Display of understanding in a second story: second teller’s reenactments and reuses of the prior teller’s resources

Eiko Yasui

doi:10.1515/text-2020-0218

Article

Display of understanding in a second story: second teller’s reenactments and reuses of the prior teller’s resources

Eiko Yasui received her Ph.D. in Communication Studies from the University of Texas at Austin and is currently an associate professor at Graduate School of Humanities at Nagoya University, Japan. Her main research interests lie in microanalysis of everyday interaction. Her most recent book-length publication is Pointing in Interaction (in Japanese) (2019; Hitsuji Shobo).

Published/Copyright: February 21, 2022

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From the journal Text & Talk Volume 43 Issue 3

Abstract

In everyday conversations, after a story of an event or one’s experience is told, the recipient often tells a second story, similar to the previous one in terms of content and structure. A second story exhibits, rather than simply claims, its teller’s understanding of a prior story. While stories are often told with reenactments of an event, this study specifically examines the cases in which second tellers produce reenactments similar to that presented by the prior teller through reusing similar verbal and bodily conduct produced by the prior teller. Drawing on conversation analysis using a total of approximately 16 h of Japanese videotaped everyday conversation, this study explores how reenactments of similar moments contribute to the display of understanding and what they further accomplish. The findings reveal that the second teller’s reenactments similar to the one presented by the prior teller exhibit the understanding of not only the contents, but also the main focal point of the prior story while demonstrating different stances towards it. This study contributes to the body of research on the embodied display of understanding by showing how performing an operation on already shared verbal and bodily resources embedded within the ongoing sequence can exhibit multiple levels of understanding.

Keywords: co-operative action; conversation analysis; embodied understanding; multimodality; reenactments; reuse of bodily conduct; second story; storytelling

Corresponding author: Eiko Yasui, Graduate School of Humanities, Nagoya University, Furo-cho, Chikusa-ku, Nagoya, Aichi 464-8601, Japan, E-mail: eyasui@nagoya-u.jp, eikoyasui@gmail.com

Funding source: JSPS KAKENHI

Award Identifier / Grant number: 15K16737

About the author

Eiko Yasui

Eiko Yasui received her Ph.D. in Communication Studies from the University of Texas at Austin and is currently an associate professor at Graduate School of Humanities at Nagoya University, Japan. Her main research interests lie in microanalysis of everyday interaction. Her most recent book-length publication is Pointing in Interaction (in Japanese) (2019; Hitsuji Shobo).

Aknowledgments

I would like to thank the editor and two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments on the earlier version of this paper. This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number 15K16737.

Appendix

Transcription conventions used for transcribing talk (Jefferson 2004):

[: onset of overlapping talk
(0.2): length of silence in tenths of seconds
::: lengthened sound
OKAY: higher volume
°okay°: lower volume
okay: stress or emphasis
oka-: sound cut-off
>okay<: increase in tempo
<okay>: decrease in tempo
hh: audible outbreath
.hh: audible inbreath
(h): laughter
¥okay¥: smiley voice
(okay): unintelligible talk

Embodied actions are transcribed based on the convention developed by Mondada (2019) (https://www.lorenzamondada.net/multimodal-transcription). Additional symbols used are as follows:

A_gz: gaze by a participant indicated (participant A in this case)
A_bd: bodily conduct by a participant indicated (participant A in this case)
A_fc: facial expression by a participant indicated (participant A in this case)
*: delimits gaze by a participant
§: delimits gaze by a participant
△: delimits gaze by a participant
@: delimits gestures by a participant
+: delimits gestures by a participant
&: delimits facial expressions by a participant
%: the moment at which a screen shot was taken from the video
……: preparation of action/transition of gaze
,,,,,: retraction of an action

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Received: 2020-12-15

Accepted: 2022-02-02

Published Online: 2022-02-21

Published in Print: 2023-05-25

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https://doi.org/10.1515/text-2020-0218

Keywords for this article

co-operative action; conversation analysis; embodied understanding; multimodality; reenactments; reuse of bodily conduct; second story; storytelling