Intertextuality in interaction: Reframing family arguments in public and private
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Deborah Tannen
Deborah Tannen is University Professor and Professor of Linguistics at Georgetown University. Her twenty books include
Conversational Style: Analyzing Talk Among Friends; Talking Voices: Repetition, Dialogue and Imagery in Conversational Discourse; Gender and Discourse; I Only Say This Because I Love You ; and, most recently,You're Wearing THAT?: Understanding Mothers and Daughters in Conversation . Her work has been translated into 29 languages.
Abstract
Building on Becker's notion of prior text and Bakhtin's of dialogicality, I explore intertextuality in family discourse by tracing how three couples' conflicts about domestic responsibilities are recycled, reframed, and rekeyed over time, both between each other and in conversation with others: in one case with a friend, and in another with the couple's child. I use the term ‘recycling’ for situations where a topic is closed then arises again later in the same or a different conversation; ‘reframing’ for a change in what the conversation is about; and ‘rekeying’ for a change in the tone or tenor of an interaction. I trace a conflict in each of three families—the first two briefly, the third at length—in order to examine how speakers negotiate conflicts about the division of household responsibilities. In the third example, analysis helps explain why the issue of household responsibilities carries so much weight. In all three examples, restoring harmony was accomplished in part by reframing in a humorous key, and in ways that reinforced the speakers' shared family identities. The paper thus demonstrates how the abstract concept, intertextuality, actually works in everyday interaction.
About the author
Deborah Tannen is University Professor and Professor of Linguistics at Georgetown University. Her twenty books include Conversational Style: Analyzing Talk Among Friends; Talking Voices: Repetition, Dialogue and Imagery in Conversational Discourse; Gender and Discourse; I Only Say This Because I Love You; and, most recently, You're Wearing THAT?: Understanding Mothers and Daughters in Conversation. Her work has been translated into 29 languages.
© Walter de Gruyter
Articles in the same Issue
- Editorial: Advances in family interaction studies
- Introduction
- ‘Honey, I'm home!’: Framing in family dinnertime homecomings
- Retrospective and prospective orientation in the construction of argumentative moves
- Public medium, private talk: Gossip about a TV show as ‘quotidian hermeneutics’
- Habits of the hearth: Children's bedtime routines as relational work
- Participation, affect, and trajectory in family directive/response sequences
- Reshaping prior text, reshaping identities
- Parents' inquiries about homework: The first mention
- Intertextuality in interaction: Reframing family arguments in public and private
- Commentary 1. Doing family: An interactive accomplishment
- Commentary 2. Building the micros toward seeing the macro
Articles in the same Issue
- Editorial: Advances in family interaction studies
- Introduction
- ‘Honey, I'm home!’: Framing in family dinnertime homecomings
- Retrospective and prospective orientation in the construction of argumentative moves
- Public medium, private talk: Gossip about a TV show as ‘quotidian hermeneutics’
- Habits of the hearth: Children's bedtime routines as relational work
- Participation, affect, and trajectory in family directive/response sequences
- Reshaping prior text, reshaping identities
- Parents' inquiries about homework: The first mention
- Intertextuality in interaction: Reframing family arguments in public and private
- Commentary 1. Doing family: An interactive accomplishment
- Commentary 2. Building the micros toward seeing the macro
