Performance

This week, I recorded a few of my friends and I as we had dinner. The conversation flowed smoothly the whole time. There were a couple of places where one person dominated the conversation by telling some sort of story. It was interesting to note how these exchanges began. The first incident occured during a slight lull in conversation when one friend exclamed, "Oh my god, I have to tell you what I saw yesterday!" The then proceeded to tell us about a car accident that she witnessed while driving home from work. During this performance, I noticed that she spoke louder than she or anyone else had during normal conversation. I also noticed (of course this didn't show up on the tape) that she moved forward in her chair, sat up straighter, and used more and bigger hand and arm gestures. It was very obviously a performance for her. For the most part, the rest of the group was silent during the story, but there were some exclamations of "Oh my god!" and a few gasps. These reactions seemed to encourage the speaker to contintue with the story. The speaker concluded the story by resuming her more comfortable sitting position, lowering the volume of her voice, and saying, "Anyway, it was the scariest this I've ever seen. I'm so glad no one was hurt." At this point, the rest of the friends at the table feel free to share their reactions, reflections, and questions about the story that was told.

The second story occured a little while later. This one differed slightly in how it began because the storyteller was encouraged to begin by the friend sitting next to her. The rest of the table was interested even before she began becuase of the way her friend was encouraging her. She didn't change her body language quite as drastically as the other storyteller, perhaps because her story was less "exciting" or because she only felt she had to tell it because her friend wanted her to. Again, the rest of the group was mostly quiet while she told her story, and again, she used a kind of "wrap up" statement and a physical repositioning of her body to indicate that she was finished.

These brief storytelling sessions seemed to be important to the overall conversation as it helped keep the conversation flowing and gave us new topics to discuss. I think that oral literacy and performance are very important to the overall literacy of children. I plan to incorporate this into my library with puppet shows and retellings of stories. I read the Bauman and Briggs article, but I had some difficulty understanding it, and I'm having some difficulty relating it to the above recordings. I'd love any feedback. :)