Disorderly Discourse: Narrative, Conflict, and Inequality

by Charles L. Briggs (Editor)

Conflict plays a crucial role in social interactions, and representations of conflict are an important aspect of language. Stories and narratives involving everything from war to playground disputes generate, sustain, mediate, and represent conflict at all levels of social organization. Still, despite the vast amount of research on conflict and narrative in a number of disciplines, no one has yet examined how these play off of each other; in fact, most studies treat narrative merely as a source of information about conflict rather then as a part of conflict's process. The contributors to this collection argue that language consists of socially and politically situated practices that are differentially distributed on the basis of gender, class, race, ethnicity, and other categories. Each of them, writing from the perspective of their own disciplines, challenges previous assumptions about narrative and social conflict as they interpret a range of disputes that emerge in a variety of settings. Taken in total, these essays substantially further our theoretical and methodological understanding of narrative and conflict and how they intersect.

248 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1996

Reviews

[Teddee · Rating 4 out of 5]

I only read an article by Ochs Smith and Taylor called Detective Stories at Dinnertime: Problem Solving Through Co-Narration. It explains the socialization process that occurs during dinnertime story telling and the opportunity space provided for the family to socialize one another. In addition, the family is being socialized into ways of articulating and problem solving through the construction of a social genre that is jointly owned and made by the participants.