Conversational recipe telling

Journal of Pragmatics 43 (2011) 2740–2761

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Conversational recipe telling Neal R. Norrick * Saarland University, 66041 Saarbru¨cken, Germany

A R T I C L E I N F O

A B S T R A C T

Article history: Received 16 September 2010 Received in revised form 14 April 2011 Accepted 20 April 2011 Available online 31 May 2011

Conversational recipe tellings are multi-unit turns with characteristic openings and closings. They are similar to narratives in several ways, but they are also like sets of instructions, and they tend to switch back and forth between the first person past tense of the former and the second person imperative of the latter at sequentially significant junctures. Recipe tellings routinely issue from narratives and segue into narratives in conversational interaction, requiring tellers to mark off the recipe portion in characteristic ways, including shifts in tense and person. In line with their status as sets of instructions for preparing food, recipe tellings constitute expert talk, presupposing shared background knowledge and interest, and containing technical vocabulary and references to ingredients, measurements, tools and procedures associated with specialized practices. Conversational recipe telling exploits conventions from written recipes: conversational recipe telling borrows its overall sequential order, presuppositions, vocabulary, measurements, and grammatical structures from written recipe texts. Recipe telling as shop talk among cognoscenti establishes individual identity and group membership, demonstrating shared practices and interests. ß 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Conversation Expert talk Foodways Footing Identity Instructions Multi-unit turns Narrative Recipes Written text versus talk

1. Introduction Participants in conversation about food and cooking sometimes formulate more or less complete recipes for their listeners. Such recipe tellings constitute multi-unit turns, during which one participant holds the floor while the others act as recipients or listeners. As such, recipe tellings are like stories in conversation: they open and close in distinctive ways, and listeners respond with continuers, assessments, questions, and co-telling. Moreover, the telling of a recipe may occur within the course of a narrative, naturally growing out of the narrative and segueing back into it. At the same time, recipe tellings are like sets of instructions, influenced by written recipe texts with elements of expert talk and technical terms. The simultaneous orientation toward story telling and giving a set of instructions means recipe tellings may switch back and forth between the past tense indicative with first person I and imperatives with the second person you. The skills involved in cooking and baking constitute sets of practices, and those who engage in these practices share a body of more or less specialized knowledge about ingredients, tools, procedures—and recipes. Written recipes constitute technical texts with their own characteristic presuppositions regarding tools and ingredients (pre-heat oven, put that in the beater, strain), vocabulary (knead, reconstitute, fold into), units of measure (three quarters of a cup, two tablespoons, a dash), and even grammatical structure (transitive verbs with null objects, as in cover and cook till tender).1 In many cases, a conversational recipe telling stands in relation to a written recipe text: this written text is often explicitly invoked as

* Tel.: +49 0 681 302 3309; fax: +49 0 681 302 4623. E-mail address: [email protected]. URL: http://www.uni-sb.de/fak4/norrick 1 For details on special textual properties of written recipes, such as the transitive verbs with a null objects ‘‘and then press into like a round um pizza pan’’ in the excerpt Aunt Annie’s peach cake below, see Norrick (1983a,b) and Cotter (1997). 0378-2166/$ – see front matter ß 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2011.04.010

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authoritative, and its characteristics and status as a technical text feed into the ways recipe tellings are organized. We will examine this relationship between written recipes and conversational recipe tellings in the pages to come. Telling a recipe displays an expert footing within a discourse concerning the preparation of food. In telling a recipe, the primary speaker invites listeners to display membership in a community conversant with a special kind of technical language and special cooking practices: specialist knowledge of ingredients, recipes, tools and procedures. During this exchange, recipients of a recipe telling have various opportunities to display an expert footing as well, following recipe and cooking conventions, commenting on ingredients, procedures and the final product. Recipe telling in conversation is a kind of ‘‘shop talk’’, generally providing a forum for initiates to share information rather than an opportunity for one participant to adopt an expert footing and to lecture to others in an asymmetric way. Thus, recipe telling provides for identity negotiation and fosters rapport among those involved. This article aims to analyze recipe tellings from natural conversations, pointing out their similarities and various interactions with storytelling, their relationship with written recipes and sets of instructions more generally. Context and source are relevant for understanding recipe telling in situ, and they will naturally be considered in the analyses as well. Openings and closings of recipe tellings in conversation will come in for special scrutiny, as will the various relationships between recipe telling and storytelling. We shall see that recipe tellings mirror both a set of instructions for food preparation and also some concrete context of interaction. In addition to recipe tellings, examples of stories about using recipes incompetently and of a joke recipe telling will be presented for purposes of comparison. The data used in this investigation derive from five different corpora: the Saarbru¨cken Corpus of Spoken English (SCoSE), the CallHome Corpus, the Santa Barbara Corpus of Spoken American English (SBCSAE), the Wellington Corpus of Spoken New Zealand English (WSC), and the Longman Spoken and Written English Corpus (LSWEC). For the sake of consistency, excerpts from the CallHome corpus, the SBCSAE, the WSC, and the LSWEC have been adapted to the transcription conventions of the SCoSE summarized below. See the note Data Sources at the end of this article. 2. Recipe telling and storytelling Recipe telling is like storytelling in that they both tend to consist of descriptions of temporally ordered events. The tradition in narrative theory pioneered by Labov and Waletzky (1967; see Labov, 1972) analyzes the internal structure of stories as a set of ordered clauses describing a sequence of past events. Labov and Waletzky take a remembered sequence of events as the pre-existing substructure of personal narrative. Similarly, a recipe telling necessarily follows preparation of the food according to a written recipe or at least a set of procedures accomplished in the kitchen (Norrick, 1983a,b). But far from simply recapitulating past experience, storytellers often reconstruct, relive, and evaluate remembered experience, and recipe tellings will naturally consist of more than a simple ordered list of cooking procedures. Indeed, part of the purpose of telling a recipe is to comment on it from the personal perspective of the teller. This commentary corresponds to the evaluation Labov views as central to personal storytelling (see Cotter, 1997:54). Nevertheless, tellers routinely impose sequential order in verbalizing instructions as well as in telling stories, so that recipe tellings will naturally fall into sets of ordered steps, even as they allow slots for background information and evaluation. As Sacks (1974) pointed out in the context of telling jokes in conversation, the incipient teller must provide a projection of some sort in order to gain the floor for an extended type of turn. This holds true of any stretch of talk made up of more than one unit such as a story or recipe telling (Schegloff, 1987; Sacks, 1987). Tellers set up and preface such multi-unit turns in characteristic ways, while listeners signal to the teller from the preface on through the performance—by means of standard contextualization cues or response tokens such as mhm, uh-huh, nodding, laughter, physical orientation to the teller, and engaging in silence—that they are following and ratifying the ongoing performance and that they recognize the story or recipe as tellable in the dynamic context. The projection of a particular type of multi-unit turn like a recipe telling is also particularly relevant at the (potential) completion of the telling, so that recipients can recognize that the telling is over and respond in appropriate ways. Again we can expect recognizable items of talk to signal the completion of a recipe telling, just as there are formulaic units for closing stories. Thus, the openings and closings of recipe tellings in conversation will be of particular interest here, and the various relationships between recipe telling and storytelling will be investigated. Whether a recipe telling is like a story in that it consists of temporally ordered events or of a set of steps to be followed, recipients can project what is coming next—in fact, they may already know a lot about the recipe up front, especially if they share knowledge of cooking, baking and related matters. In many cases, participants will have seen and tasted the product in question, indeed the very name of a dish generally identifies a primary ingredient and the category of food the recipe describes, as in carrot cake or steak and kidney pie, so recipients of recipe tellings may easily guess at the ingredients, as in the Peanut Butter Pie example in the next section, where Nancy answers her own question ‘‘what is it, what’s in it?’’ by guessing first ‘‘cream cheese?’’ after Margaret’s initial hesitation and then saying ‘‘and peanut butter and’’ following Margaret’s ‘‘uh-huh’’ before Margaret takes over telling, beginning with the pie shell. Since tellers can project next steps, co-telling can occur, and this is again a property recipe tellings share with stories, as we shall see below. A story must be ‘reportable’ in the sense of Labov (1972) or ‘tellable’ in Sacks’ terms (1974, 1992): A would-be narrator must be able to defend a story as relevant and newsworthy to get and hold the floor. The same presumably holds for recipes, and we shall see below what sorts of contexts make recipe telling appropriate. At the same time, Sacks points out in a late lecture on ‘Spouse Talk’ (1992, vol. 2, p. 443) that, when interlocutors run out of news, they can reminisce, telling old stories

