DISCOURSES
AND REPRESENTATIONS
THE EIGHTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
ON NARRATIVE
November 12-13, 1999
Department of Communication
University of Kentucky
Lexington, Kentucky
Program
Friday, November 12, 1999
8:30 a.m. – 3:00 p.m.
REGISTRATION
9:30 a.m. – 10:00 a.m.
WELCOME
10:00 a.m. – 10:30 a.m.
James Hertog
Department of Journalism, University
of Kentucky
"Defining
the meaning of electoral results: Conflicting narratives"
The press and political contenders
have unique ways of trying to make meaning of the vote. Because the vote
can be interpreted in a number of ways, and its meaning has significant
political impact, the competition over meaning is an important area of
the study of political communication. This research reviews post-election
coverage on television and in the newspapers of the recent elections in
Kentucky to determine how the various candidates and their spokespersons,
as well as journalists, try to define the meaning of the vote.
jhertog@pop.uky.edu
10:30 a.m. – 11:00 a.m.
David Crowson
Department of Communication,
University of Kentucky
"Religious
conversion within marriage: An ideal speech situation?"
Increasingly, American Jews are
becoming romantically involved with non-Jews - some of whom later decide
to convert to Judaism. This decision to convert is examined against Jürgen
Habermas' Ideal Speech Situation with the conclusion that it is not possible
for the decision-making process to be "ideal."
dcrow0@pop.uky.edu
11:00 a.m. – 11:30 a.m.
Cynthia K. Matthews
Department of Communication, University
of Kentucky
"’What's the use?’: Shame expressions
of invisibly disabled people interacting with health care providers"
Three individuals with invisible
disabilities were interviewed to investigate the emotional reaction of
these individuals to their experiences with their physicians and health
care providers. Responses were coded and compared to the verbal cues described
in Retzinger's method of detecting shame and anger in discourse. Shame
responses were then compared to behavior expectancy as described in the
Shame Response Model (Matthews, 1996). All three interviewees used verbal
cues that would indicate that they had experienced shame in connection
with their disabilities when interacting with physicians or health care
providers and that these three individuals handled that shame maladaptively.
cmatt0@pop.uky.edu
11:30 a.m. – 12:00 a.m.
Donna M. Wills
Department of Communication, University
of Kentucky
"Weighing
in for God: Stories told by women in The Weigh Down Workshop"
The obsession that women have in
our society with their body size is evidences in a myriad ways, but today
some women find the message about appropriate body weight in the Christian
religious context. The Weigh Down Workshop is a program touted to be the
Christian way to eat into a thinner body and is promoted primarily to women.
This paper tells the story of three women who have participated in this
workshop, how it has affected the way they feel about their bodies, their
experiences with weight, their Christian spirituality, and how they express
these feelings in family and other social interactions.
12:00 p.m - 1:00 p.m.
LUNCH
1:00 p.m. - 2:00 p.m.
ROUNDTABLE METHODS
2:00 p.m. – 2:30 p.m.
Michael Shelton
Department of Communication, University
of Kentucky
"Discursive
representations of the syllogism: The enthymeme, Toulmin’s warrant, and
narrative fidelity"
The syllogism is central to traditional
logic, yet it fails to reflect the practice of discursive reasoning. This
was first recognized by Aristotle who proposed the enthymeme as an alternative.
Other scholars, Stephen Toulmin and Walter Fisher, have generated alternatives
to the syllogism. Toulmin’s warrant and Fisher’s concept of narrative fidelity
share much in common with the enthymeme. Discussion of these commonalities
reveals much about the history of discourse and reasoning and illustrates
an even brighter future.
mwshel00@pop.uky.edu
2:30 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.
AFTERNOON BREAK
3:00 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.
Jeff Shires
Division of Humanities, Campbellsville
University
"Through the Word of the Other: Bakhtin,
the Universal Particular and the Construction of the Self"
Bakhtin’s approaches the ethical
ought as a concrete manifestation of language. Any ethical system must
be based upon the individual (as opposed to a theoretical subject). This
paper will look at how the self and other are built through the corporal
moments of language, ideology, and the ought.
3:30 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Gavin J. Fairbairn
School of Nursing and Midwifery,
University of Glamorgan
"Storytelling and professional development
in nursing and other caring professions"
In this paper I want to talk about
uses I have made of storytelling in work on professional development with
practitioners in the caring professions, including nursing, social work,
special education, and counselling. I want, particularly, to focus on its
use in thinking about and working with ethical issues in practice, and
in the development of empathic understanding. En route I shall make some
comparisons between the use of storytelling and the use of other common
tools including role play and simulation exercises.
