Abstract: The study of narratives in a wide range of everyday contexts has led researchers to challenge the focus of post-Labovian research on monologic teller-led stories that were recounted to compliant and mostly silent audiences in interviews and instead to emphasize the complexity and variability of storytelling formats, their dependence on the local context of interaction, and the important role played by participant structures in their production and reception. In this chapter, we focus on stories as interactional achievements, and we therefore stress the significance of participation structure and of the conversational work done in the moment-by-moment unfolding of a story's telling. Our aim is to show how studies of storytelling have gradually moved from tellers to tellership and from story as a product to storytelling as a process. We will discuss ways in which storytellers launch, sustain and end narratives in interaction, and illustrate the role of storytellers and audiences in the unfolding of stories. In particular, we will analyze the kinds of problems that storytelling poses to tellers and audiences, the many ways in which reactions from an audience may affect storytelling, and the variability in roles that can be taken up by participants in a storytelling event.
Publication Year: 2011
Publication Date: 2011-11-24
Language: en
Type: book-chapter
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 1
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