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Girl Talk: A Dialogic Approach to Oral Narrative Storytelling Analysis in English As a Foreign Language Research
Thomas, M'Balia
Thomas, M'Balia
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Abstract
Research in the fields of Applied Linguistics (AL) and Second Language Studies (SLS)
has begun addressing the ways in which second and foreign language (L2) use is a
“material” struggle to understand, acquire and author L2 words for one’s own creative
purposes – particularly in the face of ideologies about language learning and language use
(Squires 2008; Suni 2014). This struggle has implications for the subjectivity, agency and
ultimate acquisition and use of the target language by L2 users. This dissertation seeks to
augment scholarship in this area by demonstrating how material struggle can surface in the
process of data collection (a research interview). It presents an analysis of a recorded
narrative of an English as a foreign language (EFL) user, who was a second year graduate
student enrolled in a university in the southwest US. She was invited by the author -- a
native speaker of English -- to tell an oral narrative story in English to a group with whom
she met regularly. However, in positioning the EFL subject as “non-native” in the
recruitment process, the author as a native speaker failed to anticipate the manner in which
her request was interpellative (Althusser 1971[2001]), thus reproducing and subjecting the
“non-native” to the ideology and discourses associated with that category and setting into
motion a creative authoring of response to this interpellative call.
In approaching the analysis from this perspective, this dissertation adopts an approach to
oral narrative story analysis that is based on the Bakhtinian-inspired notion of dialogism
(Bakhtin 1981, 1986). Dialogism underscores the resultant narrative as a collection of
utterances poised to respond to the request to “tell a story,” while simultaneously
addressing the ideology and discourses associated with this request. Additionally, the
analysis explores the dialogic nature of the narrative from the standpoint of “tellability”
(Norrick 2005; Ochs and Capps 2001), thus highlighting aspects of the narrative that
render this tale of friendship, an extramarital affair and a friend “in hatred” meaningful in
the context of its telling.
Guided by an interest in Bakhtinian dialogism and driven by a concern for narrative
tellability, three differing, yet complimentary, analyses of the narrative are explored: 1)
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genre, register and vague (“vaguely gendered”) language, 2) face work, framing and
cooperation and 3) gossip, stance and the representation of speech and voice. These
analyses likewise uncover three themes that underlie the narrative context of the tale.
These themes are: the backgrounding of nativeness and foregrounding of gender, the
simultaneous and ambiguous struggle for solidarity and power, and the display of personal
style through moral stance in the presentation of a continuous self over time and place.
The implication of this work for future research and assessment in AL and SLS is
addressed.
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2014
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The University of Arizona
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Thomas, M. (2014). Girl Talk: A Dialogic Approach to Oral Narrative Storytelling Analysis in English as a Foreign Language Research. PHD Dissertation. University of Arizona.