Lecture to assist with fieldwork assignment I
option 2
Storytelling, Co-narration, Detective Stories, Hidden Transcripts, Face Work, Frames
We are constantly being enculturated and socialized through our interactions with others. One of
the most basic ways that we are influenced by and influence others is through conversations.
Most conversations involve stories or storytelling.
Humans think and talk in stories.
Storylines
Anthropologists Elinor Ochs and Lisa Capps write about how institutions in our culture settings
(educational, military, religious, legal and medical, etc.) have their own master storylines. “In a
militarized setting, for example, stories are told through statistics, technical terms, and
impersonalization to authorize and sanitize the stockpiling and testing of nuclear weapons”
(Ochs & Capp 1996:25). If you tell a story to a group of military officers you will be expected to
adhere to certain story themes and use certain kinds of language. Other versions of the same
story will be discouraged or not allowed.
Institutional storylines greatly influence how we think about an experience. In that sense, we
learn culture through working to conform (or not conform) to storytelling expectations.
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When we tell a story, we anticipate what parts of an experience to tell and which to leave out.
- Values that the group shares will be assigned to the story about an experience
- We may be expected to tell stories in ways that will reinforce and conform to the social
order of a culture or subculture
- Other forms of storytelling are often silenced as a way to muffle alternative perspectives
- Some people in a group may have greater access to telling stories than others
- Some people in a group may have greater authority to decide what a story ‘means’ than
others
An example that Ochs and Capp provide is as follows:
“While family norms organize personal narration in the early period of life, schools may disfavor
family-preferred narrative styles and resocialize children into teacher-preferred ways of
narrating. The personal storytelling style of African American children, for example, during socalled sharing time periods at school, are often radically reconfigured in terms of the genre
conventions favored by the teacher” (Ochs. & Capp 1996:26).
The influence on storytelling on us and the power of conforming to (or resisting) storytelling
expectations becomes clearer when we look at how theory of mind works.
James Herbert Mead’s
Theory of Mind
• Theory of mind is the human ability to ‘mind read’ or enter into the attitudes of others “and so
make our very complex societies possible.”
• We often find that we can best think out an argument by supposing that we are talking to
somebody.
We are constantly having conversations in our heads about how someone will react if we
say certain words or tell them particular information. We anticipate how they will respond
and then adjust what we will say or do, based on how we perceive their reactions.
This process of thought …
• talking to others (in our minds) and then replying in their language
• this is what constitutes thinking
Mead called this sympathy. I think empathy is a better word.
This is part of social control. The subject assumes the same attitude toward self that the
community assumes toward him or her. (This is a ‘practice’ of thinking that influences
and changes us even if we think something different from what we say in public.)
Read the following cartoon letter from a Canadian politician to his constituents. Consider how
the letter is an example of ‘theory of mind’.
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The writer is anticipating how people will respond to his words and then adjusting them based
on what he believes others will think. He is learning culture and how to ‘be’ in culture whether he
wants to or not.
Storytelling involves theory of mind, so we adjust our stories based on how we anticipate others
will respond to them. Once we tell our stories they belong to the group who is our audience. Our
audience influences what meanings we will find, what to leave out, what to stress, and how the
story will be interpreted. The moral of the story is connected to the group to whom we tell the
story.
In your first fieldwork paper, you can observe storytelling norms, rules, rituals,
meanings, power aspects, etc. etc. Consider what you can learn about your
culture group by focusing on people’s storytelling.
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Gossip is a kind of storytelling you might examine in
the group you observe
• What is it?
• Reasons for gossip?
• Results of gossip?
What is gossip?
According to linguistic anthropologist Donald Brenneis it is:
Basically gossip is talking about someone who is absent from the
conversation. Even if the talk is positive and not scandalous, gossipers are
telling someone else’s story. Gossip might be talk about people in their
personal lives that involves some kind of newsworthy element and or
evaluation. Gossip might simply be descriptions of people and events.
What are reasons for gossip?
- Gossip informs. It provides people with a cognitive map of their social
environment.
- Gossip influences. It can be a manipulative device to gain information and
pass it on to further one’s own relational and material goals.
- Gossip entertains for mutually satisfying amusement.
- Gossip socializes. It is a re-iteration of norms. Gossip provides opportunities
for the expression of what the group decides is moral values.
- Gossip creates cooperativity to maintain social relations
- Gossip is a way to display solidarity.
What are results of gossip?
- Gossip creates a definition of who one is by discussing someone else who
one is glad not to be.
- Gossip can threaten to disrupt relations with some and build and sustain
relations and sociability with others.
- Gossip is a way to identify group membership.
- Gossip identifies group boundaries.
- Gossip is a sanctioning mechanism of moral policing.
- Gossip increases group cohesion by asserting collective values or
establishing normative boundaries.
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Gossip as a form of othering
• to build group identity based on descriptions of people the group has decided it is not
• to participate in boundary making based on deciding who belongs and who doesn’t
Men and women gossip
The average man is as big a gossip as his female counterpart, new research has claimed.
A British study says that men are as interested in gossip as women are, although for both sexes
girls are the favorite topic of conversation.
University of Leicester Dr Charlotte De Backer, June 2007.
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You can look at gossip through storytelling as a focus for your fieldwork paper.
Donald Brenneis, who studies gossip, recommends the following to gossip
researchers.
If you examine gossip, consider that there are two kinds of social relationships involved
in any gossiping event: those between gossipers and their subject and those between
the gossipers themselves. Gossip is both talk about and talk with others.
If you examine gossip, consider that gossip is not an isolated phenomenon but is part of
the expressive and communicative repertoire of a community. How gossip is conducted
in any community – its style, its content, its informers and its audience – is important to
consider. What are the power dynamics at play?
If you examine gossip, consider that gossip can threaten to disrupt relations with some
and build relations with others. It is a weaving of a social web.
You might focus in on gossip as part of power dynamics
Political anthropologist James Scott, author of Domination and the Arts of Resistance, studied
situations in which subordinate and dominating people interacted. (employee/boss,
slave/master, student/teacher, etc. etc.) He described two ways that people interacted in
circumstances of unequal power and called them the public transcript and the hidden transcript.
Public transcript (how people of unequal power communicate face to face in
the public sphere)

