Home Embodiment in Moroccan Arabic storytelling: language, stance and discourse analysis
Article
Licensed
Unlicensed Requires Authentication

Embodiment in Moroccan Arabic storytelling: language, stance and discourse analysis

  • Dris Soulaimani

    Dris Soulaimani received his PhD in applied linguistics from UCLA. He is currently Assistant Professor of Arabic at New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD). His research interests include discourse analysis, talk and embodiment, and sociolinguistic issues of identity and language ideologies. His most recent publications include “Becoming Amazigh: Standardization, Purity and Questions of Identity” (2016, The Journal of North African Studies) and “Writing and rewriting Amazigh/Berber identity: Orthographies and language ideologies” (2016, Writing Systems Research).

    EMAIL logo
Published/Copyright: April 25, 2017

Abstract

This article examines an oral story that displays how embodiment is crucial for understanding language in interaction. It demonstrates how stance, which refers to the way speakers or hearers evaluate the topic of conversation, is an embodied activity. Drawing on theories of discourse analysis, this study examines natural data collected in Morocco and argues that storytelling is a social and interactive practice. A shopkeeper recounts an unusual dining event, which started with commensality and ended with a physical dispute. The storyteller tells his story, enacts its events, and displays stance through intricate forms of embodiment, including contrasts and different ways of producing and copying gestures. Analysis shows that telling a story, beyond a matter of verbal narrative, is performed through embodied enactments to allow for achieving co-participation and alignment. The data also reveal a unique way of intensifying storytelling through both verbal and embodied repetition of selected story events.

About the author

Dris Soulaimani

Dris Soulaimani received his PhD in applied linguistics from UCLA. He is currently Assistant Professor of Arabic at New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD). His research interests include discourse analysis, talk and embodiment, and sociolinguistic issues of identity and language ideologies. His most recent publications include “Becoming Amazigh: Standardization, Purity and Questions of Identity” (2016, The Journal of North African Studies) and “Writing and rewriting Amazigh/Berber identity: Orthographies and language ideologies” (2016, Writing Systems Research).

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the editor and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful and constructive comments. I also wish to thank Charles Goodwin and Marjorie Harness Goodwin for their encouragement and insightful suggestions on earlier versions of this paper.

Appendix: transcription conventions

The transcription is based on prior analysis developed by Sacks (1992). See also Schegloff (1997) and Jefferson (1978). Additional symbols are added to represent specific Arabic sounds such as (‘) which stands for the pharyngeal fricative (ع).

.

Falling intonation

,

Continuing intonation

((words))

Nonverbal activity

(0.1)

Silence in tenths of a second

[

Overlap

=

Latched or contiguous utterances (no pause between the previous utterance and the next)

wo:

Vowel lengthening

?

Rising intonation

WORDS

Increased volume (e. g. WAH)

words

Some type of emphasis

*hh

Inbreath

.1P

First person plural

.3S

Third person singular

.3P

Third person plural

.M

Masculine

.F

Feminine

DEF

Definite article

with-

Missing words

[words]

Words added for clarification of translation

References

Bourdieu, Pierre. 1991. Language and symbolic power. Cambridge: Polity.Search in Google Scholar

Clark, Herbert H. & Richard J. Gerrig1990. Quotations as demonstrations. Linguistic Society of America 4. 764–805.10.2307/414729Search in Google Scholar

Du Bois, John & Elise. Kärkkäinen 2012. Taking a stance on emotion: Affect, sequence, and intersubjectivity in dialogic interaction. Text & Talk 32(4). 433–451.10.1515/text-2012-0021Search in Google Scholar

Du Bois, John W. 2007. The stance triangle. In Robert Englebretson (ed.), Stancetaking in discourse: Subjectivity, evaluation, interaction, 139–182. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/pbns.164.07duSearch in Google Scholar

Goffman, Erving. 1981. Footing. In E. Goffman (ed.), Forms of Talk, 124–159. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania.Search in Google Scholar

Good, Jeffrey S. 2015. Reported and enacted actions: Moving beyond reported speech and related concepts. Discourse Studies 17(6). 663–681.10.1177/1461445615602349Search in Google Scholar

Goodwin, Charles. 1979. The interactive construction of a sentence in natural conversation. In George Psathas (ed.), Everyday language: Studies in ethnomethodology, 97–121. New York: Irvington.Search in Google Scholar

Goodwin, Charles. 1984. Notes on story structure and the organization of participation. In Maxwell Atkinson & John Heritage (eds.), Structures of social action: Studies in conversation analysis, 225–246. Cambridge: Cambridge University.10.1017/CBO9780511665868.016Search in Google Scholar

Goodwin, Charles. 1986. Audience diversity, participation and interpretation. Text 6. 283–316.10.1515/text.1.1986.6.3.283Search in Google Scholar

Goodwin, Charles. 1996. Transparent vision. In Elinor Ochs, Emanuel Schegloff & Sandra A. Thompson (eds.), Interaction and grammar, 370–404. Cambridge: Cambridge University.10.1017/CBO9780511620874.008Search in Google Scholar

Goodwin, Charles. 2000. Action and embodiment within situated human interaction. Journal of Pragmatics 32. 1489–1522.10.1016/S0378-2166(99)00096-XSearch in Google Scholar

Goodwin, Charles. 2002. Time in action. Current Anthropology 43. 19–35.10.1086/339566Search in Google Scholar

Goodwin, Charles. 2007a. Participation, stance and affect in the organization of activities. Discourse & Society 18(1). 53–73.10.1177/0957926507069457Search in Google Scholar