4:00 p.m. – 4:30 p.m.
Angela Brumley-Shelton
Department
of Communication, University of Kentucky
"Furry Hugs and Sloppy Kisses
The role of animal-assisted therapy in decreasing communication apprehension
and anxiety among residents visited by the PAWS therapy dog group"
This investigation attempts to discover
and explain the contributions therapy dogs make to decreasing communication
apprehension and anxiety among nursing home residents visited by
the PAWS therapy dog group from Southland Christian Church in Lexington,
Kentucky. Personal observations and experience from three years as
a therapy dog handler and a strong interest in health-related communication
with the elderly prompted the construction of this investigation
based on inquiry into communication behaviors. Participant observation
and interview of key informants were the two types of data collection
employed in this investigation. I gained access to the PAWS group
easily because I was willing to become an active participant, making visits
whenever and wherever necessary with my own dog. The goal of using
narratives of therapy dog handlers experiences is to discover how
therapy dogs influence interactions between handlers and residents,
and to see if reaction patterns exist that could be transferred to
patients in different settings and to interactions with health care
providers.
bms@qx.net
4:30 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Dave Robinson
Department of Behavioural Sciences,
University of Huddersfield
"Crossing
the water: Facilitating the transition to a university environment"
Three stories, drawn from a number
of e-mail interviews with current undergraduates, are used to illustrate
some of the issues encountered by students in the period of transition
to higher education. The paper concludes with a discussion of the extent
to which current practices are meeting the needs of mature students.
5:00 p.m. – 5:30 p.m.
B. Keith Murphy
Department of English and Foreign
Languages, Fort Valley State University
"DC
Comics and the construction of place: Representations of ideology through
setting"
Setting plays a critical role in
communicating meaning. DC originated the super hero genre with Superman
and Batman who protect their own "fictional" settings which have become
as important as the protagonists. This work is examines DC Comics’ use
of Gotham City and Metropolis to represent a feeling of place and communicate
a dichotomy of potential urban futures through setting.
5:30 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.
Connie Fletcher
Department of Communication, Loyola
University of Chicago
"Cops
as story-tellers"
I have interviewed hundreds of
cops for three oral histories: "What Cops Know"(Random House), "Pure Cop"
(HarperCollins), and "Breaking and Entering: Women Cops" (HarperCollins).
This session will center on the ways in which narrative is crucial to police
work: as training device, as bonding agent, and as therapy. I will also
discuss police story structure and format, the ways in which women police
differ from male police in story-telling, and the ways in which police
stories encode and enforce police values.
Saturday, November 13, 1999
8:30 a.m. – 3:00 a.m.
REGISTRATION
9:00 a.m. – 9:30 a.m.
Stephanie Kelley
Department of Theater and Rhetoric,
Bates College
"Touched
by an alien: Abduction as a narrative frame"
This study conducts a close textual
analysis of the narratives of people who believe they have been abducted
by aliens. Examination of the interdependent relationship between the form
and function of these narratives reveals them to be important framing stories
in the lives of those who believe in them. In this work, I argue these
stories are an example of a living myth -- "The Myth of Communion." The
narrative/mythic analysis seeks to demonstrate the relationship between
form and function as well as surmise what these stories reveal about contemporary
society.
9:30 a.m. – 10:00 a.m.
Anna R. Holloway
Department of English, Fort Valley
State University
"Understanding each other’s stories:
Long-term female friendship in the work place"
Learning each other’s stories can
enable women to cooperate constructively in an academic department. We
base our reactions on academic tradition, statistics and facts, but also
on our personal stories and envisioned roles in them. Having posed a crucial
academic question to co-workers, I analyze their reactions and our challenge
to work together.
10:00 a.m. – 10:30 a.m.
Amy Carrell
Department of English, University
of Central Oklahoma
"Girl
talk: Women keeping women down"
So much has been made of equal
rights, the Women's Movement, Feminism, women in the workplace, political
correctness, sexist language, male domination, glass ceilings. But women
continue to be treated as the lesser of the two genders. Why? The answer
is simple: we do it to ourselves by the ways we address each other and
the ways in which we talk to each other.
10:30 a.m. – 11:00 a.m.
Jeanelle Barrett
Department of English, Purdue
University
"Dialect
and humor in conversation"
Conversational humor is a fertile
area of study in both linguistic and humor research. The use of dialect
as a tool in conversation and storytelling has been virtually ignored,
and this paper examines issues which pertain to the use of dialect for
the purposes of eliciting humor in not only daily discourse, but also in
literature.
11:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.
ROUNDTABLE THEORY
12:00 p.m - 1:00 p.m.
LUNCH
1:00 p.m. – 1:30 p.m.
Patricia A. Kilroe
Department of English, University
of Louisiana at Lafayette
"To
dream, perchance to discourse: Dreams as texts"
Scrutiny of dream reports reveals
that there is more to a dream than imagery. A model of dreaming suggests
that the source of the dream is the unconscious discourse of the sleeping
person. Much dream imagery may be explained as visual illustration of the
dreamer’s subliminal thoughts, typically reconstructed in narrative language
upon waking.
1:30 p.m. – 2:00 p.m.
Rebekah D. Kelleher
Department of Education, Wittenberg
University
"Personal schooling narratives and
preservice teachers' conceptions of the ideal teacher"
Preservice teachers wrote personal
schooling narratives and articulated in writing their conceptions of the
ideal teacher. They shared the narratives and conceptions in focus groups
and explored the impact of their schooling experiences on their perceptions
of exemplary teachers. Students shared their insights in journal entries
and personal interviews. The journal and interview data were comparatively
analyzed for the emergence of common themes.
2:00 p.m. – 2:30 p.m.
Siegfried E. Heit
Department of Humanities, University
of Central Oklahoma
"Peacekeeping
discourse in Bosnia-Herzegovina"
The "honest broker" role played
by the United States in its relations with European states facilitated
achieving the Dayton Peace Accord (DPA). The discourse which led to the
DPA peacekeeping force continues not only among the major nations involved
but also between the three warring factions in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Why
is this discourse so difficult?
2:30 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.
Kyoko Murakami
Department of Human Sciences,
Loughborough University
"Identity-in-action:
Discourse analysis of Letters to the Editor on POWs and Emperor"
The paper explores a notion of
identity in the discursive practice of letter writing using discourse analysis.
It examines ways in which people's identities are claimed in the act of
remembering and forgetting W.W.II, framed by the social debate over the
POWs' demand for apology and reparation.
3:00 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.
AFTERNOON BREAK
3:30 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Brian Torode
Sociology, Trinity College Dublin
"Two rationalities in the affirmation
or negation of consumer complaint narratives"
The conversation analysts (Harvey
Sacks and his successors) have demonstrated that helpline conversations
involve negotiation between the caller and professional helper. However
they do not discuss what this negotiation achieves. The present study uses
a narrative analysis grounded in Sacks' discussion of story-telling to
examine successful and unsuccessful calls.
4:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.
ROUNDTABLE ETHICS
5:00 p.m. – 5:30 p.m.
Ann Goetting
Western Kentucky University
"Self Help Through Biography:
Life Stories of Women Who Left Abusive Men"
A collection of 16 life stories
of women who got out of abusive relationships is used to steer battered
women out of their own captivity. These stories of diversity --
women battered at every age, of many ethnicities, from all over the U.S.,
of every social class, both heterosexual and lesbian, and of many circumstances
-- show that every kind of woman can fall victim to battering and
that there are no limits to the creative escapes possible. Getting
out is a process rather than an event. That fact shows up clearly
in this collection of life stories. Battered women can create their
own escape strategies using these stories as models. This presentation
is derived from my book, GETTING OUT LIFE STORIES OF WOMEN WHO LEFT ABUSIVE
MEN (Columbia University Press, 1999).
Ann.Goetting@wku.edu
5:30 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.
Laura Barrett
Honors College, Florida Atlantic
University
"Words
and pictures: Ekphrasis and the complexities of fictional photographs"
Ekphrasis, the verbal representation
of visual representation, undermines realism and challenges the possibility
of representation. Due to their similarities to both narrative and visual
art, which is partly a result of temporal ambiguity, photographs serve
as exemplary ekphrastic devices. Fictional photographs have been used since
Hawthorne’s The House of the Seven Gables to question truth and objectivity
and to remind us that what we see is constructed.
6:00 p.m. - 6:30 p.m.
J. Guy Stalnaker
University of Wisconsin
"Narratives
of seduction, seductions of narratives: Giacomo Puccini's Tosca"
Jane Miller, writing about Don
Giovanni, comments on the way in which narratives of seduction appropriate
women’s voices. Carolyn Abbate reveals the startling power of women’s voices
in opera. What happens when men write operas that contain seductions? In
this paper I explore how the composer Giacomo Puccini reconciles these
seeming opposite positions in his opera about seduction, Tosca.
8:00 p.m. – ???
OFFICIAL ICON PARTY: 1040
CASTLETON WAY