like raisins in a fruitcake
As an exercise in "just write," I wanted to use this blog post as an opportunity to attempt to use a discursive psychology framework for data that I find interesting. All along I planned to use this data and I've thought a lot about it, but here I plan to do some elaboration. To begin, the context of my data is essentially a group of people telling a story. What makes this particularly story unique is that it was collaboratively constructed and structured only by vague narrative "seeds." The storytellers were playing what I like to call a story game. In this scenario, participants are given a general theme, a couple character traits (or flaws), and connections with other characters (e.g., a shared need, location, or object). From there, they improvisational build a fictional world, construct identities, and tell a story. From my perspective, I consider this adult pretend play, in which the shared goal is to tell an interesting story (as opposed to an individual goal of "winning" the game).
I see this as an interesting context to investigate how individuals use discourse to shape a fictional world, "play" with identity, and negotiate social relations, as well as consider cross-contextual implications. And while this may not be "naturalistic" talk, in the sense that it does not occur out in the world and is bound to the structures of a game, it is talk that perhaps reflects/refracts our world(s). Moreover, if this fictional world is an abstraction of some understanding the world, identity within the world (i.e., a character) has fictional and "real-world" consequences. In story games, discourse certainly constitutes the narrative world. In fact, the narrative world is almost entirely discursive (the only material elements being papers, pens, or dice that act semiotically). To build this discursive world, individuals use interpretative repertoires to establish and organize their narrative. I think the case could be made that these resources are similar (or maybe even mirror) the interpretative repertoires used in everyday talk. While I am not exactly sure if I want to use interpretative repertoires as an analytical tool, I do think it is a possible lens through which we can explore how people construct realities in pretend play.
Identity play
Jørgensen & Phillips' (2002) briefly discuss a DP approach to identity as resulting from social dialogues, cultural narratives, and positionings. What I find particularly appealing is that identity, as formed "through the stories that they tell themselves" individuals "try out and negotiate aspects of self" throughout one's life as a participate in narrative and social interaction (p. 109). This is in stark contrast to a more developmental approach that would argue pretend play, and therefore "trying out identities," diminishes as identities become less fluid. Yet, what makes story games more complex is that individuals are engaged in joint activity, where stories are not internalized but publicly negotiated. Therefore, analyzing social interaction as adult pretend play in story games can focus on how identities are used to legitimatize or marginalize particular attitudes, beliefs, or ways of being. What I find interesting is that in pretend play identities are literally performed -- they are temporal, exist only in narrative, and serve no explicit purpose other than supporting the narrative. However, from an interactionist and post-structuralist perspective, these identities are potentially embedded across contexts or exist discursively in a variety of forms and functions.
At this point, I would like to share a small bit of data, about 30 seconds from a corpus of over 12 hours. This particular sample is from the beginning of a story game called "Regina's Wedding." The players have developed very basic characters and are beginning to explore and negotiate their roles in the narrative. A few additional notes. First, I have separated this transcript into "in-narrative" and "out-of-narrative" talk. In this particular scene, two participants are discussing characters who are not narratively present but are physically at the table. This allows for talk to shift in and out of narrative. Second, talk was transcribed with pseudonyms, but individuals are referencing character names. In this transcript, Adam (Hank) is in dialogue with Cathy (Joey) discussing Betty (Regina/Reginald) and Diana (Abdul). Betty and Diana are not in the scene, albeit central to the talk, but contribute "extra-narrative" talk and gesture. Third, I gave a crack at some Jeffersonian-lite transcription -- I hope it is not butchered too badly.
Click to enlarge.
While I will not fully analyze this segment of data here, I think it's clear that identity, social role, and positions are being in some capacity negotiated. Both in- and out-of-narrative, stakes are being made in narrative identity, and it appears as though narrative may be consequential to "real-life" identity. I would go so far as to say that the narrative is establishing a rapidly changing representation of the "real world." Discursive psychology would direct analysis toward how individuals (in- and out-of-character) use interpretative repertoires or discourses to talk about and construct this world. Thereby asking how pretend play and improvisational dialogue contribute to discursive constructions of a world and identities that function within that world. Yet, this is "just play" and a captious critic might find this speculative or simply too contextually bound. However, I find this to be an extraordinarily complex use of language, in which people are uses a variety of discourses (often from outside of their immediate group or self). For example, of the four participants only Adam is performing their "real-life" gender (as Hank). Moreover, as improvisatory dialogue, talk is scattered, overlapping, and perhaps deviant of most forms of socially organized talk. Therefore, this may be interesting both interactionally and ideologically.