHAHA[HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHA[HE HEHEHE ((hoch, sehr laut)) ((high pitch, very loud)) ((Sa. legt auch Kopf in Nacken und macht Mund auf)) ((Sa. also puts her head back and opens her mouth)) 5 Sa: [OA [WOW
Gesine is exaggerating the narratively-presented scenario with a fantastic scenario (1–3) intensifying the disgust. This can easily be seen in the girls’ highpitched laughter which follows (4). Gesine’s scenario of puke running down her neck is then taken up by Samantha who heightens the disgust during the girls’ laughter by drawing and enacting a picture of puke in her face. The more disgusting the description is, the more the girls laugh. On the one hand, they act like typical girls here, crying out loudly in high-pitched disgust (2.5, 4.4) thereby “doing being a girl”. On the other hand, the disgust is re-enacted, and the girls put a little drama on a virtual stage. They play with their former disgust and enjoy creating more disgusting aspects. Telling and enjoying disgusting stories is something research showed so far only for boys (Fine 1987). It is remarkable that explicit categorizations as “disgusting” are frequent, but no explicit verbalization of the past event as “funny” occurs. No girl ever utters: “This was funny.” This is part of the girls’ emotion politics. It is groupculturally accepted to frame the event as funny today, although it remains clear that the event as such was not amusing (even though Gesine ªrst laughed when the incident happened). The narration together with its humourous exploitation evokes a lot of laughter, but the victim never gets the feeling that the other girls are making fun of her. The girls master this sensitive topic and strike a di¹cult balance between humour and seriousness. For this, they break the humourous keying a couple of times, to manage the disaster and to signal solidarity and empathy with Samantha. They tell her how sorry they were for her:
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Transcript 5 1 Cl: 2 3
?:
<ehj du warst du warst geschockt; <ehy you were you were shocked; ehj du hast mir [ so: leid getan.> ehy I really felt [ so: sorry for you.> [HAHAHA
and how brave she was: Transcript 6 1 Cl:
und Samantha du warst tApfer gä. and Samantha you were <sO> brave.
In both transcripts Clara shows her empathy not only lexically but also prosodically by lengthening and accentuating vowels and using a higher register. Up to this point the vomit story was mainly a story about Samantha and the group of girls. Only at the end of this very long narration is the behaviour of the other girl strongly condemned as shown in the following transcript. Aspects of “complaint” (Günthner 2000, 1997) and accusation play a role for the ªrst time. Transcript 7 1 Sa: and than if this had happened to me,>> 3 Cl: ja gä yes 4 Sa: erstmal hätt ich aufn Boden dann wohl gemacht. Wrst of all I would have done this on the Xoor. 5 Cl: ja yes 6 Sa: [oder in irgend einen Becher, [or in a cup, 7 ,
Humourous disaster and success stories among female adolescents in Germany 129
10 Cl:
((Lachpart.)) ((integrated laughter particles)) [wie scheuHEßlich HEHEHEHE [how disgUsting HEHEHEHE
Samantha criticizes the apology of the girl, which she considered too short (1). This is going to be picked up later on in detail. Then she oŸers a version of what she would have done in the other girl’s situation. Clara supports her (3, 5) and adds another example of correct behaviour, followed by two more scenarios from Samantha (6, 7), conªrmed by Karina (8). This transcript is shortened at the end, but it continues in this pattern. Humour is mainly produced by inventing disgusting scenarios. Samantha’s behaviour is hereby evaluated as correct, and the manners of the vomiting girl as critical.12 In doing this, the girls negotiate norms about appropriate behaviour while supporting Samantha. They all laugh together as a group, they are not laughing at Samantha, even though she is the victim. This is ongoing emotion politics. The event is put on stage as horrible, but they as a group have mastered it. This strengthens the group ties. Nobody denies the terrible aspect of what has happened, but the time has come to laugh about it, to reinterpret the negative experience, and make fun of the ghosts of the past. The girls once again hand down the event as a group anecdote. They all work together on healing the wounds. Humourous disaster stories can, as this example shows, strengthen group solidarity. The girls display social sensitivity and manage a di¹cult task. But that happens when the victim is present. Another disaster story in my material called “Stairs” does not show these aspects at all. Here the victim, Samantha again, is absent, and the girls laugh about the disaster without any signs of regret or empathy. The other girls are looking at photographs as the narration — which is stimulated by a picture — takes place. Most girls know parts of the story, but no details. The researcher does not know the story at all because the event took place during the girls’ student-exchange in Great Britain from which they just returned. In the stair story, Clara describes how Samantha lost her balance and fell down the hallway stairs of their host family’s house. Clara witnessed the incident and began laughing. When the host mother came running to ask if Samantha was all right, Samantha wanted to reassure her in English, but she chose the wrong word in the foreign language and said: “Oh, it’s okay, it was only my asshole“ (instead of butt, bottom, etc.). From this point on, Clara describes how she could not stop laughing even though Samantha got very angry.
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Samantha, the victim, was not present when the narration took place, and this is why it is likely that it turns out to be the opposite of the vomit story. Whereas the emotion politics of the vomit story forestalls explicit evaluations of the past event as funny, the stair story is interlaced with them (see 8.12, 22). The narrator, Clara, does not play down her ringing laugh when Samantha fell down the stairs. She also laughs when she tells the story, and the audience joins in, as the following transcript shows. Transcript 8 1 Cl: und die Samantha is so hinter mir gelaufen; and Samantha walked behind me; 2 auf einmal hör ichs po:l[tern;> ja? suddenly I hear this ru:[mble;> yeah? 3 Ge: [HEHEHEHE 4 Cl: und der Schlappen ¶iegt mir voll [ins Gesicht; [HEHEHE and the slipper Xies right into [ my face; [HEHEHE 5 Ge: [HAHAHAHA 6 ?: [HEHEHEHE 7 Cl: Samantha rutscht aus; [HEHEHE Samantha slips; [HEHEHE ((Lachpart.)) ((integrated laughter particles)) 8 Ge: [HAHAHAHAHA 9 Cl: düb düb düb 10 Ge: HAHAHAHA [HAHAH [HAHA 11 a: [HAHAHA 12 Cl: [und ich mußt so lachen; [and I had to laugh so hard; 13 , , 14 Ge: HA:: [HA[HAHAHA 15 Cl: [ A:ch 16 a: [HAHA 17 Cl: und die <Mutter> [kommt hoch ja. and the <mother> [is coming upstairs. 18 ?: [HAHA 19 ?: HAHA [HA 20 Cl: [Samantha steht auf, [Samantha gets up, ((Lachpart.))
Humourous disaster and success stories among female adolescents in Germany
((integrated laughter particles)) 21 ?: <eh> 22 Cl: und ich mußt < so [ > and I had to [ < <so hard yeah?>> 23 ?: [HAHAHA 24 Cl: und dann [dann sagt die Samantha noch,= and than [than Samantha says,= 25 ?: [HEHE 26 Cl: = oh it’s okay, 27 it was only my asshole 28 a: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA… 29 … 30 Cl: hey des war so witzig hey that was so funny
Clara’s story shows a typical structure of narrations. Clara uses narrative present tense (Günthner, 2000). The short paratactic main clauses are sometimes connected with the conjunction “and”. This syntactically condensed narrative format creates suspense and underlines the drastic event. It is only interrupted by the girls’ laughter. In addition, the transcript shows from line 2 to 9 a repetitive sound pattern which matches the simple syntactic structure. This pattern is mainly achieved through extremely high pitches at certain points. The narration is generally characterized through high pitch and acceleration which is typical for the group’s humourous stories. A humourous strategy which is also used in the transcript is onomatopoeia (3).13 With “düb düb düb” Clara echos Samantha’s fall down the stairs with an also falling pitch. She does that a couple of times during the narration. Clara does not present herself as feeling sorry for Samantha and none of the listeners show pity or sympathy towards Samantha, either. The aspects the girls exploit humourously are: a. Samantha weakening her positive image by falling down the stairs and ªnding herself in an embarrassing situation. Such sudden falls are a classical comedy or slapstick element. b. Samantha reacting in an even more embarrassing way by using the wrong word in a foreign language. Stylistically wrong expressions are prominent laugh objects, especially in the circle of the Great Britain stories, but the anal aspect of this mistake makes it even funnier. Again, the tension built up by the narration of an embarrassing event ªnds its vent in laughter.
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Dramatic events are presented humourously in the vomiting story and the stair story. The narrators use a variety of humourous maneuvers and the audience conªrms this humourous framing by its laughter. In the stair story the absence of the victim Samantha allows explicit evaluations of the event as funny (30), whereas in the vomiting story the girls break the humourous mode a couple of times to display their empathy with the present victim. Both stories demonstrate the importance of bodily phenomena in the adolescent girls’ group culture. The violation of bodily tidiness and integrity by puke, falls and vulgar words are presented through a comic perspective. Bachtin (1990, 1987) describes this as the “grotesque body”. The interbreeding between bodies and between bodies and the world happens here through body ¶uids such as vomit. Instances of falling-down, where top and bottom are mixed up, are also part of Bachtin’s conception of the comic and grotesque body.
Success story: Parents and the telephone As stated in the beginning, humourous success stories occur very rarely in my data; they are shorter and tend to change into other story types. An example of such a story where the teller breaks the success was “The wine princess”, as summarized in the introduction. The egalitarian group culture seems to play an important role here. In the following examples I will present excerpts of a whole “story round” (Tannen 1984), which includes both, broken and unbroken success-stories. In contrast to Coate’s (1996) triumph stories these humourous stories mainly focus on the girls’ own successes and not the triumphs of others. Secondly the unbroken stories are not necessarily told with “a tone of wonder” (Coates 1996, 103). The chosen stories are about two aspects I found central to adolescent girls’ culture: rebellion against parents and being on the telephone. In the phase of adolescence, arguments with parents about limits and the private sphere often occur. Sometimes the girls resist their parents’ authority, and sometimes they come out of these arguments as submissive daughters. The following transcripts of a broken success story demonstrates both aspects. Gesine reanimates a discussion with her parents and the outcome. The unbroken phone stories will be discussed afterwards. Transcript 9 1 Ge: EHJ EHJ (-) (.hhh) because I wanted something.>> (-) (.hhh) 4 und da mh bin ich dann äh rausgegangen; and mh then I left the room; 5 und da hat mei Mutter so > and my mother > 6 WEnn du die Tür IF you ((drohend, threatening)) 7 a: HEHEHEHAHAHA 8 Ge: dann bist du dran. (-) then you will be in trouble. (-) 9 a: HEHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA 10 Ge: ich hab die Tür so I closed the door 11 a: [HAHEHEHEHEHE
Gesine describes herself “standing” there, having a vehement argument with her parents, because she did not get what she wanted. She is literally standing up for her personal wishes and needs. Then she brings up an aspect the adolescent girls frequently report about discussions with their parents. They leave the room and bang the door. Gesine’s story is diŸerent. As soon as Gesine leaves the room her mother warns her not to bang the door. Even though her mother’s threat is characterized as “schreien/shouting” Gesine reanimates it very low and frightening (6). The other girls laugh about this striking stylization of the mother’s voice. In contrast to the behaviour told in all the other stories, Gesine describes now how she closes the door softly. Up to this point this is a success story. Gesine presents herself as controlling the situation. She does what all the girls want to do: she stands up and verbalizes her thoughts. Her soft closing of the door also breaks with childlike behaviour and obviously with the audiences expectations because the break is framed by the laughter of the audience as funny (11). But now the story changes. As soon as Gesine enters her own private sphere she behaves like the “furious” teenager. 1 Cl: [und zarapp knallt se dann zu. [and bang the door slamms shut. ((Lachpart., particles of laughter)) 2 a: [HEHEHE HEHEHE
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3 Ge: ne ich bin (?glorreich?). no I (? ?). 4 ich bin gegens Bett getreten; I kicked against my bed; 5 gä 6 a: [HEHEHEHAHAHOHOHO= 7 =[HAHA 8 Ge: [ich hab [I 9 ich hab >wo[HOrfen. I was > 10 a: [HAHA… 11 … 12 Sa: 13 a: [HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHA 14 Sa: 15 a: HAHAHAHAHA [HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA 16 Ge: [ehj ich hab. [ehj I was 17 ich ich hab so den Wutanfall gekriegt. I I was having such a Wt of rage.
Gesine describes in detail how she messed up her room. Samantha is also oŸering a funny ªctive scenario working with a humourous hyperbole in lines 12 and 14. Gesine’s throwing around of the animals is here to fore exaggerated into slitting open the teddy-bear (12). During the entire sequence the girls laugh out loud. As argued in the beginning of the chapter, these are typically the kind of stories the girls laugh about. Gesine pictures herself as losing control. She produces humour at her own costs. Throwing around stuŸed animals is also symbol of the teenage world this anecdote takes place in. Following this extremely laughed at passage, Gesine returns to the ªrst sequence. 1 Ge: already when she said upstairs. 2 gesacht hat. (-) said (-)
Humourous disaster and success stories among female adolescents in Germany
3
then you will be in trouble.>> 5 a: HEHE [HE 6 ?: [O:ch 7 Ge: (1.2) shut up stupid cow.>> (1.2) 9 a: HAHAHAHAHA [HAHAHA 10 Sa: [hej ich hätt beinah, (-) [hey I nearly did, (-) 11 oder ich hab or I did 12 ich hab dabei noch gerufen (kaum hörbar, extremely low)) a: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH
Gesine citates her mother’s voice again. This time she animates it so low, it is nearly inaudible. She than adds new information in line 7: “da hätt ich am Liebsten gesagt; halts Maul du dumme Kuh/there I really wanted to say; shut up stupid cow”. She describes the punch line of this sequence as something she would have liked to do ªrst (10), but then she corrects herself and oŸers a version in which she actually calls her mother “du Arsch/you ass” (12). Gesine presents herself as verbalizing what she thinks, thereby triumphing over her parents. This is why Gesine turns out to be a heroine at the end of the story. Again, what JeŸerson, Sacks and SchegloŸ (1987) called “improper talk” played a major role for creating entertainment. The following loud laughter also transports astonishment by the audience. “Ass” is something the girls never call their mothers. Impudent remarks about their parents are a common occasion of laughter. This can also be demonstrated by the following analysis of unbroken phone-stories told just a short time later. Being on the phone is one of the girl’s central free time activities. On the one hand, this phone culture is a culture of intimacy and closeness overcoming spatial divisions (Gri¹ths 1995). On the other hand, the parents are confronted with high bills and a constantly-occupied phone. Of course, con¶icts
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result out of this constellation, which are described in the phone-stories. The girls present themselves as heroines ªghting for the constant contact needs of the group. The parents are presented as restricting this part of their group culture. This is why these triumph stories as well as the story above are not at all risky. Presenting oneself as the impudent teenager towards their parents negotiates a group-culturally-accepted image. A feeling of togetherness can therefore also be conjured up through success stories. Again, stylized voices of the girls and the parents play a central role in generating a comic perspective. Some of the stories are shortened, fragmentary, and constructed as general scenarios (Kallmeyer/Keim 1994). The story orientations depend in their economy and detailedness on contextual features like the theme of working out stereotypical parent’s behaviour humourously. In ªnding out that their parents argue in a stereotypical way, their arguments and the parental authority per se lose power and in¶uence. By also laughing about their own bold replies to their parents — as we ªnd in the following shortened example14 — the girls conªrm their rebellious behaviour. They are breaking the image of the nice daughters, and they obviously enjoy it: Transcript 10 1 Cl: oder letztens or the other day 2 bei der Telefonrechnung (-)(’H) with the phone bill (-) (’H) 3 da hat da ham se auch irgendwie rumgenervt, (-) they they really got on my nerves, (-) 4 oh Gott jetzt regt euch doch auf, oh god don’t make a fuzz out of it, ((ac)) 5 ihr telefoniert auch mit <der Omma> immer Stun[de ja (-) you’re also on the phone with < Grandma> for hou[rs (-) 6 a: [HAHAHAHA 7 HEHE 8 Cl: (’H) und dann (-) (’H) WEnn die Telefonrechnung kommt, (’H) and then (-) (’H) when the telephone bill comes, ((drohender Ton)) ((threatening voice)) 9 und die ist höher als sonst [(-) and it is higher than usual [(-) 10 ?: [HEHE
Humourous disaster and success stories among female adolescents in Germany 137
11 Cl: ich [ ZIEH dirs von deinem Konto ab I’ll [ DEDUCT it from your bank account 12 ?: [HEHEHE 13 a: HAHAHAHAHOHO [HOHOHEHE 14 Ge: [ja (-) bei mir sagen se immer, [yeah (-)they always tell me, 15 (-) 18 ?: HEHEHE 19 Ge: 20 doch meistens an, is the one who calls most, 21 was kann Chi non caca un kilo – zahlt 20 Mark Strafe!tutto?all?everything?tutto?everything?pure da [noi.< it know it have seen also I. >also at [us.< I know I’ve seen it as well. > also where [I live.
pure da noi.”/“there’s a boiler:: on ((it))- I know I’ve seen it as well. >also where I live. [. [. =cioé al rovescio.= =that is at the reverse.= =that is inside-out.=
7 ME: =mm.= 8 LI:
=tu metti il pelo verso il legno e qui là dove c’hai =you put the fur towards the wood and here there where it have ((2nd ps sg)) =you put the fur towards the wood and here there where you have
9
la carn- la pelle; quando son fresche le inchiodi su the ¶es- the skin; when ar’ fresh them nail on the ¶es- the skin; when they’re fresh you nail them on
10
un’asse e e::: così bel- bella quadrata; a board and a:::nd so beaut- beautiful squared; a board and a:::nd so wel- well squared;
A telling is here prompted by a question by Me. about hide tanning, after they have been telling a narrative about their grand-father selling red wine.8 Li.
