Synopses & Reviews
Conflict plays a crucial role in social interactions, and representations of conflict are an important aspect of language. Stories and narratives involving everything from war to playground disputes generate, sustain, mediate, and represent conflict at all levels of social organization. Still, despite the vast amount of research on conflict and narrative in a number of disciplines, no one has yet examined how these play off of each other; in fact, most studies treat narrative merely as a source of information about conflict rather then as a part of conflict's process. The contributors to this collection argue that language consists of socially and politically situated practices that are differentially distributed on the basis of gender, class, race, ethnicity, and other categories. Each of them, writing from the perspective of their own disciplines, challenges previous assumptions about narrative and social conflict as they interpret a range of disputes that emerge in a variety of settings. Taken in total, these essays substantially further our theoretical and methodological understanding of narrative and conflict and how they intersect.
Review
"This collection constitutes a significant contribution to anthropological linguistics, the ethnography of communication, ethnolinguistics, and sociolinguistics. It will interest students of conflict/conflict talk in several fields."--Allen Grimshaw, Indiana University
"[T]he essays reveal a great deal about the ethnographic realities of the present, and they show that linguistic anthropology can be particularly effective at illuminating cultural phenomena."--Journal of Anthropological Research
"This collection is blessed with an excellent and very thorough introduction as well as a high standard of carefully written, individual essays. It should appeal to a broad readership...will interest those intrigued with broadly philosophical questions about narrative."--American Anthropologist
Table of Contents
The co-narration of order : aesthetics, iconicity, and experiencing conflict resolution / Donald Brenneis -- The trickster's scattered self / Ellen Basso -- Detective stories at dinnertime / Elinor Ochs, Ruth Smith, and Carolyn Taylor -- Embarrassment as pride : narrative resourcefulness and strategies of normativity among Cretan animal-thieves / Michael Herzfeld -- Ideological dissonance in the American legal system / William M. O'Barr and John M. Conley -- Consensus and dissent in U.S. legal opinions / Elizabeth Mertz -- We want to borrow your mouth : Tzotzil marital squabbles / John B. Haviland -- Disorderly dialogues in ritual impositions of order : the role of metapragmatics in Warao dispute mediation / Charles L. Briggs.