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Comparing stories told in sociolinguistic interviews and spontaneous conversation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 February 2011

Michele Koven
Michele Koven
Affiliation:
Department of Communication, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1207 W. Oregon St., Urbana, IL 61801, USAmkoven@illinois.edu
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Abstract

In this article I challenge the notion that interviews are artificial speech events, by comparing how one participant told stories in a sociolinguistic interview and again in a subsequent spontaneous conversation. As shown by qualitative and quantitative comparison of speaker-role inhabitance (Koven 2002, 2007), I show that the interview stories are no less involved (Tannen 1989), and are actually more interlocutory than the conversational stories. With these comparative materials, I demonstrate how interviews may be contexts in which people (re)tell experiences that they may also tell in “naturally occurring” contexts. (Narrative, interviews, footing, retellings)

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Articles
Information
Language in Society , Volume 40 , Special Issue 1: Narratives in interviews, Interviews in narrative studies , February 2011 , pp. 75 - 89
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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