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responds to it in line 2 (“si’ no bisogna stendere la pelle dritta su-”/“yes no one must stretch the hide straight on-”) by referring to the hides in the singular form (line 2, “la pelle”/“the hide”). She is then interjected by Ci. who elaborates the point in the teller’s turn about stretching the hides, by referring to them in the plural (line 3, “ste:se piantate coi chiodi”/“stre:tched ªxed with the nails”): in Italian “pelle” (hide) is feminine and the two past participles, “ste:se piantate” (“stre:tched ªxed”) — through which Ci. refers to the hides — are conjungated in the feminine plural form, through the word ending “-e”. Even though the teller refers to the hides in the singular and the interjector in the plural, the interjector aligns with her. The interjector’s alignment is displayed by the intervention’s design: it is topically connected to the teller’s turn; and in the intervention she repeats the verb which is extrapolated from the teller’s turn (“bisogna stendere”/“one must stretch”, line 2) and elaborated (“ste:se piantate coi chiodi”/“stre:tched ªxed with the nails;”, line 3). Nonetheless, Ci. is also repairing the teller’s utterance since her turn is conforming to the question in which Me. referred to the hides in the plural (line 1, “a conciare le pelli dei conigli come facevate?”/“to tan the rabbits hides how did you make it?”). In her next turn (line 4), the teller continues the explanation in a way through which she displays alignment with the interjector: she does so by including Ci.’s intervention in her continuation “si inchiodano”/“one nails ((them))” (line 4). While Ci. employs the circumlocution “piantate coi chiodi”/“ªxed with the nails” (line 3), Li. uses a “more direct” form: “si inchiodano”/“one nails ((them))” (line 4), nonetheless the meaning is the same. Moreover, she also aligns with Ci. insofar as she also refers to the hides in the plural form: when she continues (“la pelle- le pelli si inchiodano cioe’ al rovescio”/“the hide- the hides one nails ((them)) that is inside-out”, lines 4 and 6), she ªrst refers to the hides in the singular form (“la pelle-”, “the hide-”, line 4), then she makes a self-repair and switches to the plural (“le pelli 9”, “the hides”, line 4), through which she displays her continuing alignment with Ci.. After Li. includes the intervention in her turn, Ci. interjects her narrative again with a continuation (“su un’asse”/“on a board”, line 5), which is later included again by Li. in her turn (“le inchiodi su un’ asse”/“you nail them on a board”, lines 9–10). Through the two successive interventions (what I call cascade eŸect), Ci. displays her alignment with the teller who subsequently reciprocates by including her interventions in her narrative. Through the sustained alignment between these two speakers and the coordination of their turns, in which they display an orientation towards each other’s talk, co-telling is achieved: in other
The use of interjections in Italian conversation 209
words, Ci. is not anymore a recipient of Li.’s narrative, rather she actively participates in the delivery of the story through interventions which in¶uence the way the narrative is developed. In this way, Ci. becomes co-teller of Li.’s story. A recipient, then, may become co-teller during the telling through the use of subsequent interventions. In the previous case, whilst the ªrst intervention is immediately included in the story by the teller, the second one is incorporated after some time; nonetheless, co-telling is achieved. A similar case is the following, where Li. has been telling about a form of heating she heard of, which — as it transpires — Te. knows something about: Extract n. 6 [CMM:TR1:2:Woods:91–95] (Li. is telling about a form of heating which works oŸ a stove) 1 LI: il calore della legna, >è molto migliore di quello::is much better of that::is much better than the one::pure da [noi.< it know it have seen also I. >also at [us.< I know I’ve seen it as well. > also where [I live.
che vanno nelle stanzethat go in the roomsthat go in the roomsche vanno nelle stanze.that go
The use of interjections in Italian conversation 213
in the rooms.è molto migliore di quello::is much better of that::is much better than the one::mno mno< 7 B: ((ca ca)) (..) Ka:l to mno mno= 8 T: =Fobeρ de lw (.) all den kollei sto Ntnu 9 B: Kai TI na tou pei?
cei ts ::cla (.) // tsig:ρo? 11 T: // ci ρe Bib na sou pw loip:n pρsexe (.) o N ko pou le tane sth Pma mno mno ((ca ca)) ki pine poρtokalad tsa mno mno o Ntnu douleei msa sto Kallist kai den e nai >mno mno< kai p nei alkoloca pρmata >de mpoρe na pa na tou pei t pota< (.) MPOρe ::? 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17
T: Vivi (.) I can’t go up to him and say hi what’s up when are we going out? Isn’t it totally out of the blue?= V: Why? It’s not out of the blue You’ll get right in there T: So Vivi shall I do it like you with Nikos all alone all alone V: huhhhhh (..) all alone all alone was cool= T: =Yeah tops (.) but doesn’t ªt in Danny’s case B: And what will you tell him? Got a chewing gum (.) a cigarette? T: //No Vivi let me tell you something listen (.) Nick was sitting at Roma all alone all alone hheh ((both laugh)) an’ he was having his orangina all alone all alone but Dan works in Kallisto and he is not all alone all alone and he drinks alcohol so you ca:n’t go and talk to him like that (.) can you?
Same old story? 233
An initial acknowledgement and even reinforcement of the turn that encodes a reference to a shared story seems to be necessary regardless of the type of action the reference performs locally and the addressee’s reaction to that. As can be seen in example 5 above, F(otini) quickly acknowledges the reference “talk to him man, talk to him” by means of laughter (line 61), despite the fact that she subsequently frames it as “non-serious” talk and is quick to reintroduce the previous topical agenda (line 62).
(Re)-tellings and participant roles As amply demonstrated in studies of conversation analysis, the shape of a turn as well as the action performed in it set up contingencies for subsequent contributions and action from co-participants. In particular with regard to storytelling, Goodwin’s study (1984) has shown that a story’s structural components, rather than being purely analytical devices, are instrumental in raising alternative tasks and types of action for diŸerent participants. In similar vein, each of the above initiations can be mapped with possibilities or contingencies that it creates for the type and function of subsequent telling of a story and the participants’ roles in it (as summarized in Table 1). These are by no means posed as absolute and deterministic. Nonetheless, as will be shown below, there is a fairly systematic and dialectic relationship between a shared story’s initiation and the interlocutors’ participation framework, in particular as regards who is a knowing participant and who is not: speciªcally, not only is the initiation shaped by the interlocutors’ participation framework but it also shapes participant roles, in that it raises speciªc telling or contribution tasks in the story’s subcomponents for each of the participants. The ªrst type of initiations discussed here, namely elicitations, tend to be followed by full (re)tellings that are essentially performed or put on as displays for the sake of the participants who do not know of the story’s events. Interestingly, such stories cluster together in the form of storytelling rounds, as in example 1 that forms one of 8 stories from the particular family’s past which were on the speciªc occasion put on display for the sake of the interlocutors who were not in the know.3 Participants for whom a story is shared typically contribute to its re-telling: the types and degrees of such contributions can be assumed to be data-speciªc and culturally variable (cf. Blum-Kulka 1997). In the case of the data at hand, there is a main teller that is upheld throughout. In this respect, co-participant contributions do not concern telling rights but they
234 Alexandra Georgakopoulou
add to the tale: they can a) add to the orientation parts of a narrative, mainly in the form of supplying details that are perceived as important for the plot (lines 5, 13 in example 7 below),4 b) evaluate the main events or characters talked about (lines 45–48), and c) enhance the story’s high point (climax, lines 24– 32). In this way, audience contributions to a shared story’s retelling prove to be congruent with a cultural style of full-¶edged performances in Greek storytelling (for a discussion, see Georgakopoulou 1997, p. 43–49, 1998). This style is based on a main teller, responsible for the rhythmic deployment of narrative action, while being aided by secondary tellers in the foregrounding of salient events. (7) [Data-set 1] 1 nna (Mhtρa): […] All eke no pou mou e ce knei entpwsh 2 tan h diafoρ twn duo paidin. 3 E ca na dwmtio tou paicnidio (..) mokta stρwmno lo (.) paidtopo 4 stρma //ktw kai 5 Giρgo: //kai tρcame kai phdgame kai pftame pnw sto stρma= 6 nna: =na stρma pnw sto ptwma t pot ’llo 7 gia na kqontai na xekouρzontai 8 mia biblioqkh gemth skuli kai paicn dia= 9 Giρgo: =A qa pw ti e ca knei me // th biblioqkh 10 nna: // O N ko ap en tou b dwse to mpoukli 11 e ca mia kolnia h opo a e ce kρ kou meglou (.) me mikρ mikρ 12 pol // mikρ epnw 13 N ko: // Plastik ((further down)) 24 Giρgo: 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 ((further down))
ci de bgke o N ko eme bgkame pρto eg me to Qodwρ skaρfalnoume eg (.) skaρfalnw pρto pftw ktw ρcetai o Qodwρ ap p sw o N ko msa fnaze eke pρa bglte me mna den ton bglame autn
Same old story? 235
45 46 47 48
nna: Patρa: N ko: Mhtρa:
kleismno den kaqtan thn epanstash= =ca ca (.) epanast:th!= =ca ca cwρ ait a.
1 Anna (Mother): […] but what had impressed me 2 was the diŸerence between the two of them ((as babies)). 3 I had a room full of toys (.) it had a carpet (.) like a playground 4 a mattress down //and 5 George: //And we were running and jumping and falling on the mattress= 6 Anna: =a mattress on the ¶oor nothing else 7 so that they’d have something to sit on and relax 8 bookshelves full of teddies and toys= 9 George: =Ah:: right I’ll tell about the bookshelves (.) what //I did= 10 Anna: Nikos aged one screwed the bottle 11 I had a perfume that had a big screwy basis with lots of little (.) 12 and //a narrow neck 13 Nick: ((It was)) // plastic
24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 45 46 47 48
((further down, George assumes temporarily becomes the main teller, to elaborate on climactic events)) George: No Nikos didn’t get out we did ªrst Theo and I we climb up (..) I climb ªrst I fall onto the other side and then Theo came and Nikos started crying in there get me out of here and we didn’t get him out […] ((further down)) Anna: He couldn’t stand being put inside Father: ((So he started)) a rebellion= Nick: hhheh huh (..) A rebel!= Anna: =huh without a cause.
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Prefaces, as already mentioned, are mostly aimed at establishing mutual reference as opposed to securing strong ¶oor-holding rights. In other words, unlike elicitations, they do not p?ect a multiple turn constructional unit. As such, they are typically followed by a mini-telling of the story, which comprises its narrative skeleton, that is, a quick reference or reminder to its events and their resolution (lines 4–7, example 3). What is normally spent some time on is the point or evaluation of those events. In this context, however, evaluation or point does not refer so much to aesthetic issues of tellability but to issues of current relevance: i.e. what the point of the tale is in the moment of telling. As can be seen in example 3 above, the mini-tellings that follow prefaces commonly appear in the context of an argument and exemplify or illustrate a point, or, similarly, provide further evidence to something already discussed. In this way, they act as analogies, in other words, they are put forth as a comparison base, guideline, or commentary on what is discussed. Example 3 is part of an argument between Tonia and Vivi that pertains to the course of action which their friend Irene should follow regarding her unrequited love. As can be seen from the example, Vivi argues that it is di¹cult for Irene to move on and let go of her feelings, while Tonia ªrmly believes that she has not tried hard to do so. As proof for her view, she brings up two shared stories of personal experience (initiated in lines 1 and 35 respectively), which she puts forth as analogies: the message is “this is how I acted in a comparable case, so this is how Irene should act too”. A typical uptake of shared stories as argumentative devices is that what is contested is not the authenticity or persuasive power of the reported events themselves but the point or interpretation of them; in particular, it is the validity of the analogy between the story’s events and the issues disputed that tends to be cast doubt on and debated over. This is illustrated in line 13 of example 3 where Vivi rebutts Tonia’s mini-telling of shared events by characterizing them as “a diŸerent situation” to that of Irene. In similar vein, references to shared stories commonly occur in the context of argumentation, but also more broadly in any activity that involves joint formulation and negotiation, be it decisions-making or planning (as in the case of example 5). In these contexts, they are either used as analogies (example 6) or as an assessment of a situation or character (example 5). In this way, they either become part of or themselves form utterances of self- or other-identity, roles, and relations claims. As in the case of mini-tellings of shared stories, they can be contested for the current relevance of their point in the local context (example 6, lines 11–17).
Same old story? 237
In the light of the above, the three types of introduction of a shared story in its surrounding talk can be mapped out in a continuum of inter- to intra-group interactions (see Table 1 below). Speciªcally, on one end of the continuum (lefthand side of the continuum), elicitations, followed by sustained (re)tellings tend to occur in inter-group situations, which present a distinction between participants who are in the know and those who are not. On the other end, intragroup situations, where all participants are familiar with the events related, call for quick and elliptical references to shared stories. Indeed, cases of full retellings of shared stories in intragroup situations are highly unusual in the data at hand. Tellingly, bids for storytelling in such contexts frequently make sure that the upcoming is not a shared story, as can be seen in the example below; if it turns out to be, then the teller does not proceed with the telling of the story: (8) [Data-set 3] 1 Maρ a: Thn istoρ a me to Giρgo kai thn Tas a, duo adρfia, thn xρete? 2 Eg tou xeρa auto // tan mouna scole o 3 Antnh: // Mou thn cei pei o //Cρsto emna 4 L tsa: // Eg den thn xρw 5 Maρ a: Pou lte (..) auto tane adρfia 1 2 3 4 5
Maria: D’you know the story of George and Tasia, brother and sister? I knew them // when I was at school. Andonis: Chris // has told me= Litsa: //=I don’t know it Maria: So (..) there were those two siblings […]
Another continuum that the three types of initiation can be plotted in pertains to their focus on the narrated versus the narrative event (see Table 1 below). More speciªcally, on one end of the continuum, elicitations go hand in hand with a focus on the (re)telling of the tale and its details, that is, on the narrated event or the taleworld. Moving away from that and to the endpoint of references, the focus shifts to the narrative event, that is, to the ways in which shared stories are more or less brie¶y drawn upon to indexically link past and present worlds and to suit local purposes, such as providing guides on current and future action or evidence for a point of view.
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Table 1. Initiations and subsequent tellings of shared stories Elicitation Full-blown telling Display Inter-group interactions Focus on narrated event
Preface Mini-telling Analogy
Reference Introduction/insertion Assessment Intra-group interactions Focus on narrative event
Conclusions This chapter has attempted to show how lumping shared stories together with the prototypical personal story of past events oversees important diŸerences in the ways in which the former are sequenced and in the ¶oor-bidding and ¶oorholding arrangements they implicate. Based on the analysis of shared stories in Greek that occurred in a variety of conversations between intimates, the discussion brought to the fore three distinct ways of initiating shared stories in their surrounding talk. These were subsequently argued to set up contingencies for diŸerent types of telling and roles and action by diŸerent participants. The ªrst type of initiation discussed was that of elicitation, which essentially forms a reversal of the prototypical pattern of storytelling initiation (i.e. an oŸer to tell a story). In elicitations, the teller is other-selected and the preferred second-part turn is to accept the invitation. Cases of self-selection for telling a shared story, labelled here as prefaces, proved to pose an added sequential task for the teller: in addition to securing ¶oor-holding rights, tellers had to establish mutual reference with the knowing participants. Both elicitations and prefaces are commonly uttered by means of oŸering an abstract of the story and/or a reference to a previous telling. A third identiªed type of initiation takes the form of a brief (mostly one-line) reference to the story, commonly made up of the story’s punchline. In terms of subsequent tellings of a shared story, the three types of initiation presented here were shown to implicate three points of a continuum from a full retelling to a mini-telling as a mid-point and to a quick allusion at the other end of the continuum. Full retellings were routinely found to be put on as displays for unknowing participants while mini-tellings and references were more enmeshed in local interactional business and drawn upon in order to set up analogies or to provide ready-made assessments for the issues and characters talked about.
Same old story? 239
The above ªndings can be proposed as a step towards tapping into aspects of shared stories that have far from been fully explored, namely the various intermittent forms that drawing on a shared story can take in local contexts to suit local purposes. Analytical attention to the mid-point and right-end of the continuum, as can be seen in Table 1 above, would precipitate the need for looking into the similarities between shared stories and other sources of shared assumptions, possibly in the light of processes of stylization and appropriation. As discussed here, elliptical references to shared stories act in comparable ways as those to other shared resources: they are based on and call upon relational history. In addition, both are actively drawn upon in local contexts for the accomplishment of various actions. Looking into the sequencing of shared stories was proposed here as a point of entry into the ways in which they are strategically employed for local purposes and are methodically linked with current concerns. This is arguably another aspect of shared stories which presents ample scope for further research. Speciªcally, the tendency is to investigate the local occasioning of shared stories through the lens of the function of consolidating group cohesion by means of re-creating and re-enjoying the co-experienced. Nonetheless, as the analysis in this chapter suggested, group bonding and solidarity a¹rmation are by no means an all-encompassing function in the case of shared stories. In contrast, as shown, shared stories are frequently appealed to as devices for contestation, argumentation, and negotiation. Further evidence against the pigeon-holing of shared stories as opportunities for rea¹rming closeness and intimacy comes from the various entitlement rights that seem to be at play in their telling. This study has only brought up issues of entitlement with respect to the elicitation of stories, but these are worth further exploring with regard both to other types of initiation and to participant contributions in the telling of shared stories. Such an inquiry would shed light on how the diŸerent roles or types of action assumed by participants in the initiation, subsequent telling, and response to shared stories, invoke and make visible larger social roles, relations, and identities holding beyond the immediate storytelling situation. Overall, this study has been oŸered as a step towards securing a central place in narrative problematics for shared stories as well as other types of stories that can easily fall into the margins of analytical pursuit, due to their departure from the “prototypical” features of newsworthiness and tellability that are associated with non-shared personal experience stories.
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Notes 1. The transcription symbols used are adapted from the standardized system developed within conversation analysis and are as follows: //overlapping utterances; =continuous utterances; :extension or prolongation of a sound; :: longer extension; ? rising intonation; ! animated tone; (( )) editorial comments; , end of intonation unit, continuing intonation; . stopping fall in intonation; .. a pause of less than 0.5 seconds; …a pause greater than 0.5 seconds; […] omitted continuation of the text; > < talk uttered more quickly than the surrounding utterance; underlining is used for emphatically produced talk. 2. For a detailed analysis of the tale of tomorrow, in the context of which the reference “talk to him man, talk to him” occurs, as well as a discussion of the interaction between stories of shared events and stories of projected events, see Georgakopoulou 2002. 3. As can be seen in example 7 (line 7) below, bids from tellers for a follow-up story during storytelling rounds of shared stories can even occur in the middle of the ongoing story. 4. This is in tune with Norrick’s study of shared stories (1997), where emphasis on details was found to be a way of asserting one’s co-ownership of a story and the right to contribute to the formulation of its point.
References Blum-Kulka, S. (1997). Dinner talk: cultural patterns of sociability and socialization in family discourse. Hillsdale, NJ.: Lawrence Erlbaum. Chafe, W. (1977). Creativity in verbalization and its implications for the nature of stored knowledge. In R.O. Freedle (Ed.), Discourse production and comprehension. (Advances in Discourse Processes I). (pp.41–55). Norwood, NJ.: Ablex. Chafe, W. (1998). Things we can learn from repeated tellings of the same experience. Narrative Inquiry, 8, 269–285. Ferrara, K. Variation in narration: retellings in therapeutic discourse. In B. Brown, L. Walters, & J. Baugh (Eds.). Linguistic change and contact. Proceedings of the 16th Annual Conference on New Ways of Analysing Variaiton in Language. (pp. 100–112). Austin Texas: University of Texas Press. Ferrara, K. (1994). Therapeutic ways with words. New York: Oxford University Press. Georgakopoulou, A. (1997). Narrative performances: a study of Modern Greek storytelling. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Georgakopoulou, A. (1998). Conversational stories as performances: the case of Greek. Narrative Inquiry, 8, 319–350. Georgakopoulou, A. (2001). Arguing about the future: on indirect disagreements in conversations. Journal of Pragmatics, 33, 1881–1900. Georgakopoulou, A. (2002a). Greek children and familiar narratives in family contexts: en route to cultural performances. In S. Blum-Kulka, & C. Snow (Eds.), Talking to adults. 33–54. Hillsdale, NJ.: Lawrence Erlbaum.
