• The Conference
  • Home
  • Programme
  • Venue & directions
  • Organizing Committee
  • Scientific Committee
  • Exhibitors & sponsors
  • Satellite events
  • Conference Party
• Past & future
  • Previous symposia
  • Finland 2014
  • Spain 2016
• About FU Berlin
  • University homepage
  • Humanities at FU

Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 1403

Part of Session 115: Discursive Construction of Emotion in Multilingual Interaction (Other abstracts in this session)

“He said… I thought…”: Represented Talk and Thought (RTT) as Resources for Representing Emotion in Second Language Complaint Stories

Authors: Prior, Matthew T.
Submitted by: Prior, Matthew T. (Arizona State University, United States of America)

Based on data from 30 hours of oral ethnographic interviews with 6 Southeast Asian immigrants in the US and Canada, this study examines the interactional use and functions of represented talk and thought (RTT) formulations in second language (L2) complaint stories.

Previous research has shown that RTT formulations are used by speakers in both narrative and non-narrative talk, particularly when describing unusual, problematic, and emotional events (Buttny, 1998; Drew, 1998; Holt & Clift, 2007). Functions of RTT include providing an affective key, making talk vivid, doing assessment, and producing objective and subjective stances. Recently, researchers have pointed out two areas in need of investigation: 1) represented talk (e.g., “He said…”) and thought (e.g., “I thought…”) as distinct yet interrelated phenomena (Haakana, 2007; Vásquez & Urzúa, 2009), and 2) RST use by second language users (Wolf, 2006). Analytic challenges include RST’s potential ambiguity (e.g., “I’m like…”) (Romaine & Lange, 1991; Tannen, 1989) and its demonstrative and descriptive functions (Couper-Kuhlen, 2007).

Informed by conversation analysis and discursive psychology, the study reported in this paper builds upon previous research by focusing on two aspects of represented talk and thought formulations in complaint stories in L2 English about experiences with linguistic and ethnic discrimination. First, it examines how talk-thought contrast sequences (e.g., “He said… I thought…”) allow the complaint story tellers to “silently” assess the morality of people and events while maintaining the moral “high ground” and inviting sympathetic responses from their listeners. Second, it demonstrates how speakers use represented thought, although less frequently than represented talk, at strategic and bounded points in their complaint stories to cue their listeners not just to the general emotionality of events but to highlight negative affect in particular. Supporting Vásquez and Urzúa’s (2009) work on direct reported mental states (DRMS), findings also show that speakers use represented thought formulations as a broad device to index and describe emotions and perceptions as well as internal thought.