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not for the sake of their content, but for other reasons. My own work (Norrick, 1997, 1998, 2000) demonstrates that conversationalists often tell stories familiar to some or even all their listeners for entertainment. The tellability of familiar stories hinges not on their content as such, but on the dynamics of the narrative event itself. Labov (1997) also recognizes that there can be no absolute standard of inherent tellability, so that in appropriate circumstances a thoroughly banal story may be told. There is a high degree of contextualization in the notion of reportability of an event, so that tellers must rely on their acquaintance with the immediate audience and the recent history of the context in introducing a narrative. Tellability is one of the gradient dimensions of narrative, in the sense of Ochs and Capps (2001), something negotiated by the teller and the listeners in particular local contexts. The degree of tellability accorded a story in an interaction results not only from its (detached) content, but also from the contextual (embedded) relevance of the story for the participants involved. We can assume for recipe tellings as well that they depend not only on the content of the recipe, but on their potential for interaction among the participants in conversation. 2.1. Openings and closings Like stories, conversational recipes are multi-unit turns, where one participant becomes the primary speaker and at least one other participant becomes the recipient. There are ways of requesting and announcing the telling of a recipe, so that participants can orient to its presentation, and there are characteristic closings for recipe tellings, so that recipients know when to respond, as we shall see shortly. The person responsible for cooking or baking the food may naturally announce a recipe telling in various ways. While the incipient listeners are sampling her peanut butter pie, Margaret sets up a recipe telling as in example (1), excerpted from Peanut butter pie treated in more detail in section 3. (1) 64

Margaret:

very easy to make,

65

only takes me about,

66

takes me twenty minutes to make.

During appreciative talk about a pie on the table in front of them, a recipe telling is relevant and appropriate, so that the participant responsible for producing the pie naturally becomes the teller of the recipe: she has ‘‘telling rights’’ for the recipe, just as the person most centrally involved in an incident has telling rights for the story about it (see Shuman, 1986). Margaret’s introduction with ‘‘very easy to make’’ is furthermore self-effacing: it foregrounds the recipe rather than her personal baking skills. While sharing food or simply talking about food, one participant may ask another about a recipe. Sometimes incipient listeners explicitly request information about or a recipe for a dish from the one who prepared it, as in the excerpt from Red beans and rice below. In example (2), Sean has invited Fran, Bernard and Arlette to a dinner party, and has just served the main course, when Fran begins to talk about the food. (2) 1

Fran:

mm.

2

is this-

3

we- this looks like something we used to call grillades.

4

in New-.. in New Orleans.

Fran accomplishes three ends in this turn: (1) she demonstrates her knowledge of food in identifying the dish as grillades; (2) she informs or reminds her listeners that she has a connection with New Orleans; and (3) she demonstrates appreciation and interest to her host and cook Sean. A few turns later Fran continues: (3) 19

Fran:

did you invent this?

Sean:

[mhm].

23

Arlette:

mhm.

24

Fran:

mm.

20 21

[cause it’s v]ery like a New Or[2leans recipe2].

22

[2I invented it2].

25 26

wonderful. Sean:

I had red beans and rice,

27

for dinner,

28

last week,

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29

and it was so great,

30

and I thought,

31

I could make this for a dinner par[ty],

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As this passage demonstrates, a recipe telling may be embedded within a narrative framework: Sean sets up his telling by producing a little background narrative about where he got the idea to prepare the dish he has served his guests. A recipe telling may occur as part of a narrative in progress, as in (4) from the excerpt Cans of stuff analyzed in more detail at the beginning of section 2.2. In such a case, the teller already holds the floor and does not need to project a multi-unit turn but rather to signal the shift from the narrative mode to the recipe telling in some way. In this excerpt, Alice is telling her daughter Annette a story about preparing a dish at the home of a friend, and she includes a brief recipe telling in her story. (4) 12

Alice:

13

we stopped at the store and got the stuff, ’cause all you have to do is brown some hamburger and,

14

[onions],

15

Annette:

[yeah].

16

Alice:

and then toss ca:ns of stuff in,

17

and spices.

Alice tells her personal story in the mode typical of narratives, namely past tense and first person, here represented by the plural pronoun we, then shifts from the narrative mode to the recipe telling proper with the discourse marker ’cause, followed by the second person pronoun you and the modal construction have to do to mark it off clearly. Recipe tellings arise naturally during talk about food, especially during talk about the food participants are currently enjoying, and tellers set them up and project them in characteristic ways. Further, recipe tellings may grow out of stories already in progress, in which case tellers must indicate the transition from narrative to recipe telling, shifting pronouns and verb forms in typical cases. Turning now to closings, a recipe telling may end with an all-purpose closing such as the formulaic ‘‘and that’s all’’ in the next sample passage from Peanut butter pie (treated in more detail in section 3). (5) 98

Margaret:

99

and then fold that into that other

100 101

and with the milk and the vanilla and that’s all

Nancy:

and that’s it.

The phrase ‘‘and that’s all’’ bears no particular relevance to recipe telling or even to food more generally, but it does serve to close Margaret’s turn in progress, and her primary listener Nancy immediately responds with an echo of the phrase in ‘‘and that’s it’’, signaling her recognition that the recipe telling is complete. A more characteristic closing for a recipe telling is a positive assessment of the recipe’s product, as in the sequence below from Aunt Annie’s peach cake (treated in more detail later in section 2.2). (6) 27

Audrey:

so we just used Cool Whip.

28

and it was it was very good.

29

it was very nice.

Assessments typically occur at the close of narratives and other multi-unit turns, and the reference to the quality of the food from a recipe is a sequentially logical way to close a recipe telling. Finally, a recipe telling may end with an explicit return to the narrative mode, as in example (7), which continues on from example (4) above. (7) 16

Alice:

and then toss ca:ns of stuff in,

17

and spices.

18

H he says [that’d] be good,

19

Annette:

[((SNIFF))]

20

Alice:

and,

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21 22

then we wouldn’t have toAnnette:

to.. cook a lot.

Thus recipe tellings have characteristic, recognizable openings and closings, ensuring that recipients can appropriately orient to the telling and respond upon their completion. In this way, recipe tellings are similar to other multi-unit turns such as stories, joketellings and so on. 2.2. Recipe telling embedded in storytelling Recipe tellings are not just structurally similar to storytelling in many ways, they also interact with stories in the dynamic conversational context. Recipe tellings may grow out of narratives and flow back into narratives, as (8) from the SBCSAE, portions of which we inspected in the previous section as illustrations of openings and closings in examples (4) and (7). This passage provides a good example of a recipe as a part of an ongoing narrative. Alice and Annette are mother and daughter, and Alice is telling a story when she has occasion to produce a brief recipe telling. (8) Cans of stuff 1

Alice:

so he says,

2

well I don’t know what else I can take.

3

so I said,

4

well why don’t you-

5

I says that recipe is so easy.

6

(SNIFF) so I sat over here,

7

before we went over to Diane’s,

8

and explained the recipe to em,

9

[and],

10

Annette:

[(SNIFF)]

11

Alice:

H a:nd uh,

12

we stopped at the store and got the stuff,

13

cause all you have to do is brown some hamburger and,

14

[onions],

15

Annette:

[yeah].

16

Alice:

and then toss ca:ns of stuff in,

17

and spices.

18

H he says [that’d] be good,

19

Annette:

[((SNIFF))]

20

Alice:

and,

21 22

then we wouldn’t have toAnnette:

to.. cook a lot.

24

Alice:

[yeah].

25

Annette:

[and that kinda stuff].

26

Alice:

[at least they’ll be out] in wide open H.. air,

23

and you don’t end up dirtying a lot of dish[es],

SBCSAE 043 Alice already has the floor to tell a story, so she need not project her recipe telling as a multi-unit turn in its own right, but she does announce the recipe and sets it off from the narrative in various ways. Notice the explicit reference to a particular recipe in lines 5 and 8 to set up the telling of the recipe. Then the phrase ‘‘cause all you have to do’’ serves as the introduction to the recipe itself, which is delivered in the second person and with the verb phrase have to do to distinguish it from the surrounding first person past tense narrative. The recipe telling itself is fairly rudimentary, only hamburger and onions are identified as ingredients, with ‘‘cans of stuff’’ and ‘‘spices’’ left vague, as Alice is characterizing just what she said to convince the man with her that the recipe was ‘‘so easy’’ to prepare. This recipe telling fulfils a particular purpose as part of a story, its brevity and vagueness appropriate to the specific storytelling context, and it differs in this way from recipe tellings like Peanut butter pie, presented for their own sake, as we shall see in section 3.