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Georgakopoulou, A. (2002b). Narrative and identity management: discourse and social identities in a tale of tomorrow. Research on language and social interaction, 35: 427– 451. Goodwin, C. (1984). Notes on story structure and the organization of participation. In J. M. Atkinson, & J. Heritage, (Eds.), Structures of social action. (pp. 225–246). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hymes, D. (1985). Language, memory and selective performance: Cultee’s “Salmon Myth” as twice told to boas. Journal of American Folklore, 98, 391–434. Jefferson, G. (1978). Sequential aspects of storytelling in conversation. In J. Schenkein (Ed.), Studies in the organization of conversational interaction. (pp. 219–248). New York: Academic Press. Labov, W. (1972). Language in the Inner City. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Norrick, N. R. (1997). Twice-told tales: collaborative narration of familiar stories. Language in Society, 26, 199–220. Norrick, N. R. (1998a). Retelling stories in spontaneous conversation. Discourse Processes, 25, 75–97. Norrick, N. R. (1998b). Retelling again. Commentary on W. Chafe’s “Things we can learn from repeated tellings of the same experience”. Narrative Inquiry, 8, 269–285, 373–378. Ochs, E., & Capps, L. (2001). Living narrative. Creating lives in everyday storytelling. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Sacks, H. (1992). Lectures on conversation (ed. by G. Jefferson). Oxford: Blackwell. Sebba, M. (1993). London Jamaican. London: Longman. Shuman, A. (1986). Storytelling rights. The uses of oral and written texts by urban adolescents. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Chapter 10
Institutional memories The narrative retelling of a professional life Jenny Cook-Gumperz
This chapter looks at interview narratives as an exercise in institutional memory tracing in which a retired university professor recalls the setting up, running and closing of a popular teaching program. Analysis focuses on the issue of temporality, how the narrative telling leaves unspeciªed the long time frame of the events. As an account of past events in a speciªc bureaucratic setting, the tale depends on complex institutional details that have more signiªcance for the teller who must select those relevant to the action, and yet the interviewer to keep up the narrative ¶ow is also constrained to disguise any lack of knowledge of these details. Over the course of the telling the interaction between narrator and interviewer shifts, so the outcome in a real sense is interactively constructed.
When institutions make classiªcations for us, we seem to loose some of the independence that we might otherwise have had…Our social interaction consists very much in telling one another what right thinking is and passing blame on wrong thinking. This is indeed how we build institutions, squeezing each other’s ideas into a common shape so that we can prove rightness by sheer numbers of independent assent (Douglas, M. 1986. How Institutions think. p. 91).
Introduction When professionals share memories of professional life they once more enter into the institutional thought frame. Anthropologist Mary Douglas in her study quoted above of “How Institutions Think” explored the ways in which such thought framing institutional categories can be created, and can control members lives and memories. This chapter will explore how memories of an
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institutional professional life can be selectively accessed through personal recall. To construct a trail of signiªcant memories, individuals frequently retrieve speciªc events through some accompanying ideological or emotional expressions that serve as keys for their recall. However the enactment of the past events as narrative transforms the telling of memories into what can be regarded as a moral activity, one where the teller in the course of telling a story selectively recontextualizes past events into a framework that gives a present signiªcance to these events (for the recontextualization and interpretation of past events cp. Chapter 6). By relating events within a narrative to an audience who may see these events without the same background knowledge, the teller must make explicit some part of the ideological or emotional meaning that was an essential part of the memory. It is the establishment of this three-way relationship of teller and audience to recollected material that is a key to all acts of social remembering. Institutional memories need to provide the audience with a way of entering into the institutional framework, that is memories need to be located in social space. To do this a narrative telling places institutionally framed activities and persons within speciªc contexts and events, so giving non-members access to institutional ways of thinking. This makes telling of institutional memories diŸerent from other kinds of narrative activity. In this chapter a senior professor, who left active teaching a just over a decade ago, recalls the academic program he had had a signiªcant role in creating, and one that was terminated a few years after his retirement. This program had a large following of past students, and had been the subject of a university review that reduced the number of current students. The professor discusses the program, its history and possible reasons for its demise with an interviewer, herself a student who would have liked to enter the program. During the telling both reveal aspects of their own personal life and these remarks play a part in shaping their interactive exchange, as during the interview, they uncover reasons for a shared viewpoint. As an exercise in institutional memory tracing, the interview exchanges while they resemble many conversational narratives, have some distinctive features. SchiŸrin in describing how narratives can provide the grounds for demonstrating self identity that places a person in a wider context says “the ability of narrators to verbalize and situate experience as a text provides a resource for the display of self and identity” (p.168, 1996). In telling these institutional narratives, within an interview setting, the person interviewed is constrained by having to judge how much background information needs to be presented. Personal recall of events that took place over a lengthy time period, and in speciªc bureaucratic settings
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depend for their interpretation on the narrator providing complex institutional details. Such details often have more signiªcance for the teller than for the listener, and serve as prompts for further recall. The listeners on the other hand are also under some interactional constraint to signal that they can understand some of these speciªc details, and so keep up the ¶ow of the story. As Tannen describes in her work on conversational narratives, essential to a successful conversation is the creating of a bond of emotional involvement between the audience (or participants) and the story teller (1989). Without some empathy of the audience with the teller and the tale, the exchange falters (cp. Chapter 4 and 8 on audience participation). Narrators have a range of strategies for dealing with the need to create involvement, this chapter will show that the tellers of a tale of academic memories have particular strategies for these tales.
The practice of social remembering Recent studies of social, that is collective remembering have focused on the participants’ need to establish a shared frame of reference in terms of which signiªcant details are retrieved. Two solutions have been proposed, one, to locate the story in time, and secondly to provide the hearer with a way of locating the dramatis personae in social space. As Linde suggests landmark events, known to all, serve as a way to locate speciªc memories (Linde 1993). Linde, in her studies of life stories argues that the most important task of narrative is to provide a sense of coherence in a narrative by establishing not just common reference, but a set of themes that cohere around a common ideology. Such themes serve to locate the tale in social space. Middleton and Edwards also point out that in collective remembering tellers need to describe their own position in relation to characters being recalled, thus creating a mutually accessible social space for the narrative (1990). Cicourel’s work on medical discourse has repeatedly shown that the discourse context in which remembered or recalled events are recovered is vital, and therefore, requires both teller and hearer to spend interactional time constructing a shared context. He shows that medical diagnosis rarely takes place in such a shared discourse context because of participants as clients lack a common ground with the experts, or doctors, and the institutional setting most often constrains development of such a frame (1999). The requirement to construct a shared context interactively applies particularly to bureaucratic life where committees, as Brenneis
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shows in his work on a national research funding agency, are central to the process of decision-making and where committee members become socialized into a shared history of previous decision-making (Brennis 1994). A signiªcant part of the problem is that selected remembrances are highlighted against what is deliberately not mentioned, or as Shotter calls it institutional amnesia (Shotter 1990). What is told stands out against backdrop of what is forgotten. In oral memory research the uncovering of what many informants misremember or speciªcally forget, provides some of the best clues to interpretation. That is there can be a speciªc goal for recall that separates such discourse occasions both from ordinary talk and from the process of reminiscing seen as the casual recall of past activities (Bornat 1994). As narrators situate themselves in relation to the events they describe, they also provide as part of their narrative telling, indirect commentary on others’ as well as their own actions. Bergman and Luckmann showed that narratives are an essentially multi-purpose genre that addresses a range of social tasks, dealing in a reconstructive way with the prospective-retrospective nature of human experience (1995). By using the term “reconstructive genre” Luckmann provides a theoretical framing to the idea of telling stories about speciªc remembered and reconstructed past events. Narratives not only recount past events or place these in a historical frame they also presage future actions, often by providing real time comments upon the narrated actions from a present day standpoint. Any successful narrative contains as organized discourse both a temporally sequenced story and a narrative commentary that evaluates the course of the tale, and thus the tale gains a moral signiªcance.
Narratives retellings in conversations and in interviews People tell stories about themselves in many diŸerent contexts and for many diŸerent purposes, as Barbara Johnson suggests the “urge to make our lives coherent by telling about them, must be universal; personal narrative is how we make sense of ourselves as individuals and as members of groups” (p.640: 2001). Quasthof in discussing the interactive nature of narrative describes some of the necessary prerequisites for a narrative. She comments: “narrative discourse units have to be prepared by a display of thematic relevance with respect to the narrative’s content (or the display of formal relevance with respect to narrating as an activity). In other words the turn by turn talk has to provide a contextual condition for the sequential placement of a narrative; it has to reach (or be driven) to a point where topicalizing a narrative is at least possible in
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next turn position”. (p.123: 1997) That is both the contextual and structural availability of interactions that make narratives possible, open-end discussions or interviews are potential sites for narrative to happen. Once we accept that narratives in their telling are inherently interactive then interviews provide possible sites for narratives. Interview narratives diŸer from those usually understood as personal narratives, where a spontaneous life story is told, and organized so as to receive sympathetic audience response (Ochs and Capps 1996). By contrast interview narratives are not freely produced, they occur in the context of a situation where what the interviewee says is orchestrated to a large extent by the interviewer’s questions. Interview questioning requires that in order to be successful an interviewee must be able use to their explanations to project understanding of institutional requirements. Moreover, although we use the term projection, the more usual understanding of narratives as projections of the self in which the narrator embarks on a path to self-presentation as a process of self discovery does not apply. Rather, in the institutionally constrained interview context, the mode of presentation the narrator chooses must present an ‘institutional self’ that will re¶ect some knowledge of what it takes to be seen as appropriate to this role. However as SchiŸrin comments nowhere is this urge more likely to result in a story than in the interview situations (1997). SchiŸrin in reviewing her own interviews where respondents were asked a series of questions about their social activities in community groups, found that responses to open ended questions about relationships with friends and family were more likely to result in a narratives being told. The form of the question, whether posed as a ‘wh’ question, an as open-ended statement comment, or as a ‘yes-no’ question, determined to some extent whether narratives would happen. In this chapter, I argue that the interview questions in this data are likely to provide for narrative responses because the interactants are both familiar with the social context graduate education at the university. The interviewer, a student, is already part in a minor key, of the organization being described, and the interviewee has an recognized status as a professor and so is more likely to see himself as able to control and pace the interaction.
Narrative memories as professional discourse This chapter focuses on how the telling of a narrative of academic life reproduces some of the key features of such a life, as part of the necessary context for
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recall of memories. Institutions confer identity on members who in turn shape their own sense of social positioning in terms of their perceived position within the institution, a positioning that is reinforced by the everyday discourse occasions. Narrative details recalled by the professor situates him in relation to the activities and persons in his academic world: the academic teaching programs, his own programs of research and the social organization of the larger university. Reference to the classiªcations or categorizations on which institutions are based confers coherence on any explanation about the workings of the institution, as Mary Douglas in her work on institutional thinking suggests. For example, the closing of an academic program can be seen as calling into doubt the premises on which that program was based, because naming a particular course of study as an academic program, classiªes and legitimates the knowledge that such a course provides. On the other hand disestablishing a program also raises doubts about the content, faculty and teaching methods, and so de-legitimates the participants’ expertise. The bureaucratic action of closing a program will have been part of a written report that each member read and may have been asked to comment on. Retelling these events present the teller with a memory task to retrieve, or forget, what was common discussion at several years ago when the program was ended. These diŸerent aspects constitute a map of the institutionally recognized things that a program must include or address, and a record of the perceived positioning of the participants in relation to these factors. Aspects of the program that are recalled and commented upon, by mere mention, even without explicit evaluation, can be seen as justifying actions or apportioning blame, and thus the tale of the program’s ending becomes a moral commentary. Theories of narrative reconstruction from Bakhtin to Luckmann suggests that such moral conclusions are an intrinsic part of the nature of narrative reconstructive recall (Luckman 1998). In view of this, the purpose of analysis is to ªnd some key markers of the stance and positioning of the teller, that makes the tale illustrative of the essential knowledge needed to live such an institutional life, and how activating narrative memories makes this academic life available to an audience.
The telling of the tale The interview lasts about 40 minutes and covers a number of topics, but a key aspect of the proceedings centers on ‘how the program ended’. Although the text has the surface structure of an interview, in a much as Professor Roger
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talks in response to the interviewer’s questions, taken as a whole his contributions show a coherence that makes the responses into a life story narrative. In a way this interview has some similarity to Linde’s life stories, in that these cohere around a common ideology, that demonstrate what Linde calls a “coherence system” (1993). The collaboration between narrator/interviewee and the interviewer establishes a shared stance toward understanding the daily practices of bureaucratically manages university, and in the course of this interview this shared stance brings about increasing involvement in the tale being told. By establishing such a common framework both reveal much more than the actual events they are narrating. The analysis concentrates on four segments extracted from the interview each with its own sub-theme. The narrative fragments appear as organized stretches of discourse both by reason of their structure and content, that is as sequential stories. Each segment begins with a raised voice that answers the questioner, and continues until a lowered voice often trailing oŸ that marks the end of a fragment. Through the telling the interviewer gradually takes on a larger importance in keeping the tale going and in responding and highlighting the emotional aspects of the tale. Though the narrative account initially appears as a simple recitation of causes, without the transforming canonical narrative structure of beginning sequence, complicating action and ending coda/evaluation, each section contributes to the overall tale. At the end a story has been told. There are three aspects to the narrative telling that took place in the interview. 1. Interviewer’s role in narrative telling. One, the narratives are occasioned by the interviewer’s interaction with the teller. As SchiŸrin points out the way an interview question is structured, eŸects the likelihood that a narrative account will follow. The story is told in response to a question although it looks monologic, it is occasioned by growing rapport between the interviewer and the interviewee. Even though the interviewer does not know any of the details of the story to be told nor where it will lead, she is formally in charge of the interview from the ªrst question-repsonse and this provides the occasion for the story. Since the stories occur as part of an interview, it is the interviewer’s question on how the program ended that counts as the real beginning, in as much as it provides the introduction/orientation for the following story in terms of the Labovian paradigm (Bamberg 1997). Two, the telling of institutional memories where one person must ªll in a great deal of background detail and terminology in order to create a common
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framework in which a narrative can take place diŸers from the telling of past events within a common framework. Linde (1999) in describing story retellings with several diŸerent people in an institutional setting pointed out that diŸerences in stance were constructed through verb forms the story teller used depending on the persons being told the tale, and their position in the institutional hierarchy. In this data there are assumptions about the organizational structure of the program and university establishment that while never explicitly described become an essential part of the narrative telling, without which the narrative would not be eŸective. Three, the sequencing and chronology or the narrative is two-fold. There is the present time scale of the on-going interview, in which there is a growing collaborative relationship with the interviewer, this leads to the later segments becoming more personal narratives, and an increasing involvement of teller, tale and interviewer. There is the chronology of the narrative being told. The teller remains somewhat vague about the time scale, occasionally providing actual calendar dates, “that was in 1991 when the university”… but mostly the chronology of the story events remains unspeciªed. However by implication the events beginning with the interviewer’s question about the closing of the program, begins with a speciªed point in time. As the interview continues the impression is given that the chronology of the tale moves backwards in time, the professor works his way through his tale toward the original founding of the program, and it becomes clear retrospectively, that despite his disavowals, he thinks of the program that he initially describes as “our program” as his own personal creation.
Analysis of the narrative interview [the transcription uses the following conventions: CAPTIAL letters indicate stressed words; …(periods) indicate pauses; brackets indicate overlaps. Segment One: Struggle over FTE INT: if you wouldn’t mind umm explaining the problem which came caused the end of the program in…in your {way of think…ing: PR: {oh yes …… that’s that’s complicated because there are many.. DI MENSIONS to this and at many diŸerent LEVELS and many PERSPECTIVES there’s the whole INSTITUTIONAL issue which is TYPICAL in that people are trying to get umm. FTEs for their own programs, and
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trying to get them,. wherever they can GET them and that when our people RESIGNED or even BEFORE,. we ah we retired ah resigned or retired or… resigned or retired (lowered voice) Int: ahh hahh [laughs] PR: but uh that was that was part of the PROBLEM, and part of that problem was…that we were never ALLOWED, to consider our own GRADUATAES as potential faculty which I think was grossly unfair because although we were told that the university wasn’t wouldn’t ALLOW it that fact is other programs went ahead and did it XXX hired their own people for example so where do you GO for somebody to teach in the program there is no place to go because we were the only PROGRAM, so that was that was part of the problem INT: Do you think that was uhm that was the University just holding on to their blanket no-hire rule or it was.. PR: NO INT: pointed at the program PR: No no this it was within the DEPARTMENT itself which was bullshit, and ah, but that’s what happened… [sotto voce, as voice trails oŸ.]
