Table Of ContentStorytelling in Daily Life
Performing Narrative
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Storytelling
in Daily Life
Performing Narrative
Kristin M. Langellier
and Eric E. Peterson
TEMPLE UNIVERSITY PRESS
PHILADELPHIA
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For our families,
and especially for Raymond Langellier (1919-1996),
family storyteller par excellence
Temple University Press, Philadelphia 19122
Copyright © 2004 by Temple University
All rights reserved
Published 2004
Printed in the United States of America
§ The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the
American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of
Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Langellier, Kristin, 1951-
Storytelling in daily life: performing narrative / Kristin M. Langellier and
Eric E. Peterson.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1-59213-212-X (cloth: alk. paper) - ISBN 1-59213-213-8 (pbk. : alk. paper)
l. Storytelling. 2. Folklore-Performance. 1. Peterson, Eric E., 1954- . II. Title.
GR72.3.L35 2004
808.5'43-dc21
2003050791
24689 753 1
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Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Part I A COMMUNICATION APPROACH TO STORYTELLING
1 Performing Narrative in Daily Life 7
Part II FAMILY STORYTELLING: A STRATEGY OF
SMALL GROUP CULTURE 33
2 Ordering Content and Making Family Stories 39
3 Family Storytelling: Ordering Tasks in
Small Group Cultures 71
4 Performing Families: Ordering Group and
Personal Identities 112
Part III STORYTELLING PRACTICES: THREE CASE STUDIES 157
5 Storytelling in a Weblog: Performing Narrative
in a Digital Age 159
6 Breast Cancer Storytelling: The Limits of
Narrative Closure in Survivor Discourse 189
7 Performing Narrative on Stage: Identity and Agency
in an Autobiographical Performance 219
Coda 243
Notes 245
References 255
Index 269
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Acknowledgments
Storytelling happens-but only through the participation of many people. Be
fore we begin our narrative, we take a moment to recognize the people whose
participation and support made it possible for us to write this book.
Storytelling matters-it involves effort and risk for storytellers and audi
ences. We first gratefully acknowledge the participants in our research who
shared their stories with us. For reasons of confidentiality in research, we
have not named the individuals who invited Kristin to join them around
kitchen tables to talk and laugh and eat, but we hope that the attention we
bring to Franco-Americans in Maine will help to express our appreciation and
regard for the vibrancy of their lives and stories. We thank them for their gifts
of storytelling. We also thank two storytellers highlighted in the case studies:
Jane, for her curiosity about our work and for volunteering to contribute her
stories to our study; and Craig Gingrich-Philbrook, for his many stimulating
conversations on performing narrative and his willingness to share a videotape
of his performance.
Storytelling changes things-but by the time we realize it we are already en
meshed in a world of stories. We recognize the importance of our families, to
whom we dedicate this book, in nurturing and shaping our intrigue with and
understanding of storytelling. We especially recognize the role of our son,
Keir, whose birth crystalized for us the significance of family storytelling and
whose enjoyment of wide-ranging narrative performances spurs us on.
Storytelling endures-as students of narrative and performance, we con
tinue as audiences to our first mentors. We are deeply indebted to our gener
ous and inspiring teachers: to Richard Lanigan and Tom Pace for guiding us in
phenomenology and philosophy of communication; to Marion Kleinau, Wil
liam Haushalter, and Elbert Bowen for initiating us in performance studies.
Our colleagues in performance studies, too numerous to list and some-but
not all-of whom are cited in the following pages, have also informed, en
livened, and enriched our understanding of narrative through their perform
ances, scholarship, and conversations. Our students, too, keep us learning.
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viii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We owe a particular debt of gratitude to Cathy Riessman for her friendship
and support, for late night and early morning discussions about all things nar
rative, and for introducing us to Elliot Mishler and the narrative study group
of Cambridge, Massachusetts. This local group of narrative scholars, who
monthly gather under Elliot's guidance in his and Vicky Steinitz's home, re
sponded to many of the ideas and examples we explore in this book. In addi
tion to Cathy and Elliot, we acknowledge Susan Bell, Michael Bamberg, Jane
Attanucci, Sara Dickey, Mark Freeman, Arlene Katz, Brinton Lykes, Angeliki
Nicolopoulou, John Rich, Michael Rich, Ellen Rintell, Jill Taylor, Lucie White,
and Krista Van Vleet. We thank our dear friend Deborah Pearlman, who finds
room for us in her home on our trips to attend narrative study group meetings.
We recognize the University of Maine for providing a grant to support Kris
tin's fieldwork and then simultaneous sabbaticals that gave us much needed
time to devote to our writing. Susan Pinette (Franco-American Studies), Lisa
Michaud (Franco-American Center), and Amy Morin (Canadian American
Center) helped Kristin find participants for the fieldwork. Our colleagues in
the Department of Communication and Journalism, with the constant sup
port of Dean Rebecca Eilers, covered our responsibilities while we were away.
Although finding time to write was difficult, finding the space was easy
thanks to Celeste Langellier and Karen McMillin, who helped us make a sab
batical home near theirs and near our families in the Midwest.
We thank Peter Wissoker of Temple University Press, who expressed inter
est in this project early on and then patiently waited several years until we
found time to write. We thank Della Pollock for introducing us to Peter and
for her reading and suggestions to improve the manuscript.
Finally, portions of Chapter 7 written by Eric were originally published in
Narrative Inquiry as "Narrative Identity in a Solo Performance: Craig Gingrich
Philbrook's 'The First Time'" (vol. 10,2000, pp. 229-251) and "One More First
Time: A Response to Katz and Shotter" (vol. 10, 2000, pp. 475-481). Copyright
© 2000, John Benjamins B. v., Amsterdam.
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Part I
A Communication
Approach to Storytelling
Here, I would like to recount a little story
so beautiful I fear it may well be true.
-Michel Foucault (1976, p. 225)
"Let me tell you about something that happened to me," one friend tells an
other as they walk through the park. "So, how did your school day go?" asks
a family member at the dinner table. "Did you see last night's episode on tele
vision? Let me tell you what happened," a worker says to a colleague during
their coffee break. "Once upon a time," intones a pre-school teacher to a group
of children. "I would like to tell you my version of what is going on," a peti
tioner states at a town meeting. "You'll never guess what happened today," be
gins the latest entry in an online Internet journal. "Here is how I experienced
it," a patient confides to a doctor. These simple speech acts announce, request,
declare, promise, and invoke stories. They perform narrative. Such storytell
ing matters: it is an integral and consequential part of daily life.
As audiences gather around storytellers, narrative becomes a significant
site of communication and study. Embedded in the daily lives of ordinary and
extraordinary people, storytelling flourishes. People make sense of their ex
periences, claim identities, interact with each other, and participate in cul
tural conversations through storytelling. Narrative is performed everywhere.
Writers pen autobiographies and fictionj scholars recount the dramas of his
tory and science. Storytelling permeates newspapers and magazines, radio, tel
evision, and film. Advertisers tell stories to sell their stock, and politicians
package their lives in stories during campaigns. On stage, in the workplace,
and at home, storytelling thrives. In the postmodern idiom, we "get a life" by
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