Embodied performances and footings in a young child’s spontaneous participation in bilingual Russian–Swedish storytelling

Authors

  • Ann-Carita Evaldsson Uppsala University
  • Olga Abreu Fernandes Uppsala University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1558/rcsi.37297

Keywords:

young children, bilingual storytelling, multimodal participation, footings, embodied performances, reenactments, multimodal interactional analysis

Abstract

This study uses a multimodal interactional conversation analytic approach to explore a two-and-a-half-year-old child’s spontaneous participation in the activity of telling personal experiences in the context of everyday bilingual mother–child interactions. The selected data draw from a video-ethnographic study of children in Swedish families with Russian-speaking mothers. The analysis focuses on a young child’s storytelling activities as co-constructed interactional practices, calling attention to the role of embodied performances, affective alignments and footings as central for the tellability of a story. It is found that the child’s spontaneous tellings were orchestrated through shifts in footings involving embodied animations, reenactments and affect displays, including prosodic actions and exaggerations, dramatizations, laughter, sound effects, exploitations of language form and code-switching (Russian–Swedish). Various keying resources (for affective embodied stances) were collaboratively produced to strengthen affective alignments and to heighten the emotional significance of the narrated event, framing it as a playful and imagined joint activity. The findings demonstrate how a reflexive kind of agency emerges whereby the child’s playful embodied performances and reenactments of past, present and imagined events provide a common ground for a jointly performed open-ended bilingual storytelling performance.

Author Biographies

  • Ann-Carita Evaldsson, Uppsala University

    Ann-Carita Evaldsson is professor of education at Uppsala University. Her research combines ethnographic studies with ethnomethodological conversational analysis to investigate children’s everyday lives, peer language practices and language socialization across culturally diverse settings. Recent papers explore how children accomplish identities-in-interaction (gender, class, ethnicity, disability); multilingual practices and; the moral character of affect and stance in both child and adult controlled contexts (Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties, Journal of Pragmatics, Linguistics and Education, Research on Language and Social Interaction, Routledge Handbook of Language and Identity).

  • Olga Abreu Fernandes, Uppsala University

    Olga Abreu Fernandes works at the Department of Education, Uppsala University, Sweden. Her research concerns linguistic ethnography and family interaction, with a focus on multilingual practices, language socialization, relational and emotional aspects of family life.

References

Abreu Fernandes, O. (2019). Language workout in bilingual mother–child interaction: A case study of heritage language practices in Russian–Swedish family talk. Journal of Pragmatics, 140, 88–99. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2018.11.021

Aukrust, A. (2002). ‘What did you do in school today?’ Speech genres and tellability in multiparty family mealtime conversations in two cultures. In S. Blum-Kulka & C. Snow (eds), Talking to Adults (pp. 55–85). Mahwah, NJ & London: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Bateman, A. & Carr, M. (2017). Pursuing a telling: Managing a multi-unit turn in children’s storytelling. In A. Bateman & A. Church (eds), Children’s Knowledge-in-Interaction: Studies in Conversation Analysis (pp. 91–110). Berlin: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-1703-2_6

Blum-Kulka, S. (1997). Dinner Talk: Patterns of Sociability and Socialization in Family Discourse. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Burdelski, M. & Morita, E. (2017). Young children’s initial assessments in Japanese. In A. Bateman & A. Church (eds), Children’s Knowledge-in-Interaction: Studies in Conversation Analysis (pp. 231–255). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-1703-2_13

Cekaite, A. & Björk-Willén, P. (2018). Enchantment in storytelling: Co-operation and participation in children’s aesthetic experience. Linguistics and Education, 48, 52–60. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.linged.2018.08.005

Cekaite, A. & Evaldsson, A.-C. (2019). Stance and footings in children’s multilingual peer play: Rescaling practices in a Swedish preschool. Journal of Pragmatics, 144, 127–140. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2017.11.011

Cromdal, J. & Aronsson, K. (2000). Footing in bilingual play. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 4(3), 435–457. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9481.00123

Dabašinskien?, I. & Voeikova, M. (2015). Diminutives in spoken Lithuanian and Russian: Pragmatic functions and structural properties. In P. M. Arkad’ev, A. Holvoet & B. Wiemer (eds), Contemporary Approaches to Baltic Linguistics (pp. 203–234). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.

Duranti, A. & Black, S. (2011). Language socialization and verbal improvisation. In A. Duranti, E. Ochs & B. Schieffelin (eds), The Handbook of Language Socialization (pp. 443–463). Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781444342901.ch19

Evaldsson, A.-C. (2002). Boys’ gossip telling: Staging identities and indexing (unacceptable) masculine behaviour. Text, 22(2), 1–27. https://doi.org/10.1515/text.2002.008

Evaldsson, A.-C. & Svahn, J. (2012). School bullying and the micro-politics of girls’ gossip telling. In S. Danby & M. Theobald (eds), Disputes in Everyday Life: Social and Moral Orders of Children and Young People (pp. 297–322). Bingley: Emerald. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1537-4661(2012)0000015016

Filipi, A. (2017). The emergence of story-telling. In A. Bateman & A. Church (eds), Children’s Knowledge-in-Interaction: Studies in Conversation Analysis (pp. 279–296). Berlin: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-1703-2_15

