Jenny Mandelbaum

Interpersonal activities in conversational storytelling

This paper presents a case study of a conversational storytelling in which a recipient redirects an ongoing storytelling. The storytelling begins as one which threatens to make another recipient its “butt.” In redirecting the storytelling, the “butt” is rescued. The account of how these activities are achieved indicates, first, that storytelling may be a way of accomplishing interpersonal activities, both for teller and recipients. Secondly, it demonstrates that recipient is an active participant in the storytelling, both in determining what the storytelling comes to be “about,” and in working out the interpersonal activities it performs. Conclusions are drawn about the work of storytelling in the interactive construction of experience.

Pursuing a Response by Repairing an Indexical Reference

Prior conversation analytic research has demonstrated that when, following a sequence-initiating action, a response is relevantly missing (or is forthcoming but is apparently inadequate), speakers may use a range of practices for pursuing a response (or a more adequate response). These practices—such as response prompts, preference reversals, or turn extensions—treat the missing (or inadequate) response as indicative of some problem, and they may either expose or mask the response pursuit and the problem they attempt to remediate. This article extends this prior research by showing that speakers can also use repair technology—specifically, repair of an indexical reference—as a resource for pursuing a response. It demonstrates that speakers can use repair of indexicals, particularly when no uncertainty as to the referent seems possible, in order to pursue a response while obscuring some other possible source of trouble. Initiating repair on an indexical reference in transition space claims that a missing response is due to a problem of understanding or of recognizing the reference, and by repairing it, the speaker makes available another opportunity for a response without exposing recipient disinclination as the possible source of the trouble. Likewise, repairing an indexical reference in the third turn can pursue a more adequate response, while avoiding going on record as doing so, by treating the sequence-initiating turn as the source of the trouble. We show that, by ostensibly dealing with problems of reference, repairs on indexicals manage (covertly) other more interactionally charged issues, such as upcoming disagreement or misalignment between interlocutors.

At the Intersection of Epistemics and Action: Responding with I Know

ABSTRACT We examine I know as a responding action, showing that it claims to accept the grounds of the initiating action but either resists that action as unnecessary or endorses it, depending on the epistemic environment created by the initiating action. First, in responding to actions that presume an unknowing addressee (e.g., correcting, advising), speakers deploy I know to resist the action as unnecessary while accepting its grounds. Second, in responding to actions that presume a knowing addressee (e.g., some assessments), speakers use I know to endorse the action, claiming an independently reached agreement (in this way, doing “being on the same page”). Data are in American and British English.

The use of conversational co-remembering to corroborate contentious claims:

Memory is a central epistemic resource, yet the interactional organization of shared remembering is largely unexplored. Drawing on a large corpus of video- and audio-recorded interactions in English and Russian, we examine a collection of over 50 cases in which participants are engaged in the activity of co-remembering. We show that memory formulations are commonly used as an evidential method to legitimize or support a claim or point of view in contexts of challenges, objections, disagreements, skepticism, resistance and when alternative positions are on the floor. Our study indicates that in deploying memory formulations, interactants rely on the robust character of excavatable shared past experiences to provide an upgraded epistemic claim to support a contentious stance toward an alternative position.