Exploring Affiliation in the Reception of Conversational Complaint Stories

Abstract

This chapter investigates the linguistic resources deployed by recipients of conversational complaint stories to show affiliation (or not) with the teller, affiliation being understood as the display of support and endorsement for a conveyed affective stance, here typically anger and/or indignation. Among the verbal means for affiliative reception are claims of understanding, congruent negative assessments and by-proxy justifications, while factual follow-up questions, minimal responses and withholdings are shown to be non-affiliative. As a rule, affiliative verbal devices are accompanied by prosodic matching or upgrading, while non-affiliative ones have prosodic downgrading. The affiliative import of response cries is shown to depend even more heavily on prosodic matching or upgrading, although the transitoriness of prosody makes verbal reinforcement a desideratum. All in all, the discussion paints a complex picture of what it takes to come across as affiliative in response to a conversational complaint story, but one not lacking in systematicity. 1. On story reception in conversation 1.1 Affiliation vs. alignment In a recent contribution to the literature on conversational storytelling, Stivers (2008) distinguishes two types of story reception: alignment and affiliation. Alignment involves supporting the asymmetric distribution of roles which characterizes the storytelling activity: e.g., positioning oneself as story recipient and refraining from 2 coming in while the telling is in progress. Mis-aligning involves, e.g., competing for the floor during the telling or failing to treat a story as in progress or, on its completion, as over. Alignment is thus a structural dimension of the activity of story reception. It can be achieved among other things through the use of vocal continuers (mm hm, uh huh and yeah) during story production. Affiliation, on the other hand, is a social dimension in story reception. Stivers describes it as "the hearer displays support of and endorses the teller"s conveyed stance" (2008: 35), stance being understood as "the teller"s affective treatment of the events he or she is describing" (2008: 37). How do storytellers convey stance? For one, story prefaces (e.g., something very very cute happened last night or I'm broiling about something) inform recipients about the sort of response which the teller is seeking on story completion (Sacks 1974). But stance can also be conveyed through prosody, e.g., in reported speech (Couper-Kuhlen 1999, Günthner 1999), and through various forms of embodiment (Niemelä 2010, Goodwin et al this volume). Furthermore, the (sequential) context of the telling can offer clues; for instance, in a medical visit a telling is likely to be conveying a trouble or problem (Stivers 2008). It is through resources such as these that story recipients are provided with access to the teller"s stance. Affiliation is generally agreed to be the preferred response in storytelling. Stivers argues that it is achieved by "the provision of a stance toward the telling that mirrors...

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