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Description:
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This book aims to appraise sociolinguistic work devoted to the form and
function of storytelling and to examine in detail the ways in which
narrative constitutes a fundamental discursive resource across a range of
contexts. The chapters presented here bring together some of the most
recent work in the theory and practice of narrative analysis from a broad
sociolinguistic perspective. They address some of the questions left
implicit whenever stories are brought within the analytic frame of
sociolinguistics: What exactly do we mean by 'story'?; what kind of social
and contextual variations can determine the production and shape of
situated stories, and what are the core elements of narrative as a
discursive unit and interactional resource?; how is the relationship
between narrative discourse and social context articulated in the
construction of cultural identities? The data come both from institutional
settings such as workplaces, courtrooms, schools, and the media, as well as
from informal everyday settings.
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