“One of us”

Abstract

While scholars have explored the importance of quoting media in accomplishing relationship and identity work in conversation, there is little work on how people actually phonetically and paralinguistically signal media references in the speech stream. This chapter demonstrates how speakers make 148 media references recognizable across five audio-recorded everyday conversations among Millennial friends in their late twenties. Five ways that media references are signaled in talk are identified: word stress and intonation, pitch shifts, smiling and laughter, performing stylized accents, and singing. This systematic analysis of the contextualization cues used to signal media references in everyday talk contributes to understanding how speakers participate in intertextual processes. This chapter also introduces how signaling playful media references often (but not always) serves to negotiate epistemic, or knowledge, imbalances as well as interactional dilemmas, or awkward and unpleasant moments in interaction; this will be explored in more detail in chapters 4 and 5. Also weaved in are analyses of the identity work being constructed with the media references, as well as of the media stereotypes that are repeated in some of them.