Telling tales of the unexpected : the organization of factual discourse

Author(s)

Bibliographic Information

Telling tales of the unexpected : the organization of factual discourse

Robin Wooffitt

Barnes & Noble Books, 1992

  • : us
  • : uk
  • : uk pbk

Available at  / 8 libraries

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Note

Includes bibliographical references (p. 202-211) and indexes

Description and Table of Contents

Volume

: us ISBN 9780389209850

Description

Conversation analysis, discourse analysis and the study of rhetoric are combining to form a powerful interdisciplinary field of social scientific inquiry. Robin Wooffitt, in a systematic analysis of how people describe their paranormal encounters as factual experiences, introduces this field to the student and reader unfamiliar with its methods and theoretical constructs. Powerful cultural scepticism about the paranormal ensures that such experiences not only provide an implicit challenge to common-sense understanding of the world, but also undermine the pronouncements of the scientific orthodoxy. Wooffitt focuses on the ways in which accounts are organized in order to warrant the speaker's claim that the experiences actually happened and were not, say, the product of misperception, wish fulfillment or psychological aberration. He also examines the design of descriptive sequences through which speakers portray themselves as "normal," "rational" people; and contributes to the study of identity construction in discursive practices. Wooffitt has illustrated and simplified complex theoretical arguments in conversation and discourse analysis with relevant empirical materials, and he usefully clarifies points of convergence and divergence between these analytic traditions.
Volume

: uk ISBN 9780745010519

Description

This text offers a study of how people organize their accounts of paranormal, telepathic, clairvoyant or precognitive experiences, showing there are often recognizable linguistic mechanisms employed by the claimants. The book argues that such claims are frequent enough to warrant academic attention. The mere act of claiming paranormal experiences can lead to assumptions in others of, at best, crankiness, or worse, some form of psychological deficiency. Research on the everyday conversational interaction of claimants has shown that participants may design their utterances defensively in circumstances in which the co-participants may be hostile to, sceptical of or suspicious of, or simply unsympathetic to, what the speaker may be saying. For example, Pomerantz (1986) shows how "extreme case formulations", such as "never", "always" and "everyone" are used in the routine conversation of claimants to guard against the likelihood of a recipient being able to undermine the basis of the speaker's complaints. Courtroom utterances also show this tendency. The author identifies the properties of a sequence which occurs at the very beginning of accounts. The opening sequence has three stages - in the first, the speaker produces an oblique, inexplicit reference to the experience they have just had; in the second and third, the speaker provides two adjacent descriptions of "when" the experience happened. The author argues that these "when" formulations are designed to provide a setting sequence which the speakers exploit to produce formulations of when the experience happened that are defensively designed. The writer also draws together points of convergence on this topic from psychology, sociolinguistics and parapsychology.

Table of Contents

  • Descriptions as actions
  • on the analysis of factual accounts - three case studies
  • some methodological issues
  • a single case analysis
  • "I was just doing X ... when Y ..." - a device for describing recollections of extraordinary events
  • voices - some inferential properties of reported speech
  • beginnings.
Volume

: uk pbk ISBN 9780745010526

Description

Offers a study of how people organize their accounts of paranormal, telepathic, clairvoyant or precognitive experiences, showing there are often recognizable linguistic mechanisms employed by the claimants. The book argues that such claims are frequent enough to warrant academic attention. The mere act of claiming paranormal experiences can lead to assumptions in others of, at best, crankiness, or worse, some form of psychological deficiency. Research on the everyday conversational interaction of claimants has shown that participants may design their utterances defensively in circumstances in which the co-participants may be hostile to, sceptical of or suspicious of, or simply unsympathetic to, what the speaker may be saying. For example, Pomerantz (1986) shows how "extreme case formulations", such as "never", "always" and "everyone" are used in the routine conversation of claimants to guard against the likelihood of a recipient being able to undermine the basis of the speaker's complaints. Courtroom utterances also show this tendency. The author identifies the properties of a sequence which occurs at the very beginning of accounts. The opening sequence has three stages - in the first, the speaker produces an oblique, inexplicit reference to the experience they have just had; in the second and third, the speaker provides two adjacent descriptions of "when" the experience happened. The author argues that these "when" formulations are designed to provide a setting sequence which the speakers exploit to produce formulations of when the experience happened that are defensively designed. The writer also draws together points of convergence on this topic from psychology, sociolinguistics and parapsychology.

Table of Contents

  • Descriptions as actions
  • on the analysis of factual accounts - three case studies
  • some methodological issues
  • a single case analysis
  • "I was just doing X ... when Y ..." - a device for describing recollections of extraordinary events
  • voices - some inferential properties of reported speech
  • beginnings.

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