Mandelbaum1993

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Mandelbaum1993
BibType ARTICLE
Key Mandelbaum1993
Author(s) Jenny Mandelbaum
Title Assigning responsibility in conversational storytelling: the interactional construction of reality
Editor(s)
Tag(s) EMCA, Conversation Analysis, Storytelling, Responsibility, Reality
Publisher
Year 1993
Language
City
Month
Journal Text
Volume 13
Number 2
Pages 247–266
URL Link
DOI 10.1515/text.1.1993.13.2.247
ISBN
Organization
Institution
School
Type
Edition
Series
Howpublished
Book title
Chapter

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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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