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Listener Comments: A Form Of Collaboration In Conversational Narrative, Cynthia Dunn

Honors Papers

To show that while comments by listeners do have the appreciative and encouraging role described above, this is not their only role. In her study of Hawaiian children, Watson (1975) discovered that two children would frequently tell a story in tandem, one child taking the role of lead narrator, the other interjecting comments which elaborated on, rephrased. summarized, and otherwise supported the main narrator's story. Robinson has recently called into question the applicability of this research to continental American white society (1981: 72-3), but I have found evidence of something similar, which I shall call "co-narration", among American whites. If …