Storytelling in Daily Life

by Langellier, Kristin M.; Peterson, Eric E.

• ISBN13: 9781592132126
• ISBN10: 159213212X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-01-01
• Publisher: Temple Univ Pr

Summary

Storytelling is perhaps the most common way people make sense of their experiences, claim identities, and "get a life." So much of our daily life consists of writing or telling our stories and listening to and reading the stories of others. But we rarely stop to ask: what are these stories? How do they shape our lives? And why do they matter? The authors ably guide readers through the complex world of performing narrative. Along the way they show the embodied contexts of storytelling, the material constraints on narrative performances, and the myriad ways storytelling orders information and tasks, constitutes meanings, and positions speaking subjects. Readers will also learn that narrative performance is consequential as well as pervasive, as storytelling opens up experience and identities to legitimization and critique. The authors' multi-leveled model of strategy and tactics considers how relations of power in a system are produced, reproduced, and altered in performing narrative. The authors explain this strategic model through an extended discussion of fami

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	vii
Part I A COMMUNICATION APPROACH TO STORYTELLING	1	(32)
1 Performing Narrative in Daily Life	7	(26)
Part II FAMILY STORYTELLING: A STRATEGY OF SMALL GROUP CULTURE	33	(124)
2 Ordering Content and Making Family Stories	39	(32)
3 Family Storytelling: Ordering Tasks in Small Group Cultures	71	(41)
4 Performing Families: Ordering Group and Personal Identities	112	(45)
Part III STORYTELLING PRACTICES: THREE CASE STUDIES	157	(86)
5 Storytelling in a Weblog: Performing Narrative in a Digital Age	159	(30)
6 Breast Cancer Storytelling: The Limits of Narrative Closure in Survivor Discourse	189	(30)
7 Performing Narrative on Stage: Identity and Agency in an Autobiographical Performance	219	(24)
Coda	243	(2)
Notes	245	(10)
References	255	(14)
Index	269