Lee2024
| Lee2024 | |
|---|---|
| BibType | ARTICLE |
| Key | Lee2024 |
| Author(s) | Yo-An Lee |
| Title | Managing Coherence in Conversational Storytelling |
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| Tag(s) | EMCA, In press, Ethnomethodology, Conversation analysis, Storytelling, Recipient, Coherence, Topic maintenance, Conversational storytelling, Repair, Progressivity, Intersubjectivity |
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| Year | 2024 |
| Language | English |
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| Journal | Human Studies |
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| URL | Link |
| DOI | 10.1007/s10746-024-09769-8 |
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Abstract
Storytelling is a central aspect of everyday interaction, frequently observed in the routines of conversational exchanges. It involves managing multiple turns where utterances are linked to form a coherent sequence. This connectedness allows recipients to interpret a series of turns as a unified whole. However, recipients may sometimes question this coherence. Such challenges can disrupt the progressivity of storytelling, obliging tellers to resume their narratives. Following the analytic traditions of ethnomethodology and conversation analysis (CA), this study examines how topical coherence is questioned and managed in storytelling sequences when factual details and narrative content are problematized. Although CA has explored interactive storytelling, less attention has been given to the work of topical maintenance. Analyzing 27 storytelling sessions with second-language tellers, this paper reveals how recipient challenges can interrupt the story’s anticipated trajectory, and how tellers restore coherence through interactive negotiation. The findings illustrate that coherence maintenance involves more than language adjustments; it reveals the methodical nature of commonsense reasoning during conversational storytelling.
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