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Inasmuch as recipes are like narratives and grow out of narratives, they may naturally begin in the first person, as in Aunt Annie’s peach cake below, but inasmuch as they constitute sets of instructions, say in response to a question like ‘‘how do you make this?’’, they will tend to use imperative clauses in the second person. The simultaneous pull of these two telling strategies often occasions switching between first and second person and between present imperative and past indicative during the course of a recipe. Thus, in excerpt (9) from the CallHome Corpus, Audrey begins in the first person and the past tense in line 7, reporting on making a ‘‘wonderful peach thing’’, then switches into the second person and imperative for the steps of the recipe proper in lines 13, 14 and 17. Betty and Audrey are sisters engaged in a long-distance telephone conversation. They are already talking about food and recipes: in particular Betty is talking about fresh peaches she froze to have on hand for preparation of Aunt Annie’s peach cake in lines 1–6, a recipe apparently familiar to both women on the basis of this definite description, when Audrey is reminded of a peach dessert she herself prepared a week earlier. (9)

Aunt Annie’s peach cake

1

Betty:

2

and I froze one bag full of halves

3

to make Aunt Annie’s peach cake

4

Audrey:

mhm

5

Betty:

in the winter

Audrey:

I made a wonderful peach thing last week.

9

Betty:

yeah

10

Audrey:

at Christmas time from,

12

Betty:

yeah

13

Audrey:

well you make the dough .H

6 7

so we’ll see what happens

8

um you know the recipe book that Jane gave me,

11

desserts from your bread maker.

14

and you leave it in the bread maker.

15

until it goes through a couple of cycles.

16

of ye- kneading and raising and all that kind of stuff.

17

and then you take it out before it bakes.

One can identify the first person, past tense ‘‘I made a wonderful peach thing last week’’ in line 7 with the narrative mode, and the second person imperatives ‘‘you make the dough’’ in line 13, ‘‘you leave it in’’ in line 14, and ‘‘you take it out’’ in line 17 with a set of instructions characteristic of written recipe texts. Later in this recipe telling, Audrey switches back to the first person and even into the past tense and the past perfect to relate how she came to have a particular mixture of berries for her pie. (10) 18

Audrey:

19

and you divide it into two. and let it sit for a few minutes.

20

and then press into like a round um pizza pan.

21

Betty:

oh.2

22

Audrey:

and then I put-

23

now the kids had picked berries along the road.

24

um,

25

uh raspberries blackberries and huckleberries.

26

so I made one with uh that on it.

Since put is a morphologically defective verb with no difference between its present and past tense forms, it is not clear whether the phrase ‘‘and then I put’’ in line 22 is a past tense narrative-like unit or a present tense phrase used to report a general habit or practice. But the past perfect of the following clause ‘‘now the kids had picked berries’’ in line 23 and the final 2 Betty’s response ‘‘oh’’ in line 21 seems to indicate some degree of surprise in response to the report that you use a pizza pan. According to Heritage (1984), ‘‘oh’’ functions as a change-of-state token, signaling that the user has undergone some change of state of knowledge, information, orientation or awareness. This response indicates expert knowledge of baking procedures by suggesting that Betty expected a different sort of pan.

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clause ‘‘I made one with uh that on it’’ in line 26 makes it seem that put represents the past tense. The whole passage from line 22 to line 26 is certainly hearable as narrative, as opposed to the second person imperative instructions of the previous chunk in lines 18–20. Moreover, the repetition of ‘‘and then’’ in lines 20 and 22 develops the list-like dimension inherent in the recipe, providing coherence in terms of both story action and text (cf. Schiffrin, 1994; and Schiffrin, 1987 on discourse markers more generally). As she goes on with this recipe telling, Audrey first continues in the past tense and first person with ‘‘I sliced peaches real thin’’ in line 28, then segues back into second person imperative with ‘‘and then you put cinnamon sugar and and melted butter on the top’’ at line 30. After some more talk about the dough and the ingredients the written recipe specifies for the topping between line 32 and line 42, Audrey uses the plural pronoun we instead of singular pronoun I with regard to using Cool Whip in line 43 below, perhaps indicating that the choice of Cool Whip was a group decision or detaching herself from the ‘‘non-foodie’’ choice she made as a cook. (11) 27

Audrey:

and the other one,

28

I sliced peaches real thin.

29

and then you put cinnamon sugar.

30

and and melted butter on the top.

31

and bake it.

32

and of course it’s a real,

33

y’know it’s a yeast dough.

34

Betty:

mhm.

35

Audrey:

uh it’s a real good dough.

36

Betty:

yeah and good

37

Audrey:

and boy they were,

38

and it it tells you,

39

the recipe actually calls,

40

{breath} for some kind of a um,

41

on it it says either unflavored whipped cream or uh sour cream.

42

something like that.

43

so we just used Cool Whip.

44

and it was it was very good.

45

it was very nice.

46 47

I took one I cooBetty:

uh-huh.

Audrey appeals to Betty for a reaction with ‘‘y’know it’s a yeast dough’’ in line 33, deploying a discourse marker which functions as a response-elicitation cue according to Schiffrin (1987), and allowing Betty an opportunity to display her own knowledge of baking lore. After a minimal response from Betty, when Audrey maintains ‘‘it’s a real good dough’’ at line 35, a yeast dough being a more complicated and advanced cooking procedure, Betty responds ‘‘yeah and GOOD’’, stressing that the dough is good on the culinary level, not just good tasting, and this goes to demonstrate her expert status in regard to baking as well. This excerpt also nicely illustrates how a recipe telling can flow back into narrative: Once Audrey has finished with the recipe proper and has appended an assessment ‘‘it was very good, it was very nice’’ in lines 44–45, she goes on to report in the narrative mode that she took one to the guy across the road. This is a new story, separate from the narrative Betty was telling about freezing peach slices for Aunt Annie’s peach pie in lines 1-3 just before the recipe telling. This narrative closing thus differs from the one in Cans of stuff, where the recipe telling is completely embedded within a single story. 3. A recipe telling Let us now look in some detail at a recipe telling involving two primary participants and two mostly passive listeners. In this excerpt, Nancy and her husband Peter are visiting Nancy’s aunt Margaret. A fourth ratified participant in the sense of Goffman (1979, 1981), Susan, does not speak during the course of this excerpt. The four are seated in Margaret’s kitchen sampling Margaret’s peanut butter pie. Nancy seems to be tasting the pie for the first time, commenting ‘‘mm, it’s wonderful’’ in lines 52–53, though Margaret thinks she may have brought one to Peter and Nancy some time in the past, and there is some discussion of these matters in lines 54–63. This discussion leads into Margaret beginning to tell the recipe, introducing it with the phrase ‘‘very easy to make’’ in line 63. She goes on with some additional background information, ‘‘only takes me

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about, takes me twenty minutes to make’’, before Nancy asks ‘‘what is it, what’s in it?’’ at line 67. When Margaret hesitates, Nancy begins to guess at the ingredients. As noted above, this is not difficult for someone familiar with recipes and baking, especially having tasted the pie and knowing that it is called peanut butter pie. Nevertheless, correctly guessing the ingredients in a recipe naturally expresses expert knowledge of baking. At the same time, this line of questioning demonstrates Nancy’s appreciation of and interest in Margaret’s pie. But Margaret is not yet ready to discuss the filling until she has talked about the graham cracker pie shell, starting at line 72. Written recipes have a characteristic organization, and Margaret apparently feels the crust is where to begin a recipe telling as well. Next comes the initial ingredient for the filling, namely the cream cheese at line 78. Again Margaret follows a natural order of events for actually making the pie, since the cream cheese has to warm up outside the refrigerator for a while, before it is ready for use: ‘‘I take my, er, six ounces of cream cheese, I take it out of the refrigerator and have it warm up a little bit’’ (lines 78–81). The use of the possessive pronoun my in the phrase ‘‘my six ounces of cream cheese’’ performs various functions. Margaret asserts possession of the recipe; she thereby takes control of the telling after Nancy had taken the initiative with guesses about ingredients in the early going in lines 69–72; Margaret also suggests her expert status with regard to handling the ingredients. (12)

Peanut butter pie

52

Nancy:

mm.