Professor Roger in his opening remarks begins with what appears to be a list of several problems that account for what happened, taking what can be seen as a professorial stance, by commenting that the story to be told “is a complex matter”. But almost immediately afterwards, he begins to focus on a single cause ‘need of FTE by others’ as the main point of the story. This involves a number of institutional speciªcs that require insider’s knowledge of the university’s bureaucratic arrangements and categories to be fully understood. The choice of a single cause leads to other consequences that follow, thus giving the narrative its appearance of a coherent tale that moves from beginning to an over-all conclusion ( in segments three and four). The narrator justiªes singling out one cause from as he puts it the “complexity of the dimensions and perspectives” by citing what amounts to its institutional typicality. Analysis of the whole interview narrative shows that this comment can be seen retrospectively as a central motif of the story. For the tale is told at a level of generality that rarely mentions speciªc people by name or examines events in relation to speciªc dates. What is more the key part of narrative construction, the matter of chronological time is left vague, with few speciªc benchmarks that could help a non-member or contemporary to locate his tale in time. Professor Roger presents the tale as a personally motivated struggle of “our program” against the institutional others, especially in narrative three. It
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is for this reason that analysis of the narrative is best done using a Proppian framework in which forces beyond the “hero’s” control need to vanquished and overcome (Propp 1968; Toolan 1991). The principles are rarely identiªed by proper name, mostly by pronouns or generic nouns. This gives the tale an informal feel as if it were a casual conversation about people known to both participants. Yet the characters in this tale are bureaucratic entities, part of the organizational structure of a university, not individuals. Pronominalization, therefore serves as a distancing strategy diminishing the importance of the university as a bureaucratic body by treating it as a set of individuals. By his use of pronouns the narrator conveys a sense of struggle, of “us = the program” versus “them = other programs” in the department, and/or the university as a whole. In the ªrst segment this appears as “[other] people versus our people”. In Proppian terms he sets up a narrative with a victim, an innocent actor, who is ultimately to become the hero, and the wicked evil protagonist with whom the hero must struggle. In this initial narrative segment, the interviewer appears to say little. And her opening question is overlapped, nevertheless the question does set up the narrative rationale that the answer counts as an explanation of “the problems that caused the ending of the program”. In the third exchange the interviewer’s knowing laugh suggests an emotional sharing that can also be taken to stand for a shared institutional perspective. Retrospectively we can see that the laugh becomes an interactional resource that enables the interviewee to provide more personal, emotional comment. The concluding, highly emotive: “that was bullshit, but that’s what happened” suggests that the entire narrative segment beginning with the question about the end of the program has now turned into a confessional, and as a statement of guilt, in other words its recasts the entire segment as a narrative about “who was to blame for ending the program”. Through its telling, the account becomes a ‘moral tale’ in the sense intended by Guenthner (1995 and this vol.) when she describes narratives told by means of “exemplary stories” that indirectly allude to a moral. In the present case Professor Roger uses terms and examples of ‘institutional typicality” to set up the motivating force behind the tale, as in the beginning phrase “FTE’s for their own programs”. His use of the institutional classiªcations of what academic programs should do, and what academics also must do to assess and justify the bureaucratic results, recalls Mary Douglas’s comments on institutional categories as “classiªcations which present the grounds for right thinking and passing blame on wrong thinking”. The remark “we could never use our own graduates as potential
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faculty the university wasn’t wouldn’t allow it” , where he corrects the verb “was not” which contains the implication of negated possibility, by the modal “would not”, reveals the fact that the speaker accepts the bureaucratic institutional ruling of the university. While blaming the department for apparently applying the rule inconsistently, and unfairly Rogers never criticizes those classiªcations per se. Although the story appears to list the reasons for the events described in the initial orienting question, the list is never actually given. The narrator immediately introduces a number of terms that described particular knowledge of the university’s organization and their structural activities such as ‘getting “FTE’s for their own programs’. By using members’ terms the narrator treats the interviewer as an insider. Her relationship to this story, its teller and its action is reinforced by her laugh at the teller’s dramatic repetition of “resigned or retired” said several times in a slowing tempo. The delivery of this repeated phrase alludes to a speciªc period when the university was “downsized” at a time of a major budgetary crisis. The interviewer builds the impression of being an insider by the way she times her laugh, as if to say ‘yes I know the reason’, later followed by her statement “the university’s blanket no-hire rule” giving an apparent bureaucratic term as a prompt to further comment by the narrator. Coherence is achieved by the way the story is performed with a softly voiced ending “ah that’s what happened”. This leads the listener to realize that a reason has been given for the ending that could perhaps be summarized as “no successors existed to replace the retiring faculty”. Despite the apparent lack of explicitness the performance in collaboration with the interviewer makes the tale appear as an acceptable narrative. The appearance of coherence is further enhanced by the rhythmic stress pattern, discussed above as a professorial tone, that conveys the impression of the professor giving a reasoned account of a series of events. In segment two, Professor Roger picks up his explanation arguing that the lack of continuity was due to the program’s own graduates not becoming in their turn junior professors. By distinguishing between “our students [in the program] and the students” [in the department or university] and by casting himself as a ªctionalized “I” in the action, a “¶awed” hero, he adds to the dramatic personae. He goes on by singling out program continuity as a cause of the demise to present the explanation as if the narrative represented a continuous chronologically sequenced whole. On closer examination it turns out that the narrative actually lacks this chronological sequencing. One event does not follow on from another in sequence or temporal time, but the telling of the tale
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creates the appearance as if this were the case. Again the similarity in the prosodic patterning at the beginning of this segment provides a continuity with the segment one. Segment Two: The Academic Game PR: That is part of that problem.. the SECOND part of that problem is that we although we had people who could come in and become faculty in the program we never ah DIRECTLY TRAINED people to do that… and that… And that was one of the BASIC THINGS, that was a problem.. a problem with this program continuing ANYHOW, is that we didn’t,. anticipate or care enough about the quote GAME .. the ACADEMIC game…uh..[light tone, faster tempo] I can only speak for MYSELF,. but I was SO ENGAGED with that program because it was a continually emerging and changing ALONG with ..what was happening in various.. contexts in the ªeld and how it was being used how it was used and the problems and so FORTH …it was so much FUN ..so EXCITING that ..ah. that I never … I .[slower tempo]….committed a GREAT SIN of not encouraging our students and graduates [quicken pace] or MYSELF to publish…uhmmmm there was CONSIDERABLE PUBLISHING but it wasn’t academic publishing that would receive recognition uhmmm… INT: uhmmm {uhmm PR: {what is fascinating that after the program ended the students graduates themselves have taken this up and done all this. .what we should have been doing in the program INT: That’s very interesting PR: like we have a….SIE ..SEI a special interest group in INT: a sig at AERA PR: in AERA its been doing very very well for some years now and many of the people quite a number of them have gone on to publish in their own ªelds.. PR: uh but anyhow uh that was one thing the fact that we didn’t emphasize publication enough that as I say was because I was so interested in what was going on. INT: umm PR: I had published enough for my own career but not enough for the greater good of the program ..uh that one of the reasons. I would say ah.. some of the reasons were not of our own doing. There was some I don’t know faculty didn’t quite know how to handle us… they liked to put a label on us. And of course what’s happening now…
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Narrative two not only introduces the students, especially the graduates of the program, as new players in the drama, but also other bureaucratic entities, Special Interest Groups at the national research meetings of the American Educational Research Association, the national body representing the educational academic research community. This introduces a bureaucratic entity of greater scope and therefore greater “moral weight” in the discipline than the department or any other university committee. Clearly in segment two the Proppian struggle has been engaged between the main players, the department and its faculty, and the program and its faculty members and students, but the moral weight of the whole research community is invoked on the side of “our program and our graduates”. In this segment the ªctionalized “I” of the innocent but victimized hero makes its main appearance: “I can only speak for myself” [says the narrator] “but I was so engaged with that program” [later] “I committed a great sin of not encouraging our students to publish” [later on] “I had published enough for my own career but not enough for the greater good of the program”. This interpretation is further supported by Roger’s delivery of the narrative, after establishing the contoured speech style of stress with even tempo, the narrator switches as he says” I can only speak for myself” to a light voice and a quicker tempo, setting up a prosodic opposition that contrasts the voicing of his own private self and feelings, with his more professorial public self. In all of these statements the villain is not the department and its faculty as in the previous segment, but the university as a bureaucracy, motivated by the ideology of textualism, the unwritten but often spoken rule of “publish or perish”. Professor Roger’s comment serves to direct the listener to this interpretation “we didn’t care enough about the game.. the academic game”. In other words “the academic game” has become the motivating force, and the university’s acceptance of the game rules is the institutional justiªcation for any decisions. In light of this explanation, the decision in segment one, attributed to the institutional body itself ‘not to allow the program to hire its own graduates’ is re-interpretable in terms of the apparent ¶outing of the “rules of academic survival” by the founding faculty of the department. The narrative as a “moral tale” seems to have come to an end, with the hero and his department not defeated, but suŸering rejection by misunderstanding, through maintaining their own principled course of action in the face of these misunderstandings. In a latter phase of the interview after discussion of the fate of several of the graduates of the program, and of how the ideas on which it was founded were
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before its time, Professor Roger returns to the issue of why the program was closed. Now, ‘the department’ becomes the villain of the piece. Segment Three: Two Academic Cultures “who are these strangers around here” INT: I personally found when I came here, this is my third year in graduate school, I wanted to see what role aŸect could play and why.. it was not used in public education no one was interested.…. [turns ommitted] PR: There’s a diŸerence between virtual learning and actual learning we are full of the virtual stuŸ now… if its that. But anyhow {uh.. INT: {uh I totally agree with you so.. PR: This ..this was of course part of the problem we had in the department that PEOPLE and I am not BLAMING them for it because they were SOCIALIZED in certain paradigms INT: {umm PR: {and this is the way they think it was like.. two diŸerent CULTURES uh who are these strangers around here. And they had a problem with that too because… [voice trails oŸ…pause] I am pretty strong because otherwise that program would not have continued that I could ªght oŸ all the crap that was being thrown and in the department meetings and all that and then ªghting with the deans if I had too and so forth and and ah they knew that I was publishing and doing things…and I am pretty sharp at pointing things out in faculty meetings they could not avoid So I think we really were an irritation to many PEOPLE,.although they would still band together and say privately and say oh its just roger again ..(sotto voce as he mouths/whispers some other words ) whatever.. then of course when Joe joined our FACULTY it was an even greater problem for them, because he was NATIONALLY and INTERNATIONALLY recognized.. and THAT must have been disturbing for some of them and then we kept getting these GRANTS and not only that we were teaching incredible teaching LOADS.. I hadn’t thought about it as possibly bothering them .. INT: so if I understand it you were succeeding without {being part of the … PR: yes as I remember the ETHOS,[long vowel] the ethos [short vowel] I don’t know if that’s the word for it, was trying to TEACH as little as possible so you could PUBLISH and we uh were doing BOTH, that is we were teaching a lot of courses (sotto voce) …AND we were publishing and getting grants.. [voice trails oŸ]
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The introductory section of this segment begins with a discussion about the interviewer’s plans for graduate work and ends with an overlapping comment of gains a warrant for his expression of opinion with an increase of emotional evaluation. He no longer needs to cloak his narrative account of program with the appearance of reasonableness as he tried to do in segments one and two, and the emotional tone of the narrative increases accordingly. Interactively the sequence establishes the collaborative nature of the telling, and the interviewer now comes to be seen as allied with the teller, her comments also increase as the story unfolds. The dramatic action of this sequence is focused on the same characters as segment one, the program/we; the department/they; the narrator/I; and the motivating power of the institutional classiªcatory devices, the academic ideology of teaching and publishing that deªnes the terms of academic life. In the italicized sequence, Professor Roger presents the main narrative, the past retold as a personal struggle. Continuing the Proppian analysis the narrative unfolds as a story with a hero, Roger, a second hero Joe, and a villain the department and its action, the villainy failing to understand the program and ultimately closing it down. The narrative proper begins with an introductory coda that ties the story back to the previous segment after the discussion sequence when Professor Roger returns to the problem between the program and the department, and so ventriloquates the department members ‘ thoughts’: “who are these strangers around here”. He continues with the ‘us’ versus ‘them’ dichotomy so essential to seeing this as a tale of an institutional struggle. Again the use of a meta-narrative or performance strategy, as with the stress patterns established in the beginning of the interview provide for an enhanced emotional tone and interactional involvement. Professor Roger gives a listing of all institutionally legitimated categories for academic review, getting grants for research, publishing research papers that result in an academic reputation being established for the person both national and international. Additionally faculty must adopt an academic educational mission to develop programs and teach courses for students. Such comments makes it clear that these categories form a standard by which all academic professional lives are judged. In telling this narrative Roger disavows his own concern with the consequences of the programs reception. Bauman has argued that disavowal in storytelling can serve to heighten or restart a narrative when the teller, or the characters seems to have reached an impass (1993). Roger uses his disavowals of intent as a way of emphasis. He begins this sequence by saying as he did in
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the ªrst narrative segment “I am not blaming them” when the text makes it quite clear that he is in fact doing just that. When he argues how the misunderstanding on the part of the villain, “the department” led to the misjudgment of the program itself again he uses a disavowal. The further disavowal “I hadn’t thought about it bothering them” provides an evaluative coda to this recollection sequence. Segment four: The Big Grant-the program begins INT: so it was hard for you since you have been… had been the father of this program PR: NO you see I never thought of myself that way I never thought of it as my program of course I identiªed with it because I started it was going but I had no emotional attachment to it. I had an emotional ATTACHMENT to my students. But I was sick of it .. the academic bull shit and ah all these games… [turns ommitted] INT: how did the progam get started? If I understand it…I think it was pretty much plagued with lack of acceptance from the beginning… PR: oh yes what HAPPENED was the reason we had the program was uh..I was doing some individual work I was doing ..I was working at X Institute at the time which was quite a diŸerent world from the university..dealing with the so-called non-verbal humanties is what they used to call them there and uh..AND rather than lead a schizi existence I was trying to combine these two worlds essentially it was the world of aŸect and of cognition.. and by chance the Ford Foundation gave us some money, at ªrst a small grant to look into some of the things we were doing up in the Institute and then a BIG Grant a four year project for to put these two worlds together not.. it wasn’t described that way but it was described in terms of aŸect and cognition putting them together and apply these various approaches diŸerent approaches and that immediately legitimatized us, legitmated us Anyway and we had uh a program and uh..we started out .. there was at that time.. INT: Were you on the faculty at at that time the university PR: oh yes all the time I came to the faculty in ‘61 and that’s another story..
In this ªnal sequence it is the interviewer who provides an essential part of the story. Her questioning serves as the introductory abstract that focuses the tale and sets the tone for the response. She has by now become a sympathetic collaborator in Professor Roger’s tale. Roger’s use of disavowals as in his “NO I never thought of myself that way” again leads to a shift in emphasis, and provides him with a chance to cast his tale as a typically institutional issue,
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something more than just a personal tale of disappointment. As a professor, an initiator of the program and a well-known scholar, Roger now becomes a representative of the institution and the subject of the ªnal major narrative segment. He begins his narrative proper, underlined in the segment above, with a formualic phrase “oh yes what happened was” and so he begins a narrative that this time is a direct reconstruction of his life as an academic intellectual. This segment is the most truly ‘narrative’ of the four, in that it provides a direct temporally organized account of past personal events. Only in the very last line can we see that the chronology, kept so vague and unspeciªed throughout the interview actually spans thirty years of professional life. The program began to be wound down in 1991, and it started in 1961. However the tale by now can be seen to be not about the speciªc and particular program, but as a universal struggle, of the hero, Professor Roger and the institutional battles that he fought on behalf of “his program” often referred to in Professor Roger’s ‘feigned modesty’ as “our program”.
Conclusion As I argued at the beginning of this chapter, cultural sharedness which has been found to be so important in narrative analysis is most easily established through shared memory construction, and through reference to familiar events, places or other culturally symbolic material. When interviewees personal life memories diŸer from those of the interviewer participants need to re-orient the interview or take up more interview time in narrative telling for background information. However neither of these tasks is easy, and both change the very metacommunicative norms that govern interviewing. In other words, as Briggs described it, the communicative situation of interviewing is one that most likely results in the “possibility of constructing a ‘minority voice’ that conªrms the hegemonic status quo” (Briggs 2002 pp.911–912) rather than one that allows the individual with very diŸerent life experiences to be heard. The above shows how quickly attempts at explanation can be subverted by seemingly minor infringements, and how deeply culturally speciªc are the requirements of even brief narrative explanations. In conclusion Mary Douglas’s comment on the long-term eŸect of institutional thinking, the ability to apportion blame along with the strong need not to criticize the very classiªcations and categories that shape institutional life, appears to have been borne out in the narrative. Professor Roger blames the
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university as well as his colleagues in some measure for the demise of their program. However he does not blame the institutional thinking, the pressure for publishing of scientiªc papers and the creating of research paradigms, as well as the search for research grants that also had a role in its demise. Even in retirement from active teaching his own academic professionalism still depends on the classiªcations that governed his life as a regular professor. In his collaboration with the interviewer, herself a student, he takes the opportunity to make his professorial identity available again. The narratives in which he presents himself and his account of the program’s ending, interwoven with the interviewer’ s questions provide far more information in their telling than either might have realized, and this tale shows far more support for academic institutional thinking than either might have intended. For to repeat Mary Douglas’s words, “this is how we build institutions by squeezing each other’s ideas into a common shape so that we can prove rightness by sheer numbers of independent assent”.
References Bamberg, M. (Ed.) (1997). Introduction to oral versions of personal experience: three decades of narrative analysis. Special issue of Journal of narrative and Life History, 7(1–4). Bauman, R. (1993). Disclaimers of performance in responsibility and evidence in oral discourse. In J. H. Hill, & J. T. Irvine (Eds.). (pp. 182–196). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bergmann, J., & Luckmann T. (1996). Reconstructive genres of everyday communication. In U. Quasthoff (Ed.), Aspects of oral communication. Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter. Brennis, D. (1994). Discourse and discipline at the national research council: a bureaucratic bildungsroman. Cultural Anthropology, 9(1), 23–36. Bonant, J. (Ed.) (1995). Reminiscence reviewed: Evaluations, achievements and perspectives. Buckingham: Open University Press. Briggs, C. (2002). Interviewing, power/knowledge, and social inequality. In J. Gubrium, & J. Holstein (Eds.), The Handbook of Interview Research: Context and method. (pp. 911–922). Thousand oaks: Sage Publications. Cicourel, A. V. (1993). Aspects of structural and processual theories of knowledge. In C. Calhoun, E. LiPuma, & M. Postone (Eds.), Bourdieu: critical perspectives. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Cicourel, A. V. (1999). The Interaction of cognitive and cultural models in health care delivery. In S. Sarangi, & C. Roberts (Eds.), Talk, work and the institutional order. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Cook-Gumperz, J. (1999). A ‘memory of many Mondays’: comment on Charlotte Linde’s narrative syntax in institutional memory. Narrative Inquiry, 9(1), 197–203.
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Douglas, M. (1986). How Institutions think. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Guenthner, S. (1995). The cooperative construction of indignation in exemplary stories. VS, 70/71, 147–175 and this volume. Johnson, B. (2001). Discourse analysis and narrative. In D. Schiffrin, D. Tannen, & H. Hamilton (Eds.), Handbook of discourse analysis. Oxford, MA: Blackwell Publishers. Labov, W., & Waletzky, J. (1967). Narrative analysis: oral versions of personal experience. In J. Helm (Ed.), Essays on the verbal and visual arts. (pp.12–34). Seattle University of Washington Press. Reprinted in Journal of Narrative and Life History, 7(1–4), 3–38. Linde, C. (1993). Life stories: The creation of coherence. New York and London: Oxford University Press. Linde, C. (1990). The transformation of narrative syntax into institutional memory. Narrative Inquiry, 9(1), 139–173. Luckman, T. (Ed.) (1998). Moral im Alltag. Gütersloh: Bertelsmann Stiftung. Middleton, D., & Edwards, D. (1990). Conversational remembering: a social psycholgical approach. In D. Middleton, & D. Edwards (Eds.), Collective remembering. London: Sage Publications. Ochs, E., & Capps L. (1996). Narrating the self. Annual Review of Anthropology, 21, 19–45. Propp, V. (1968). Morphology of a folktale. Translated by L. Scott. (2nd edition) Austin: University of Texas Press. Quasthoff, U. (1997). Were you ever in a situation where you were in serious danger of being killed? Narrator and listener interaction in Labov and Waltezky’s narratives. In M. Bamberg (Ed.), Oral versions of personal experience: three decades of narrative analysis. Special issue of Journal of narrative and Life History, 7(1–4), 121–128. Schiffrin, D. (1996). Narrative as self-portrait: the sociolinguistic construction of identity. Language in Society, 25, 167–204. Schiffrin, D. (1997). Stories in answer to questions. In M. Bamberg (Ed.). Oral versions of personal experience: three decades of narrative analysis. Special issue of Journal of narrative and Life History, 7(1–4), 129–138. Shotter, J. (1990). The Social construction of remembering and forgetting. Collective Remembering (op cit). Tannen, D. (1989). Talking voices: repetition, dialogue and imagery in conversational discourse. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Toolan, M.(1991). Narrative: a critical linguistic introduction. London: Routledge.
Chapter 11
Interaction in the telling and retelling of interlaced stories The co-construction of humorous narratives Neal R. Norrick
This chapter describes the interaction of participants during the telling and retelling of interlaced stories. These stories share characters and events, and the second teller’s story works as the continuation of the ªrst. Interlaced stories present special challenges for tellers, who must decide where their respective parts begin and end, how to eŸect the transition from one story to the next, and how to negotiate perspectives and attitudes. In particular, I focus on how the tellers co-construct con¶icting cultural models of marriage proposals. The recording also contains retellings of the same stories, related for a new listener, oŸering an unusual opportunity to observe how tellers accommodate their stories to each other after they have already “practiced” once.
Introduction The interlaced stories analyzed here represent an otherwise unreported phenomenon in the literature on conversational narrative. The taped data for this chapter consists of interrelated stories told, then later retold, in a natural conversational setting. In the telling and retelling, the two stories are related temporally and causally, but they do not end up as a single co-narrated story. At the same time, they share much more than theme and perspective, as is usual with an initial and a response story. In the retelling, the ªrst teller recasts her story more as background, and the second teller also streamlines her episode to concentrate more clearly on the humorous crux identiªed during the ªrst telling (for retellings cp. also Chapter 12). The primary tellers accomplish the re-contextualization of their stories the second time through with
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plenty of input from the other participants, allowing us to observe the ongoing re-interpretation of life stories and the events they describe. The telling and retelling of such closely interrelated stories also oŸers us a special purchase on questions of narrative interaction such as storytelling rights and co-narration. Past research on oral narrative contains various references to the collaborative telling of shared past experience, though not to causally related stories woven together by tellers who have fairly clear segments of their own (see also Chapter 5). Thus, Watson (1975), Boggs (1985), Goodwin (1986) and SchegloŸ (1992) have documented the in¶uence of listeners and co-tellers on the trajectory of a narrative through diŸerential interest and competence in the details of talk. Tannen (1978) demonstrates the importance of diŸering expectations about what counts as a story and how this can lead to dissonance between conarrators. QuasthoŸ (1980a) identiªes various strategies by which listeners become co-tellers, and she describes both supportive and antagonistic uses of these strategies. Falk (1980) describes “conversational duets” between two conarrators presenting a single shared story for a third party; she shows how collaborative telling aŸects turn-taking and related matters such as simultaneous speech. Chafe (1998) analysed two spontaneously produced tellings of the same story, drawing out “things we can learn from repeated tellings of the same experience”; see Norrick (1998b) for comment. My own work (Norrick 1997, 2000) has explored both co-narration and retelling of a wide range of story types. I have shown in particular when and how stories are retold, including cases of retelling by multiple co-narrators, but not interlaced stories of the kind to be treated here. In both interlaced stories women describe how they recently received proposals of marriage. Proposal stories belong to the more general class of “life stories” in the sense of Linde (1993). In particular, they count as “landmark event” stories, in describing a signiªcant episode in the teller’s life. The proposal stories described here again represent a special class of landmark event stories, because they are told as funny personal anecdotes, obviously as much for their entertainment value as to inform hearers about the events leading to a new personal status. Unlike typically funny stories about such landmark events as a summer job or learning to drive, proposal stories might easily be solemn and romantic rather than funny, so that their humor constitutes a signiªcant feature for their classiªcation. Signiªcantly, as we shall see, even landmark events in personal life stories may take on diŸerent signiªcance from one telling to the next as tellers recontextualize their stories in diŸerent ways.
