Life Stories: The Creation of Coherence PDF
Preview Life Stories: The Creation of Coherence
Life Stories This page intentionally left blank LIFE STORIES The Creation of Coherence Charlotte Linde New YorkOxford OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 1993 Oxford University Press Oxford New York Toronto Delhi Bombay Calcutta Madras Karachi Kuala Lumpur Singapore Hong Kong Tokyo Nairobi Dar es Salaam Cape Town Melbourne Auckland Madrid and associated companies in Berlin Ibadan Copyright © 1993 by Charlotte Linde Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016-4314 Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Linde, C. (Charlotte) Life stories : the creation of coherence / Charlotte Linde. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-19-507372-X (cloth). - ISBN 0-19-507373-8 (pbk.) 1. Discourse analysis, Narrative. 2. Cohesion (Linguistics) I. Title. P302.7.L56 1993 401'.41-dc20 92-25763 579864 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper This book is for my parents. This page intentionally left blank ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This work has been many long years in the making, and my debts to friends and colleagues are correspondingly great. I am grateful to Eleanor Rosch and Dan Slobin for introducing me to autobiography as an area of investigation. My interest in discourse analysis and my understanding of its place in linguistic theory are due to William Labov. I am indebted to Joseph Goguen for pointing out to me that an 80-page article that keeps growing probably wants to be a book, and to George Lakoff and John Robert Ross for encouraging me to include that book in their edited series —which did not, unfortunately, last as long as the writing process. I am grateful to Dorothy Holland and Naomi Quinn for their encouragement and invaluable editorial assistance with an earlier version of Chapter 6 which appeared in Holland and Quinn (1987). I am indebted to my colleagues Penelope Eckert, Brigitte Jordan, Jean Lave, and Geoffrey Nunberg for help in the process of actually finishing the manuscript. I have also been greatly aided by discussions with A. L. Becker, Penelope Eckert, Veronika Ehrich, Gelya Frank, Nathan Hale, Robin Kornman, Elizabeth Krainer, Willem Levelt, Michael Moerman, James Peacock, Livia Polanyi, Larry Selinker, Sandra Silberstein, and James Weiner. My thanks to Brent Powers, for every kind of help and encouragement. I would like to thank Cambridge University Press for permission to reproduce portions of the transcription notation from Atkinson and Heritage (1984). My primary debt is to the people who told me something of their lives and whose stories are treated here dispassionately as objects for analysis. This page intentionally left blank CONTENTS A NOTE ON TRANSCRIPTION CONVENTIONS, xi 1. The Creation of Coherence in Life Stories: An Overview, 3 2. What Is a Life Story? 20 3. Methods and Data for Studying the Life Story, 51 4. Narrative and the Iconicity of the Self, 98 5. Coherence Principles: Causality and Continuity, 127 6. Coherence Systems, 163 7. Common Sense and Its History, 192 8. Conclusion, 219 REFERENCES, 225 INDEX, 235
The list of books you might like