54

Margaret:

oh, you tasted it before, didn’t you?

55

Nancy:

did you ever.

Margaret:

oh, I brought it to your house,

53

it’s wonderful.

56 57

I don’t think so.

58

maybe you weren’t there.

59

I brought it once, didn’t I?

60

Peter:

maybe she was in California or something.

61

Margaret:

mhm

62

Peter:

we didn’t send her any

63

Nancy:

you know they don’t do things like that.

64

Margaret:

very easy to make,

65

only takes me about,

66

takes me twenty minutes to make.

67

Nancy:

what is it, what’s in it?

68

Margaret:

er

69

Nancy:

cream cheese?

70

Margaret:

mhm

71

Nancy:

and peanut butter and

72

Margaret:

well, I buy the, the, er

73

Nancy:

the shell?

74

Margaret:

six inch shell, yeah,

75

graham cracker shell

76

because I figure that’s easier than making it

77

Nancy:

mm

78

Margaret:

and, er, I take my,

79

er, six ounces of cream cheese,

80

I take it out of the refrigerator

81

and have it warm up a little bit

82

Nancy:

mm

83

Margaret:

then I put that in the beater

84

and, and beat that up

85

and then three quarters of a cup of powdered sugar.

86

Nancy:

mhm.

87

Margaret:

and you strain that,

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88

I mean, strain and then beat that up.

89

Nancy:

mm.

90

Margaret:

two tablespoons of milk,

91

and a half a cup of peanut butter.

92

and put that all in.

93

then you take, er, er, the Dream Whip

94

Nancy:

oh, okay.

95

Margaret:

and then you,

96

you know, have to constitute that,

97

reconstitute that.

98

and with the milk and the vanilla,

99

and then fold that into that other,

100

and that’s all.

101

Nancy:

and that’s it.

102

Margaret:

mhm

103

Nancy:

boy, I have a couple of kids that would really like this too.

104

Margaret:

I’ll have to give you the recipe.

105

Nancy:

uh-huh.

106

Margaret:

but like I said,

107

I, I buy the crust because it’s [a little bit easier than]

108

Nancy:

[a lot less work] uh-huh.

109

Margaret:

you know, cracking the graham crackers

110

and so

LSWEC 105902

Margaret characterizes measurements and deploys technical terminology familiar from (written) recipes. She expresses amounts of ingredients in units reflecting the conventions of cookbook recipes, for instance: ‘‘six ounces’’ in line 79, ‘‘three quarters of a cup’’ in line 85, ‘‘two tablespoons’’ in line 90, and ‘‘half a cup’’ in line 91. Moreover, she employs technical terms from the specialist vocabulary of baking, namely ‘‘strain’’ in line 87, ‘‘beat up’’ in line 88, a colloquial rendition of the more technical term ‘‘beat’’, then ‘‘reconstitute’’ in line 97 and ‘‘fold into’’ in line 99. A term like ‘‘strain’’ presupposes not only familiarity with a procedure, but also access to a specific tool, namely a strainer. When Margaret says ‘‘then I put that in the beater, and, and beat that up’’ in lines 83–84, she makes reference to a kitchen appliance and a procedure familiar to individuals who bake and cook, but not to the uninitiated. These references and ways of speaking are associated with specific practices in baking and cooking, and they further attest to Margaret’s expert status in these areas and her assumption that her interlocutors know these terms as well. Consider Margaret’s use of the first person I and the second person you. Her introductory observations in lines 65–66 are in the first person, as are her comments on buying the shell in lines 72–76. After entering into the actual recipe telling in line 78 with I and my, Margaret continues with first person I at line 80 and line 83. All these sets of first person remarks are also in the simple present tense as general statements, neither narrative nor instructions as such. Margaret shifts to the second person you explicitly in lines 87, 93 and 95, moving from a narrative-like mode into an instruction-type mode with imperative structures. When Margaret repeats her admission that she buys rather than makes the pie crust in lines 106–107 after completing the actual recipe telling, she again returns to the first person and simple present tense. Notice how Nancy reacts straight away at the end of the recipe telling: immediately after Margaret says ‘‘and that’s all’’ at line 100, Nancy responds with the paraphrase ‘‘and that’s it’’ in line 101. Since recipients can project the end of a recipe telling, they can respond appropriately at the completion of the telling. This ability to project the end of the recipe telling presupposes familiarity not only with appropriate practices of baking and/or cooking but also with the genre of recipe telling in conversation. Nancy receives the recipe telling initially with ‘‘and that’s it’’ at line 101, then she provides an assessment with ‘‘boy, I have a couple of kids that would really like this too’’. Interestingly, in response to this assessment, Margaret offers to give Nancy ‘‘the recipe’’ in line 104, by which she of course means a written version of the recipe, implicitly recognizing that a conversational recipe telling is insufficient for purposes of actually baking the pie and according the written recipe text a special authority. The purpose of telling a recipe in conversation does not consist primarily in providing a set of instructions for preparing food in a kitchen, but rather presents an opportunity for ‘‘talking shop’’, that is for engaging in expert talk on a

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topic of mutual interest, offering personal assessments, and sharing tips: even Margaret’s introductory comments that the pie is ‘‘very easy to make’’ (line 64) and that it only takes her ‘‘twenty minutes to make’’ (lines 65–66) count as personal comments in this sense. Notice in particular Margaret’s remark in lines 78–81 that she takes the cream cheese out of the refrigerator to let it warm up, and her clarification between line 72 and line 76 that she buys the graham cracker crust rather than producing it from scratch as well as her repetition of this commentary in lines 106–109. All these features contribute to the individual character of Margaret’s recipe telling over and above its ratification of her as a competent baker of pies. Notice that when Margaret repeats her comments about buying the graham cracker crust rather than making it herself from scratch in lines 106–109, Nancy again projects and anticipates where Margaret is headed, overlapping her ‘‘a little bit easier’’ (line 107) with a roughly equivalent ‘‘a lot less work’’ in line 108. Nancy’s ability to project and anticipate verifies both that she has been listening and that she, too, understands baking procedures and the complexity inherent in specific actions. Thus, both tellers and recipients of recipes in conversation have opportunities to demonstrate expert knowledge of the practices and discourse associated with food preparation. This mutual revelation accrues to establishment of identity and fosters rapport or competition. 4. The relation between recipe tellings and written recipes Goodwin, in an article about a group of people talking about car racing, argues that the display of ‘‘precise independent knowledge’’ in the appropriate form makes participants part of ‘‘a domain of expertise and knowledge, indeed a small culture in its own right’’, creating that domain at the same time (Goodwin, 1986:289). Cooking and baking constitute such a domain of expertise and knowledge, and recipe telling counts as a display of such knowledge. In telling and receiving a recipe in everyday talk, participants adopt a specialist footing in the sense of Goffman (1979) toward food and a set of specialist practices involved in its preparation; they ‘‘position themselves’’ (Bamberg, 2005; De Fina et al., 2006) as experts in the interaction, and reference to written recipes is a part of this positioning. Much of the research on expert talk has focused on the asymmetries it can create between participants (Drew, 1991; Kotthoff, 1997), but the recipe tellings I have inspected demonstrate bonding rather than asymmetric displays of knowledge or lecturing. They do not constitute ‘‘teaching’’ in the sense of Keppler and Luckmann (1991), so that knowing versus not knowing a particular recipe does not create a relevant asymmetry in everyday conversation, though it might in the kitchen while cooking. Among people interested in cooking and baking, telling a recipe does not constitute a significant change in footing, as expert testimony in a courtroom does for Matoesian (1999): it is closely akin to what Goodwin (1986) described as a ‘‘small culture’’ which sometimes surfaces in conversation among cognoscenti. As Lakoff (2006) shows for restaurants, menus and recipes, culinary preferences and familiarity with food preparation have important implications for the ‘‘small identities’’ displayed by participants in interaction. The language of recipes and cookbooks delineates an audience of readers, a community of users, as Cotter (1997) shows. Written recipes of the kind found in cookbooks encode sets of ingredients, methods of measurement and procedures traditionally associated with particular dishes, and these written recipes thereby assume a particular authority in talk about cooking and baking. Many conversational recipes are delivered by participants clearly familiar with written recipes of the kind found in cookbooks, and they may be more or less consciously orienting to the conventions of written recipe texts in their oral productions. These written recipe texts3 are sometimes explicitly invoked in conversational recipe telling, where their status as texts in a domain of specialist discourse and practices, along with their characteristic organization as texts, may influence the ways recipes are told. Goldberg (1975) analyses recipes described on air in a radio call-in show, where listeners request information about particular dishes, and then write them down as they listen to a professional cook essentially dictating from a written recipe. This ‘‘transfer of instructions’’ is punctuated by copious direct repetition and markers of up-take like okay and got it. In conversational recipe tellings, as we have seen so far, the recipients do not assume the role of instructee, but rather participate much the way they would during a conversational storytelling. For instance, in the excerpt Aunt Annie’s peach cake, the speaker makes reference to a particular recipe book, apparently with the title ‘‘Desserts from your bread maker’’. Though Audrey seems unable to recall the exact name of the recipe, calling it simply ‘‘a wonderful peach thing’’, she identifies the dessert through reference to a specific cookbook she expects Betty to be familiar with. (13) 7

