When the other narrates for the aphasic: observing evaluations and entextualizations

Abstract

Considering the diversity of configurations of oral narratives as short or long stories of the past, present, or future, of personal or vicarious experience, we assume that, in the process of narrating, actions such as evaluations and entextualizations are coproductions of the interactants. As such, we set out to investigate these two categories in oral narratives about neurological disorders told by aphasics’ companions. In our analyzes, we use theoretical-methodological instruments of narrative analysis (an affluent of discourse analysis) as well as theoretical tools from sociological and anthropological studies that greatly contribute to this aspect of discourse analysis. As a result of our investigations, we observed that the construction of meanings was achieved interactionally by evaluations and entextualizations; resources that also contributed in the configuration of the narratives as dramas and as a reportable story. We can, therefore, argue that tellability of the narratives was interactionally constructed using performative resources by the aphasic’s relatives.