Intertextuality in family discourse: Shared prior text as a resource for framing.

摘要

This study brings together frames theory and work on intertextuality, or the idea that all texts and utterances are related to other texts and utterances, to explore how repetition is used as a resource for framing in family interaction. Specifically, I consider instances where one family member repeats remembered bits of language in a family conversation with a co-present interlocutor who has previously experienced the language in a prior shared family interaction. This study demonstrates that repeating shared prior text across interactions contributes to how interlocutors create meanings, relationships, and identities in everyday discourse.; Data were drawn from a larger project where four dual-income couples with at least one child carried digital audio tape recorders with them for approximately one week, taping nearly non-stop throughout the day. This methodology captured specific instances of different types of prior text being recycled by parents and children across family interactions, including words, strings of words, speech acts, and interactional routines or ways of speaking.; The analysis shows that repeating shared prior text intertextually in family conversation serves as a resource for (1) laminating frames, thus creating layers of meaning; (2) (re)creating and negotiating alignments between participants; and (3) “framing the family” or constructing the family as a unique, bound social group with its own private language and culture. My analysis demonstrates the ways in which prior text is recycled in everyday interaction, and how this recycling creates intertextuality and dialogicality through linking disparate stretches of talk. It shows that an intertextual analysis uncovers otherwise obscure layers of meaning and patterns of alignment. Finally, the analysis illustrates how repeating shared prior text works towards creating a familylect, or unique way of speaking, and towards creating the family itself. Thus, this study elucidates how framing works moment by moment in (and across) interactions while demonstrating that meaning making in discourse fundamentally depends on access to and recognition of shared prior text, particularly in the context of a social group such as the family.