Interactional convergence in conversational storytelling: when reported speech is a cue of alignment and/or affiliation

Abstract

This paper investigates how and when interactional convergence is established by participants in conversation. We analyze sequences of storytelling using an original method that combines Conversation Analysis and a corpus-based approach. In storytelling, the participant in the position of “listener” is expected to produce either generic or specific responses adapted to the storyteller's narrative. The listener's behavior produced within the current activity is a cue of his/her interactional alignment. We show here that the listener can produce a specific type of (aligned) response, which we term a reported speech utterance in echo. The participant who is not telling the story is nonetheless able to animate the characters, while reversing the usual asymmetric roles of storyteller and listener. The use of this device is a way for the listener to display his/her stance toward the events told by the storyteller. If the listener's stance is congruent with that of the storyteller, this reveals a high degree of affiliation between the participants. We present seventeen excerpts from a collection of 94 instances of Echo Reported Speech (ERS) which we examined using the concepts of alignment and affiliation in order to show how different kinds of convergent sequences are constructed. We demonstrate that this phenomenon is mainly used by the listener to align and affiliate with the storyteller by means of reformulative, enumerative, or overbidding ERS. We also show that in affiliative sequences, reported speech can be used by the listener in a humorous way in order to temporarily disalign. This disalignment constitutes a potential starting point for an oblique sequence, which, if accepted and continued by the storyteller, gives rise to a highly convergent sequence.

Listing Practice in French Conversation: From Collaborative Achievement to Interactional Convergence

“…storytelling here) in which they are embedded (Selting, 2007) but also to the sequences that lists contribute to constructing (word search, humor). We then show that a collaborative achievement does not necessarily achieve a convergent sequence as defi ned in (Guardiola & Bertrand, 2013). …”

“…The current paper aims to investigate such collaborative work in listing practice. Using the notions of alignment and affi liation (Stivers, 2008), respectively defi ned as an adaptation to the activity in progress and an endorsement of the speaker's stance, we then attempt to demonstrate that collaborative work by the recipient is not suffi cient to make what we have called a "convergent sequence" (Guardiola & Bertrand, 2013). In listing practice, the recipient can add a potential list item that we have characterized as a specifi c feedback response -henceforth SFR - (Bavelas et al, 2000) in the current work.…”

“…In this respect, one of the most widely studied activities, in various fi elds, is storytelling (see Schegloff , 1997;Norrick, 2000;Bavelas et al, 2000;Stivers, 2008;Guardiola & Bertrand, 2013). Storytelling is seen as an asymmetrical activity involving diff erent discursive roles by the storyteller/narrator and the listener.…”

From Narrating the Self to Posting Self(ies): A Small Stories Approach to Selfies

“…Alignment is very often signaled with supportive embodied and paralinguistic contributions. In addition, a typical feature of alignment, as documented within conversation analysis, consists in creating contributions that are lexically, syntactically, grammatically and sequentially similar to previous contributions (Guardiola & Bertrand 2013;Stivers 2008). Such convergent sequences are viewed as a linguistic manifestation of convergent relations and behaviours, a sign within psychological research of affiliation with another.…”

“…Such convergent sequences are viewed as a linguistic manifestation of convergent relations and behaviours, a sign within psychological research of affiliation with another. Although the exact relations between doing alignment vis-à-vis the communicative action of a speaker's prior contribution and expressing affiliation with them and their stances are a matter of some dispute (see Guardiola & Bertrand 2013), a position that seems to be more prevalent in CA is that alignment is a prerequisite for affiliation (Stivers 2008). Aligning with what and how a speaker communicates displays support and endorsement of his/her conveyed stance.…”