As a generic and ubiquitous social activity, storytelling has been the topic of diverse research
traditions. Adopting the perspective of conversation analysis and cognate approaches, the
seminar will examine storytellings as locally occasioned through the preceding talk, recipient-
designed, jointly accomplished by tellers and recipients, and interactionally consequential. Focus
will be given to the sequential organization of storytellings, the linguistic and multimodal
resources through which storytelling activities are achieved, and the participation of story
recipients. Analytic attention to these matters will reveal how storytellings accomplish actions,
identities, and epistemic and affective stances in everyday conversation and institutional
settings, including second language classrooms. We will also consider longitudinal studies
showing how L2 speakers develop practices of story telling and story recipiency over time.
Seminar activities will include critical discussion of the research literature, data sessions, and a
data-based study. As always students are welcome to work on data collected for their ongoing
projects or develop a new study.
Department of Second Language Studies
University of Hawaii at Manoa