The following papers and panels have been scheduled at this time for presentation at the conference and have been organized into panel sessions.
 
Friday, November 7, 1997

9:00a.m. - 10:00 a.m.   Panel 1:  Humor (1):  Sounds Funny...

Room 1    Jeanelle Barrett
                Department of English, Purdue University
                "Look who's talking: The use of dialect and accent in the 1990s situation comedy"

In recent years, situation comedies have increasingly made use of dialects and accents as part of their minor characters' comic makeup. Because dialect is an established mechanism for character and humor development among authors such as Twain and Dickens, it is of interest that this mechanism is now becoming prevalent in the electronic medium of television. This paper examines this particular use of dialect and accent and proposes possible reasons for such a change, looking closely at stereotypes and the issue of political correctness as possible explanations.

Siegfried E. Heit
Department of Humanities and Philosophy, University of Central Oklahoma "Mark Twain and the 'awful' German language"

Mark Twain's many humorous remarks about German reveal his absorbing and frustrating attempts to achieve mastery of this elusive "awful" language. This paper will examine Twain's interest in, knowledge of, and skill in the German language.

Room 2   Carol Swenson and Chloe C.
                School of Social Work, Simmons College
                "I and we, us and them"

We analyze an extended dialogue about a clinical social worker's experiences as a graduate student with a substantial psychiatric history. That disclosing this story could jeopardize the student's professional future presents a paradox for education, which claims goals of valuing diversity, learning from difference, and empathizing with the 'other.'

It is argued that narratives from a variety of discursive fields serve to influence the evolution of a professional identity. These include media and folklore, as well as psychiatry, sociology, medical anthropology, and psychology, among many others. This is then juxtaposed with the possibility that client identities are less evolutionary.

Room 1   Richard C. Cante
                Department of Humanities, Indiana University at Kokomo
                "An epidemic of abbreviation: reading the AIDS joke"

This paper investigates the manner in which a popular category of AIDS jokes narratively enunciates important cultural tensions about gay male HIV and AIDS, emphasizing a cycle of jokes involving the commodified use of language--and, in particular, proper names and abbreviated 'nicknames'--by and in the late capitalist, HIV-infected, mediated American empire.

The definition of 'Sense of humor' varies with gender, class, regional and national differences.  In Taiwan, more females than males define 'a person who has a sense of humor' as 'a person who can tell jokes deprecating themselves to entertain and please the audience.'  Jokes carry cultural ideology.  Chinese appreciate English jokes of university subject such as sex, senility, politics, and childhood.
 
Amy Carrell
Department of English, University of Central Oklahoma
"Situation comedies and audiences: Humor communities"

This paper introduces the notion of 'humor community' as an adaptation and modification of the concepts of local and global discourse communities in conjunction with the audience-based theory of verbal humor. The concept of humor communities is illustrated in a rather complex example of a situation comedy humor community, with its spatial and temporal peculiarities and dynamic, fluid, non-exclusive membership. Humor communities are seen as the basis for successful syndication, spin-offs, reunions, television specials, and reruns of popular situation comedies for decades. Some similarities with other media forms are also noted.

Room 2     Joy L. Hart, Shirley Willihnganz, and Greg Leichty
                Department of Communication, University of Louisville
                "Stories found--stories lost"

This paper examines stories of an organization's history.  During a two-year period, data were collected in several ways, including in-depth interviews.  We examine critical events in the organization's lifespan.  In particular, we focus on commonly told stories, explore some key events about which few stories are told, and link this occurrence to the organization's culture.

The word 'community' seems to be one of the buzz words of the 1990s. To get a better understanding of this phenomenon, this paper examines how traditional community institutions, such as the county library, serve their 'communities.

"The Essence of Things" - David Dick, Former Director, School of Journalism and Telecommunications, University of Kentucky

2:45 p.m. - 3:15 p.m. Afternoon break

3:15 p.m. - 4:45 p.m. Panel 5 "Lights, Music, Action!"

Room 1     Andrew Bonacci, Jay Batzner, and Ian Coleman
                Department of Music, University of Kansas
                "Telling the story through music: The use of music as a para-narrative in the motion
                picture industry"

Film music is one of those elements of the movie-going experience that many do not consciously notice. This being the case, it is our proposal that music can actually serve in the role of a para-narrative, not only supporting the events in the film, but driving the drama and reinforcing our understanding of the plot and the interaction of the cast.

Room 2     Andrew E. Rudd
                 Department of Interpersonal Communication, Bowling Green State University
                "Stories and myths: Personal narratives (re)forming identity in interracial marriages"

This paper focuses on the effects of cultural myths and how they impact individuals in interracial marriages. Interracial marriages potentially represent and imply symbolic remedies for the racial conflict in our culture. I explore how the stories of individuals in these marriages both reinforce and resist stereotypes of racial identity.

In this presentation, I will attempt to show how Malcolm X, in his autobiography, utilizes narrative in conjunction with Aristotle's three subcategories of ethos in order to create space for racial reconciliation. His ethos enables readers to let go of that which offends, while his stories create a space for empathy.

This paper explores the use of personal anecdotes and participatory narratives by Raleigh Washington, a rally speaker for the Promise Keepers. By these complementary strategies, he is effective in constructing a credible speaker's ethos, achieving consubstantiation with his auditors, and moving his auditors to social action.

Room 1     Tomoko I. Sakita
                 Kyoto University
                 "Choice of narrative dialogue forms: Subjectification and self identity"

Stylistic choices in conversational reporting reflect speakers' recall and conceptualization of past experiences. Subjective and objective construals of recalled events lead to the choice of direct and indirect styles. Narrators' self identity and psychological distance from recalled persons influence the tense forms of dialogue introducers. The paper documents these points with cognitive models.

The relationship between narrative thinking and various forms of cognitive knowledge structures in memory will be considered to illustrate their importance in developing narrative skills. The role of narrative thought and other cognitive structures in organizing and retaining autobiographical memories will be discussed. Furthermore, the consequences of narrative thought on what we remember and how we remember it will be examined.

Room 2    Julie A. Noonan
                Brookings, South Dakota
                "The use of narrative in interpreting musical messages: A narrative methodology for
                the American musical"

The narrative form found in the American musical requires a multifacted methodology. This study implements a narrative methodology supplemented with a musical analysis to interpret the musical nuances found in the American musical. The results indicate an empathetic component which broadens the accessibility of the message.

Rap music often receives a bad rap. However, there are reasons that justify our listening as well as its recent popularity. This paper explores the content of female rap music, using a fantasy-theme analysis to evaluate the lyrics of eight songs by female rappers.

8:00a.m. - 9:45 a.m.   Panel 9:  Visual Ide/iolects

Room 1     Maki Takahashi
                College of Communications and Information Studies, University of Kentucky
                "The historical development of Japanese girls' comic books (shoojo manga):
                From the 12th century to the present"

This paper provides an introductory developmental history of Japanese girls' comics (shoojo manga) from the 12th century to the present by focusing on main themes and major comic book artists at different periods of time.

An analysis of the Fox Broadcasting Company's animated program X-Men using the Semantic/Syntactic Theory of Genre and the Theory of Intertextuality reveals that X-Men is a generic hybrid television genre which could be called 'dramation': the combination of dramatic elements and classical animation, particularly animation devices associated with superhero cartoons.

The more than 200 pantomime cartoons in the early New Yorker illustrate rhetorical features of non-verbal, inconographic narration at the same time that they show how one exceptionally skilled editorial staff tailored its mass messages to its medium and audience.

Four surviving painted coffins created four 14th century Augustinian saints and 'beati' provide a sampling of a popular form of instructional visual art. Their narrative scenes and emblematic images represent highly selected episodes from the lives, and formularized miracles performed in life and after death.

The presenters will explore the role of reflecting team members as editors, de-constructionists, and co-constructors of client stories.  The focus will be upon the pragmatics of team members listening to the therapist-family conversation in the therapy room and using their language, themes, and stated goals as the rhetorical tools for creating new and more resourceful client stories.

This research study was undertaken as an exploratory investigation of narrative perspectives in clinical practice. Ten clinicians participated in semi-structured interviews. The major findings were that narrative therapists are unified by underlying philosophical views including: (a) therapy is an ethical stance (b) eliciting client's self-narrative enhances a sense of authorship, (d) this process occurs through a co-structured conversation within the context of the therapeutic relationship.

This paper examines how the narratives that are central to the culture of Alcoholics Anonymous function as a form of invitational rhetoric. Unlike rhetorical approaches that emphasize persuasion, the communicative goal of AA narratives is the promotion of mutual understanding by inviting the narrative's audience to view the world as the narrator does.

This study examines how organizations, companies and other individuals who supply information for cancer patients through the Internet might utilize narrative or personal stories into their Web sites as a source of information and a way of connecting with other cancer patients and survivors. It is proposed that by utilizing cancer patients' personal stories to inform other patients about diverse and alternative cancer experiences, individuals will be better able to make sense of their illness and construct a knowledge which reflects their lived experience rather than a naturalized or ideological notion of cancer.

Room 1     Joan Hac
                Center for Labor Education and Research, University of Kentucky
                "Thelma Stovall and the role of the media in the 1979 Kentucky gubernatorial
                race"

This paper examines the impact of the role of the media in the 1979 gubernatorial elections. It pays particular attention to the democratic primary, which pitted the sitting Lieutenant Governor, Thelma Stovall, against party favorite Terry McBrayer. Of specific important is the use of the media by John Y. Brown, a late entry into the race, and the ultimate winner.

    Richard M. Clewett, Jr.
    Department of English, Eastern Kentucky University
    "Narrative epistemology and political argumentation: The case of welfare
    reform and the Personal Responsibility Act"

This examination of the arguments concerning welfare reform that were embodied in the Personal Responsibility Act, first introduced in the House as a bill in January of 1995, provides an informative opportunity to formulate theory concerning the workings of narrative epistemology as it helps inform and distort the political process.

This paper explores narrative construction in Portrait of a Man, the Dole biofilm, and in A Place Called America, the Clinton biofilm, aired at their respective 1996 nominating conventions. We focus on the intersection of landscape and character as strategic elements in presidential campaign biographical narratives.

Room 2    Veronique Nguyen-Duy
                 Departement d'Information et de Communication, Universite Laval, Quebec
                "Blurring boundaries: Quebec's television dramas and the public sphere"

What is the relation between popular culture and the public sphere? Our study of Quebec's television dramas has shown that those programs are the nexus of a network of secondary discourses and spin-offs. This network is characterized by a blending of genres and functions, of reality and fiction. As those dramas address issues directly related to Quebec's socio-political reality, we think that the discursive network they generate might redefine our understanding and operationalization of collective debate.

     Jacques Lemieux
    Department d'Information et de Communication, Universite Laval
    "Real-life and dream-life: French Canadian viewers discuss their favorite
    fiction programs"

This paper should is a sequel to my 1996 conference contribution: it will focus on retelling teleromans and is based on about 40 interviews of Quebecois viewers.

 This paper showcases the winning advertisement in the Singapore Television Commercial Awards (1995).  The advertisement, a narrative that employs a series of flashbacks rooted in life stories borrows its style from Hollywood's employment of recalling past scenes.  Why is narrative using flashbacks a successful strategy in eliciting audience response?  This paper suggests why and proposes that successful advertising is facilitated by intertwining sound bites and life narratives.  The paper also casts doubts that sex or a catchy jingle can be the most potent vehicle to sell and change attitudes.

Room 3        Brian Torode
                    Department of Sociology, Trinity College, Dublin

This session uses CODE-A-TEXT software to present spoken and written consumer complaint stories selected from

(i) telephone calls to an Irish government consumer helpline
(ii) interviews with

(A) helpline staff
(B) consumer groups
(C) retailers and manufacturers

(iii) radio phone-ins
(iv) newspapers
(v) "How to Complain" books

"The Power of Narrative"
Christopher "Chip" Scanlan, Director of Writing Programs, Poynter Institute for Media Studies, St. Petersburg, Florida

1:30 p.m. - 2:30 p.m. Roundtable Theory

2:30 p.m. - 3:00 Afternoon Break

3:00 p.m. - 4:30 p.m. Panel 13:  Structures and Consturctions (1)

Room 1     "Christine Marie Babick
                Brooklyn, NY
                "Verbal icons in the linguistic playground: Strategies for involvement and their use
                in three TV genres"

Linguistics can be of service to media studies in a new way: discourse analysis provides a method to support the nascent 'involvement' theory in media research. The latter focuses on the macrolevel--the 'metamessage' of involvement--whereas linguistics focuses on the microlevel. The application is transformed from interpersonal to mediated context TV.

This paper provides a description of late-night television interviews from the conversation-analytic perspective. It was found that all three shows shared some news interview format aspects while maintaining an ordinary conversational structure. It is suggested that the turn-taking structure of late-night television interviews elucidates aspects of spoken narrative construction.

Alan Hansen
Department of Communication, State University of New York at Albany "Narrating the game:  Interaction constraints on partisan broadcasters"

Analysis of the radio broadcast of the same American football game by two pairs of broadcasters, each partisan to a different team, demonstrates that construction of a narrative of the game was shaped not just by the broadcasters' partisanship toward their team but by their adherence to turn-allocation protocol.

Room 2     Olivia B. Major
                 Herndon, Kentucky
                 "Meta-meaning in the narratives of elderly Kentucky farm women"

This study of elderly farm women in western Kentucky attempts to establish that women tell stories about their lives in stylized ways that covey meta-meaning.  Meta-meaning is expressed through how they structure what they say, and through hidden meaning and pseudo meaning embedded in the content of what they say.  Meta-meaning is defined as meaning that exists beyond what is conveyed by the actual text of what is said.

The distinction between message and meaning is quite significant. This essay discusses the means by which the distinct scholarly approaches of mass communication research and cultural studies research can be reconciled, both theoretically and methodologically, to improve the prediction of media effects resulting from exposure to mass-mediated narrative offerings.

The writings of Harvey Sacks (1992) and his successors can form the basis of a systematic analysis of story-telling ["narrative structure"], distinct from the more well known analysis of the turn-taking system ["sequential structure"],  (Sacks, Schegloff, & Jefferson, 1994).

This approach is demonstrated in a narrative analysis of four telephone calls to consumer helplines

Speakers invent reported speech to illustrate a claim they have made.  Coparticipants can use this hypothetical situation in support of opposing claims.  Constructed discourse turns into stories when coparticipants co-construct additional talk for one particular character invented by a previous speaker. (German data)

Room 2     Katherine Richardson Bruna
                Education, University of California at Davis
                "Multiculturalism as myth:  A Barthesian semiotic analysis of a popular educational
                theme"

This paper discusses multiculturalism as narrative from a critical perspective using philosopher Roland Barthes' semiotic model of myth.  It argues that this model is useful in understanding not only how meaning is produced but how we can resist representational practices that limit our way of knowing the world.

Dances with Wolves received numerous awards, and the film has been cited as one of the most influential films in Hollywood which opened a cultural dialog between Whites and Native Americans.  However, by re-examining the film four perspectives of post-colonialism, we can see that the film is just another faceless mainstream Hollywood movie that constantly reinforces the dominant ideology of "Whites".

Room 1     Theresa Bachmann
                College of Communication, Marquette University
                "Evangelicals' conversion narratives"

Recently, the Megachurch (those presentation/entertainment-style churches of anywhere from 6,000 to 20,000 members) have been attracting participants from all over the Chicago, Grand Rapids and Milwaukee areas to attend a nondenominational Bible-centered community. Just as the Saul/Paul conversion on the road to Damascus is a well-versed story of sudden conversion, so are those life narratives told by members of protestant Megachurches. This paper examines conversion narratives from several perspectives and also assesses the role of the mass media.

This paper presents an analysis of the first five years (1889-1894) of the serial literature in the Young Woman's Journal a nineteenth-century Mormon periodical. Major affiliate themes included recitations of sacrifice for the religion; empathy for Mormons of other generations and nationalities; defense of Mormon theology and lifestyle; encouragement to marry Church members; and positive accounts of plural marriage.

8:00 a.m. - 9:30 a.m. Panel 18 - Credible Virtual Identities

Room 1    Sage Graham
                Linguistics Department, Georgetown University
                "Virtual Identities:  Creating the self for an electronic community"

Though communities have traditionally been defined by the place in which they were centered, the emergence of computer communication has created de-centered communities with their own rules of initiation and acceptance.  This study examines the ways in which electronic authors "create" themselves for electronic communities, focusing specifically on introductory narratives posted to an e-mail discussion list.

Lately, the World Wide Web's impact as a communication medium has received a great deal of popular scrutiny. Most of this has focused on perceived physical and psychological effects on Internet users. The purpose of this work is to examine how the World Wide Web has used both narrative and iconic form to become an instantly credible medium.

This paper presents a micro-level discourse analysis of the co-construction of eating disorder identities--anorexic and bulimic--within narratives of first-time participants in an on-line support group. My analysis also aims to demonstrate the relationship between the collaboratively created safe context of newsgroup interaction and the co-construction of eating disorder identities that flourishes within it, emphasizing this relationship's therapeutic ramifications.

Room 2    Christine Leiren Mower
                Department of English Studies, Western Washington University
                "Iconoclastic memoir: Rebel narrative in the language of Dorothy Allison and Mary
                MacLane"

Though writing nearly a century apart, Mary MacLane and Dorothy Allison rebelliously construct a new language, a transgressive narrative of self which suggests the continuing limitations of narrative language and convention in representing or presenting the female subject as both the narrator and protagonist of self within the norms of conventional society.

Through an analysis of psychoanalytical accounts of narrative sexual development and Henry James's The Golden Bowl, this paper intends to offer an account of writing that would locate perversion not in its 'margins,' but rather in the negative movement of narration itself.

Jones's second novel Eva's Man raises disturbing questions about female agency and discourse. By using Luce Irigaray's theory of feminine mimicry, I suggest that Jones's main character, Eva Medina Canada, excessively identifies with the images and metaphors that attempt to erase her from the text as a legitimate speaking subject in order to paradoxically assert that these are the very metaphors that are agents of a discursive system that Eva subverts and de-centers.

By reading Eugene Sue's Les mysteres de Paris in the newspaper in which it appeared, we can develop an alternative to the descriptions of univocal narrative proposed by many theorists. Instead, the narrative of the text interacts with its context to destabilize the constructed realism and rationality of the newspaper.

Room 1    Michael Shelton
                College of Communications and Information Studies, University of Kentucky
                "Theory convergence; A case study of narrative fidelity and argument fields"

Fisher's concept of narrative fidelity and Toulmin's theory of argument fields represent significant advances in argumentation. Unfortunately, little scholarship has focused on the relationship between the two theories. This project takes up this challenge and argues that narrative fidelity 'resides' within particular argument fields. Both narrative fidelity and argument fields will be reviewed briefly, and then merged to examine the issue of political correctness. Several implications of this convergence of theoretical perspectives will be highlighted.

Despite the growth of interest in narrative for the presentation of data in recent years,  epistemological issues have remained substantially in the background.  While the immediate appeal of storying experiences, extracting themes, and making linkages between the themes offers strong possibilities for academic papers and theses, less attention has been paid to aspects such as truth, cause, explanation, understanding, and interpretation in narrative theory.  This paper provides a focus on these aspects, drawing on the work of the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur in particular.  In focusing on narrative knowing attention will be given to ensuring that an artificial duality is not set up between epistemology in natural the science and humanities.

This experimental text uses critical theory to inform a personal narrative -- a story about how I work to become a part of the entertainment industry.  Specifically, by giving Walter Benjamin, Stallybrass and White, Bakhtin and others spaces in my text, I allow their stories and mine to rub up against each other for a while.  My work in this piece, to quote Hannah Arendt on Walter Benjamin, is in "tearing fragments out of their context and rearranging them afresh in such a way that they [illustrate] one another and [are] able to prove their raison d'etre in a free-floating state."

Room 2     Diane S. Grimes
                 Department of Speech Communication, Syracuse University
                "Situating whiteness through personal narratives"

Researchers who address 'difference' may find personal narratives, which outline     important experiences and assumptions, useful in situating their writing. Readers can use such narratives as a guide for interpretation. I give an example of such a  narrative used to situate my writing about black women's insights into  organizational theory.

This paper examines the discourse of those fleeing from persecution, oppression, and death, specifically how these individuals talk or write about their forced      expulsion. Three case studies are presented, describing the discourse of      African-American exiles living in Africa during the 1960s, German Jews who fled Germany during the rise of the Nazi Party, and South Vietnamese who fled their country after the United State withdrew from the Vietnam war.

By re-examining Oliver Stone's film, JFK, we can discover that the film is more than a reconstruction of past events. It is not an anti-establishment film as some would argue, rather, it is more of a pro-establishment film. It is argued that cultural hegemony works through legitimization and film rituals.

12:00n - 1:30 p.m. Panel 22:  Tales of Harrassment, Rape and Violence

Room 1     Eugenie P. Almeida
                Communication Department, George Mason University
                "Narrative Themes and Structures in the Paula Jones Story"

The coverage of the Paula Jones lawsuit against President Clinton for alleged sexual harassment is analyzed for the types of textual structures that the reader can access to construct private, individually meaningful narratives.  A partial list of narrative themes has been developed and textual structures both linguistic and rhetorical, have been identified.

Since its 1990 premiere, the popular series Beverly Hills 90210 has featured four plots about sexual assault, each reflecting particular ideas about gender, sexual danger and social power. In this paper, I explore the narrative content and character development in each rape story, documenting not only the construction of rape in Beverly Hills 90210 but also the critical importance of narrative analysis to understanding the power of popular culture.

By juxtaposing the films Fargo (1996) and Pulp Fiction (1994), and comparing both with a chain reaction of drug-related violence that occurred in upper East Tennessee, I explore the ethics of representing violent crime. My argument is that the collective imagination encouraged by these films needs to reflect the interconnections of people, places, and politics in our violent society, in order to provide the resources for envisioning alternatives to their status quo

Room 2  Chair: Georgia Caver, The University of Tennessee, Knoxville

                Bethany K. Dumas
                Department of English, The University of Tennessee, Knoxville
                "Strucutural Autonomy and Narrative Success:  Evidence From Incomplete
                Narratives"

An examination of textual cohesion reveals the extent to which an apparent narrative is complete. By examining a series of four personal narratives that share abstract and coda, the author demonstrates a lack of textual autonomy, hence incompleteness, and suggests a possible motive for the conversational recycling of the narratives.

Two oral narratives are examined using methods from Labov's sociolinguistic analysis and Fisher's rhetorical theory. The second narrative fails to achieve coherence because the audience will not accept the argument implied by the narrative. Coherence is as much the result of audience cooperation as it is the means of persuasion.

Let us now praise famous men represents one of the more spectacular journalistic failures of our century, partly because it is an unconventional text that defies generic classification. This paper argues that Agee and Evans might have succeeded in integrating disparate genres had their work resulted in a coherent narrative.

Return to the 1997 International Conference on Narrative Home Page

Last updated: October 29, 1997
Questions and/or comments to Judy Stivers  jsbear0@pop.uky.edu