Public transcripts are the public rituals of communications between those who are dominant
and subordinate (employee/boss, citizen/bureaucrat, slave/master)

Subordinate: may portray a deference and consent that is possibly only a tactic. (An
employee may pretend politeness to her boss as a tactic to avoid trouble and to demonstrate
a positive work attitude.)

Power holder: produces a performance of mastery and command in order to maintain
dominance

The greater the power difference, the more ritualistic and stereotyped the public
transcript.

The more menacing the power, the thicker the public mask.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feK8DO8t-Ow (bad boss technique)
Hidden transcript (how subordinates talk with each other when the
dominant person(s) are absent)
 Consists of those offstage speeches, gestures, and practices that confirm, contradict, or resist
what appears to be the public transcript.
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 The hidden transcript is performed and produced for a different audience than that of the
public transcript.
 It is usually a performance between those who share subordination.
 Power holders also have their own hidden transcripts with other power holders.
 Hidden transcripts usually remain hidden.
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahvGbBTS0Mk (hidden trans. in office. Boss trying to
figure it out.)
What happens when the hidden transcript becomes public, when the
subordinate repeats the gossip or criticisms about the power holder in public so
the power holder can hear? Because when hidden transcripts become public, they
challenge the power of the boss, master, bureaucrat, etc. etc.
Power-holder have three choices when the hidden
transcript is made public, according to Scott
Power holders:
1. Can share power (This is my contribution, not Scott’s. If a power holder decides to share
power, he/she loses power, but it is an option.)
2. Can ignore the challenge (hope that it will pass without incident)
3. Can discredit the challenger (accuse them of being crazy, delinquent, dangerous, etc.)
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4. Can destroy the challenger (firing, jailing, banishing, killing, etc. etc.)
You can choose to write about public and hidden transcripts (which might
include story telling, gossip, joking, etc.)
Remember:
• Doing fieldwork in a culture group that you are familiar with is difficult.
• You have to be able to see the obvious in a new way. It’s not easy.
• Consider even the things about humor or storytelling that you take for
granted.
Another kind of narratives you might watch for are called
detective stories
by Elinor Ochs, Ruth Smith, Carolyn Taylor
Problem solving through storytelling
• Dinnertime is often when family members tell each other stories about
what’s going on in their lives.
Some stories stimulate more participation from listeners
These are often ‘detective stories’
• Listeners want to make sense of the problem
• Listeners may feel there is missing information
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Telling stories to others who help the teller re-interpret it
Listeners become ‘Lieutenant Columbo’ or ‘Monk’ co-narrators who:
• Scrutinize
• Cross examine for details
• Probe or contribute information
• Add their own analysis of the story situation
Once you tell your story to others, it belongs to them as well. They
become co-narrators.
Co-narration often leads to paradigm shifts
• When co-narrators overtly adopt a new perspective of the story situation, a
paradigm shift often occurs
• The teller and listeners see the situation in a new light
Beliefs, values, attitudes are collectively and dialogically
engendered
• Audiences become co-authors
• Audiences become co-owners of the story
• Audiences share control over the moral and other values that these
stories illustrate.
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