Co-participation in story eliciting and narrating phases: an analysis of Korean reported speech in media talk

Abstract

This study investigates a talk show host's questioning, active listening and coparticipating practices in story elciting and narrating phases in a Korean television talk show, particularly focusing on the use of reported speech and bodily actions. The host's use of reported speech was quite noteworthy because the utterances realized in a form of reported speech are not exclusively "reports" of past events. Viewing reported speech as a creative linguistic resource, instances of reported speech that were not only uttered, but also left unsaid are examined. Unexpressed instances of reported speech include self-quotations, conjectures, inferences and hypothetical utterances. This study's data consists of 1,045 minutes of Korean TV talk show. The selected guest speakers are prominent individuals from varying fields. This research is primarily concerned with (1) how the host brings the guest speakers' past experience into the present moment and heightens the narratives' tellability; (2) how the host achieves his institutional role; and (3) how the host displays his involvement in the storytelling and collaboratively co-constructs the story-in-progress with the guest speaker. This study suggests that in questioning sequence, the host uses reported speech to display a less knowledgeable epistemic status; to communicate the tellability of a guest's non-normative speech event; and to prompt the guest's version of story. In listening sequence, the host's use of quoted formulation conveys his immediate understanding, committed affiliation; summarizes the guest's previous turns; resolves misunderstanding caused by trouble sources; and allows the host to take back the conversational floor and close down the ongoing topic. This study also shows that the host signals his affiliation through the employment of reported speech and embodied action. The host recycles the story climax; jointly accomplishes storytelling by co-completing or assumingly enacting what the guest's story character must have thought, felt or said at the time of the narrated story; and builds common ground by sharing his personal experience. Through the analyses, this study demonstrates the multi-functional aspects of Korean reported speech. It also provides implications for the view of reported speech as a social action and conversational practice.