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Article published In:
Narrative Inquiry
Vol. 30:1 (2020) ► pp.161–184

“I’ll tell you later on”

Proleptic and analeptic tying devices in oral history interviews

| Charles University

This article investigates an interactional phenomenon in which oral history interview participants deal with temporal structure in extended storytelling. It is based on the observation that while narrating a life story, participants routinely use its temporal structure as an organizing principle of the interview. Drawing inspiration from Sacks’ notion of tying devices and Genette’s distinction of prolepsis/analepsis, I have identified two forms of practices that interrelate storytelling sequences in an interview. For the first form, I propose the term analeptic tying: in this practice, turns produced earlier are treated as a resource for the current turn. For the second form, I propose the term proleptic tying, which refers to planned turns of speech that have yet to be produced being treated as a resource. I discuss the proleptic and analeptic tying devices in relation to relevant research in ethnomethodology/conversation analysis, which is the approach taken in this article.

Keywords: storytelling, oral history, time, temporality, ethnomethodology, conversation analysis
Article outline
  • Oral history: Method, setting, data-set
  • Proleptic and analeptic tying devices in interview storytelling
    • Tying structures and formulations
    • Analeptic tying
    • Proleptic tying
  • Discussion: Dealing with temporal structure in oral history narratives
  • Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 10 March 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ni.18020.mly
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