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Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 272

Part of General Paper Session (Other abstracts in this session)

Narrative and the city: negotiating identities in urban tales

Authors: Flannery, Mércia Santana
Submitted by: Flannery, Mércia Santana (University of Pennsylvania, United States of America)

This paper centers on the analysis of an urban narrative, collected in a sociolinguistic interview, describing the encounter between two youngsters and the police at a checkpoint in the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. One of the highlights of this analysis is how teller and audience actively engage in the process of meaning negotiation, through co-evaluative participation. This is accomplished as the interlocutors’ familiarity with prior urban discourses is brought to bear in the interaction, and as they reference urban styles and identities to negotiate the point of their stories. This process establishes the status of those involved in the story world, and ascertains the teller’s identity, while eliminating the ambiguities purposely invoked before. The results of this give and take which occurs during the interaction are: 1) humor, as the teller supplies marks of identity characteristic of urban types from which he distances himself only after a reaction from the audience (laughter, repetition) is manifested; 2) solidarity between the interlocutors, deriving from the constant interplay between them. For instance, throughout the narrative, different urban identities are highlighted, as the teller presents himself in the context of the story world, but readjusts his participation status, and the impressions given-off (Goffman, 1959), as the audience interprets them. In a long orientation section, the teller presents several descriptive details whose semiotic value is linked to specific urban stereotypes— e.g., a funkeiro of the favelas in Rio de Janeiro, a homosexual, an inebriated, disorderly young male, or a preppy university student. As these identities are evoked in the teller’s account, they allow for the presentation of self and other in the narration through a dynamic process that unfolds as a result of his audience’s reactions. These series of urban identities and styles are linguistically constructed through: 1) the verbal code used, which include carioca slangs and the use of an urban informal register; 2) the intertextual references of urban images and styles, which invoke the shared experience of city duelers (Georgakopoulou, 2006).

References:

Georgakopoulou, Alexandra. 2006. Small and large identities in narrative (inter)action. In: Anna de Fina, Deborah Schiffrin, and Michael Bamberg (eds.). Dicourse and identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Goffman, Ervin. 1959. The presentation of self in everyday life. New York: Anchor books.

Lopes, Luiz Paulo da Moita. 2003. Socioconstrucionismo: discurso e identidade social. In: Luiz Paulo da Moita Lopes (ed.). Discursos de identidades. Campinas, SP: Mercado das Letras. 

Preti, Dino. 1998. Estudos de língua falada: variações e confrontos. São Paulo: Humanitas.

Tuan, YI-Fu. Language and the making of place: a narrative approach. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Vol. 81, No. 4 (Dec., 1991), pp. 684-696.