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These particular tellers take quite seriously their “storytelling rights,” in the sense of Shuman (1986) and Blum-Kulka (1993). Only those individuals personally involved in the events reported generally possess the right to tell or co-tell the story. Perhaps fairly clear separation of episodes is a feature typical of interlaced stories vis-à-vis co-narrated tales of shared experience. Or perhaps the personal topic of a marriage proposal confers exclusive storytelling rights on the proposal recipient, so long as she is a participant in the conversation. Still, with stories so closely interlinked, we might expect the sequential tellers to switch back and forth, participating freely in each other’s stories to the point of becoming full-¶edged co-tellers. Somewhat surprisingly, however, the tellers of these interlaced stories keep their parts substantially unmixed, with one major exception when one of the women feels the other has neglected to report a key speech; tellers of interlaced stories may violate even otherwise clear storytelling rights, if they see ways of completing or improving each other’s stories. Also, when stories are interlaced, the right to tell a story turns into the responsibility for telling it, when other participants request it, and re-request it, as my data further demonstrates. From the outset, the women negotiate two incongruent views of proposals. On the one hand, they evoke the traditional model with such “romantic” trappings as candles, dinner and rings, but on the other hand they display a more “modern” attitude, according to which women play a more active role and men may be inept without losing face and risking failure. This incongruity between the romantic and modern models creates distance and humor. We shall see how the women recontextualize their stories in the second telling toward humor and away from the romantic model of proposal for a new listener. They combine forces to accomplish this recontextualization after having just “practiced” telling their shared story and with considerable input from the other participants. They localize the humor in Lois’ response to Hank’s proposal: “you don’t have to do that, just because Ernie asked Cordelia” in lines 229–30. This speech serves as more than the humorous punchline of Lois’ story; it expresses the crux of the connection between the two proposals. The co-construction of con¶icting cultural models in a series of narratives also creates a window through which we can observe the ongoing negotiation of attitudes in and through stories. The recording was made in Birmingham, during a visit three German women paid their English friends. Cordelia, Lois and Emma are young German university academics and good friends. Cordelia and Lois had recently become
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engaged to be married. They tell and retell the interlaced stories of how they were proposed to, before their host couple co-narrates the story of how he proposed to her. The three women all speak English quite ¶uently, though they occasionally produce somewhat unidiomatic constructions and suŸer from diŸerent word-ªnding di¹culties than native speakers. Neither of these problems seems signiªcantly to aŸect their ability to present their interlaced stories quite eŸectively, then to re-present them, even more closely interlaced. Cordelia and Lois had already related their proposal stories to Emma and each other before the evening’s recording, as comes out in the passage of conversation following the ªrst tellings. James and Lucy are their hosts, and George comes to visit while the proposal stories are being told the ªrst time. These three participants are all monolingual British English speakers. James alone hears the ªrst version of the stories, while Lucy and he act as recipients of the retelling. During the retelling, Emma and George are engaged in a parallel conversation on a separate topic in the background. Their two-party talk is clearly audible on the tape, and both conversations were, in principle, accessible to the other group, though neither conversation was being attended to by the participants of the other. Emma is recording the conversation on a mini-disc recorder, and everyone except Lucy knows they are being recorded. All the participants are accustomed to being recorded any time Emma is present, and there are no obvious taping eŸects of the kinds one sometimes ªnds, such as speakers addressing the recorder directly or shying away from speaking (see Norrick 2000). All participants’ permission to use the tape was, of course, secured later, and all the personal and place names have been changed to preserve the anonymity of the participants. Since the taping, I have conducted sociolinguistic interviews with some of the participants to gain insights about their relationships and their impressions of the taped conversation. The complete transcription of the data cited appears in an appendix, along with a summary of my transcription conventions. The ªrst tellings run to line 137 of the transcription. They are followed immediately by some discussion about the prehistory of the stories and their primary tellers (lines 138–68). Although about nineteen minutes intervene before the retellings commence, I have numbered the second excerpt consecutively from 169–239 to avoid confusion.
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Cognitive models, narrative analysis and humor According to LakoŸ (1987) and other cognitive linguists, our knowledge of the world is organized around Idealized Cognitive Models (ICMs). We categorize the continuum of experience not by counting features, but rather by comparing our sensory input with information stored in ICMs. These ICMs contain prototypes for objects and events along with relevant collateral details. Cognitive models represent a further development of the frames, schemas and scripts of earlier approaches to discourse analysis. Frame theory has its roots in the thinking of Bateson (1953, 1972) and GoŸman (1967, 1974). Fillmore (1976, 1985) championed frame theory within linguistics as an account of semantics. But it was Tannen (1978, 1979; cf. Tannen, ed. 1993) who showed how frame concepts account for expectations about story patterns themselves as well as for relations between the elements of a narrative. QuasthoŸ’s (1980b) narrative macro-structures accomplish much the same thing. Today’s cognitive models, like the earlier frames, encode prototypes for objects, sequences of events, and causal relationships, and these facilitate recognition, categorization and memory of stories; in addition, they guide tellers in what sorts of stories are appropriate and what to include in them as well as suggesting to hearers what to expect and how to respond to stories. Moreover, ICMs hook up with theories of humor to provide an account of which stories are funny and why. All the standard incongruity theories of humor from Freud (1905) and Bateson (1953) to Raskin (1985) and Norrick (1993) conceptualize the basis of humor as a con¶ict between frames of reference, formalized as clashing schemas or incongruous scripts. As early as Norrick (1986), I argued that incongruous frames of reference could be best understood as cognitive schemas, and the sort of schemas intended have now evolved into the ICMs of current cognitive linguistic theorizing. Whether a given text is funny or not depends on the presentation of the con¶ict: a set-up foregrounding one model, but potentially supporting both models provides the basis for humor, and a sudden reversal of the foregrounded model with the previously hidden one should strike us as funny. Let’s have a look at ICMs for a proposal of marriage to see how they can generate humorous con¶icts. In the traditional “romantic” model, two people meet, court, fall in love, become engaged, marry, go on a honeymoon, then take up housekeeping together and have children. Becoming engaged involves an explicit proposal of marriage and an acceptance. The proposal grows out of
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love and readiness for lifelong commitment; it involves a private ceremony with a speech act at its center, characteristically fulªlling the conditions below. Substantial cultural diŸerences obtain for this ICM. The version below re¶ects interviews with women from the appropriate area of Germany. Nevertheless, even within a fairly cohesive social group and region, one ªnds signiªcant diŸerences about the ring (or reciprocal rings), the proper ªnger to wear the ring(s) on and so forth. Preparatory: the couple has a fancy dinner by candlelight etc. (some traditionalists include prior consent of proposal recipient’s father/family) Properties: ring (for woman’s left hand, to be transferred to right hand at wedding ceremony) Accompanying acts: proposer on one knee before proposee, holding up ring to proposee Formulas: “would you consent to be my wife,” “will you marry me” Response: the proposee may accept immediately or politely request “time to think about it,” perhaps in consultation with the family Consequences: the couple are then engaged (to be married) or betrothed, ªancé and ªancée, with certain social privileges and responsibilities etc.
There are standard idiomatic phrases for talking about this particular speech act, namely: “to ask for someone’s hand (in marriage),” and less formally “to pop the question.” In the “modern” ICM, people still meet and fall in love, date (rather than court), move in together and have children. The proposal, marriage and honeymoon are not ªxed at a particular point between dating and living together, although they must still occur in this order. The modern proposal itself grows out of a practical decision to make a long-term commitment; it takes the form of a two-party arrangement rather than a ceremony instigated by a single partner. The preparatory conditions, properties, accompanying acts and formulas are optional at best. The potential for incongruity between the two models oŸers plenty of matter for humor. A reversal of the traditional order of events automatically sets up the conditions for humor. Thus, a standard joke claims that the typical modern proposal of marriage takes the form of a question by the male partner: “You’re going to have a what?” In addition, a model con¶ict can arise any time the romantic accoutrements (candlelight dinner, ring etc.) surface in a contemporary discourse, especially if they appear
Interaction in the telling and retelling of interlaced stories 269
directly adjacent to mundane details like children’s playgrounds in the rain, as in Cordelia’s ªrst telling. Still, there are other sources of humor in the stories to be considered. One is the improbability that two friends would receive proposals of marriage within a twenty-four hour period, and this is what Emma claims makes the pair of stories “so funny” in her original elicitation. Proposals are such rare and personal matters that we are surprised when they occur in close proximity. Another incongruity comes out in Lois’ response to Hank’s proposal: “you don’t have to do that, just because Ernie asked Cordelia” in lines 229–30. This response presupposes that Hank’s motivation for proposing is all wrong. At the same time, it represents such a face threat to Hank that it contravenes our notion of a proper response to a proposal. If Hank proposed to Lois just because Ernie proposed to Cordelia, then his proposal runs counter to both models. His proposal violates the romantic model, since it denies that love is the impetus for proposing; and it violates the modern model, since it denies even that expediency is the impetus. The women come to identify this as the major incongruity in the interlaced stories during the ªrst telling, and they focus on it in their retelling.
The ªrst telling The ªrst telling of the two stories occurs at the suggestion of Emma in line 5: “You should hear the story of the proposal.” In a discussion about Cordelia being pregnant, it develops that the date of conception was the day she was proposed to. Lois speculates (line 1–2) and Cordelia immediately conªrms: “it was exactly that night.” James’ response, “that’s great” at line 4 prompts Emma to mention the proposal story. Her elicitation shows that Emma already knows the story herself and that she ªnds it tellable (see Labov 1972, Sacks 1992 on “reportability” and “tellability” of stories). She goes on to explain why, starting in line 7: “this is so funny, ‘cause the two of them were proposed to within” twenty-four hours (there is some confusion about time, which Lois ªnally clears up in her retelling). At ªrst it sounds as if Emma intends only to elicit Cordelia’s story in relation to the discussion of her pregnancy, but she justiªes its tellability with the humor of the close connection between the two proposals. Thus, Emma initially describes the two stories as funny due to their interrelation, though not necessarily taken separately.
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Cordelia apparently agrees with Emma, and begins to set the stories oŸ from each other by calling her own “the dramatic version” in line 16 before Lois intrudes the phrase “romantic slash funny” at line 18. These terms hearken back to the way the women diŸerentiated their respective stories before the England trip, but they suggest here that Lois locates the humor of ther stories elsewhere, at least initially. She seems to be calling her own story “romantic slash funny,” though she can be heard as modifying or replacing the word “dramatic” in Cordelia’s phrase. Cordelia herself repeats “the romantic” overlapping with the end of Lois’ turn, again seeming to mean Lois’ story, though the extraneous noise and laughter surrounding her comment, as well as the reaction to it, make it di¹cult to determine whether she meant this or her own story. When James says, “let’s have it then”, as the laughter dies down, it sounds as if he was requesting the “romantic slash funny” story just mentioned, and Cordelia naturally begins. Indeed, this ªrst time through, Cordelia tells her story as if it were an independent entity tellable for its own sake. Her initial statement at line 22, “well, I don’t know, for some reason Ernie had to move out ªrst”, sets up the story as a progression of events with the proposal as its goal. The initial discourse marker well signals an introductory passage with background information (see Norrick 2001 on speciªcally narrative discourse markers). Cordelia describes the proposal scene as “really cute” (line 42), and the following details about the little playground hut, sitting “like this” (with appropriate body language), the candles, the rain and the unfortunate dog present a touching vignette. The scene possesses a deªnite humorous tone of its own, due to the mixture of elements from the romantic proposal model with quotidian details like the playground hut, the rain and the dog. James even comments, “oh God, it’s like a ªlm” at line 64. And when, at the completion of Cordelia’s story, Lois says: “it turned out to be really romantic, didn’t it?” in lines 86–87, it sounds like the sort of comment someone makes who has seen her initial assessment realized. In any case, Lois’ evaluation of Cordelia’s story stands as the ªnal assessment. From an outsider’s perspective, then, Cordelia’s story is romantic slash funny, whereas Lois’ story is dramatic slash funny, as we shall see. This returns us to the way Emma prefaced the whole event by saying “this is so funny, because the two of them were proposed to” so close together: If the humor lies in the temporal proximity of the proposals, either one or both might be “romantic slash funny” in and of itself. Either way, the two stories together develop a special humor through the interlacing of the two proposals and the characters involved.
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Lois begins to interlace the stories when she says “and Hank and me, we were sitting ehm at home, waiting” in line 73–74. Emma adds for clariªcation “Ernie had moved to them” at line 79 and again “and they were waiting for him” at line 82, but James is still reacting to Cordelia’s original story when he says “oh God, that’s a great story” at line 83. Lois even interrupts her own story to remark that Cordelia’s story “turned out to be really romantic” in lines 86– 87. It remains for Emma to produce a clear initiation of the second story with her summary preface “and then it really spoiled Hank’s plan to propose to Lois” at line 89. In this preface we hear for the ªrst time that Lois’ story may be funny for another reason, namely Hank’s spoiled proposal plan. James reacts to this preface with appropriate surprise and a question, “oh no, he’d, he had already planned it?” at line 93. This apparent interest on James’ part may also urge Lois in the direction of drawing out the misunderstanding. Indeed, her story thrives mostly on the dramatic irony that Lois repeatedly fails to understand the serious nature of Hank’s proposal. Lois hears Hank’s proposal as a reaction triggered by Ernie’s proposal, because she “was so preoccupied with Ernie and Cordelia’s thing” (line 115). Lois reports at lines 113–14 that Hank said, “you got it all wrong, you know, that’s because of Ernie.” James marks a potential end to this story with a somewhat paradoxical evaluation in lines 119–20: “that’s neat. Oh that is terrible.” When Lois continues with an apparent coda, James again responds with a potential pre-closing, “so you eventually got it?” at line 124. Ironically, it is Cordelia who delivers the apparent punchline by way of reminding Lois, “you didn’t say that you said, ‘you don’t have to do this just because of Ernie’” at lines 127–28. Cordelia presumably recalls this piece of dialogue from the pre-England version of the story, and identiªes it as the focal point of the humor in Lois’ story. This speech parallels the one attributed to Hank in lines 113–14, both end in “because of Ernie,” and Lois may be telling a diŸerent version here. In any case, Lois immediately latches onto Cordelia’s punchline, adding, “and he was like ‘uahh’ and he,” {laughing and slapping her thighs}. James comments “oh no, that’s terrible” at line 132, and again “that’s terrible. how funny” at line 134. Emma echoes him, laughing: “yeah, that’s funny” in line 135. All this evaluation and the repetition of “funny” serve to underline the speech Cordelia inserts as the proper punchline of Lois’ story. When James concludes and summarizes the dual telling in line 137 with “that’s a great combination of stories that is” it further suggests that the two stories work together to highlight this punchline. We shall see below that Lois recalls this formulation and cites these words almost verbatim in her retelling.
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Following the ªrst telling, from line 138 to 168, talk turns to the original exchange of stories before the women traveled to England. Emma describes Lois’ pre-trip report of the proposal as “this long story” (line 151) that “went on and on” (line 162), saying “we thought the punchline was somewhere else” (line 155). In her report, Lois was drawing out the action to build up to the actual proposal, which was new information at the time. For an audience aware that the two women have become engaged, the stories must be revised, in particular Lois must identify a new “punchline.” Emma’s comments show Lois has already dropped romantic details in favor of dramatic irony, leaving out “how they went and had dinner” (lines 152–53) and the “certain restaurant” (line 157). Along with Cordelia’s reminder, “you didn’t say that you said, ‘You don’t have to do this just because of Ernie’,” during the story, Emma’s reference to a “punchline somewhere else” also helps determine the future form of the “double engagement story.” A separate perspective on the stories appears in a brief exchange between Lois, Emma, and Cordelia, right at the end of the passage following the ªrst telling. After Emma’s assessment that “it was the proposal, and we were all {gasping}” in lines 163–64, Lois evokes a diŸerent response to the stories, namely that of another friend Steven, who was present during the very ªrst presentation of the two stories back in Germany. Since James does not know Steven, this comment can only be addressed to Emma and Cordelia. Emma then laughingly recalls Steven’s reaction to the proposal stories: “he was so envious” at line 167. For a listener who wishes he might experience a romantic engagement of his own, the stories clearly bear a diŸerent signiªcance.
The retelling In their retelling, both women simplify their stories. They coordinate their separate parts of the “double engagement story” to lace the stories more closely together and to focus on Lois’ misunderstanding and awkward response. Cordelia discards the whole traditional versus modern incongruity and streamlines her story as background for the second proposal. Thus, the playground hut, candles and rain of the ªrst telling are missing here. Lois also deletes details of events leading up to the misunderstood proposal, but draws out the central scene to spotlight the incongruity of her response. In her retelling, she even neglects to mention the anniversary ring.