Audrey:

8

I made a wonderful peach thing last week. um you know the recipe book that Jane gave me,

9

Betty:

yeah

10

Audrey:

at Christmas time from,

11

desserts from your bread maker.

Especially in the absence of an exact name for the ‘‘peach thing’’, reference to its source in a specific recipe book lends the recipe telling authority. Later on in this same recipe telling, Audrey again refers to the written source.

3

Cotter (1997) briefly outlines a history of the standardization of the written form; see also Cotter (1994) and Goody (2008).

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(14) 38

and it it tells you,

39

the recipe actually calls,

40

{breath} for some kind of a um,

41

on it it says either unflavored whipped cream or uh sour cream.

42

something like that.

43

so we just used Cool Whip.

Besides the formulaic phrase ‘‘calls for’’ specifically associated with the recipes, Audrey also says ‘‘it tells you’’ and ‘‘it says’’, invoking the authority of the written recipe, which she nevertheless overrides. Part of projecting an expert footing on food preparation consists in referring to recipes, but another part consists in evaluating these recipes based on personal experience. Even the telling of the relatively rudimentary recipe Cans of stuff was introduced with explicit reference to a (written) recipe: (15) 5

I says that recipe is so easy.

6

(SNIFF) so I sat over here,

7

before we went over to Diane’s,

8

and explained the recipe to em,

Perhaps the cursory recipe telling is geared more toward demonstrating that it is indeed ‘‘so easy’’: notice the introductory phrase ‘‘cause all you have to do’’. After that, the whole telling consists of just two basic steps: browning hamburger and onions, then tossing in cans of stuff and spices. (16) 13

cause all you have to do is brown some hamburger and,

14

[onions],

15

Annette:

[yeah].

16

Alice:

and then toss ca:ns of stuff in,

17

and spices.

Still the reference to an authoritative written source renders this minimal telling sufficient to convince her listeners that the teller is able to produce the dish. Moreover, her ability to summarize the recipe in this off-hand manner also suggests an expert footing such that the assertion about simplicity should be heeded. As noted in the discussion of Peanut butter pie above, recipe teller Margaret says ‘‘I’ll have to give you the recipe’’ after she has finished rehearsing the entire recipe for the recipient Nancy. In this context, ‘‘the recipe’’ clearly refers to the written form by contrast with the oral version she has just delivered. But if it is obvious to both women that hearing a recipe once in conversation does not suffice as a set of instructions for actually baking the pie in question, what is then the purpose of conversational recipe telling? As we have seen, talking about food is part of enjoying food for many people. Additionally, for those who cook and/or bake, conversation about food provides an opportunity to engage in expert talk, particularly when the orientation turns to the details of preparing food. Telling and receiving recipes allows the participants to project an expert footing and to display specialist knowledge with regard to food preparation through deployment of technical terminology as well as to exchange assessments, experiences and tips. All this fosters rapport among those actively involved in the recipe telling. 5. Narratives about using recipes By way of comparison with recipe tellings, let us inspect a pair of conversational storytellings, both of which happen to concern unsuccessful attempts to follow recipes. The excerpt below from the WSC contains first a brief story about unsuccessful biscuits, followed by two narrative accounts of how inexperienced recipe users misinterpret instructions about eggs in written recipes with disastrous consequences for the final product. The pair of stories represent a series of stories in the sense of Ryave (1978), and a first and second story in Sacks’ (1992) terms; see Norrick (2000) on response stories. They share not only the theme of baking and problems with baking recipes, but specifically misunderstandings of recipe instructions concerning eggs. Of particular interest here are the overlap and difference between these little stories told for their entertainment value and the conversational recipe tellings we have been investigating, recipe tellings which potentially provide the recipient with a genuine set of instructions for cooking or baking. Nora, Addie and Connie are talking about the baking failures of a woman they all know. For the most part, both stories are told in the pure past tense with unvarying third person pronouns she and they, but in both stories the tellers switch at one point to forms more typical of recipe tellings or written recipes. The effect of this switch in both cases (line 7 and lines 30–31) is to refer to the recipe as a set of instructions by contrast with the actions of the characters in the narratives.

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(17) 1

Eggs in cake recipes Nora:

2

she made um these biscuits, and my brother and his friend took them outside,

3

and ((laughing)) played tennis with them.

4

Addie:

((laughs)) that’s awful.

5

Nora:

and then she made a chocolate cake.

6

and er there’s something there about warming up the milk.

7

and then you mix an egg with it.

8

well she boiled the milk,

9

threw the egg in,

10

the egg poached,

11

she ((laughing)) put it in the cake,

12

((laughing)) and there were these little bits of poached egg,

13

all through the chocolate cake ((laughs)).

14

Addie:

15

Nora:

oh gross ((laughs)). yeah egg white everywhere.

16

Connie:

that was um this teacher at school,

17

told us a story about her um SON.

18

who went down to Dunedin to go to university.

19

and this was with a group.

20

they were in a flat with a group of guys y’know.

21

never left home before=

22

Nora:

=oh yep.

Connie:

and they were making-

23 24

yeah (living)

25

and they thought.

26

we’ll make a cake.

27

and so what they thought.

28

we’ll () cake.

29

and they got out um a recipe,

30

and it said,

31

separate one egg.

32

and they were like,

33

well how do we do that.

34

so they boiled the- they boiled the egg,

35

and then they took the yolk from the white,

36

and then they chopped it into little bits.

37

put into the cake.

38

and they wondered why their cake was really dry,

39 40

with white bits in it. Nora:

what does it mean ((laughing)) yeah.

42

Addie:

white.

43

Nora:

((laughing)) gross=

44

Connie:

=yuck

45

Addie:

hopefully they had enough beer at the place that it didn’t matter.

Connie:

yeah.

41

split it in half.

46 47

((laughter)).

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WSC DPC128 In example (17), Nora begins the first story in the standard narrative mode with third person she and past tense made: ‘‘and then she made a chocolate cake’’, then switches into the present tense to report on the contents of the recipe in line 6: ‘‘there’s something there about warming up the milk’’, where there signifies ‘in the recipe’. In line 7, Nora uses the second person pronoun you and the imperative to signal clearly that she is paraphrasing the recipe itself: ‘‘and then you mix an egg with it’’. She returns to the narrative mode in the very next line, ‘‘well she boiled the milk’’, with well to mark the shift. In the second story, Connie follows a similar strategy. She begins in the past continuous ‘‘they were making’’ in line 24, but immediately switches into the simple past tense ‘‘they thought’’. She goes on in the past tense, explicitly mentioning the recipe in line 29: ‘‘and they got out um a recipe.’’ Explicitly citing the recipe in lines 30–31, Connie reports: ‘‘and it said, separate one egg’’, where the clause ‘‘separate one egg’’ is again in the second person imperative form we have seen to be characteristic of written recipes. When the recipe telling is finished, Nora chimes in with ‘‘what does it mean ((laughing)) yeah. split it in half’’, again referring to the written recipe with it and the simple present tense in line 40, and setting off the misunderstandable instruction with the imperative ‘‘split it in half’’ in line 41. Tellers strategically deploy these person and tense switches as sign-posts in these narratives, helping listeners navigate the complex interrelations between narration proper and citations of/paraphrases from written recipe texts. In both stories, inexperienced cooks misinterpret technical terminology in written recipes. In order to appreciate the humor of these stories, both tellers and recipients must themselves be familiar with the technical sense of the recipe terminology and acquainted with the proper procedures delineated by the recipes. Nora comments explicitly on the phrase ‘‘separate one egg’’, demonstrating that she recognizes a technical meaning for it not within general lay parlance but within the expert realm of cooking and baking. Thus, telling and receiving these stories asserts expertise and shared knowledge with recipients just as performing and receiving a recipe telling does. 6. A joke recipe It is instructive to inspect a recipe telling constructed as a joke. The joke recipe in example (18) follows the basic pattern for an oral recipe in the form of a set of instructions in the second person. As with a recipe telling, the set-up includes a phrase in line 11, namely ‘‘the best recipe for possum’’, explicitly identifying the talk to come as a ‘‘recipe’’. In fact, this identification may create a problem for uninitiated or uninformed recipients, who may not orient to the telling as a joke instead of a proper recipe. (18)

Possum soup/

1

Frank:

2

the musk- the- their scent glands.

