Activating memories in interviews: an instance of collaborative discourse construction

Abstract

The article attempts to account for some conversational strategies for the thematic construction of discourse in a 30,000 word corpus of contemporary oral French. The sub-genre studied is that of the ‘memory-activation interview’, a speech situation, or ‘activity-type’ (Levinson, 1992) in which dialogues and meaning are co-constructed with the purpose of reviving memories. The general analytical framework is that of ‘interactional sociolinguistics’ as defined by Schiffrin (1998), in which the more specific aspects of ratification, legitimization and modes of contribution are redefined and diversified. Also central in the memory-activation process is the interviewer%'s role which, although not of a therapeutical nature (the interviewees suffer no particular memory impairments) is shown as being fully involved both at macro- (organizational) and micro- (interlocutive and turn-taking) levels. The article also tries to widen the range of the currently available tools for the analysis of speech seen as a thematic–rhematic process through the alternation of speech turns. The notion of thematic-discursive perimeter is introduced to account for thematic consistency.