Interaction in the telling and retelling of interlaced stories 273
James elicits the retelling for the beneªt of his wife Lucy, who has been in the adjacent kitchen. James asks if she has “heard the eh story, the engagement story” in lines 169–70, insisting that there is but one story, namely “the double engagement story” (line 173). This leads Lucy to make the explicit request, “well, tell me” at line 178. James not only recontextualizes the two interlaced stories as a unitary “double engagement,” he insists on his perception of their cohesion in a single unit, referring to “it” twice: “it’s a peach” in line 175 and “it is total quality” in line 177. Stories are retold for various reasons (Norrick 1997,1998a), retelling for a newly arrived listener is perhaps one of the most obvious ones. Retelling a story known to more than one participant often encourages co-narration, but in the present example each woman sticks to her own portion of the story even more than the ªrst time through. Apparently, the right to tell a proposal story belongs solely to the proposal recipient, so long as she is present. Moreover, by the time this retelling commences, Cordelia almost acts as if her storytelling rights are becoming onerous storytelling duties. She really just sets the stage for the now central portion by Lois. After all, the ªrst telling grew out of interest in Cordelia’s pregnancy, but this time around the context has been reduced to this humorous double story with Hank’s misunderstood proposal and Lois’ daunting response at its center. James and the storytellers seem to judge that the new listener Lucy will be more interested in the humorous “double engagement story” than in the personal life stories of Cordelia and Lois. Given Emma’s determination that the “punchline was somewhere else” during the discussion following the ªrst tellings (line 155) and Cordelia’s own identiªcation of the punchline in the remark Lois forgot to report, namely: “you didn’t say that you said, ‘you don’t have to do this just because of Ernie’” at line 128, it is hardly surprising that Cordelia keeps her own part of the story to a minimum. However, Lois could not tell the whole double engagement story alone. Her storytelling rights extend only to her own story within the interlaced complex. So long as she is present, the ªrst teller must present the ªrst half whenever called upon to do so. Apparently, then, in the case of interlaced stories, storytelling rights turn into storytelling duties. Though both stories are shorter in the retelling, the weight has shifted from Cordelia’s story to Lois’ story. Whereas Cordelia’s story was slightly longer than Lois’ in the ªrst tellings, in the retelling Lois’ part has become signiªcantly longer than Cordelia’s. In particular, in the ªrst tellings, Cordelia’s story constitutes the central topic for about 63 lines (from around line 7 to line 69),
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compared to about 59 lines (line 73 to line 131) for Lois; by contrast, in the retelling, Cordelia holds the ¶oor for only about 15 lines (from 180–194), while Lois’ part goes on for about 35 lines (from 200–234). Cordelia leaves out all the “romantic slash funny” details about the little children’s hut, the candles, the rain and the dog. She gives the impression of rushing to the point where she can report that Ernie had been “staying at Hank’s and Lois’ place” (line 195), so that she can hand the telling over to Lois with the words “you- your turn” at line 198. In pointedly saying “your turn” to Lois, Cordelia explicitly recognizes the connectedness of the two stories, and further contributes to the impression that she has come to view her own story only as part of the build-up to Lois’ punchline. Lucy immediately responds with “your part, your part” at line 199, conªrming the perception of Cordelia’s story as but the ªrst part of a continuing narrative with the climax to come later on. Lois also reconceptualizes her story as the logical consequence of Cordelia’s. After the transitional passage about her waiting at home with Hank, Lois clariªes the somewhat confusing time relationship from the ªrst telling, saying: “and the next day, Hank and me, we had our anniversary” (lines 208–210). Lois reorganizes her story to focus on the salient piece of dialogue which makes it a humorous personal anecdote rather than a serious narrative describing a landmark event of personal achievement or self-recognition, namely her response to Hank’s proposal: “you don’t have to do that, just because Ernie asked Cordelia” in lines 229–30. This speech serves as more than the humorous punchline of Lois’ story; it expresses the crux of the connection between the two proposals. After all, Ernie’s proposal is both facilitative and inimical to Hank’s, it both leads to and spoils Hank’s proposal. Emma’s comment that “the punchline was somewhere else” at line 155 in the passage following the ªrst telling, and Cordelia’s identiªcation and insertion of the so-called punchline into the ªrst telling at line 128, are not lost on Lois, who cites the speech in her retelling practically verbatim from Cordelia, as we have seen. Notice that Lois omits the detail that she gave Hank a ring for their anniversary, although she reports that “he opened his present” at line 217, in order to introduce the ªrst misconstrued proposal: “you know, but now you have to marry me.” This omission insures that the humor must develop out of the misunderstanding. Lois also leaves out the whole section containing the parallel speech attributed to Hank (“you got it all wrong, you know, that was because of Ernie” in lines 113–14 of the ªrst telling) in this second telling. This simpliªcation further helps focus the story. Lois also includes the information, prompted by James’ question in the ªrst telling, that Hank had been planning
Interaction in the telling and retelling of interlaced stories 275
his proposal for a long time already. She even dramatizes it in this second version as dialogue by Hank himself: “oh uahh, I’ve planned that for ages, all my friends know it” in lines 232–33. Thus, Lois ends up telling a rather diŸerent sort of story the second time. She takes her cue from Cordelia, who sets the stage for her and indicates the direction her story should take. She draws heavily on input received from other participants during and following the initial telling. She shifts the humorous point away from the con¶ict between traditional and contemporary models of the marriage proposal to focus on the misunderstood proposal and the incongruity of her response to it.
Conclusions We investigated the interactional accomplishment of interlaced stories through their telling and retelling in conversation. We noted particularly the in¶uence of listeners and co-narrators on the trajectory of the ªrst tellings and the structures and integration of the retellings. Comparison of the initial telling with the retelling of the stories reveals how the tellers reconceptualize their stories based on the input they received during the ªrst telling. We observed how the tellers drop certain elements to streamline and more closely interlace their stories, to relocate the climax and to re-focus their stories to achieve diŸerent humorous ends. Clearly, tellers feel free to re-evaluate even landmark events in their personal life stories from one telling to the next, as they recontextualize their stories for diŸerent interactional goals and audiences. We have explored storytelling rights and responsibilities in interlaced stories, observing how they aŸect co-narration and listener participation. In presenting interlaced stories, the tellers may violate even otherwise clear storytelling rights, if they see ways of completing or improving a story. At the same time, storytelling rights become storytelling duties so long as both tellers are present. We have further seen how cognitive models provide eŸective tools for describing our expectations about the structure of stories and the events they describe; ICMs guide tellers in what sorts of stories are appropriate and what to include in them as well as suggesting to hearers what to anticipate in and how to respond to stories. Moreover, ICMs link our discourse analysis with current incongruity theories of humor to provide an account of why and where a given text is funny. We saw how incongruities between cognitive models for a landmark event can be manipulated for various humorous eŸects.
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Interlaced stories oŸer special perspectives on narrative interaction. The comparison of initial and retold versions of stories constitutes a privileged site for the investigation of negotiated contextualization of personal narratives. Particularly the negotiation of humor in retold interlaced stories reveals much about how tellers narrate interactively.
References Bateson, G. (1953). The position of humor in human communication (ed. by H. von Foerster). (pp.1–47). Cybernetics, Ninth Conference. New York: Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation. Bateson, G. (1972). A theory of play and fantasy. Steps to an ecology of mind (ed. by G. Bateson). (pp.177–93). San Francisco: Chandler. Blum-Kulka, S. (1993). “You gotta know how to tell a story”: Telling, tales, and tellers in American and Israeli narrative events at dinner. Language in Society, 22, 361–402. Boggs, S. T. (1985). Speaking, relating, and learning: A study of Hawaiian children at home and at school. Norwood: Ablex. Chafe, W. (1998). Things we can learn from repeated tellings of the same experience. Narrative Inquiry, 8, 269–285. Falk, J. (1980). The conversational duet. Berkeley Linguistics Society: Proceedings of the sixth annual meeting. (pp. 507–514). Fillmore, C. J. (1976). The need for a frame semantics within linguistics. Statistical Methods in linguistics. (pp. 5–29). Fillmore, C. J. (1985). Frames and the semantics of understanding. Quaderni di semantica: Rivista Internazionale di Semantica Teorica e Applicata, 6, 222–254. Freud, S. (1905 / 1960). Jokes and their relation to the unconscious. New York: Norton. Goffman, E. (1967). Interaction ritual. Chicago: Aldine. Goffman, E. (1974). Frame analysis. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Goodwin, C. (1986). Audience diversity, participation and interpretation. Text, 6, 283–316. Labov, W. (1972). Language in the inner city. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Lakoff, G. (1983). Women, fire and dangerous things. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Linde, C. (1993). Life stories. New York: Oxford University Press. Norrick, N. R. (1986). A frame-theoretical analysis of verbal humor: Bisociation as schema conflict. Semiotica, 60, 225–45. Norrick, N. R. (1993). Conversational joking. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Norrick, N. R. (1997). Twice-told tales: Collaborative narration of familiar stories. Language in Society, 26, 199–220. Norrick, N. R. (1998a). Retelling stories in spontaneous conversation. Discourse Processes, 25, 75–97. Norrick, N. R. (1998b). Retelling again. Narrative Inquiry, 8, 373–378. Norrick, N. R. (2000). Conversational narrative. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
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Norrick N. R. (2001). Discourse markers in oral narrative. Journal of Pragmatics, 33, 849–78. Quasthoff, U. M. (1980a). Gemeinsames Erzählen als Form und Mittel im sozialen Konflikt oder Ein Ehepaar erzählt eine Geschichte. (pp. 109–141). In K. Ehlich (Ed.), Erzählen im Alltag. Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp. Quasthoff, U. M. (1980b). Erzählen in Gesprächen: Linguistische Untersuchungen zu Strukturen und Funktionen am Beispiel einer Kommunikationsform des Alltags. Tübingen: Narr. Raskin, V. (1985). Semantic mechanisms of humor. Dordrecht: Reidel. Sacks, H. (1992). Lectures on Conversation, 2 (ed. by G. Jefferson). Oxford: Blackwell. Schegloff, E. E. (1992). In another context. In A. Duranti, & C. Goodwin, (Eds.), Rethinking context. (pp. 191–227). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Shuman, A. (1986). Storytelling rights. New York: Cambridge University Press. Tannen, D. (1978). The effect of expectations on conversation. Discourse Processes, 1, 203–209. Tannen, D. (1979). What’s in a frame? Surface evidence for underlying expectations. In R.O. Freedle (Ed.), New directions in discourse processing. (pp. 137–181). Norwood, NJ.: Ablex. Tannen, D. (ed.) (1993). Framing in discourse. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Watson, K. A. (1975). Transferable communicative routines: strategies and group identity in two speech events. Language in Society, 4, 53–72.
Appendix The transcription was produced from a mini-disc recording by my students and me according to the conventions summarized below. Transcription conventions Each line of transcription contains a single intonation unit. She’s out. Oh yeah? well, okay bu- but says “Oh” [and so-] [Why] her? da:mn (2 sec.) {sigh}
Period shows falling tone in the preceding element. Question mark shows rising tone in the preceding element. Comma indicates a continuing intonation, drawling out the preceding element. A single dash indicates a cutoŸ with a glottal stop. Double quotes mark speech set oŸ by a shift in the speaker’s voice. Square brackets on successive lines mark beginning and end of overlapping talk. colon marks unusual length in preceding vowel Numbers in parentheses indicate timed pauses. Curly braces enclose editorial comments and untranscribable elements.
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44
Lois: Cordelia: James: Emma: Cordelia: Emma:
Lois: Emma: James: Emma: Lois: James: Cordelia: Lois: Cordelia: James: Cordelia:
James: Cordelia:
. . . I said to Hank, I bet it was exactly that night. it was exactly that night. that’s great. {clapping his hands} and you should, you should hear the story of the ehm proposal {laughing} yeah that, I mean this is so funny, ‘cause the two of them were proposed to within I don’t know, [three] [twenty-four hours] two days, yeah Oh really? It was so funny. It was so funny. fantastic. yeah, (1 sec.) we had the dramatic version, they had the- what is it? the romantic, [slash funny] [the romantic] {general laughter} let’s have it then well, I don’t know, for some reason Ernie had to move out ªrst and then two days, we were both kind of you know on the the verge of a nervous breakdown, to realize that maybe it wasn’t a good idea, {chuckles} I went to him and I wanted to talk eh with him about some problems, we were having and he kind of thought I wanted to break up or something, I don’t know anyway, he moved out, and then (3 sec.) well, he realized it was the wrong idea {laughing} to move out yeah, yeah yeah, and then, he proposed in a park in Stuttgart, it was really cute, in a little hut, on a ehm children’s
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45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88
what is it? Emma: [playground] Lois: [playground] Cordelia: yeah, on a playground, we sat like this in one of these little huts and we had a little ehm, well, candles and everything and we were just, I just went there to have a talk with him you know, to know, what he was going to do, if he was going to come back or you know something like that and then he justEmma: and it [rained] Cordelia: [proposed] and [it was raining like hell] James: [o:hh] Cordelia: [yeah, it was raining] James: [o:hh], oh God, it’s like a ªlm. Emma: [yeah.] Cordelia: [yeah,] and our poor dog, I always had to look at Spot, you know, because the hut was so small, so the dog had to stand outside in the rain. Emma and James: {laughing} Cordelia: and the ears like that Emma: {laughing} (6 sec.) Lois: and Hank and me, we we’re sitting ehm at home, waiting f- you know, eh, uh, and when Ernie did didn’t come home, I thought: “okay, he made it”. or “they made it.” James: uehh {laughing} Emma: Ernie had moved to them Lois: yeah, exactly James: Oh, really? Emma: and they were there waiting for him. James: Oh God, that’s a great [story.] Cordelia: [mmh,] well, it was (2 sec.) Lois: yeah, in the end, it turned out to be really romantic, didn’t it? James: {laughs}
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89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132
Emma: and then it really spoiled [Hank’s plan to propose to Lois] Lois: [Hank’s (1 sec.) yeah] Cordelia: yeah. {general laughter} James: Oh no, he’d, he had already planned it? Lois: He had planned it for ages, you know. James: [oh no:] Lois: [he’d told his friends and stuŸ,] and the, the moment he asked me, I just didn’t get it, you know, so, because it was our ehm anniversary, you know, when- the day we met. James: mmh Lois: and I gave him a ring, you know, and he opened the little box and he looked at me and said: {door bell ringing}”you know, but now, now you’ve you’ve got to marry me” and I said: “yeah, sure, yeah, yeah!” and he was like: “no, do you want to marry me?” {squeaking door} James and Cordelia: {laughing} Lois: yea:h. and he was like: “you got it all wrong, you know, that’s because of Ernie.” because I was so ehm preoccupied with Ernie and Cordelia’s thing that I didn’t really, I didn’t think that there would be something s- serious going on in my relationship. James: that’s neat. oh that is terrible. Lois: so it took him a third time to to to make me ehm realize that this is a serious proposal [oh my God] James: [so you eventually] got it? Lois: yeah, I got it. Cordelia: yeah and then you’d you didn’t say that you said: “you don’t have to do this just because [of Ernie”] James: [oh no:] Lois: and he was like: “uahh” and he, {laughing and slapping her thighs} James: Oh no, that’s terrible!
Interaction in the telling and retelling of interlaced stories 281
133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168
Lois: James: Emma: James:
yeah that’s terrible. {squeaking door} how funny. yeah, that’s funny.{laughing} that’s a gathat’s a great combination of [stories that is.] Emma: [yeah, isn’t it?] and we met like a few days later at a friend’s house, the three of us, and this friend, and they were both telling their stories and then I Lois: yeah Emma: knew already that Lois had been asked too, and I kind of Lois: yah {laughing} Emma: pushed her and said:. “now, come on.” Lois: {slapping her thighs} Emma: and then Lois started to tell this long story of how they went and had dinner on their anniversary. and ehm we thought, you know, we thought the punchline was somewhere else. James: yeah Emma: because he surprised her with a certain restaurant and we thought: “ah that was it, that was the story.” Cordelia: {laughing} Emma: that was, you know {laughing} but then, it went on and on and ªnally it was the proposal and we were all {gasping} {general laughter} Lois: Steven couldn’t believe it, you know. Emma: he was so envious. {laughing} James: that’s classic. About 19 minutes intervene, Lucy arrives
169 170 171 172 173 174
James: Lucy: James: Lucy:
have you heard the eh (2 sec.) story? the engagement story. what do you mean? no, I don’t know. the double engagement story. no. no.
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175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218
James: Lucy: James: Lucy:
it’s a peach. oh no it is total quality. well, tell me, I didn’t know. Cordelia: it’s really strange, you know, Ernie and I quarreled, oh we didn’t really quarrel. I wanted a serious talk, and he moved out. right. and then two days or three days, I don’t remember, later, we decided to have a talk, and we met in a little park, Lucy: o:h Cordelia: and then, when I got there, he asked me to- if I wanted to be his wife. you know, so he had really decided it wasn’t a good idea. yes, and then mea- meanwhile, he was staying at Hank’s and Lois’ place, you know, and ehm yeah Lois: yeah Cordelia: you- your turn. Lucy: your part, your part Lois: {clearing her throat} uah, and and the thing was we actually at that, you know, at that night we were sitting there waiting whether Ernie would come back or not. and he didn’t. so, we knew. Lucy: it was good news, yeah Lois: and the next day, Hank and me, we had our anniversary, Lucy: yeah. Lois: and Hank asked me whether I I’d wanted to become his wife, you know. Lucy: no? Lois: and at ªrst I just didn’t get it, you know. Lucy: yeah Lois: so he opened his present he said:
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219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238
Lucy: Lois:
Lucy: Lois:
Lucy: James: Lucy:
“you know, but now you have to marry me.” {gasps} [o:h] {very high pitch} [“yeah sure, sure”] “no, no, no, no. do you want to marry me?” and “yeah, of course, I mean, you must know that, yeah, sure” and then he, he ha- had a third try and then I realized and then I said: “you don’t have to do that, just because Ernie asked Cordelia” {gasps} “oh uahh, I’ve planned that for ages, all my friends know it, how can you say that?” oh no:, o:h fantastic, it’s great isn’t it? that’s- tha- I can’t believe it.
Chapter 12
Narrative reconstructions of past experiences Adjustments and modiªcations in the process of recontextualizing a past experience* Susanne Günthner
In order to reconstruct past events, speakers often make use of narrative genres. Hereby, narrators decontextualize past experiences from their original context and recontextualize them in a new communicative context. In this process of recontextualiziation, the original experience is getting transformed according to generic conventions, situative constraints, intentions of the narrators, reactions of the recipients, etc. On the basis of an original interaction and two diŸerent narrative reconstructions of this complaint by the same speaker, I will analyze modiªcations of the original complaint which the speaker makes use of in the process of de- and recontextualizing the particular interactive event. The analysis reveals how speakers present one and the same communicative event in diŸerent ways — adjusting their narrative performances to the situation at hand, to interactive aims and to reactions of the participants.
Introduction: Complaint stories and the narrative reconstruction of misbehavior In complaining about the misbehavior of third persons, speakers in everyday informal conversations often make use of narrative reconstructions, i.e. of complaint stories.1 Complaint stories belong to the “family” of “reconstructive communicative genres” (Bergmann/Luckmann 1995), which recontextualize past experience in the social-communicative present time (telling about past * I would like to thank John Gumperz and Gene Lerner for their comments on a previous version of this chapter.
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experiences cp. chapter 10). According to Sacks (1968–72/92) these are “big packages”, or relatively long sequences of talk. The “participation framework” of complaint stories includes: a. The narrator and complainant, who appears as protagonist in the narrative. This protagonist is the victim of some wrongdoing in the storyworld. b. The recipients of the complaint story, who are not part of the storyworld and were not witnesses of the events being reconstructed. c. The antagonist and wrongdoer, who harmed, unjustly attacked, or wronged the protagonist and is not present in the narrating situation. The antagonist’s behavior, which is presented as morally inadequate, forms the focus of the narrative.2 I will argue that narrators of complaint stories not only reconstruct a third persons’ behavior as a wrongdoing, but they also stage this past experience as a “little show”, presenting it as something for the recipients “to re-experience, to dwell on, to savor” (GoŸman 1986 [1974]: 506). The lively staging of the past event is — as will be shown — an ideal device with which to persuade the coparticipants of the accuracy of the narrator’s own evaluation of the portrayed misbehavior and to evoke their emotional alignment. Complaint stories, however, are not mere reconstructions of past events, but are always modiªcations of the original experience: Narrators decontextualize (Bauman/Briggs 1990) past experiences, such as the wrongdoing of others’, from their original context and recontextualize them in a new communicative setting.3 Moments of past experience are thus severed from their original interconnections (Stierle 1979) and are placed into a new context. As Walter Benjamin (1955: 230) once pointed out: “Traces of the narrator stick to every narrative just as traces of the potter’s hand stick to his pottery-bowl” (own translation). In this chapter, I will argue that not only traces of the narrator, but also traces of the interactive context in which a narrative is told, stick to every narrative.
