Table Of ContentCambridge Studies in Oral and Literate Culture 11
STORYTELLING RIGHTS
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Cambridge Studies in Oral and Literate Culture
Edited by PETER BURKE and RUTH FINNEGAN
This series is designed to address the question of the significance of literacy in human societies; it
will assess its importance for political, economic, social, and cultural development, and will
examine how what we take to be the common functions of writing are carried out in oral cultures.
The series will be interdisciplinary, but with particular emphasis on social anthropology and
social history, and will encourage cross-fertilization between these disciplines; it will also be of
interest to readers in allied fields, such as sociology, folklore, and literature. Although it will
include some monographs, the focus of the series will be on theoretical and comparative aspects
rather than detailed description, and the books will be presented in a form accessible to non-
specialist readers interested in the general subject of literacy and orality.
Books in the series
1 NIGEL PHILIPPS: 'Sijabang': Sung Narrative Poetry of West Sumatra
2 R. w. SCRIBNER: For the Sake of Simple Folk: Popular Propaganda
for the German Reformation
3 HARVEY J. GRAFF: Literacy and Social Development in the West: A Reader
4 DONALD J. COSENTINO: Defiant Maids and Stubborn Farmers: Tradition and Invention
in Mende Story Performance
5 FRANCOIS FURET and JACQUES OZOUF: Reading and Writing: Literacy in France from Calvin
to Jules Ferry
6 JEAN-CLAUDE SCHMITT: The Holy Greyhound: Guinefort, Healer of Children since the
Thirteenth Century
7 JEFF OPLAND: Xhosa Oral Poetry: Aspects of a Black South African Tradition
8 RICHARD BAUMAN: Let Your Words Be Few: Symbolism of Speaking and Silence among
Seventeenth-Century Quakers
9 BRIAN v. STREET: Literacy in Theory and Practice
10 RICHARD BAUMAN: Story, Performance, and Event: Contextual Studies of Oral Narrative
11 AMY SHUMAN: Storytelling Rights: The Uses of Oral and Written Texts by Urban Adolescents
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STORYTELLING RIGHTS
The uses of oral
and written texts
by urban adolescents
AMY SHUMAN
The Ohio State University
The right of the
University of Cambridge
to print and sell
all manner of books
was granted by
Henry VIII in 1534.
The University has printed
and published continuously
since 1584.
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
CAMBRIDGE
NEW YORK PORT CHESTER
MELBOURNE SYDNEY
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CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sao Paulo
Cambridge University Press
The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK
Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York
www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521328463
© Cambridge University Press 1986
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without
the written permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 1986
Reprinted 1990
This digitally printed first paperback version 2006
A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data
S human, Amy, 1951-
Storytelling rights.
(Cambridge studies in oral and literate culture ; II)
Bibliography: p.
I. Sociolinguistics. 2. Discourse analysis,
Narrative. 3. Urban youth - Language. I. Title.
II. Series.
P40.S47 1986 40T.9 86-12968
ISBN-13 978-0-521-32846-3 hardback
ISBN-10 0-521-32846-2 hardback
ISBN-13 978-0-521-03004-5 paperback
ISBN-10 0-521-03004-8 paperback
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For my parents and grandparents,
who make experiences into events
and events into stories.
I would like to add a dedication to "Stacie," who
persisted with her educational goals and who
recently received a Masters Degree in Human
Services, enabling her to continue significant
work with African American teenagers.
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CONTENTS
Acknowledgments page ix
Introduction 1
0.1 The research community 3
0.2 Storytelling rights: studying the uses of oral
and written communication 12
0.3 Face-to-face/absent-author communication 14
1 Fight stories: what counts is the recounting 20
1.1 Relationships between narrative and experience 20
1.2 The storytelling situation 22
1.3 The relationship between the fight and the fight story 25
1.4 Entitlement and information states 29
1.5 Fight sequences 38
1.6 Stories told at the beginning of a dispute 42
1.7 He-said-she-said: stories told at the height of a dispute 44
1.8 Stories told after a dispute was resolved 48
1.9 Summary: the transformation of experience and narrative 52
2 Storyability and tellability 54
2.1 Mediate and immediate storytelling 55
2.2 The reportable and the repeatable 64
3 Collaborative uses of literacy in the adolescent community 77
3.1 Text and context 77
3.2 Differential skills and uses 79
3.3 Writing as play 83
3.4 Writing as one talks 91
3.5 Standardization: writing for adults 96
3.6 Writing and reading in the family 101
3.7 Collaborative literacy 104
3.8 The appropriate uses of literacy: context 116
4 Retellings 122
4.1 The versions 124
4.2 Entitlement 137
vii
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viii Contents
4.3 The noninformative nature of retellings 142
4.4 Oral and written retellings 146
5 Varieties of contextuality 152
5.1 Shared understanding and the use of referents 153
5.2 Firsthand experience and reported speech 156
5.3 Shared understanding and the order of events 169
5.4 Authorship and entitlement in the girls' diaries 174
5.5 Contextualization 178
5.6 Storyability 180
6 Familiarity and distance: toward a theory of oral and written
personal narration 183
6.1 Literacy as a category 183
6.2 Literary and literacy understandings of texts 185
6.3 Standardization 189
6.4 Personal experience narratives 192
6.5 Literacy as an invention/the deinvention of literacy 199
Notes 201
Bibliography 212
Index 225
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The voices of the storytellers in this work are private and thus anonymous.
The storytellers had not requested anonymity, for although the stories contain
some secrets, confidences shared a few years ago are not necessarily secrets
today. However, the stories belong to a particular place and time, and I have
used pseudonyms to confine the information to its place and time. These are
stories that might otherwise be forgotten by their many listeners, and as their
tellers grow older, they may or may not want to be remembered by the
incidents of everyday adolescent life.
It is no accident that Dan Ben-Amos, Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett,
William Labov, Erving Goffman, John Szwed, and Dell Hymes appear fre-
quently in my citations. They have influenced my work as much through
personal help as through their printed works, and their work on narrative and
performance led me to consider the relationship between writing and speaking
for this book. I cannot hope to have cited every written work that has influ-
enced my own, let alone to have acknowledged those who contributed to the
development of this work in conversations. Meetings with Simon Lichman,
Rivanna Miller, and Shelley Posen gave me an audience for my ideas, and
their ideas, from their own studies, have become so entwined with my own
that I cannot possibly acknowledge their many contributions. Others have also
helped to turn the writing process from a monologue into a dialogue. I greatly
appreciate the conversations with Amanda Dargan, Henry Glassie, Shirley
Brice Heath, Dan Rose, Dan Wagner, and Chava Weissler. Maxine Miska
first talked with me about the notion of retellings. Without Rob Allekotte,
none of my research would have been possible. Katharine Young helped me
to refine my ideas, and I know she will be the first to discover other areas that
need further work. Ana Cara Walker read the manuscript and helped me to see
the whole picture. Susan Stewart helped me to see what was missing; Sabra
Webber helped to identify the extraneous parts. Linda Sabo typed the final
manuscript. Helen Greenberg found my bibliographic errors and Noreen
Mulcahy resolved them. Michael Gnat provided editorial skills and Sue Al-
len-Mills oversaw the entire process. I am grateful to the Ohio State Univer-
sity College of Humanities for awarding me a publication grant. A final
thanks to Craig Schaffer who listened to each new thought and helped me to
sand the edges, and to Miss Hoober, Mrs. Stansky, or Cary (or whatever
voice she uses next), who keeps me on my toes.
IX
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