Goffman, E. (1981). Forms of Talk. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Goodwin, C. (2007). Interactive Footing. In E. Holt & R. Clift (eds), Reported Talk: Reported Speech in Interaction (pp. 16-46). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Goodwin, C. (2015). Narrative as talk-in-interaction. In A. De Fina & A. Georgakopoulou (eds), The Handbook of Narrative Analysis (pp. 197–218). Chichester: John Wiley & Sons. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118458204.ch10

Goodwin, C. (2018). Co-operative Action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781139016735

Goodwin, C. & Goodwin, M. H. (1992). Assessment and the construction of context. In A. Duranti & C. Goodwin (eds), Rethinking Context: Language as an Interactive Phenomenon (pp. 147–190). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Goodwin, C. & Goodwin, M. H. (2004). Participation. In A. Duranti (ed.), A Companion to Linguistic Anthropology (pp. 222–244). Oxford: Blackwell. https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470996522.ch10

Goodwin, M. H. (1990a). Tactical uses of stories: Participation frameworks within girls’ and boys’ disputes. Discourse Processes, 13(1), 33–71. https://doi.org/10.1080/01638539009544746

Goodwin, M. H. (1990b). He-Said-She-Said: Talk as Social Organization among Black Children. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

Goodwin, M. H., Cekaite, A. & Goodwin, C. (2012). Emotion as stance. In A. Peräkylä & M.-J. Sorjonen (eds), Emotion in Interaction (pp. 16–42). Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199730735.003.0002

Goodwin, M. H. & Kyratzis, A. (2011). Peer socialization. In A. Duranti, E. Ochs & B. Schieffelin (eds), The Handbook of Language Socialization (pp. 365–390). Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781444342901.ch16

Heath, S. B. (1983). Ways with Words: Language, Life and Work in Communities and Classrooms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511841057

Jefferson, G. (1978). Sequential aspects of storytelling in conversation. In J. Schenkein (ed.), Studies in the Organization of Conversational Interaction (pp. 219–248). New York: Academic Press.

Jefferson, G. (1987). On exposed and embedded correction in conversation. In G. Button & J. R. E. Lee (eds), Talk and Social Organization (pp. 86–100). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

Jefferson, G. (2004). Glossary of transcript symbols with an introduction. In G. H. Lerner (ed.), Conversation Analysis: Studies from the First Generation, vol. 125. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.125.02jef

Kyratzis, A., Tang, Y.-T. & Bahar Koymen, S. (2009). Codes, code-switching, and context: Style and footing in peer group bilingual play. Multilingua, 28(2–3), 265–290. https://doi.org/10.1515/mult.2009.012

Labov, W. & Waletzky, J. (1967). Narrative analysis: oral versions of personal experience. In J. Helm (ed.), Essays in the Verbal and Visual Arts. Seattle, WA: American Ethnological Society.

Mandelbaum, J. (2012). Storytelling in conversation. In J. Sidnell & T. Stivers (eds), The Handbook of Conversation Analysis (pp. 492–507). Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118325001.ch24

McNeill, D. (1992.) Hand and Mind: What Gestures Reveal about Thought. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Miller, P. J. & Fung, H. (2012). Introduction. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 77(1), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5834.2011.00642.x

Miller, P. & Sperry, L. (1988). Early talk about the past: The origins of conversational stories of personal experience. Journal of Child Language, 15(2), 293–315. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305000900012381

Mondada, L. (2018). Multiple temporalities of language and body in interaction: Challenges for transcribing multimodality. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 51(1), 85–106. https://doi.org/10.1080/08351813.2018.1413878

Ochs, E. & Capps, L. (2001). Living Narrative: Creating Lives in Everyday Storytelling. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Protassova, E. & Voeikova, M. D. (2007). Diminutives in Russian at the early stages of acquisition. In I. Savickien? & W. U. Dressler (eds), The Acquisition of Diminutives: A Cross-linguistic Perspective (pp. 43–72). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/lald.43.03pro

Sacks, H. (1972). On the analyzability of stories by children. In J. Gumperz & D. Hymes (eds), Directions in Sociolinguistics (pp. 325–345). New York: Rinehart & Winston.

Sacks, H. (1995a). Lectures on Conversation, vol. I. Malden, MA: Blackwell. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781444328301

Sacks, H. (1995b). Lectures on Conversation, vol. II. Malden, MA: Blackwell. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781444328301

Sacks, H., Schegloff, E. & Jefferson, G. (1974). A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking for conversation. Language, 50(4), 696–735. https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.1974.0010

Sawyer, R. K. (2002). Improvisation and narrative. Narrative Inquiry, 12, 319–349. https://doi.org/10.1075/ni.12.2.05saw

Schegloff, E. A. (2007). Sequence Organization in Interaction: A Primer in Conversational Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511791208

Sidnell, J. (2006). Coordinating gesture, talk, and gaze in reenactments. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 39(4), 377–409. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327973rlsi3904_2

Theobald, M. (2016). Achieving competence: The interactional features of children’s storytelling. Childhood, 23(1), 87–104. https://doi.org/10.1177/0907568215571619

Theobald, M. & Reynolds, E. (2015). In pursuit of some appreciation: assessment and group membership in children’s second stories. Text and Talk, 35(3), 407–430. https://doi.org/10.1515/text-2015-0006

Published

2019-08-29

How to Cite

Evaldsson, A.-C., & Abreu Fernandes, O. (2019). Embodied performances and footings in a young child’s spontaneous participation in bilingual Russian–Swedish storytelling. Research on Children and Social Interaction, 3(1-2), 36-64. https://doi.org/10.1558/rcsi.37297