Mandelbaum1993
| Mandelbaum1993 | |
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| BibType | ARTICLE |
| Key | Mandelbaum1993 |
| Author(s) | Jenny Mandelbaum |
| Title | Assigning responsibility in conversational storytelling: the interactional construction of reality |
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| Tag(s) | EMCA, Conversation Analysis, Storytelling, Responsibility, Reality |
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| Year | 1993 |
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| Journal | Text |
| Volume | 13 |
| Number | 2 |
| Pages | 247–266 |
| URL | Link |
| DOI | 10.1515/text.1.1993.13.2.247 |
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Abstract
This study describes an interactive method for assigning responsibility and shows how proposing alternative versions of 'reality' is part of that method. In the course of assigning responsibility for an occurrence, what 'actually' happened can become an issue for participants. Conversational storytelling, the recounting of past events, provides a method for the interactive construction of two contrasting versions of 'reality' in the course of participants offering a reproach and the response to it.
Specifically, a storyteller recounts an action formulated in such a way as to be understandable as an offense. Recipients, including the blamed party, display their understanding of these events. The blamed party (or other recipients) may recount events in such a way as to include other information which provides for another agent to be recognized as the responsible party, thus exonerating the initial blamed party. Thus conversational storytelling provides an interactive method for proposing, inferring, reproposing, and inferring again, versions of 'reality'. 'Reality' is collaboratively reconstructed in order to make a point, and to conduct a social act.
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