Two narrative reconstructions of the same reproach In general, it is di¹cult to detect which are the “traces” of the narrator or those of the interactive context, and to determine how the narrator has adjusted the reconstruction to the situation at hand, since we (as analysts) cannot compare the reconstructed event to the original one (for retellings cp. also Chapter 11).
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In other words, if we want to analyze complaint stories, we usually cannot get a hold of the original interaction which forms the source for the narrative reconstruction. This time, however, we are lucky enough to have a recording of the original interaction as well as two diŸerent narrative reconstructions by the same speaker. The original text is a message left on an answering machine. Sara’s neighbor complains that she “aims her lamp every night at his apartment”. A few hours after Sara has checked to her answering machine, she calls her mother and reconstructs the neighbor’s message and her further meeting with him — in the form of a complaint story. One year later, in informal dinner conversation among friends, Sara uses the genre of the complaint story once more to reconstruct her experience with the neighbor. We shall look at the original version of the neighbor’s message on Sara’s answering machine before analyzing Sara’s reconstructions and modiªcations of the original text, and thus look at the process of de- and recontextualizing a particular interactive event.4 LAMPE (ANRUFBEANTWORTER) 1N: hhh’ guten Abend Frau=Mai er? 2 hh’ ich bin de Nachbar vom Vorderhaus. (-) 3 hh’ vom Haus Nummer DREI. 4 hh’ und eh: wi:r hh’ (-) FRA:gen=uns=jetzt, 5 wa rum Sie (.) jeden Abend h’ Ihre LAMPE da, (.) 6 gegen unser Haus RICHTEN. 7 hh’ des STÖRT uns also GA:NZ emPFINDlich. 8 und selbscht nachts also im- in- in- in- im Schlafzimmer 9 stört des geWALTig. 10 d- die (Außen) vorne eh die ANDERN sind auch schon zie:mlich (-) 11 hh’ AUFGE BRACHT. 12 wir möchten doch bitt EN daß Sie die 13 die LAMPE hh’ nach ner andern Richtung hh’ eh STELLEN. 14 daß es (also ni- also) nicht also angeSTRAHLT werden. 15 hh’ wir wärn SEHR dankbar dafür hh’= 16 wieder hörn. LAMP (ANSWERING MACHINE) 1N: hhh’ good evening Mrs. Maier? 2 hh’ I am your neighbor from the front building. (-) 3 hh’ from house number three.
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4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16
hh’ and eh: we: hh’ (-) were wondering now, why you aim (.) your lamp every evening, (.) at our house. hh’ this bothers us ve:ry much. and even at night well into- in- in- in- into our bed room this disturbs us terribly. th- the (outside) infront eh the others are also quite (-) hh’ upset. we would like to ask you to aim hh’ the lamp hh’ in another direction. so that it (well no- well) we do not get shone upon. hh’ we would be very thankful for that hh’ good bye.
After the opening sequence ”hhh’ guten Abend Frau=Mai er?” (“hhh’ good evening Mrs. Maier”; line 1), the neighbor identiªes himself by saying “ich bin de Nachbar vom Vorderhaus. (-) vom Haus Nummer DREI.” (“I am your neighbor from the front building hh’ from house number three.”; lines 2–3). This (somewhat) anonymous identiªcation stands in striking asymmetry to the fact that he has addressed the called person by name “Frau=Mai er”. After his unspeciªed identiªcation as a member of a social group (that of the neighbors), he then provides the “kernel of the message” (Knoblauch 1995: 187Ÿ) and switches from referring to himself as “I” to presenting himself as part of a collective “we”: “wi:r hh’ (-) FRA:gen=uns=jetzt, wa rum Sie (.) jeden Abend h’ Ihre LAMPE da, (.) gegen unser Haus RICHTEN.” (“we hh’ (-) were wondering now, why you aim (.) your lamp every evening, (.) at our house.”; lines 4–6). The extreme case formulation and hyperbolic expression “jeden Abend” (“every evening”; line 5) portrays Sara’s wrongdoing as persistent and systematic. By referring to the other people living in his house, who are all “AUFGE BRACHT.” (“upset”; line 11), the neighbor backs his complaint. After his reproach, he — in the name of the collective — asks Sara to change her behavior: “wir möchten doch bitt EN daß Sie die-> die LAMPE hh’ nach ner andern Richtung hh’ eh STELLEN.” (“we would like to ask you to aim the lamp hh’ in another direction”; lines 12–13). About an hour after Sara has listened to her messages, she calls her mother (Ulla) and reconstructs the neighbor’s call. What “traces of the narrator” can we detect? How does the narrator transform the original utterances in the process of de-contextualization and narrative re-contextualization? We shall now look at the beginning of the narrative and thus at the reconstructed form of the neighbor’s message on the answering machine:
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LAMPE (I) (TELEFONGESPRÄCH) 20Sara: MI:R isch grad WAS PASSIERT.(.) U:N GLAUBLICH. 21 i bin grad zrück(.)komme, 22 und hi dann war auf meim 23 ne Nachricht (0.5) von nem Typ, (-) 24 der sagt, 25 hh’ ICH BIN (-) DER ^NACHBAR. 26 UN SO GEHTS ^NICHT WEITER. 27 SIE LASSEN NACHTS IMMER EIN ^LICHT AN. 28 und da können wir nicht SCHL A:FEN. 29 WARUM STELLEN SIE IHR LICHT IMMER SO HIN.> 30 DAß ES in unSER SCHLAFzimmer REIN LEUCHTET.> 31Ulla: bei dir oder bei dene? 32Sara: bei ^MI::R. 33Ulla: ha sag [a=^MÕ:::L.] 34Sara: [ so en] DEPP. 35Sara: ond hat kein Name GSAGT; 36 und dann bin i ins Vorderhaus; (-) 37 ond hab einfach da DURCHklingelt, LAMP (I) (TELEPHONE INTERACTION) 20Sara: something just happened to me.(.)unbelie:vable 21 I just got back (.) home 22 and hee then there was a message on my 23 heehee(0.5) from a guy, (-) 24 he goes, 25 hh’ I am (-) your neighbor. 26 and it cannot go on like this anymore. 27 you leave your light on every night. 28 and we cannot slee:p. 29 why do you always position your light in such a way.> 30 that it shines directly into our bedroom.> 31Ulla: at your place or at theirs? 32Sara: at mi:ne. 33Ulla: ha un[belie:::vable.] 34Sara: [ what an] idiot 35Sara: and he didn’t leave his name; 36 and then I went over to the front building; (-) 37 and just rang every doorbell,
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Contrary to JeŸerson’s (1988) ªndings in “trouble telling”, narrators of complaint stories often initiate the storytelling themselves, and instead of sending out some “ambiguously premonitory utterances” to ªnd out if the recipient is willing to attend to the trouble telling, speakers (and thus trouble tellers) in complaint stories proceed rather directly to the storytelling — often without leaving the recipient a chance to indirectly back out.5 Already in the introduction “MI:R isch grad WAS PASSIERT. (.) U:N GLAUBLICH.” (“something just happened to me.(.) unbelie:vable.”; lines 20–21), the speaker announces something “unusual” to come, and thus contextualizes what the recipient has to expect (Sacks 1968–72/92). The laughter particles inserted in lines 22–23 frame the narrator’s aŸective stance: Something funny or even ridiculous is being contextualized. Sara also builds up the scene for the unbelievable event to happen (lines 21–23). By referring to the caller as “Typ” (“guy”; line 23) she categorizes him in a negative way from the beginning. In comparing the neighbor’s original message with the narrator’s reproduction, we ªnd modiªcations on various levels: i. Code-switching: In the original text, the neighbor speaks in the local, Southern German variety. In the reconstruction, however, the narrator reanimates the neighbor in Standard German and thus builds up a contrast between her own and her mother’s variety (Southern German dialect) and that of the antagonist (Standard German). The reconstruction of the neighbor’s utterance in the Standard variety of German creates a distinction between “us” (who speak the local dialect variety) and “him” (who speaks Standard German). ii. Prosody: The reanimated voice of the neighbor is characterized by a mannered way of pronouncing. We have dense accentuation — a kind of “staccato” rhythm6 — and a hyper- distinct way of articulating: “ WARUM STELLEN SIE IHR LICHT IMMER SO HIN. DAß ES in unSER SCHLAFzimmer REIN LEUCHTET.>” (“ why do you position your light in such a way. that it shines into our bed room>”, lines 29–30). Nearly every syllable is accentuated. This combination of Standard German with a highly distinct pronunciation and a dense accentuation indicates “monitored speech” (Mitchell-Kernan 1972: 177) and contributes to stylizing the reported character as an “oversensitive pedant”. The reconstructed reproach is also uttered with an increase in volume. It shows a high pitch register and large and expressive ¶uctuations in the pitch
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movement. These prosodic features, which are not part of the original utterance, function to stylize the reanimated character and his voice as angry and annoyed. Thus, we can observe how prosodic features are used to contextualize aŸective stances.7 In this reconstruction of the neighbor’s reproach, we not only “hear” the voice of the neighbor, but we also “hear” the narrator’s evaluation of the reported utterance as exaggerated, pedantic or even ridiculous. Several voices are superimposed on one utterance, and we can observe what Bakhtin (1981) calls “parodistic stylization”: “the speaker’s expressivity penetrates through the boundaries” (Bakhtin 1986: 92) of the speaking subjects and spreads to the other’s speech, by transmitting it in a caricatured way.8 The reported utterance shows two diŸerent perspectives at the same time: the reproachful voice of the neighbor and the condemnation of this complaint by the narrator. The narrator not only re-animates the neighbor as a character in her story; she also communicates her evaluation of his complaint as exaggerated and even ridiculous. We have what Bakhtin (1981: 304–305) calls a “hybrid construction”, i.e. “an utterance that belongs, by its grammatical (syntactic) and compositional markers, to a single speaker, but that actually contains mixed within it two utterances, two speech manners, two styles, two ‘languages’, two semantic and axiological belief systems”. The narrator’s implicit voice and her evaluation of the neighbor’s speech invites her recipient to communicate her indignation at the neighbor’s behavior. Ulla’s aŸectively marked sign of disapproval “ha sag a=^MÕ:::L” (“ha unbelie:::vable”; line 33) displays her orientation towards the narrator’s stance and thus signals her alignment. The lengthening of the vowel (“=^MÕ:::L”), the marked rise-fall intonation contour as well as the formula itself (“ha sag a=^MÕ:::L”) function as typical indignation markers.9 The narrator’s mise en scène has been successful in evoking a shared stance towards the portrayed character and his behavior.10 Direct quoting in this narrative is not only a way to claim authenticity but it is also a stylized, theatrical device used for dramatization: It creates involvement and invites the recipient to display alignment and indignation.11 Classical rhetoric acknowledged this double function of the sermocinatio — the staging of dialogues. The scenic construction “of conversations among real persons” (Lausberg 1960: 408) was not only regarded as a technique for providing evidentia but at the same time as an important persuasive technique, a “vivid re-presentation” for the purpose of arousing the emotions of the listeners, placed in the role of eyewitnesses. As Quintilian (1972/75 VIII, 3: 62) pointed out, the reconstruction of past utterances is a rhetorical
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technique that gives the recipient a chance to “re-experience” this past interaction: Confronted with fragments of past dialogues, the recipient assumes the role of an eyewitness. The lively staging of past misbehavior in complaint stories functions to build and secure solidarity among group members and to assert the reasonable character of the narrators who are portrayed as rational whereas their antagonists are characterized by their deviant behavior. By portraying the antagonists’ deviant behavior and inviting the recipients to conªrm their moral indignation at the absent party, narrators construct a normative standard of adequate behavior.12 Thus, complaint stories can be regarded as a communicative genre of “(as)sociation” (Simmel 1908/58): They are interactive means with which to achieve common judgements and aŸective evaluations about the deviant misbehavior of absent persons (Günthner 1997: 212). iii. In the narrator’s reconstruction of the neighbor’s reproach, we also ªnd modiªcations concerning the content of the message, the aŸective stance, and the aspects which are focused or backgrounded: In the reconstructed version (LAMP I), the narrator selects certain elements from the original text as being highly relevant, such as the fact that the neighbor refrained from identifying himself by name “ond hat kein Name GSAGT” (“and he didn’t give his name”; line 35). The neighbor is portrayed as an anonymous caller and, therefore, as a morally dubious person. The narrator also slightly modiªes aŸective stances: In the original version, the neighbor insinuates that Sara intentionally aimed her lamp at his bedroom (“wa rum Sie (.) jeden Abend h’ Ihre LAMPE da, (.) gegen unser Haus RICHTEN.” (“why you aim (.) your lamp every evening,(.) at our house”; lines 5–6)). In the reconstruction, this insinuation is made much stronger. Sara reproduces the neighbor in such a way that he reproaches her for purposely shedding light into his bedroom: “ WARUM STELLEN SIE IHR LICHT IMMER SO HIN. DAß ES in unSER SCHLAFzimmer REIN LEUCHTET.>” (“ why do you position your light in such a way. that it shines into our bed room>”, lines 29–30). Furthermore, certain parts of the original version are not mentioned in the reconstruction: Whereas in the original complaint, the neighbor claims to be the house representative and emphasizes that all the other people living in his house are also very ”AUFGE BRACHT” (“upset”; line 11), this part is missing in the reconstruction. The animated character is no longer a representative of the house community, but speaks for himself only (or as part of a couple). Thus, although the narrator uses the neighbor’s original speech as her source, she exploits it to suit her own purposes: The quoted complaint is
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tainted by her evaluation of the caller and his behavior. This example demonstrates that in restaging past utterances, speakers not only signal whose voice is being quoted and what type of activity the quoted character is aiming at, but, at the same time, reporters comment on the reported utterances and provide what Vološinov (1929/86: 115) calls “speech about speech, utterance about utterance”.13 Indexical devices, such as prosody, voice quality, and codeswitching play important roles. The narrator de-contextualizes the “words” of the original speaker from their embedding context and re-contextualizes them in the context at hand. Comparing the reconstruction with the original words, we can observe how the reporter remodels the past text according to the situative communicative intention and imprints her perspective onto the reconstructed event. Thus, one cannot divorce the reported speech from the reporting context. As Vološinov (1929/86: 153) pointed out: “Meanwhile, the true object of inquiry ought to be precisely the dynamic interrelationship of these two factors, the speech being reported (the other person’s speech) and the speech doing the reporting (the author’s speech). After all, the two do in actual fact exist, function, and take shape only in their interrelation, not on their own, the one apart from the other”. Traditionally, it is assumed that in using direct speech (in opposition to indirect speech) “the reporter-speaker does not have the option of communicating a comment on the content of the reported speech as s/he utters the direct quote, because (…) not only the form and the content of the reported speech, but also the non-verbal messages accompanying it, originate from the reported speaker” (Li 1986: 39).14 However, the quoted speech in LAMP I 25Sara: 26 27 28 29 30
hh’ ICH BIN (-) DER ^NACHBAR. UN SO GEHTS ^NICHT WEITER. SIE LASSEN NACHTS IMMER EIN ^LICHT AN. und da können wir nicht SCHL A:FEN. WARUM STELLEN SIE IHR LICHT IMMER SO HIN.> DAß ES in unSER SCHLAFzimmer REIN LEUCHTET.>
25Sara: 26 27 28 29 30
hh’ I am (-) your neighbor. and it cannot go on like this anymore. you leave your light on every night. and we cannot slee:p. why do you always position your light in such a way.> that it shines directly into our bedroom.>
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clearly demonstrates that even in direct speech, the reporter is able to incorporate and contextualize her interpretation, evaluation, and aŸective stance towards the reported dialogue. Simple dichotomies of direct versus indirect speech unduly reduce the complexities of re-staging past dialogues (Günthner 1996; 1999). About a year after the original call (i.e. the neighbor’s call on Sara’s answering machine) took place, Sara reconstructs this event, again.15 This time, the reconstruction (LAMP II) is embedded in dinner conversation among friends. An important sequential diŸerence between the ªrst reconstruction (LAMP I) and this second one (LAMP II) is that the latter is told as the second narrative in a series of “bad experiences with neighbors”. Ira has just ªnished her story about the “terrible” behavior of her neighbors, when Sara starts to reconstruct her neighbor’s call: LAMPE II 1Ira: 2 3 4Sara: 5 6 7Ira: 8Ira: 9Fritz: 10Sara: 11Sara: 12 13 14 15 16Ira: 17Sara: 18 19 20 21Ira:
das fand ich ziemlich MIES. weil die waren- die hatten halt wirklich nichts zu TUN. (-) ich hatte in meiner alten Wohnung gegenüber so=en alten (.) TYP, (-) Rentner, der hat sich bei[meiner .] [hahahahahahahahahahahihihihihihihihihihi] hahaha[ha] [haha [haha hahahaha] [ah NEIN. des] ªng an. da war auf meinem Anrufbeantworter war ne Beschwerde von(ihm). hier ist Ihr Nach BAR, Sie l- leuchten NACHTS mit (.) I- Ihrer L- Lampe in mein Schla:f(.)zimmer REIN. unter LAS.sen SIE. DAS. HM. (ja) KEIN. NA.ME NICHTS. dann bin ich rüber, un- und hab a- alle durchgeklingelt, bis ich diesen (.) HERRN rausgeklingelt hatte= =JA.
LAMP II 1Ira:
I found this pretty rotten behavior.
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2 3 4Sara: 5 6 7Ira: 8Ira: 9Fritz: 10Sara: 11Sara: 12 13 14 15 16Ira: 17Sara: 18 19 20 21Ira:
because they were- they really had nothing else to do. (-) I once had just across from my old apartment an old (.) guy, (-) a senior citizen, he complained to [my .] [hahahahahaheeheehee] hahaha[ha] [haha[haha hahahaha] [ah no. it] started like this. on my answering machine there was once a complaint from (him). this is your neighbor, at night (.) you sh- shine y- your l- lamp into my bed (.)room. stop doing that. hm (yeah) no name nothing. then I went over there, an- and rang the bell at e- each apartment, until I (.) found this gentleman= =yeah.
As in LAMP I, the neighbor in LAMP II is categorized as a “Typ” (“guy”), but now, the narrator adds a comment about his age: “alter (.) TYP” (“old guy”; line 4). The mere mention of an old guy — a senior citizen — complaining to Sara’s landlady about Sara (lines 4–6) provokes laughter. This reaction is grounded in various factors: First of all, Sara’s preface to the story is already accompanied by laugh particles and thus indicates that something “funny” is to be reconstructed and that laughter is expected from the recipients. Furthermore, the introduction of the character as an “alter (.) TYP, (-) Rentner” (“an old guy, (-) a senior citizen”; lines 4–5), who complained to her landlady is situated in the context of friends talking about “strange experiences with their neighbors”. It evokes associations of “a weird, cranky old guy” and invites expectations of an amusing episode. Finally, this reconstruction is embedded in an informal conversation over dinner-context in which the participants laugh a lot and invitations to join in the laughter are readily followed. Thus, due to the situational and sequential environment, this reconstruction shows a diŸerent design from the ªrst reconstruction in LAMP I: Now the narrative is being transformed into the second story in a series of anecdotes about ‘strange neighbors and their misbehavior’.
