Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-m6dg7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-15T09:31:07.624Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Twice-told tales: Collaborative narration of familiar stories

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 February 2009

Neal R. Norrick
Neal R. Norrick
Affiliation:
Department of English, Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, IL 60115-2863, nnorrick@niu.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Consideration of twice-told tales, of narrative events built around stories already familiar to the participants, offers a special perspective on conversational storytelling, because it emphasizes aspects of narration which lie beyond information exchange, problem-solving etc. This article seeks to show that the retelling of familiar stories has at least three functions: (a) fostering group rapport, (b) ratifying group membership, and (c) conveying group values. It is shown that familiar stories exhibit characteristic structures, conditions on tellability, and participation rights. Such stories are prefaced so as to justify their retelling on the basis of the opportunity they offer for co-narration, and this in turn allows participants to modulate rapport and demonstrate group membership. (Discourse analysis, conversation, storytelling, narrative, co-narration)

Type
Research Article
Information
Language in Society , Volume 26 , Issue 2 , June 1997 , pp. 199 - 220
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1997

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Bauman, Richard (1986). Story, performance, and event. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blum-Kulka, Shoshana (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.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blum-Kulka, Shoshana, & Snow, Catherine E. (1992). Developing autonomy for tellers, tales, and telling in family narrative events. Journal of Narrative and Life History 2:187–217.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boggs, Stephen T. (1985). Speaking, relating, and learning: A study of Hawaiian children at home and at school. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.Google Scholar
Brown, Penelope, & Levinson, Stephen (1978). Universals in language usage: Politeness phenomena. In Goody, Esther N. (ed.), Questions and politeness, 56–310. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press. [Re-issued as Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987.]Google Scholar
Cederborg, Ann-Christin, & Aronsson, Karin (1994). Conarration and voice in family therapy. Text 14:345–70.Google Scholar
Chafe, Wallace (1980), ed. The Pear Stories. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.Google Scholar
Duranti, Alessandro (1986). The audience as co-author: An introduction. Text 6:239–47.Google Scholar
Erickson, Frederick (1982). Money tree, lasagna bush, salt and pepper: Social construction of topical cohesion in a conversation among Italian-Americans. In Tannen, Deborah (ed.), Analyzing discourse: Text and talk, 43–71. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Falk, Jane (1980). The conversational duet. Berkeley Linguistics Society 6:507–14.Google Scholar
Ferrara, Kathleen (1992). The interactive achievement of a sentence: Joint productions in therapeutic discourse. Discourse Processes 15:207–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferrara, Kathleen (1994). Therapeutic ways with words. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goffman, Erving (1955). On face-work. Psychiatry 18:213–31. [Reprinted in his Interaction ritual, 5–45. Chicago: Aldine, 1967.]CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Goffman, Erving (1959). The presentation of self in everyday life. Garden City, NY: Anchor.Google Scholar
Goodwin, Charles (1986). Audience diversity, participation and interpretation. Text 6:283–316.Google Scholar
Hymes, Dell (1974). Foundations in sociolinguistics: An ethnographic approach. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Hymes, Dell (1981). “In vain I tried to tell you”: Essays in native American ethnopoetics. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hymes, Dell (1985). Language, memory and selective performance: Cultee's “Salmon myth” as twice told to Boas. Journal of American Folklore 98:391–434.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Labov, William (1972). Language in the inner city. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Labov, William, & Fanshel, David (1977). Therapeutic discourse. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Labov, William, & Waletzky, Joshua (1967). Narrative analysis: Oral versions of personal experience. In Helm, June (ed.), Essays on the verbal and visual arts, 12–44. Seattle: University of Washington Press.Google Scholar
Lakoff, Robin (1973). The logic of politeness; or, minding your p's and q's. Chicago Linguistic Society 9:292–305.Google Scholar
Michaels, Sarah, & Cook-Gumperz, Jenny (1979). A study of sharing time with first grade students: Discourse narratives in the classroom. Berkeley Linguistics Society 5:647–60.Google Scholar
Norrick, Neal R. (1993). Conversational joking. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Norrick, Neal R. (1994). Involvement and joking in conversation. Journal of Pragmatics 22:409–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ochs, Elinor; Smith, Ruth; & Taylor, Carolyn (1989). Detective stories at dinner-time: Problem solving through co-narration. Cultural Dynamics 2:238–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ochs, Elinor; Taylor, Carolyn; Rudolph, Dina; & Smith, Ruth. (1992). Storytelling as a theorybuilding activity. Discourse Processes 15:37–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Polanyi, Livia (1979). So what's the point? Semiotica 25:207–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Polanyi, Livia (1981). Telling the same story twice. Text 1:315–36.Google Scholar
Polanyi, Livia (1985). Telling the American story. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.Google Scholar
Romaine, Suzanne (1984). The language of children and adolescents. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Sacks, Harvey (1974). An analysis of the course of a joke's telling. In Bauman, Richard & Joel, Sherzer (eds.), Explorations in the ethnography of speaking, 337–53. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Sacks, Harvey (1992). Lectures on conversation (2 vols.), ed. by Jefferson, Gail. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Schegloff, Emanuel A. (1987). Between micro and macro: Contexts and other connections. In Alexander, J. C. et al. (eds.), The micro-macro link, 207–34. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Schegloff, Emanuel A. (1992). In another context. In Duranti, Alessandro & Goodwin, Charles (eds.), Rethinking context, 191–227. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Schiffrin, Deborah (1984). How a story says what it means and does. Text 4:313–46.Google Scholar
Scollon, Ron, & Scollon, Suzanne B. K. (1984). Cooking it up and boiling it down: Abstracts in Athabaskan children's story retellings. In Tannen, 1984a: 173–97.Google Scholar
Sherzer, Joel (1982). Tellings, retellings and tellings within tellings: The structuring and organization of narrative in Kuna Indian discourse. In Bauman, Richard & Sherzer, Joel (eds.), Case studies in the ethnography of speaking, 249–73. Austin, TX: Southwest Educational Development Laboratory.Google Scholar
Shuman, Amy (1986). Storytelling rights. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tannen, Deborah (1978). The effect of expectations on conversation. Discourse Processes 1:203–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tannen, Deborah (1980). A comparative analysis of oral narrative strategies: Athenian Greek and American English. In Chafe, 1980:51–87.Google Scholar
Tannen, Deborah (1984a), ed. Coherence in spoken and written discourse. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.Google Scholar
Tannen, Deborah (1984b). Conversational style. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.Google Scholar
Tannen, Deborah (1984c). Spoken and written narrative in English and Greek. In Tannen, 1984a:21–41.Google Scholar
Tannen, Deborah (1986). That's not what I meant! New York: Morrow.Google Scholar
Tannen, Deboraah (1989). Talking voices: Repetition, dialogue, and imagery in conversational discourse. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Toolan, Michael J. (1988). Narrative: A critical linguistic introduction. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Watson, Karen Ann (1975). Transferable communicative routines: Strategies and group identity in two speech events. Language in Society 4:53–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar