Narratives in interview: The case of accounts

Narratives in interview — The case of accounts For an interactional approach to narrative genres Anna De Fina

Georgetown University

Narratives told in interview have become a central tool of data collection and analysis in a variety of disciplines within the social sciences. However, many researchers, particularly those who embrace a conversational analytic or ethnomethodological approach (see among others Schegloff, 1997; Goodwin, 1997), regard them as artificial and oppose them to naturally occurring stories, which they see as much richer and interesting sources of data and analysis. In this paper, I argue that the criticism against interview narratives has been justified by the lack of attention that many narrative analysts have shown towards the interview as a truly interactional context. However, I also point to some shortcomings that derive from this opposition between naturally occurring and interview narratives and to an alternative framework in which the stress is not on the kind of narrative data used for the analysis, but rather on the kind of narrative analysis that should be adopted. I argue that our methodologies of analysis cannot fail to take into account the way narratives shape and are shaped by the different contexts in which they are embedded and propose the study of narrative genres as a way of looking at the reciprocal influence of narratives and story-telling contexts. I illustrate this point looking at accounts as a genre. Keywords: interview, narratives, interaction, accounts, genre

Introduction Narratives told in interview have become a central tool of qualitative research. Indeed, the popularity of the narrative turn in social science research is related to the success of its proponents in claiming that such genres as the life story and the narrative of personal experience are pivotal to a rich and nuanced understanding Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Anna De Fina, Georgetown University, ICC 307J 37 & O St. NW, Washington DC 20057. Email: [email protected] Narrative Inquiry 19:2 (2009), 233–258. doi 10.1075/ni.19.2.03def issn 1387–6740 / e-issn 1569–9935 © John Benjamins Publishing Company

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of social phenomena. Thus, narratives have started to play an unprecedented role in this kind of research. However, only relatively recently researchers have started to interrogate themselves on the kinds of theoretical-methodological questions that narrative-based research poses and on the often implicit principles that guide the collection and analysis of narrative data. As I will discuss, recent efforts to put interview narrative data in context (see Atkinson & Delamont, 2006), provide a fruitful alternative to a tradition (mainly grounded in conversation analysis) in which these kinds of texts have been opposed to conversational narratives as artificial and unnatural. In this paper, I want to provide further arguments for a contextualist approach to narrative data, arguing that we need to pay more attention to the notion of genre in narrative analysis, while at the same time grounding the study of genres in an interactional perspective. My main argument will be that we should not erase the interview context as is often done in narrative research, but that at the same time we should not treat it as unnatural; on the contrary we need to treat it as any other context of interaction and therefore analyze and discuss how it shapes and it is shaped by the narrative event. In order to develop my argument I will first discuss the opposition between naturally occurring narratives and interview narratives as presented in contextualist approaches to linguistic analysis such as conversation analysis and ethnomethodology. I will then point to some shortcomings that derive from this opposition and to an alternative framework in which the stress is not on the kind of narrative data used for the analysis but rather on the kind of narrative analysis that should be adopted. In the following section, I present the concept of genre as an important tool that can help us focus on the contextual embedding of narratives through a discussion of accounts as a narrative genre. In the conclusions I discuss some implications for narrative studies and directions for further research.

Interview narratives versus “naturally occurring data” Let me start with a consideration: although the story told in sociolinguistic interviews has been the focus of Labov & Waltezky’s (1967) original model of narrative analysis and the target of endless debates about the adequacy of interview data for narrative analysis, relatively little has been done to study and define the different types of interview contexts in which narratives may emerge, the roles of interlocutors in them, and the kinds of narratives that may be told in those different contexts. It is true that in the last twenty years a number of authors have talked about the interview as an interactional context for storytelling (see for example Riessman, 1991 and 2008, and Mishler, 1986), about the interviewer’s role in positioning the interviewee in autobiographical talk (see Bell, 2006; Wortham, 2001;

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Lucius-Hoene & Depperman, 2000; and more recently Johnson 2008) or about the co-production of narratives in interview situations (Baker & Johnson 2000). However, studies that analyze the interactional and contextual aspects of different types of elicited stories are still very limited in comparison with similar studies of naturally occurring narratives. This lack of attention to the interview context is partly the consequence of a treatment of the interview as a somewhat unnatural event, of an excessive focus on genres such as the canonical story or the life story within interview narratives, and of a tendency to look at narratives in interview as much more homogeneous than they really are. In order to understand these attitudes we need to go back to Labov & Waletzky’s model of narrative analysis (1967) and to the reactions to it among scholars who advocate for a strong contextualist approach in the analysis of discourse data. As is well known, Labov and Waletzky produced a description of the genre of the narrative of personal experience in terms of structural properties, so that in their model a narrative was defined by: a. the presence of a certain number of narrative components, b. the existence of temporal ordering, c. the centrality of evaluation as a mechanism to guide story interpretation by the audience. Labov and Waletky’s model was tremendously influential as it practically inaugurated the field of narrative studies, however it also generated a great deal of opposition among scholars working within a conversation analytic or ethnomethodological frame, precisely because of its absolute neglect of context in the definition of the story of personal experience as a genre. Given the space limitations of this paper I cannot adequately summarize the debate, but I want to stress the centrality of the criticism against de-contextualization in narrative analysis that has emerged in this debate and its importance for the study of narrative genres. Conversation analysts, ethnomethodologists and in general contextualists (see for example Schegloff, 1997; Goodwin, 1997; Keller-Cohen & Dyer, 1997; Ochs and Capps, 2001) noted that Labov practically erased from his model any reference to the interactional context in which the narratives that he analyzed emerged. In particular, Schegloff (1997) rightly observed that people tell stories to do something: to complain, to explain, to boast, to alert, etc. and that recipients are oriented not only to the story as a discursive unit, but to what is being done by it, with it, through it;….. it should not be surprising that the projects that are being implemented in the telling of the story inform the design and constructional features of the story, as well as the details of the telling. (p. 97)

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Given these characteristics, according to Schegloff, eliminating the recipient from the picture takes away an important element of the storytelling context. A consequence of this criticism was that Schegloff also rejected the idea of focusing on genre, as in his opinion, “taking narrative as the focus, one opts for a discursive unit, genre and activity across contexts of realization, pushing to the background the consequences of those contexts — however conceived — for the actual constitution of stories.” (p. 98) Another consequence of the rejection of Labov’s model was the contention, popular among conversation analysts and scholars influenced by this tradition, that interviews are, in a way an artificial context. According to Edwards, for example, Interview data can be rich and revealing, providing many of the elements and moves that make up discursive life. However, they are likely (and may even be designed) to underplay what talk “does”, how versions accomplish actions and counter alternatives, how stories are themselves activities and are not just about activities or provided as offstage recollections and commentaries. (1997, pp. 140)

This idea is echoed in the following statement by Goodwin, according to whom ethnography affords the researcher a process for gathering stories that is alternative to interviewing and results in different understandings about the structure that stories exhibit. By examining naturally occurring stories we can see how narrative structure is related to the participation framework of the moment and the current social projects, often encompassing multiple participants. (1997, pp. 107)

Like Schegloff, Goodwin seems to imply that narratives told in interview are not related to participation frameworks and to social projects. These positions echo arguments that have been made by CA and ethnomethodology oriented analysts in connection with qualitative research in general. Recent debates on the use of interviews as a research tool and a source of data (see Rapley 2001, and Speer 2002) have revived the discussion over the legitimacy of the opposition between ‘natural’ and ‘contrived’ data. Such debates have shown that even though CA oriented analysts have proposed insightful analyses of interviews as interactional events (see Roulston 2006 for a review), they still treat interview data with suspicion (in particular see Atkinson & Heritage 1984; Potter 1996; Ten Have 1999). As a consequence of these orientations, interactionally based analyses have mostly focused on everyday stories often in informal environments (with the notable exceptions of discursive psychologists such as Stokoe and Edwards, 2007 who have also worked on narratives in more formal contexts), and have not analyzed narratives told in interview. There is also a tacit acceptance of the fact that studying stories as genres implies extracting them from the context in which they emerge.

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One of the points that I want to stress in this paper is that interviews are interactional events, not artificial social encounters and that we should treat them as such. In that sense, I build on a tradition which has been lively in qualitative research (see for example Cicourel 1964, Briggs 1986, Rapley 2001) but which has had few followers among narrative analysts. Indeed, the fact that narratives are elicited does not, per se, mean that the stories produced in interview will be artificial and will be told without any real social objective, but simply that the interactional rules and social relationships involved are different from those of ordinary conversation and other environments. For this very reason, researchers cannot afford to ignore these constraints when analyzing the narratives that emerge in them. Whether interview contexts are deemed more or less interesting and worth while of analysis will depend on the kinds of questions that we ask about language and people and on the objectives of the research. As Speers, (2002, p. 528) has argued, researchers should treat the status of an interaction as defined by participants, not as something that can be judged in advance. Thus, there are no data gathering contexts that per se are superior to others, but it is important to assume the principle that our methodologies of analysis cannot fail to take into account the way narratives shape and are shaped by the different contexts in which they are embedded (see De Fina, 2008; De Fina & Georgakopoulou, 2008a; and papers in De Fina & Georgakopoulou 2008b on this point). In that sense, the debate over contextualization and de-contextualization in narratives is very important for narrative theory and should be seen as significant for the analysis of narratives. One way of looking at the reciprocal influence of narratives and the interactional contexts in which they are embedded is to study the narrative genres that are produced in different contexts and how they reflect and shape the relationships between interlocutors. It is for this reason that I turn to a discussion of narrative genres in the next section.

Narrative and narrative genre Let us then, look more closely at the problem of defining narrative genres. Schegloff ’s criticism of Labov’s focus on narrative as a genre centered on the idea that defining genre implies stripping narratives of their context by favoring generalizations across contexts. How justified is this criticism? It is justified to the extent that genre definitions such as the ones proposed for the narrative of personal experience have overlooked the concrete realizations and embeddings of narratives in interactional events. Many scholars have noted that, contrary to expectation, the canonical narrative is not very common in everyday talk and that a great deal of narrative types escape the rigid principles of temporal juncture, tellability (defined as the recounting of unusual or exceptional events), and evaluation (seen as

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basically the work of the teller). Thus, scholars have pointed to the existence of habitual narratives (Carranza, 1998; Baynham, 2006), hypothetical stories (Georgakopoulou, 2003) cyclical tales (Brockmeier, 2000), anecdotes (Holmes, 2006), etc. They have noted that many narratives are co-constructed, co-evaluated, that they are modified through interaction with audiences, etc. in sum, that they escape the neat organization of monological tellings. All these phenomena make it difficult to take structure as the main basis for the definition of narrative genres. A great challenge to the individuation of genres has also been posed to narrative theory by the existence of narratives that Riessman has called “long stories”, such as life stories (Linde 1993) or accounts, because these (like conversational stories) do not easily lend themselves to be analyzed as a particular type or genre, especially if we take genre to imply, “the persistence of certain conventional elements (…) which engage us in quite different ways” (Riessman, 1991, p. 46). Long stories such as accounts or oral histories (Portelli, 2004) do not present a unified structure and do not contain conventional elements. It must be noted, however, that the difficulty of classifying them into a genre category is not exclusive of long stories, but always arises when we are confronted with oral genres. Thus, we need to open our definition of genres to include consideration of the interactional conditions in which narratives arise and, at the same time accept the eminently emergent nature of oral genres. Oral narratives for the most part do not involve much reproduction of conventions, like artistic performances or traditional tellings, but rather represent interactional achievements that reflect the work of the people involved in social encounters. These considerations are consistent with a vision of genre that has been proposed by ethnographers (see Hanks, 1987 and Bauman, 2001). For example Hanks (1987) views genres as orienting frameworks, interpreting procedures or schemes that remain very general and on which people improvise in practice. Also Rampton (2006, p. 128) sees genres as “a set of conventionalized expectations that members of a social group or network use to shape and construe the communicative activity that they are engaged in.” In his view, these expectations include: – – – –

a sense of the likely task at hand the roles and relationships typically involved in an activity the ways the activity can be organized the kinds of resources suited to carrying it out.

In this respect, a certain structure and form of emplotment do not automatically constitute a genre, and a type of narrative does not necessarily coincide with a narrative genre, especially if we reject the “literary” definition of genres purely in formal terms. Thus, for example, habitual narratives per se do not constitute genres unless they form the basis for a specifically organized storytelling activity. Let me

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illustrate this point with a brief analysis of accounts as a narrative genre, in order to show what an interactional perspective on this question may involve and how it can present us with a different orientation on narrative interviews as well.

Narrative accounts The structure and the conditions under which accounts are produced are usually given for granted in the literature on narrative, as researchers often call the narratives they are working with accounts, but almost never explain what they mean by the term. As a result, we need to resort to literature in conversation analysis and in sociology in order to find contributions on the topic. Within the CA tradition, accounts have been studied mainly in connection to dispreferred social behavior such as rejections of proposals and offers (Pomerantz 1984, Houtkoop-Steenstra, 1990), refusals (Heritage, 1988), and other kinds of face threatening social actions. Summarizing this ample literature, Morris et. al. (1994, p. 128) argue that there are common elements in the way accounts have been treated by different authors within this tradition. They single out the following common characteristics: accounts are part of dispreferred actions, they are offered after some delay, and they include reports that detail activities and circumstances of an action. In their own definition an account is “a description that reports trouble accomplishing what is expected ordinarily, and therefore, is understood or credited by its recipient as an explanation for a divergence from assumptions about what ordinarily will or should happen.”(ibid. p. 130) Another well known definition of the genre comes from the work of Scott & Lyman (1968). These authors describe an account as “a linguistic device employed whenever an action is subjected to evaluative inquiry” (p. 46). They specify that an account is “a statement made by a social actor to explain unanticipated or untoward behavior” (ibid.), and therefore distinguish accounts from explanations, i.e. “statements about events where untoward action is not an issue and does not have critical implications for a relationship.” (1986, p. 46). As we see, these authors do not mention the fact that accounts are usually narratives. Indeed while Morris et al. talk about them as ‘descriptions’, Scott & Lyman define them as statements. Also all authors see them as involving a breach of expectations. Scott & Lyman describe accounts as explaining ‘untoward behavior’, while Morris et al. state that they communicate ‘trouble accomplishing what is expected ordinarily’. In my view, these definitions are adequate in the case of accounts that accompany dispreferred actions such as refusals, disagreements, etc. However, narrative accounts are not necessarily produced in such circumstances. They do not need to be seen as justifications of “untoward behavior” and do not

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seem to necessarily involve a breach of expectation about what is normal behavior, although they often do address implied interlocutors’ expectations. What all accounts involve is an explanatory component. Their specificity consists in the fact that, as correctly stated by Scott & Lyman, they are produced as responses to an open or implied interlocutor’s evaluative inquiry. Thus, narrative accounts (including justifications, excuses and explanations) can, in my view, be defined as recapitulations of past events constructed as responses to an explicit or implied “why” or “how” evaluative question by an interlocutor. Since accounts are given when an evaluation by an interlocutor is presupposed, they are eminently explanatory and dialogic. Thus, the original intention of the person who asks the question is not important here, what is important is the way the narrator shapes the narrative and therefore the way s/he perceives the interlocutor’s question. This is a fundamental condition for a narrative sequence to be seen as an account since it allows us to distinguish accounts from other types of elicited narratives. Many narratives in interview (including narratives of personal experiences and life stories) are told in response to open ended questions such as the famous Labovian danger of death question, “Were you ever in a position to be killed?”, or the life-story elicitation such as, “Can you tell me your life?” These questions do not set any kinds of limit or specifications on the type of narrative that is expected. Riessman who studied divorce accounts, rightly observed that narrative accounts “functioned to construct and interpret the past (…)”, but they were also essentially “recipient designed” (1997, p. 156). As underlined by Schegloff and other contextualists, the mode of emergence of narratives has consequences for the types of narratives that get told and it shapes and reflects a certain kind of relationship between the interactants. When accounts are produced, the relationship established between the participants tacitly implies that one of the partners is in a position not only to elicit a certain kind of narrative, but also to evaluate it. The nature of this relationship and the weight of this asymmetry needs to be defined based on the type of activity in which accounts are embedded and the specific social roles and power relations between interactants, but in general terms one can safely argue that in situations where accounts are produced it is assumed that the interlocutor, more than the narrator, has the primary responsibility in evaluating the validity and/or adequacy of the narrative in its context. Since accounts are told as responses to specific or implied evaluative questions, they are recipient oriented and they are designed to try to answer those questions. In this respect, accounts are a very large class of narratives that do not only emerge in interviews, but can be produced in all kinds of situations, from legal interviews to calls to mediation centers. The data I discuss here are accounts told in sociolinguistic interviews and focused on the crossing of the border told

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by undocumented Mexican immigrants in response to interview questions addressing the reasons and modes of migration or to direct questions about how the crossing happened (see De Fina 2003a). Let me first introduce the context in which the interviews took place in further detail. I conducted interviews with Mexican undocumented workers with the help of an insider to the community: Ismael, a young Mexican who accompanied me to most of the meetings and introduced me to the community. I was an outsider and a foreigner and my interviewees were at times curious, at times slightly suspicious about my wanting to talk to them and they were always trying to figure out what I wanted to know. Indeed, I had explained that I wanted to ask about their migration experience, but my interviewees were always doubtful that their everyday life may be of interest to someone. The atmosphere of the interview was generally relaxed, also because of the presence of Ismael, however the more general social and political context in which our interactions were embedded was one of suspicion and hostility towards undocumented migration to the United States. The need to explain/justify their presence in the country and the insecurity about my objectives are important elements to understand why so many of the narratives that I collected were constructed as accounts. As I have discussed elsewhere (see De Fina, 2003b), many of the narratives told in the interviews that I did presented negotiations over form and context. The nature of accounts as guided responses explains the presence in the storytelling of a great deal of interactional negotiations and the nature of the dialogues that goes on between interviewer and interviewee. Let us look at one example illustrating initial negotiations following the question by the interviewer. The fragment reproduced below comes from the beginning of an interview with Raquel, a young woman who had migrated with her sister and a friend: (1)

1. R: Tengo un año con siete meses. 2. A; Un año siete meses. Bastante. No has vuelto a México en este tiempo? 3. R: No 4. A: Bueno cuéntame un poco como llegaste. cómo fue que ocurrió esto? 5. R: Cómo fue? 6. o sea uh o sea decidimos venirnos para acá porque como estaba en crisis el país, 7. eh o sea teníamos un sueldo pero ya no era lo mismo, 8. no nos alcanzaba más que para para comer para vestir más que bien vestir, 9. ya no era lo mismo. 10. entonces un día decidimos venir para acá,

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11. y quieres que te cuente cómo fue que pasamos la frontera? 12. A: Lo que tu quieras. 13. R: Uh nos vinimos un veinte y cinco, veinte y seis de diciembre, 14. volamos en avión de México a Tijuana, 15. veníamos acompañad- éramos tres mujeres-> (1) Translation 1. R: I have been here for a year and seven months. 2. A: A year and seven months. A lot. You have not gone back to Mexico in this time? 3. R: No 4. A: Well, tell me a bit about how you came, how did that happen? 5. R: How did that happen? 6. well I mean we decided to come here because as the country was in a crisis, 7. I mean we had a salary that was not the same, 8. it was barely enough to to eat, to dress, more or less dress, 9. it was not the same, 10. therefore one day we decided to come here, 11. and do you want me to tell you how it was that we crossed the border? 12. A: Whatever you like. 13. R: Uh we came on a the twenty five, twenty six of December, 14. we flew from Mexico to Tijuana, 15. somebody came with us- we were three women->

This extract is an example of an account in that although my question in lines 4 is vague, R treats the question “how did you come… how did that happen” as an invitation to explain/justify her decision to leave Mexico. Thus, her response is explanatory. She provides the causes for her decision to leave: the economic crisis, the lack of decent salaries and the consequences that all that had on her life and that of her friends. Notice also the presence in the introduction to her account of discourse markers (‘well, I mean’) signaling uncertainty and the need for structuring an adequate response. This fragment also clearly shows the recipient design of the account and the attempt by Raquel to negotiate with me the kind of narrative that is acceptable in this context. In fact in line 11 she checks with me whether I want her to start telling how she crossed the border. Having received an uptake, she goes on to tell the narrative in those terms (from line 13 on). The recipient design of these stories is revealed also in other ways: notice for example the following account produced by Silvia, another young woman I interviewed:

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(2) 1. A: Ok cómo. Cómo? Me puedes contar como llegaste aquí? Como se te ocurrió? 2. Como llegaste? lo que quieras. 3. S: Pues en sí no era planeado, 4. tenía visión de de venir acá, pero fue así tan imprevisto, 5. fue de de quince días nada más. 6. tenía que juntar aproximadamente seis millones de pesos, para llegar aquí. 7. A: Seis millones, casi mil dólares! 8. S: Lo que es, lo que se le llama el coyote nos cobraba 700 dólares, 9. A: Y lo demás para que lo necesitaban, [para pagar-? 10. S: [Para el boleto de avión, lo que fue de México a Tijuana, 11. después de(.) de los Ángeles a Washington. 12. primero pasamos13. llegamos a Tijuana 14. eso se hizo un día viernes 15. y para el día sábado ya teníamos que intentar pasar la línea 16. ((FOLLOWS NARRATIVE)) 17. ya terminado eso- quieres más detallado? 18. A: No importa. (2) Translation 1. A: Ok how did you? Can you tell me how you came here? How did you decide? 2. How did you come? Whatever you want. 3. S: Well it was not planned, 4. I had a vision to come here, but it was like that really unforeseen, 5. it was [done] in only two weeks, 6. I had to put together about six million pesos, to get here. 7. A: Six million, almost one thousand dollars! 8. S: What it, the person called “coyote” charged us 700 dollars, 9. A: And what did you need the rest for,[to pay-? 10. S: [For the air ticket, from Mexico to Tijuana, 11. then from (.) los Angeles to Washington. 12. first we passed13. we got to Tijuana 14. that was done on a Friday 15. and by Saturday we had to try and cross the border 16. ((FOLLOWS NARRATIVE)) 17. then after that- do you want it more detailed? 18. A: It doesn’t matter.

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Again, my questions in line 1 are not very specific since, “How did you come?” and “How did you decide?”, can be the leads for very different narrative developments. Silvia starts with an explanation that focuses on the planning of the move to the U.S. In this case the coming is presented as unplanned, and she talks about what she needed for the trip and then seamlessly enters into the narrative of the actual border crossing (line12). Notice that she starts the telling of the actual crossing in line 12 and continues, but after few lines (line 17) she stops in order to check whether I want a more detailed recounting, to which I answer, “It doesn’t matter”. These negotiations are important to stress how accounts are designed by tellers with the questions asked by the interviewer in mind, but also how they are continuously negotiated and therefore cannot exhibit a fixed structure. Sometimes narratives are reshaped because narrators suspect that they have been too brief. See the following example where Juan had given a kind of summary story and then returns to it in order to make it more detailed: (3)

1. J: y me pasé un día en Los Angeles. 2. luego ya volé para acá y, aquí estamos. 3. A: Uhu. 4. J: @Quieres que te lo cuente, detalladamente@@? 5. A: Como quieras. 6. J: Bueno. 7. Cuando llegué a Tijuana, llegué con un primo y con mi tío, (FOLLOWS NARRATIVE)

(3) Translation 1. J: and I spent one day in Los Angeles, 2. then I flew here, and here we are. 3. A: Uhu. 4. J: @Do you want me to tell you, in more detail@@? 5. A: As you like. 6. J: Fine. 7. When I arrived in Tijuana, I arrived with my cousin and my uncle, (FOLLOWS NARRATIVE)

The negotiation with interviewer questions and about interviewer expectations is also clear in evaluation sequences since interviewees often seem to address what they think are interviewer’s expectations. The existence of presumptions about what the interviewer could expect, or deem acceptable, normal, etc. is often signaled by negative formulations that accompany the beginning or the end of accounts. For instance, we saw in example (2) (lines 3, 4, 5) how Silvia emphasized that her departure was not planned at all. Such negative formulation is an

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indication of the fact that Silvia expected me to believe that migration is usually planned in advance and therefore that her account would defeat that expectation. In the following example, (a continuation of (1)) Raquel closes her narrative account with an evaluation: (4)

1. R: me regresaron, 2. y tuve que esperar hasta el siguiente, 3. al siguiente día pasé, 4. o sea no fue problema5. yo no puedo decir que pasamos por el monte corriendo, 6. o que la persona que se encargó de eso se quiso pasar de listo con nosotras, 7. o sea fue de lo más tranquilo. 8. no hubo ningún problema, 9. salvo porque a mi me regresaron, 10. entonces sí nos pusimos un poco nerviosas. 11. pero todo fue tranquilo. 12. no hubo nada.

(4) Translation 1. R: and they sent me back, 2. and I had to wait until the following day, 3. the following day I crossed, 4. I mean it was no problem5. I cannot say that we crossed the mountain running, 6. or that the person who took care of this wanted to take advantage of us, 7. I mean, it was really easy, 8. there was not problem, 9. except because they sent me back, 10. then we got a little nervous, 11. but all was easy, 12. there was nothing.

We see that Raquel evaluates her border crossing as ‘unproblematic’ in many ways (lines 4–10) and in order to stress such lack of complications, she lists all the things that did not occur. As I have discussed in detail elsewhere (see De Fina, 2003b), all these negative statements underscore the presence of expectations about border crossing as a dangerous and traumatic experience. Thus, interviewees show that they are aware of what the expectations of interviewers may be about the content of the narratives that they are going to tell.

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These examples illustrate that accounts are highly negotiated narratives both in terms of their insertion in the conversation (should they be told at all?), their form (how long and detailed should they be?), their content (what should they be about?), and their tellability (are they worth listening?). These negotiations show that, at least in interview settings, the form and content of narrative accounts is not presupposed by interactants, but that interviewees try to accommodate to different types of interviewer’s expectations. These factors are also an indication of the fact that there are genre-related expectations associated with accounts in terms of the relationship between interactants and the kind of activity that is being carried out. In fact interviewees believe that they are engaged in responding to evaluative questions, they know that they do not need to secure listener’s attention, that their responses are supposed to consist of reconstructions of past experience and that they may use different types of narrative formats to comply with the task. In that sense, the focus is not necessarily on the meaning of the experience but on how and why it took place and all the interactants are intent in making sense of this reconstruction together. As Schegloff (1997) noticed, the conditions of production (i.e. the participation framework, the immediate local context, but also the more general social context) of narratives have consequences on the structure of the narratives themselves. The consequence of these interactional conditions is that narrative accounts are, as many oral genres, an emergent genre, a sense making process, realized in different narrative formats, punctuated by negotiations between teller and audience. In that sense and contrary to what is often said about narratives told in interview, accounts are not orderly and coherent, as events in them are not told “ as a tidy narrative package” (Ochs & Capps 2001, p. 7) but often in incomplete and negotiated ways. Indeed, narratives may begin and be framed as accounts and then develop into tellings of chronologically and spatially ordered events (chronicles, as I have called them) as a consequence of interviewer’s questions and or respondent’s own chosen narrative directions. The interactional dynamics of these kinds of tellings is also context sensitive in that it depends on the type of relationships that interviewers and interviewees establish between each other and among themselves. Thus, we find accounts that are brief and unevaluated, more as summaries of events, and accounts that are highly evaluated and more thoroughly negotiated. These differences often reflect the kind of (power or other) relationship that interviewers and intervieewes are negotiating at the moment when they are told. More richly evaluated accounts are often produced when interviewees are more relaxed and ready to share their experiences. Compare for example the following fragments that represent the end of two different accounts, the first (example 5) told by Carlos and the second (example 6) by Virginia who was partly co-narrating her border crossing with her husband Ciro:

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(5)

1. C: y este, cruzamos la línea así por la noche, 2. no era muy noche, era a punto de, de anochecer, 3. y este, llegamos caminando como más o menos unos 45 minutos casi, 4. y salimos a una carretera 5. y ya de ahí pasó un carro, 6. y nos recogió, 7. y de ahí nos llevó hasta8. no me recuerdo si fue, fue Dallas creo, 9. creo que sí fue Dallas 10. a donde llegamos ahí a una casa, 11. nos estuvimos como dos días, 12. hasta que consiguieron este, el vuelo, para, o sea, para venirnos para acá para Washington (.)

(5) Translation 1. C: and well, we crossed the line like that in the night, 2. it was not very late, it was almost becoming dark, 3. and well, we arrived at a highway more or less in 45 minutes almost, 4. and we got out on a highway, 5. and then there a car came, 6. and picked us up, 7. and from there it took us to8. I can’t remember if it was, it was Dallas I think, 9. I think it was Dallas, 10. where we arrived at a house, 11. we stayed there about two days, 12. until they got, well, the flight, I mean to come here to Washington (.) (6)

1. V: Bue[no ya decía yo, está bien pero también donde pasé otra uhm= 2. C: [Ya después3. V: = se me hizo como muy difícil no? 4. porque él me decía que en el camión que íbamos a ir se iba a subir uno de5. me imagino que del ejército algo así, un soldado y ese soldado nos iba a revisar los papeles. 6. y este, yo decía “ahi!, otra vez?” 7. o sea que también me puse más nerviosa porque pasamos donde estaba una parada,

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8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. A: 29. C: 30. V: 31. 32. 33. 34. A: 35. V: 36.

y vi unos soldados, dije,” pus aquí se van a subir,” no no se subieron! en otra parada estaban otros, y en la tercera parada estaban otros, o sea que yo no sabía en cual parada se iba a subir, pues era en la primera que habíamos pasado, pero yo estaba así super nerviosa porque no sabía ni en cual parada se iba a subir el soldado, y no no se subió, nosotros nos pasamos así derechito y ya. ya después yo llegué a, llegamos a su casa de don don Luis el señor que, según nos mandó el coyote y eso, y ya también nos quedamos, ocho días en su casa que también se nos hizo bien pesado! nosotros ya casi sin dine:ro y que nos daban así medio a com:er y eso, pero ya después nos ganamos la confianza de ellos porque uhm mi esposo les empezó a pintar su casa, o sea allí cosillas, su gabinete, ya como nos trataron un poquitos mejor, y así. y [ya pues ya después ya nos veni:mos, [Uhu. [Y ya, y ya hasta que llegamos aquí pero yo venía super espantada porque mi cuñado me decía que yo traía una cara, peor que un muerto verdad? @@ @@@ Bien blanca blanca que venía yo pero venía así bien espantada. y a la vez venía yo tan bien delgada!

(6) Translation 1. V: We[ll I was saying, fine but where I was again uhm it was very= 2. C: [Then alter3. V: = hard for me, right? 4. because he told me that in the bus that we would take someone from the5. I imagine that from the army, something like that, a soldier and that soldier was going to check our papers,

Narratives in interview — The case of accounts 249

6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. A: 29. C: 30. V: 31. 32. 33. 34. A: 35. V: 36.

and, I said, “Ahi! Again?” I mean that I again was nervous because we passed close to a bus stop and I saw some soldiers, I said, “well here they are going to get in” but they did not get in! at another stop there were others, and at the third stop there were others, so I did not know at which stop he was going to get on, since it was the first that we had passed, but I was super nervous because I did not know at which stop the soldier was going to get on, and he did not get on, we just went like that past it and that was it, then I arrived in, we arrived to the house of don Luis the man that, according to what the coyote told us, and also we spent, eight days in his house, which was also very hard! we had almost no money, and they gave us kind of something to it and that, but after we conquered their friendship, because uh my husband started to paint his house, I mean small things, his study, and since they treated us a bit better, and so and [then well then we came here, [Uhu. [And that’s it, and that’s it until we arrived here, but I was very scared, because my brother in law told me that I had a face, worse than a corpse, isn’t it? @@ @@@ Really white, I was white because I was really frightened, and I was also very skinny!

Notice that Carlos closes the reconstruction of his trip in form of a chronicle, without any detail about the way he was feeling. The ending of his account reflects the fact that we were still at the beginning of the interview and although he was trying to be cooperative, he was not totally ate ease. His answers tended to be brief

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and he did not elaborate very much on what he said. Later, however, he told me a much more involved narrative on an encounter with the police that terrified him. Virginia, on the other hand was quite comfortable talking about her experiences, and clearly at ease with the idea that I wanted to know about her coming to the U.S. Thus, she produced a highly evaluated tale adding details on what her feelings and thoughts were. As we can see Virginia talks about how she was afraid of being scrutinized by the police on the bus that took her into the United States, how she felt bad when she arrived at her new destination because she had no money and how all these experiences had taken a toll on her. From a formal point of view these two narratives are very different as the first one is not performed and consists of a simple report of facts, while the second one is performed and displays a number of mechanisms of evaluation and involvement. However they are both parts of the same narrative genre: an account. Also, contrary again to a vision of interview telling as monologic and orderly, interview accounts may be co-constructed as in the following case, where Virginia is telling me about her crossing, but her telling is often co-narrated with her husband Ciro, whom I had also interviewed: (7)

1. A: Es que usted me dijo que tenía miedo de cómo iba a ser este viaje y este paso para acá, cuéntemelo 2. V: Bueno pus a mí dónde me dio más miedo fue cuando pasamos por la por la línea. 3. allí fue donde me dio un poquito más de miedo y y que me entraba así como mucho miedo. 4. C: Te dio más miedo que en el avión viejo que nos tomamos. 5. V: Bueno, eso fue cuando nos venim[os de de México a Tijuana, 6. C: [Uhu. 7. V: = nos subimos en un avión ya, viejo no? Y @@ 8. I: Taesa o que? 9. C: Uh? Pos era, California. 10. I: Taesa 11. V: Si. 12. I: Aerocalifornia? 13. C: Si 14. V: Y se hacía así o [sea que iban entre las nubes me imagino y se hac- = 15. C: [Ya era viejo el avión y pequeño. = hacía así, 16. V: y yo decía pus esto que?

Narratives in interview — The case of accounts 251

(7) Translation 1. A: Because you told me that you were afraid about how this trip and this passage to here was going to be, tell me. 2. V: Well, the moment I was more afraid was when we crossed the line, 3. that’s where I got more scared and and I I felt that I was becoming very scared. 4. C: You were more scared on the old aeroplano that we took. 5. V: Well, that was when we ca[me from Mexico to Tijuana, 6. C: [Uhu. 7. V: = we got on a plane that was old, isn’t it? and @@ 8. I: Taesa or what? 9. C: Uh? Well it was, California. 10. I: Taesa. 11. V: Yes. 12. I: Air California? 13. C: Yes. 14. V: And it moved I [mean that they went in the middle of the clouds I= 15. C: [it was old the airplane and small. = imagine and it moved like this, 16. V: and I was saying what is this?

We can see how this narrative is shaped by my direct questions, since I was trying to get Virginia to expand on an evaluative point that she had made earlier (line 1). In an earlier section of the interview Virginia had said that she had been scared about coming to the U.S. and in this case I asked her directly about the trip and about her fear. She started talking about how the border was the point where she was most scared, but Ciro (line 5) intervened by pointing to a previous moment in the trip when Virginia had been scared: her first airplane trip, which had occurred when she took the plane inside Mexico, from Mexico City to Tijuana. At this point they both started setting the orientation to the story, but Ismael asked for details about the trip (line 9) to which Ciro and Virginia responded (lines 12–13). Then Virginia went back to the story and Ciro again participated in setting the orientation (lines 14–16). This example shows how some interview narratives (in this case accounts) can be co-constructed, how their development may be influenced by conarrators and /or listeners and how specific evaluative points may be negotiated between the partners. In terms of kinds of story structures that are involved in accounts, the variability is enormous, since some accounts are simple recapitulations of events organized around a spatially and temporally defined beginning and end, while others are very long and complex narratives which, because of their complexity, enclose a variety of embedded story types: from anecdotes (Holmes 2006), to habitual

252 Anna De Fina

narratives, to canonical stories. This is the case, for example, with two of the border crossing accounts that I have collected, which span for long periods of time and contain smaller stories, anecdotes and explanations but that still are narrative units in themselves as narrators and listeners strive to maintain a continuity between the progress from the spatial beginning of the trip which is being described to its end point. These accounts are characterized by a great deal of negotiation over orientation detail (again see De Fina, 2003b for a fuller analysis). See the following example: (8)

1. L: Y vu::m nos fuimos al pueblo a cambiar los cheques, 2. A: Uhu. 3. L: Pues si nos metimos cambiamos los cheques, 4. en eso un amigo mío/ fue a buscar a alguien para que nos echara un raid a Raleigh no? 5. A: Uhu. 6. L: Y si encontró un mexicano, 7. “Qué onda cha[vos-” 7. A: [Raleigh aquí en Virginia? 8. L: No Raleigh en [en Norte Carolina. 9. A: [Donde está? 10. S: North Caroli[na. 11. A: [Ah todavía North Carolina. 12. L: Aha.

(8) Translation 1. L: And vu::m we went to the village to Exchange the checks, 2. A: Uhu. 3. L: And we did go to Exchange the checks, 4. and in the meantime a friend of fime went to look for someone to give us a Lift to Raleigh, right? 5. A: Uhu. 6. L: And he did meet a Mexican, 7. “What’s up guys-” 7. A: [Raleigh here in Virginia? 8. L: No Raleigh en [in North Carolina. 9. A: [Where is that? 10. S: North Caroli[na. 11. A: [Ah still in North Carolina. 12. L: Aha.

Narratives in interview — The case of accounts 253

These negotiations are related to the complexity of the tales and the disorientation that is both portrayed in the stories and experienced by listeners in the interview. However, they reflect a general orientation in accounts as genre: the focus on factual information. This, again is due to the status of accounts as explanations. Although, as we have seen narrators make evaluative points as part of their stories, these points are not the main foci for listeners. To summarize what has been said about narrative accounts: –

– – – –

They are recapitulations of past experience constructed as responses to explicit or implicit interviewers’ evaluative inquiries about how or why those experiences took place They involve explanations They are recipient designed They are generally oriented towards factuality Their structure varies a great deal as it is the emergent result of the specific questions asked and the relationships established between interlocutors.

Why is a consideration of interactional dynamics and conditions of production significant for narrative analysis? A first important point is that taking the canonical story as a model for selecting narratives may lead us to overlook how different story types and interactional resources may be used to produce narratives that are accepted by interactants as adequate to the context in which they are told. For example focusing on evaluation and tellability in accounts may lead us to miss their characteristics and reasons for emergence. Thus, the analysis of narratives in concrete environments supports the need to treat structure as strongly related to function and not as separated from it. Secondly, a consideration of conditions of production (including expectations on topic, structure and roles) focuses the attention of researchers on the constitutive influence of contexts with respect to narrative form and narrative development. This is particularly important when working with contexts such as the interview, because of the dangers of treating interview narratives as entirely shaped by the narrator. It is true that scholars have pointed to the role of the interviewer in positioning the interviewee, but this is not enough. We need to know not only how the interviewer reacted to a narrative, but also what kinds of questions elicited the narrative or narratives, how these narratives developed and how, in turn, the storytelling related to and shaped or modified the roles of interlocutors within the interview. More importantly, we need to ask what kinds of power relations existed between the person who asked the questions and the person who responded. In this case, for example, an important question to ask is, “How did the relationship between interlocutors affect the kinds of stories that were told and the way they were told?” As I explained above, my position as an outsider to the community

254 Anna De Fina

and the fact that interviewees saw me in a sense as a possible representative of mainstream opinions about migration is important to understand the fact that they so often framed their narratives as accounts. Third, studying the context of narrative genres, allows us to focus on elements that may be common or different among narrators and narratives. Indeed, many interesting questions can be asked about narratives when these are regarded as interactional achievements and contextually bound texts. For example, in the particular case that we have analyzed one may ask: what kind of linguistic resources did narrators employ to describe their journeys? I have shown, for instance, the importance of space reference as a resource for the construction of these narratives (De Fina forthcoming). In particular, I discussed how accounts are both temporally and spatially organized, with space as an important resource to signal beginning, progression, and ending and to achieve orientation for the listener. As Atkinson and Delamont (2006) point out, an analysis of narratives as social action and therefore of the narrative as accomplishing interactional and social goals, also allows researchers to see how certain kinds of autobiographical talk are accomplished not only through individual creativity, but through the use of social conventions and topoi. These conventions cannot be fully understood if we abstract the narrative from its context.

Conclusions In this paper I have argued for the worthiness of narratives produced in interview as a source of data and as an object of analysis, while also pointing to the validity of much of the criticism against interview data that has been put forward by conversation analysts and ethnomethodologists. I have underscored how such criticism has been justified by the lack of attention of researchers to the interactional dynamics of narrative emergence and to the different types of narratives that are told in interview. I have proposed an interactional analysis of narrative genres as one of the antidotes to de-contextualized narrative analysis by examining the case of accounts. I argued that in order to conceptualize narrative genres we need to look at interactional approaches to genre such as the one proposed by Hanks (1987) which focus on interlocutors expectations, orienting frameworks and interpreting procedures instead of trying to provide structural descriptions of narratives. Thus studying genre involves close scrutiny of expectations (about activity and/or form, and/or content) and an open consideration of all the elements of variability that are intrinsic to oral communication. Analyzing interview narratives in this light can lead to important insights on the contexts that shaped the data. In particular, when studying narratives in interviews we want to ask, for example:

Narratives in interview — The case of accounts 255

a. to what extent narrative contents were driven by the interviewer and to what extent they were proposed by the teller; b. how genres correlated with other aspects of the interview (for example, habitual narratives may be used by tellers in response to questions to depict experiences that for some reason they do not want to present as personal); c. what kinds of expectations were openly or implicitly negotiated. These kinds of analyses will then allow researchers to answer further questions and to provide answers about data and conditions of their emergence based on how much negotiation there appear to be in an interview, how much imposition of the interviewers’ agenda, how much co-construction took place, how topic shifts and re-routings repositioned the interlocutors, what kinds of presuppositions were apparent. Analyses of this kind are not common in interview data, but they foster the practice of truly interactionally oriented approaches to narrative analysis.

Acknowledgments I want to thank Michele Koven for her insightful comments and suggestions on a previous version of this paper and an anonymous reviewer for excellent bibliographic suggestions.

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Transcription conventions Line Independent clause ((smiling)) Non linguistic actions ((…)) Incomprehensible (.) Noticeable pause [] Uncertain transcription . Falling intonation followed by noticeable pause (as at end of declarative sentence) ? Rising intonation followed by noticeable pause (as at end of interrogative sentence) , Continuing intonation : may be a slight rise or fall in contour (less than ““.”” or — “?”); may be not followed by a pause (shorter than “‘.” or “?”) word-> Listing intonation Self interruption

258 Anna De Fina = Bold CAPS :: [ (.) -> (line) @

Latched utterances by the same speaker or by different speakers Emphatic stress Very emphatic stress Vowel or consonant lengthening Overlap between utterances Long pause Highlights key phenomena. Laughter (the amount of @ roughly indicates the duration of laughter)

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