3 4

yeah. so [basically it’s like eating a] musk flavoured stew.

Lyle:

[yes ().]

5

Frank: and then a while later you be ill.

6

because it’s actually a poison.

7

[and if you manage to cut all of the glands and everything out,

8

and you cook it like normal.]

9

Lyle:

[yes and once you’ve killed it you’ve got to oh yes.]

10

Frank:

[then it tastes really (laughs) revolting ((laughs)).]

12

Lyle:

[got to kill it first] ((laughs)).]

13

Andy:

[((laughing)) really.]

14

Frank:

[is possum soup.

11

[cos the best- the best recipe for possum.

15

where you put a possum and a rock,]

16

into a pot of water.

17

and you BOIL it until there is no water left,

18

and THROW away the possum,

19

and eat the rock

20

Andy:

((laughs)).

21

Lyle:

() the possum won’t be too bloody happy about that.

WSC DPC069 Following the definition of a recipe as a set of ordered instructions, the teller formulates his joke recipe as imperatives in the second person. Even the more active listener Lyle, focusing on the killing of the possum as an essential first step, casts his

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comments in the form of second person instructions, saying you twice in line 9. Indeed, Lyle seems to be co-constructing the humor inherent in the story Frank is setting up, leading to a species of banter in the sense of Norrick (1993: esp. 29–35). Lyle seems not to realize that Frank is trying to tell a canned joke: generally, once a speaker has the floor to tell a joke (or really any story), listeners restrict themselves to minimal responses and brief assessments, as demonstrated by Sacks (1974) and Norrick (1993, 2001). Lyle also does not laugh or produce any other recognizable orientation to the joke completion at the end of the joke telling, but continues on his own tangent. The joke works as a kind of parody of a normal recipe telling. The recipe name ‘‘possum soup’’ sets up expectations that possum will be the main ingredient in the soup. The introduction of the rock in line 16 initially makes no sense, inasmuch as rocks are not edible and have no function in a soup recipe, setting up the absurdity frame that signals a potential joke and the subsequent punch line. The pot of water and the instruction to boil ‘‘until there is no water left’’ in line 17 adhere to everyday expectations for recipes, leading up to the incongruous directive to throw away the possum, depriving the soup of its main ingredient alongside the parallel awareness that there is no liquid to actually function as a soup. The punch line ‘‘and eat the rock’’ completes the absurdity of the recipe, but at the same time makes sense of the addition of the rock earlier on: the background suddenly becomes the foreground, rendering the incongruity appropriate in the terms of Oring (2003). There is a further appropriateness in the incongruity of throwing away the main ingredient and eating the rock in the suggestion that even a rock would taste better than possum. The joke recipient requires a minimal familiarity with the conventions of recipes and cooking procedures of the kind found in conversational recipe tellings in order to understand the joke, as well as the cultural knowledge of possum. 7. Conclusions, directions for future research To summarize: conversational recipe tellings are multi-unit turns with characteristic openings and closings. They are similar to narratives in several ways, but they are also like sets of instructions, and they tend to switch back and forth between the first person past tense of the former and the second person imperative of the latter at sequentially significant junctures. Recipe tellings also routinely issue from narratives and segue into narratives in conversational interaction, requiring tellers to mark off the recipe portion in characteristic ways, including shifts in tense and person. The investigation of recipe tellings in conversation is important, because they represent multi-unit turns different than stories. There has been much research on storytelling and, to a lesser extent on joketelling, in conversation, but none till now on recipe tellings. We have seen that recipe tellings can occur as part of a narrative and that they may contain narrative portions as well. Recipe tellings are like stories in their sequential development and listener responses to them, but they generally display separate kinds of structures due to their status as sets of instructions. The simultaneous pull of the two modes, narrative and instructional, yields recipe tellings which alternate between first person past tense and second person imperative. In line with their status as sets of instructions for preparing food, recipe tellings also constitute expert talk, based on shared specialized knowledge, and containing technical vocabulary and references to ingredients, measurements, tools and procedures associated with specialized practices. Thus, they presuppose shared background knowledge of and interest in food preparation. They do not constitute lecturing or teaching in everyday talk, but instead afford tellers and recipients opportunities to ‘‘talk shop’’: to display a specialist footing and to share insider experiences and knowledge. Recipe telling exploits conventions from written recipes: conversational recipe telling borrows its overall sequential order, presuppositions, vocabulary, measurements, and grammatical structures from written recipe texts. Written recipes are cited as a kind of ultimate authority: they ‘‘call for’’ certain ingredients and procedures to be used, or occasionally countermanded. We saw that even after a woman completed a rather detailed recipe telling in example (12), she said to one listener: ‘‘I’ll have to give you the recipe’’, indicating that the telling is not a viable substitute for the actual text her interlocutor would need to prepare the pie in question herself. The presentation of recipes on television and now on vlogs often integrates written text, at least measurements for ingredients and sometimes lists of steps, into the audio-visual performance in various ways. Much more research is needed generally on the influence of written texts on spoken performance, especially in cases like recipes where the written text assumes a special authority. But if recipe telling is not about actually conveying a set of instructions for the preparation of food, why do conversationalist tell recipes? Recipe telling as shop talk among cognoscenti establishes individual identity and group membership. It demonstrates shared practices and interests. Displaying shared knowledge in the appropriate way ratifies participants as co-members in ‘‘a domain of expertise and knowledge, indeed a small culture in its own right’’, to use Goodwin’s felicitous phrasing (1986:289). Moreover, since it concerns food, the teller of a recipe is also expressing preferences for certain kinds of cuisine and individual taste, which further accrues to the construction of small identities, perhaps shared with the other participants. Even within humorous stories, references to recipes allow tellers and recipients to display an expert footing in the area of cooking and baking and the conventions of written recipes. Again in narratives about misunderstanding recipes, as in example (17), we saw the switch from first person past tense narrative to second person imperative for the recipe text itself, reflecting the simultaneous pull of the narrative and the instructional modes.