Goodwin, Charles. 2007b. Environmentally coupled gestures. In Susan Duncan, Justine Cassel & Elena Levy (eds.), Gestures and the dynamic dimensions of language, 195–212. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/gs.1.18gooSearch in Google Scholar

Goodwin, Charles. 2015. Narrative as talk-in-interaction. In Anna De Fina & Alexandra Georgakopoulou (eds.), The handbook of narrative analysis, 197–218. Malden, MA: John Wiley & Sons.10.1002/9781118458204.ch10Search in Google Scholar

Goodwin, Charles & Marjorie Harness Goodwin. 1992. Assessments and the construction of context. In Charles Goodwin & Alessandro Duranti (eds.), Rethinking context: Language as an interactive phenomenon, 147–189. Cambridge: Cambridge University.Search in Google Scholar

Goodwin, Charles & Marjorie Harness Goodwin.1996. Seeing as a situated activity: Formulating planes. In Y. Engeström & D. Middleton (eds.), Cognition and communication at work, 61–95. Cambridge: Cambridge University.10.1017/CBO9781139174077.004Search in Google Scholar

Goodwin, Charles & Marjorie Harness Goodwin. 2000. Emotion within situated activity. In Alessandro Duranti (ed.), Linguistic anthropology: A reader, 239–257. Malden, MA: Blackwell.Search in Google Scholar

Goodwin, Charles & John Heritage. 1990. Conversation analysis. Annual Review of Anthropology 19. 283–307.10.1146/annurev.an.19.100190.001435Search in Google Scholar

Goodwin, Marjorie Harness. 2006. The hidden life of girls: Games of stance, status, and exclusion. Oxford: Blackwell.10.1002/9780470773567Search in Google Scholar

Heath, Christian. 1986. Body movement and speech in medical interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University.10.1017/CBO9780511628221Search in Google Scholar

Heritage, John. 2002. Oh-prefaced responses to assessments: A method of modifying agreement/disagreement. In Cecilia Ford, Barbara A. Fox & Sandra A. Thompson (eds.), The language of turn and sequence, 196–224. Oxford: Oxford University.Search in Google Scholar

Jefferson, Gail. 1978. Sequential aspects of storytelling in conversation. In Jim Schenkein (ed.), Studies in the organization of conversational interaction, 219–248. New York: Academic.10.1016/B978-0-12-623550-0.50016-1Search in Google Scholar

Kendon, Adam.1997. Gesture. Annual Review of Anthropology 26. 109–128.10.1146/annurev.anthro.26.1.109Search in Google Scholar

Kendon, Adam. 2009. Language’s Matrix. Gesture 9(3). 355–372.10.1075/gest.9.3.05kenSearch in Google Scholar

Labov, William. 1972. The transformation of experience in narrative syntax. In William Labov (ed.), Language in the inner city: Studies in the Black English vernacular, 354–396. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania.Search in Google Scholar

Prior, Paul, Julie Hengst, Kevin Roozen & Jody Shipka. 2006. ‘I’ll be the sun’: From reported speech to semiotic remediation practices. Text & Talk 26. 733–766.10.1515/TEXT.2006.030Search in Google Scholar

Rosen, Lawrence. 1989. The anthropology of justice: Law as culture in Islamic society. Cambridge: Cambridge University.Search in Google Scholar

Sacks, Harvey. 1974. An analysis of the course of a joke’s telling in conversation. In Richard Bauman & Joel Sherzer (eds.), Explorations in the ethnography of speaking, 337–353. Cambridge: Cambridge University.10.1017/CBO9780511611810.022Search in Google Scholar

Sacks, Harvey. 1992. Lectures on conversation. Ed. Gail Jefferson with Introduction by Emanuel Schegloff. Vol. 2. Blackwell: Oxford.Search in Google Scholar

Sarangi, Srikant. 2010. Practising discourse analysis in healthcare settings. In Ivy Bourgeault, Robert Dingwall & Ray De Vries (eds.), The SAGE handbook of qualitative methods in health research. 397–416. London: Sage.10.4135/9781446268247.n21Search in Google Scholar

Sarangi, Srikant & Angus Clarke. 2002. Constructing an account by contrast in counselling for childhood genetic testing. Social Science & Medicine 54(2). 295–308.10.1016/S0277-9536(01)00029-6Search in Google Scholar

Schegloff, Emanuel A. 1997. ‘Narrative analysis’ thirty years after. Journal of Narrative and Life History 7. 1–4.10.1075/jnlh.7.11narSearch in Google Scholar

Sidnell, Jack. 2000. Primus inter pares: Storytelling and male peer groups in an Indo-Guyanese rumshop. American Ethnologist 27(1). 72–99.10.1525/ae.2000.27.1.72Search in Google Scholar

Sidnell, Jack. 2006. Constructing gesture, talk and gaze in reenactments. Research on Language and Social Interaction 39(4). 377–410.10.1207/s15327973rlsi3904_2Search in Google Scholar

Smith, Dorothy. 1978. ‘K is mentally ill’: The anatomy of a factual account. Sociology 12(1). 23–53.10.1177/003803857801200103Search in Google Scholar

Streeck, Jürgen. 2009. Gesturecraft: The manufacture of meaning. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/gs.2Search in Google Scholar

Wu, Ruey-Jiuan. 2004. Stance in talk: A conversation analysis of Mandarin final particles. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/pbns.117Search in Google Scholar

Published Online: 2017-4-25
Published in Print: 2017-5-1

© 2017 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Downloaded on 14.9.2025 from https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/text-2017-0008/html
Scroll to top button