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Starting in line 12, Sara reconstructs the message on her answering machine. Again, the narrator uses reported speech to animate the neighbor (the antagonist in the story). And again, we can observe how the reported speech is intertwined with the reporting context: In recontextualizing the neighbor’s complaint within the dinner conversation among friends and their stories about bad experiences with neighbors, Sara adapts sequences of her neighbor’s original talk to her own communicative aims in the present context. Comparing this reconstruction with the neighbor’s original message, again, we can detect various modiªcations on diŸerent levels: i. Code-switching: Even though the neighbor is — as in LAMP I — animated in Standard German, this time, code-switching into Standard German has a diŸerent function: Whereas in LAMP I the neighbor’s Standard variety was built in to contrast with the dialect variety of the interactants (Sara and her mother), in LAMP II, where all the participants of the dinner conversation (Sara, Ira, and Fritz) speak Standard German, the neighbor’s Standard German variety is not marked. These two examples (in LAMP I and LAMP II) of the narrator switching into Standard German to animate the antagonist reveal that one cannot attribute a referential and de-contextual meaning to indexical signs and contextualization cues (Gumperz 1982), i.e. there is no one-to-one relationship between a certain indexical device and a speciªc meaning or function. Instead, the particular function of indexical devices can only be inferred from within their contextual usage, and thus the same linguistic devices — such as code-switching into Standard German — can have diŸerent functions depending upon to the interactive context in which they are used. ii. Prosody: In LAMP II we miss the pronounced, hyper distinct articulation which was used to stylize the neighbor in LAMP I. This time his voice sounds reproachful, excited, and unfriendly, but not as mannered as in LAMP I. iii. Further modiªcations: Again, the fact that the neighbor did not identify himself by name, is focused: “(ja) KEIN. NA.ME NICHTS.” (“(yeah) no name nothing”; line 17). The dense accentuation marks emphasize and underline the relevance of this statement. As in LAMP I, the insinuation that Sara purposely shed light into the neighbor’s bedroom is focused on much more than in the caller’s original reproach. An important development in the modiªcation of the texts relates to the participation status: Whereas in the original message, the neighbor introduces himself as the mouthpiece of a collective (the house community), in LAMP I
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he turns into an individual and the representative of a couple. Finally, in LAMP II, he speaks only for himself, as an individual. Any hints about other members in the house are absent. This modiªcation of the neighbor’s participation status is in keeping with the preface in LAMP II: The character of an “old type — a senior citizen” is the focus of the story. Furthermore, whereas the neighbor’s original message revealed formulas of common courtesy (“hh’ wir wärn SEHR dankbar dafür hh’”; “hh’ we would be very thankful for that hh’”; line 15) and the call ended with the conventionalized closing formula “wiederhörn” (“good bye”; line 16), these elements are no longer part of the reconstruction at hand. Thus the original utterance: LAMPE 12Sara: 13 14 15 12Sara: 13 14 15
wir möchten doch bitt EN daß Sie die die LAMPE hh’ nach ner andern Richtung hh’ eh STELLEN. daß es (also ni- also) nicht also angeSTRAHLT werden. hh’ wir wärn SEHR dankbar dafür hh’= we would like to ask you to aim the lamp hh’ in another direction. so that it (well no- well) we do not get shone upon. hh’ we would be very thankful for that hh’=
is turned into a short unmitigated demand: LAMPE II 15Sara: unter LAS.sen SIE. DAS. 15Sara: stop doing that
The dense accentuation makes the request sound insistent and supports the bluntness of the neighbor’s demand. This modiªcation is grounded in the contextual framing of the narrative at hand: This time the narrative is presented as the second story within a series of anecdotes about “bad experiences with neighbors”, and the second narrator (Sara) must achieve a certain coherence with the ªrst story, in which the narrator (Ira) was the “victim” of impertinent neighbors. The sequential organization as a second story, thus, in¶uences the narrative gestalt of LAMP II: the neighbor has turned from the representative of a house community who utters a reproachful complaint with conventionalized forms of politeness to a hypersensitive “petty bourgeois” and ªnally to an “impertinent, old weird guy”.
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Conclusion The comparison of the two narrative reconstructions of the neighbor’s reproach illustrates how a narrator can provide diŸerent versions of one and the same event, and how the presented versions are adjusted to the interactive context, the overall topic, and the interactive aims. DiŸerent aspects are focused, diŸerent details are selected, and the antagonist is stylized in somewhat diŸerent ways.16 In recontextualizing utterances, speakers not only dissociate certain sequences of talk from their original contexts and incorporate them into new contexts, they also adapt them to their own functional intentions and communicative aims. Thus, one can argue that everyday narratives are multivoiced and dialogical (Bakhtin 1986; Linell 1998), insofar as the narrator’s reconstruction of the past event and the interactive context in which the reconstruction takes place are deeply intertwined. In this process of recontextualization, we ªnd both “traces of the narrator” (Walter Benjamin) as well as traces of the situative context.
Notes 1. For complaint stories cf. Günthner (1997; 2000). 2. Cf. also parallels to what Stimson/Webb (1975) and Dingwall (1977) describe and analyze as “atrocity stories”. 3. For “recontextualizations in discourse” cf. also Bauman and Briggs (1990), Linell (1998), and Sarangi (1998). 4. Cf. also Günthner (2000). 5. Cf. Günthner (1997). 6. Cf. Müller (1991). 7. Cf. Günthner (1999) on the use of prosodic means in reported speech. 8. Cf. Schwitalla (1997); Günthner (1999). 9. Cf. also Günthner (1997; 2000) and Christmann/Günthner (1999) on contextualizing indignation in everyday interactions. 10. Cf. also QuasthoŸ (1980) on recipients’ reactions in everyday narratives. 11. Cf. Tannen (1989) who points out that reported speech is “constructed dialogue” and in narratives the major function of reconstructing dialogue is to maintain the recipients’ involvement and not to be “faithful” to the original utterance. Cf. also Brünner (1991). 12. For moral communication cf. Bergmann/Luckmann (1999).
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13. Cf. also Couper-Kuhlen (1997) and Günthner (1999). 14. Cf. also Sanders/Redeker (1996: 312f.) who claim that “the representation of an utterance in direct mode is subjective with respect to the quoted speaker: it is strictly bound to a certain character in the text. (…) the narrator’s interference with the representation is minimal.” As our data shows, the narrator’s interference in direct reported speech can be rather strong, especially once we take prosody and other indexical signs (i.e. code-switching, tone of voice, etc.) into account. 15. As Norrick (2000: 68) points out, work on retold stories in spomtaneous conversation is very rare; scholars who dealt with retold stories generally worked on ellicited stories rather than naturally occurring narratives. 16. Cf. also Ervin-Tripp/Küntay (1997) and Goodwin (1997).
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Goodwin, M. H. (1997). Towards families of stories in context. Journal of Narrative and Life History, 7, 107–112. Gumperz, J. J. (1982). Discourse strategies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Günthner, S. (1996). Stilisierungsverfahren in der Redewiedergabe. In B. Sandig, & M. Selting (Eds.), Sprech- und Gesprächsstile. Berlin: de Gruyter. Günthner, S. (1997). Complaint stories. Constructing emotional reciprocity among women. In H. Kotthoff, & R. Wodak (Eds.), Communicating gender in context. (pp. 179–218). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Günthner, S. (1999). Polyphony and the ‘layering of voices’ in reported dialogues: An analysis of the use of prosodic devices in everyday reported speech. Journal of Pragmatics, 31, 685–708. Günthner, S. (2000). Vorwurfsaktivitäten in der Alltagsinteraktion. Grammatische, prosodische, rhetorisch-stilistische und interaktive Verfahren bei der Konstitution kommunikativer Muster und Gattungen. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Jefferson, G. (1988). On the sequential organization of troubles-talk in ordinary conversation. Social Problems, 35(4), 418–441. Knoblauch, H. (1995). Kommunikationskultur: Die kommunikative Konstruktion kultureller Kontexte. Berlin: de Gruyter. Lausberg, H. (1960). Handbuch der literarischen Rhetorik. München: Max Hueber Verlag. Li, C. N. (1986). Direct speech and indirect speech: A functional study. In F. Coulmas, (Ed.), Direct and indirect speech. (pp. 29–45). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Linell, P. (1998). Approaching dialogue: Talk, interaction and contexts in dialogical perspectives. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Mitchell-Kernan, C. (1972). Signifying and marking: Two Afro-American speech acts. In J. J. Gumperz, & D. Hymes (Eds.), Directions in sociolinguistics. (pp. 161–180). New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston Inc. Müller, F. (1991). Metrical emphasis: Rhythmic scansions in Italian conversation. KontRI Arbeitspapier, 14. Universität Konstanz. Norrick, N. (2000). Conversational narrative: Storytelling in everyday Talk. Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Quintilianus, M. F. (1972/1975). Ausbildung des Redners, BGS, Darmstadt. Quasthoff, U. (1980). Erzählen in Gesprächen: Linguistische Untersuchungen zu Strukturen und Funktionen am Beispiel einer Kommunikationsform des Alltags. Tübingen: Narr. Sacks, H. (1968–72/1992). Lectures on conversation, 2. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. Sanders, J., & Redeker, G. (1996). Perspective and the representation of speech and thought in narrative discourse. In G. Fauconnier, & E. Sweetser (Eds.), Spaces, worlds, and grammar. (pp. 290–318). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Sarangi, S. (1998). Rethinking recontextualization in professional discourse studies: an epilogue. Text, 18(2), 301–318. Schwitalla, J. (1997). Gesprochenes Deutsch. Eine Einführung. Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag. Simmel, G. (1908/1958). „Der Streit“. In G. Simmel (Ed.), Soziologie. Untersuchung über die Formen der Vergesellschaftung. (pp. 186–255). Berlin: Dunck/Humblot.
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Stimson, G., & Webb, B. (1975). Going to see the doctor. The consultation process in general practice. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Stierle, K. (1979). Erfahrung und narrative Form. In J. Kocka, & T. Nipperday (Eds.), Erzählung in der Geschichte. (pp. 85–118). München: dtv. Tannen, D. (1989). Talking voices. Repetition, dialogue, and imagery in conversational discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Vološinov, V. N. (1929/1986). Marxism and the philosophy of language. Cambridge: MA: Harvard University Press.
Appendix: Transcription conventions [ja das] ªnde ich [du ab] (.) (-) (0.5) (??) (gestern) = =und=dann=ging= ? ´ . , word word> word word> ((cough)) > ^ no no a: NEIN so(h)o haha hoho heehee ((laughing))
conversational overlap; very short pauses of less than 0.3 sec.; short pauses of less than 0.5 sec.; pauses of 0.5 sec. and longer; unintelligible text; uncertain transcription; continuous utterances; fast tempo; intonation phrase-ªnal: rising; intonation phrase-ªnal: slightly rising; intonation phrase-ªnal: falling; intonation phrase-ªnal: slightly falling; global high pitch; global low pitch; paralinguistic and non-linguistic actions and events; accompanying paralinguistic and non-linguistic actions and events over a stretch of speech; interpretive comments over a stretch of speech; high fall; high onset; low onset; lengthening; loud voice; laughter particles during speech; syllabic laughing; description of laughter.
Index
A adolescence 115, 118, 119, 132, 140 adult-child interaction 15, 17, 52, 55, 110 animated speech 138, 140 antagonist 286, 290, 296, 298 assessment 236, 270, 272 C cascade eŸect 208, 210, 215 closing devices 41, 46, 53, 55 closings 39, 46, 51–53, 56 co-construction 149, 152, 169, 170, 173– 176, 178, 192, 263, 265 code-switching 290, 293, 296, 299 cognitive interdependence 183 cognitive models 267, 275 cognitive processes 2, 10, 110, 170, 172, 181 collaboration 11, 169, 170, 172, 174–184, 190–195, 249, 253, 260 complaint stories 285–287, 290, 292, 298, 300 complication 2, 46, 50, 95, 101–104, 107 context 5, 6, 9, 16-18, 109, 110, 145, 174, 187, 240, 244, 245, 247, 260, 277, 298, 300 contextual 3, 5, 8, 10, 17, 28, 30, 37, 136, 138, 224, 225, 246, 247, 296, 297 contextualization cues 82, 296 continuations 203 conversation 1–4, 10, 11, 56, 113–115, 141, 154, 165, 194, 195, 197–199, 219, 220, 233, 240, 241, 245, 266, 275–277, 294– 296, 299, 300 conversational stories of personal experience 17, 30, 38, 51, 53 creativity 170, 171, 177, 195, 240
D DASS 16, 34, 36, 40, 43, 44, 49 de-contextualization 288 default narrative 3 deixis 155, 158, 160 developmental process 55, 93–95, 99, 103, 107, 108 developmental theory 15, 17, 54 diegesis 154, 160 discourse acquisition support system 16, 38, 54, 94 discourse analysis 8, 89, 193, 261, 267, 275 discourse patterns 169, 170, 176, 181, 192 dissociative identity disorder 152 E elaborations 103, 203, 204, 216 elaborative questions 25, 53 embarassement 140 embedded narratives 9, 154 embeddedness 2, 4 ethnography 89, 144, 146, 219 evaluation 24, 47–50, 91, 224, 231, 232, 236, 248, 249, 257, 270, 271, 286, 291, 293, 294 external focalization 155 F familiar stories 219, 224, 241, 276 fantasy story 4, 15–20, 22, 24, 28–30, 37– 42, 45, 46, 50-55, 95, 96, 98, 99, 104–107, 109–111 focalization 155, 162 follow-up request 25 function 17, 20–23, 110, 145, 151–153, 163, 164, 190, 233, 239, 296, 298
304 Index
G gender 113–115, 119, 140, 143–147, 169, 170, 181, 183, 184, 189, 192, 193, 300 girls 9, 67, 113–122, 124, 125, 127-129, 131–136, 138–145 global pragmatic completion 201–203, 215 grounding 169 group culture 113, 115, 117, 119, 121, 122, 132, 136, 139, 143 group discussion 57, 72, 86, 87, 90 H heterodiegetic 154 highpoint 17, 50 homodiegetic 154, 157, 159, 162 humorous narratives 145, 263 humour 113–120, 122, 125, 127, 129, 134, 139, 140, 142–147, 203, 264, 265, 267– 271, 274–277 hypodiegetic narrative 155 I identity 11, 83, 87–89, 91, 119–122, 139, 145, 152, 241, 244, 261, 277 identity formation 7 institution 11, 115, 248, 259 see also institutional memory institutional thinking institutional memory 10, 243, 244, 260, 261 institutional thinking 248, 259, 260 interaction 5–10, 15–18, 56, 93, 94, 108– 111, 141, 143–146, 172–174, 219, 240, 241, 260, 261, 276, 300 see also interaction theory interactional history interactive support multi-party interaction plurilingual interaction interaction theory 15, 17, 46 interactional history 230 interactive support 15, 17, 20–22, 24, 29, 34, 36, 38, 51, 53 interjection 204, 206, 213
internal focalization 155, 162 interventions 153, 197, 198, 200, 202–206, 208–210, 215–217, 219 interview 17, 176, 181, 243, 244, 247–251, 255, 257, 259, 260 intra-group interactions 237 L language acquisition 93, 94, 109, 111 laughter 45, 47, 74, 116, 117, 119, 123, 124, 127, 129–133, 135, 137–146, 198, 219, 231, 233, 270, 278, 280, 281, 290, 295, 301 life story 54, 245, 247, 249, 261, 264, 273, 275, 276 linearity 4 M metaphor 58, 59, 69, 70, 84, 169, 170, 172, 173, 181, 192–195 middle school 58, 59, 91, 118 mini-tellings 223, 236, 238 misbehavior 285, 286, 292, 295 misplacement markers 32 moral stance 3, 4 multi-party interaction 202, 217 mutual appropriation 173 N narrative 1–11, 15–18, 29–34, 37–39, 50– 59, 63, 67, 70, 74, 81–83, 89, 91, 93–99, 101, 102–111, 113–115, 125, 140, 144, 151–165, 173, 174, 197, 198–220, 223, 224, 239–241, 243–253, 260, 261, 263, 264, 267, 276, 277, 285–288, 299–301 see also humorous narratives narrative development narrative genres narrative mode narrative perspective narrative reconstruction narrative self narrative structure narrative theory narrative tool
Index 305
narrative development 9, 15, 16, 55, 93–95, 109, 110 narrative genres 3, 4, 8, 9, 15–18, 38, 39, 51, 52, 54–56, 93, 95, 98, 103, 108, 109, 285 narrative mode 7, 58, 74, 114 narrative perspective 151, 153, 154 narrative reconstruction 169, 248, 285, 287 narrative self 151–153, 157–160, 163 narrative structure 9, 15, 16, 38, 50, 89, 93, 96, 101, 103, 104, 108, 249 narrative theory 8, 15, 17, 51, 154 narrative tool 58, 63, 67 O orientation 2, 4, 5, 88, 107, 108, 122, 124, 137, 138, 199, 202, 208, 224, 234, 249, 291 P participant roles 233 participation 62, 83, 87, 90, 115, 122, 178, 182, 197, 198, 216, 219, 223, 224, 233, 241, 245, 275, 276, 286, 296, 297 peer-group 115–117 personal experience 4, 10, 15–17, 29, 30, 38, 46, 51, 53, 54, 96, 106–108, 111, 236, 239, 260, 261 picture story 95, 96, 103 plurilingual interaction 173, 174 projection 247 prosody 10, 74, 81, 88, 290, 293, 296, 299 psychoanalytic therapy 153 punchline 230, 231, 238, 265, 271–274, 281 R re-contextualization 263, 288 reconstruction 169, 194, 248, 259, 285– 287, 290–298 reconstructive genre 246 recontextualizeable 231 relationship 118, 145, 169, 179, 183, 189-191, 233, 296 resolution 45, 95, 101, 103, 104, 106–108, 145, 146, 236
retelling 9, 95, 96, 98, 99, 157, 158, 223, 234, 238, 241, 243, 248, 263, 264, 266, 269, 271–276 retold stories 9, 221, 223, 224, 299 S scaŸolding 59, 67, 94 sequential properties 224 setting 20, 37, 46, 59, 63, 85, 96, 106, 116, 118, 151, 153, 157, 158, 160, 163, 164, 172, 243–245, 250, 255, 263, 286 sexual abuse 152, 156, 164, 165 shared stories 223–227, 230, 231, 236–240 social space 244, 245 society 5, 7, 11, 56, 90, 91, 114, 171, 193– 195, 219, 241, 261, 276, 277 sociolinguistics 300 story initiation 19, 31 see also complaint stories conversational stories of personal experience familiar stories fantasy story life story picture story retold story story preface story preface 198, 227 success 83, 84, 113, 115, 119–122, 132, 133, 136, 139, 140 T tellability 4, 236, 239, 269 tellership 3 topic development 15, 17, 52 see also topic proposals topic ratiªcation topicalization topic proposals 20–23, 25, 52, 53 topic ratiªcation 22 topicalization 25, 27, 28 V value 7, 120, 173, 264
In the series Studies in Narrative the following titles have been published thus far or are scheduled for publication: 1 2 3 4 5 6
BROCKMEIER, Jens and Donal CARBAUGH (eds.): Narrative and Identity. Studies in Autobiography, Self and Culture. 2001. vi, 307 pp. SELL, Roger D. (ed.): Children’s Literature as Communication. The ChiLPA project. 2002. xii, 352 pp. DE FINA, Anna: Identity in Narrative. A study of immigrant discourse. 2003. xiv, 252 pp. BAMBERG, Michael and Molly ANDREWS (eds.): Considering Counter-Narratives. Narrating, resisting, making sense. 2004. x, 381 pp. QUASTHOFF, Uta M. and Tabea BECKER (eds.): Narrative Interaction. 2005. vi, 305 pp. THORNBORROW, Joanna and Jennifer COATES (eds.): The Sociolinguistics of Narrative. vi + 292 pp. + index. Expected Summer 2005