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Joke recipes follow the same patterns as serious recipe tellings. In order for the parody to work, they rely on familiarity with certain recipe conventions and cooking procedures: listeners must possess a basic knowledge of recipes and their presentation in talk to recognize the reversal of background and foreground and appreciate the joke. Regarding future directions for research, as suggested above, more work is needed on the relation between written text and spontaneous talk. Recipe tellings are just one conversational manifestation of everyday talk influenced by conventions from a written text invested with authority. Many people can reproduce published poems, passages from plays and prayers verbatim. We (re-)tell stories and jokes first encountered in written form. Spoken instructions for playing games and for using technical devices also appropriate features from original written sources. Similarly, lists and schedules are recited as recalled from written forms. Natural spoken tellings of these various ‘‘texts’’ offer interesting sites for future research. At the same time, it would be instructive to compare conversational recipe tellings not just with written cookbook recipe texts, but also with the audio–visual presentation of recipes by television cooks, and the presentation of recipes on blogs and vlogs. The interweaving of recipes and narrative in novels like Julie and Julia by Julie Powell and Like water for chocolate by Laura Esquivel could also be a fruitful avenue of research. Data sources The data used in this investigation derive from five different corpora: First, the Saarbru¨cken Corpus of Spoken English (SCoSE), an extensive collection of audio and video recordings of free conversation and conversational interviews, involving a wide range of speakers from the United States. Notes on our transcription conventions and on participants in the recordings, along with steadily increasing numbers of transcribed excerpts from the SCoSE are available online at: http://www.uni-saarland.de/fak4/norrick/sbccn.htm Second, the CallHome Corpus from the Linguistic Data Consortium, consisting of long-distance phone calls between friends: http://www.ldc.upenn.edu/Catalog/CatalogEntry.jsp?catalogId=LDC97L20 Third, the Santa Barbara Corpus of Spoken American English (SBCSAE) http://www.talkbank.org/media/conversation/SBCSAE/ Fourth, the Wellington Corpus of Spoken New Zealand English (WSC) http://khnt.hit.uib.no/icame/manuals/wsc/INDEX.HTM Fifth, the Longman Spoken and Written English Corpus (LSWEC), developed for the Longman grammar of spoken and written English, by Douglas Biber, Stig Johansson, Geoffrey Leech, Susan Conrad, and Edward Finegan (Harlow: Pearson Education, 1999), and the Longman student grammar of spoken and written English, by Douglas Biber, Susan Conrad, and Geoffrey Leech (Harlow: Pearson Education, 2002). Examples derive in particular from the section containing American English conversation (329 texts; 2,480,800 words). I gratefully thank Doug Biber for the opportunity to access this rich data source at his Corpus Linguistics Research Program at Northern Arizona University in the spring of 2007 and again in 2008. For the sake of consistency, excerpts from the CallHome corpus, the SBCSAE, the WSC, and the LSWEC have been adapted to the transcription conventions of the SCoSE summarized below. Transcription conventions Each line of transcription represents spoken language as segmented into intonation units. In English, an intonation unit typically consists of about four to five words and expresses one new idea unit. Intonation units are likely to begin with a brief pause and to end in a clause-final intonation contour; they often match grammatical clauses. Each idea unit typically contains a subject, or given information, and a predicate, or new information; this flow from given to new information is characteristic of spoken language (Chafe, 1994). Arranging each intonation unit on a separate line displays the greater fragmentation inherent in spoken language (Chafe, 1982). Capitalization is used for the pronoun I and proper names. Otherwise, capitalization, punctuation and diacritics mark features of prosody rather than grammatical units. Non-lexical items, for example disfluency markers like eh and um, affirmative particles like aha or surprise markers like oh are included in transcripts. The specific transcription conventions are as follows. she’s out.

Period shows falling tone in the preceding element.

oh yeah?

Question mark shows rising tone in the preceding element.

nine, ten

Comma indicates a level, continuing intonation.

DAMN

Capitals show heavy stress or indicate that speech is louder than the surrounding discourse.

8dearest8

Utterances spoken more softly than the surrounding discourse are framed by degree signs.

says ‘‘oh’’

Double quotes mark speech set off by a shift in the speaker’s voice.

(2.0)

Numbers in parentheses indicate timed pauses.

?

A truncated ellipsis is used to indicate pauses of one-half second or less.

...

An ellipsis is used to indicate a pause of more than a half-second.

ha:rd

The colon indicates the prolonging of the prior sound or syllable.

N.R. Norrick / Journal of Pragmatics 43 (2011) 2740–2761



Angle brackets pointing outward denote words or phrases that are spoken more slowly than the surrounding discourse.

>watch out<

Angle brackets pointing inward words or phrases spoken more quickly than the surrounding discourse.

bu- but

A single dash indicates a cut-off with a glottal stop.

[and so-]

Square brackets on successive lines mark

[why] her?

beginning and end of overlapping talk.

and=

Equals signs on successive lines show latching

=then

between turns.

H

Clearly audible breath sounds are indicated with a capital H.

.h

Inhalations are denoted with a period, followed by a small h. Longer inhalations are depicted with multiple hs as in .hhh

h

Exhalations are denoted with a small h (without a preceding period). A longer exhalation is denoted by multiple hs.

()

In the case that utterances cannot be transcribed with certainty, empty parentheses are employed.

(hard work)

If there is a likely interpretation, the questionable words appear within the parentheses.

((stage whisper))

Aspects of the utterance, such as whispers, coughing, and laughter are indicated with double parentheses.

bold

Bolding marks the particular item at issue in an example.

Appendix A Examples Peanut butter pie LSWEC 109502 1

Susan:

mm.

2

Margaret:

Nancy, what about you?

3

Susan:

[how about]

4

Nancy:

[I definitely] have to try the peanut butter pie

5

Susan:

how about after this

6

Margaret:

how about you?

7

Susan:

that I put you on my back ((laughing))

8

and I run you out to Aunt Irene’s,

9 10

so I can ((laughing)) Nancy:

well, you know what I did,

11

I looked in the trunk.

12

I was going to Vicky’s and getting everything all set,

13

so I exchanged the batteries and everything.

14

Susan:

uh-huh.

15

Nancy:

picked up the tape recorder,

16

made sure everything was all set,

17

slammed the trunk and,

18

as I was slamming it,

19

I was thinking,

20

MY KEYS.

21

Margaret:

Nancy, did you want pie?

22

Nancy:

yes, sure.

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23

Margaret:

do you want cake too?

24

Nancy:

no, I have,

25

I’ll try the pie next time.

26

I had all the cake last night.

27

Susan:

28

Peter:

my, my, my.

29

Susan:

you know what I’m going to do?

30

oh, my.

I’m going to put Nancy on my back

31

and I’m going to carry her up to Irene’s.

32

Peter:

to make up for lunch?

33

Susan:

mhm

34

Peter:

and we’re eating it all

36

Nancy:

Aunt Margaret, er Aunt Irene gave me one of mother’s dresses

37

Susan:

oh, yeah?

38

Nancy:

because she said she didn’t think I was going to have time to go

35

and Aunt Margaret’s not had a bite in her mouth yet.

39

back home

40

and she was fixing sewing the belt

41

and saying, it doesn’t fit you, it doesn’t fit you.

42

so, if I show up wearing this,

43

she thinks I’m wearing the other dress.

44

Peter:

oh, well change.

45

Nancy:

yeah. ((laughs))

46

Susan:

are you going to pin her?

47

Peter:

mhm

48

Nancy:

yeah, I could use a pinning.

49

Susan:

mm.

50

aren’t you having anything to eat?

51

Margaret:

no, I have some coffee here.

52

Nancy:

mm.

54

Margaret:

oh, you tasted it before, didn’t you?

55

Nancy:

did you ever.

Margaret:

oh, I brought it to your house,

53

it’s wonderful.

56 57

I don’t think so.

58

maybe you weren’t there.

59

I brought it once, didn’t I?

60

Peter:

maybe she was in California or something.

61

Margaret:

mhm

62

Peter:

we didn’t send her any

63

Nancy:

you know they don’t do things like that.

64

Margaret:

very easy to make,

65

only takes me about,

66

takes me twenty minutes to make.

67

Nancy:

what is it, what’s in it?

68

Margaret:

er

69

Nancy:

cream cheese?

70

Margaret:

mhm

71

Nancy:

and peanut butter and

N.R. Norrick / Journal of Pragmatics 43 (2011) 2740–2761

72

Margaret:

73

Nancy:

the shell?

74

Margaret:

six inch shell, yeah,

75

well, I buy the, the, er

graham cracker shell

76

because I figure that’s easier than making it

77

Nancy:

mm

78

Margaret:

and, er, I take my,

79

er, six ounces of cream cheese,

80

I take it out of the refrigerator

81

and have it warm up a little bit

82

Nancy:

mm

83

Margaret:

then I put that in the beater

84

and, and beat that up

85

and then three quarters of a cup of powdered sugar

86

Nancy:

mhm

87

Margaret:

and you strain that,

89

Nancy:

mm

90

Margaret:

two tablespoons of milk,

88

I mean, strain and then beat that up

91

and a half a cup of peanut butter

92

and put that all in.

93

then you take, er, er, the Dream Whip

94

Nancy:

oh, okay.

95

Margaret:

and then you,

96

you know, have to constitute that,

97

reconstitute that

98

and with the milk and the vanilla

99

and then fold that into that other

100

and that’s all

101

Nancy:

and that’s it.

102

Margaret:

mhm

103

Nancy:

boy, I have a couple of kids that would really like this too.

104

Margaret:

I’ll have to give you the recipe.

105

Nancy:

uh-huh.

106

Margaret:

but like I said,

107

I, I buy the crust because it’s [a little bit easier than]

108

Nancy:

[a lot less work] uh-huh.

109

Margaret:

you know, cracking the graham crackers

Nancy:

now that I got a Cuisinart at a garage sale for about twenty dollars

113

Margaret:

oh my

114

Nancy:

pie crust is such a snap,

110 111

and so

112

and

115

throw everything in,

116

push a button and it comes out

117

Margaret:

OOH

118

Nancy:

just into perfect [little ((unclear))]

119

Margaret:

[that’d be nice]

120

Nancy:

I have to roll it out.

2757

2758

N.R. Norrick / Journal of Pragmatics 43 (2011) 2740–2761

121

Margaret:

yeah.

122

Nancy:

actually for this kind of crust

124

Margaret:

huh?

125

Nancy:

for this kind of crust it would be nice too,

123

it would be nice because it would just

126

it would just

Aunt Annie’s peach cake CallHome en_4666 1

Betty:

2

and I froze one bag full of halves

3

to make Aunt Annie’s peach cake

4

Audrey:

mhm

5

Betty:

in the winter

Audrey:

I made a wonderful peach thing last week.

6 7

so we’ll see what happens

8

um you know the recipe book that Jane gave me,

9

Betty:

yeah

10

Audrey:

at Christmas time from,

12

Betty:

yeah

13

Audrey:

well you make the dough .H

11

desserts from your bread maker.

14

and you leave it in the bread maker.

15

until it goes through a couple of cycles.

16

of ye- kneading and raising and all that kind of stuff.

17

and then you take it out before it bakes.

18

and you divide it into two.

19

and let it sit for a few minutes.

20

and then press into like a round um pizza pan.

21

Betty:

oh.

22

Audrey:

and then I put-

23

now the kids had picked berries along the road.

24

um,

25

uh raspberries blackberries and huckleberries.

26 27

so I made one with uh that on it. Audrey:

and the other one,

28

I sliced peaches real thin.

29

and then you put cinnamon sugar.

30

and and melted butter on the top.

31

and bake it.

32

and of course it’s a real,

33

y’know it’s a yeast dough.

34

Betty:

mhm.

35

Audrey:

uh it’s a real good dough.

36

Betty:

yeah and good

37

Audrey:

and boy they were,

38

and it it tells you,

39

the recipe actually calls,

40

{breath} for some kind of a um,

N.R. Norrick / Journal of Pragmatics 43 (2011) 2740–2761

41

on it it says either unflavored whipped cream or uh sour cream.

42

something like that.

43

so we just used Cool Whip.

44

and it was it was very good.

45

it was very nice.

46

I took one I coo-

47

Betty:

uh-huh.

48

Audrey:

to the guy across the road.

Betty:

uh-huh.

49 34

who cut the grass for us while we were away.

Red beans and rice SBCSAE 051 1

Fran:

mm.

2

is this-

3

we- this looks like something we used to call grillades.

4

in New- .. in New Orleans.

5 6

what is [it]. Seann:

[gri]llades.

8

Fran:

mhm.

9

Sean:

this is red beans and rice,

11

Fran:

[unhunh]?

12

Sean:

and um,

14

Fran:

it’s delicious.

15

Bernard:

it is delicious [Sean].

16

Arlette:

[mm].

18

Bernard:

(clears throat)

19

Fran:

did you invent this?

7

hunh?

10

[with some] steak,

13

(tsk) green and .. and red peppers cut up.

17

it’s gr=eat.

20 21

[cause it’s v]ery like a New Or[2leans recipe2]. Sean:

[mhm].

23

Arlette:

mhm.

24

Fran:

mm.

Sean:

I had red beans and rice,

22

[2I invented it2].

25 26

wonderful.

27

for dinner,

28

last week,

29

and it was so great,

30

and I thought,

31 32

I could make this for a dinner par[ty], Arlette:

33

what can I-

34 35 36

[yeah], [y’know],

Sean:

[and just-] and I’ll just a:dd to it,

2759

N.R. Norrick / Journal of Pragmatics 43 (2011) 2740–2761

2760

37

and,

38

.. that’s what I like.

39

is to [add,

40

Fran:

[and ja:zz it up].

41

Sean:

I couldn’t real]ly follow a recipe.

42

Fran:

mhm?

43

Sean:

(tsk) I mean I could but,

44 45

hm. Bernard:

46

I used to say, well how much did you put in.

47

I don’t know.

48

Fran:

mhm?

49

Sean:

I don’t know.

50

Arlette:

can you do it again.

51

no,

52

I don’t [think] so.

53

Sean:

[no].

References Bamberg, Michael, 2005. Encyclopedia entry on ‘Positioning’. In: Herman, D., Jahn, M., Ryan, M. (Eds.), The Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory. Routledge, New York, pp. 445–446. Chafe, Wallace, 1982. Integration and involvement in speaking, writing, and oral literature. In: Tannen, D. (Ed.), Spoken and Written Language: Advances in Discourse Processes. Ablex, Norwood, pp. 35–54. Chafe, Wallace, 1994. Discourse, Consciousness and Time. University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Cotter, Colleen, 1994. The cook, the community, and the other: how recipes organize affiliation. In: Bucholtz, M., Liang, A., Sutton, L., Hines, C. (Eds.), Cultural Performances: Proceedings of the Third Berkeley Women and Language Conference. pp. 133–143. Cotter, Colleen, 1997. Claiming a piece of the pie: how the language of recipes defines community. In: Bower, Anne, L. (Eds.), Recipes for Reading: Community Cookbooks, Stories, Histories. University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst, pp. 51–72. De Fina, Anna, Deborah, Schiffrin, Michael, Bamberg, 2006. Discourse and Identity (Studies in interactional sociolinguistics 23). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Drew, Paul, 1991. Asymmetries of knowledge in conversational interactions. In: Markova, I., Foppa, K. (Eds.), Asymmetries in Dialogue. Harvester Wheatsheaf, Hemel Hempstead, pp. 21–48. Goffman, Erving, 1979. Footing. Semiotica 25, 1–29. Goffman, Erving, 1981. Forms of talk. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia. Goldberg, Jo Ann, 1975. A system for the transfer of instructions in natural settings. Semiotica 14 (3), 269–296. Goodwin, Charles, 1986. Audience diversity, participation and interpretation. Text 6 (1), 283–316. Goody, Jack, 2008. The recipe, the prescription and the experiment. In: Counihan, C., van Esterik, P. (Eds.), Food and Culture: A reader. 2nd edition. Routledge, Abingdon, pp. 76–90. Heritage, John, 1984. A change-of-state token and aspects of its sequential placement. In: Maxwell, A.J., Heritage, J. (Eds.), Structures of Social Action. Studies in Conversation Analysis. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 199–345. Keppler, Angela, Luckmann, Thomas, 1991. ‘Teaching’: Conversational transmission of knowledge. In: Markova, Ivana, Foppa, Klaus (Eds.), Asymmetries in Dialogue. Harvester Wheatsheaf, Hertfortshire, pp. 143–165. Kotthoff, Helga, 1997. The interactional achievement of expert status: creating asymmetries by ‘Teaching conversational lectures’ in TV discussions. In: Kotthoff, H., Wodak, R. (Eds.), Communicating Gender in Context. Benjamins, Amsterdam, pp. 139–178. Labov, William, 1972. Language in the Inner City. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia. Labov, William, 1997. Some further steps in narrative analysis. The Journal of Narrative and Life History 7, 395–415. Labov, William, Waletzky, Joshua, 1967. Narrative analysis: oral versions of personal experience. In: Helm, J. (Ed.), Essays on the Verbal and Visual Arts. University of Washington Press, Seattle, pp. 12–44. Lakoff, Robin, 2006. Identity a la carte: you are what you eat. In: De Fina, A., Schiffrin, D., Bamberg, M. (Eds.), Discourse and Identity. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 147–165. Matoesian D Gregory M., 1999. The grammaticalization of participant roles in the constitution of expert identity. Language in Society 28, 491–521. Norrick, Neal R., 1983a. Technical instructions. In: Diller, H.J., et al. (Eds.), All Kinds of English. Winter, Heidelberg, pp. 119–130. Norrick, Neal R., 1983b. Recipes as texts: technical language in the kitchen. In: Jongen, E., et al. (Eds.), Sprache, Diskurs und Text. Niemeyer, Tu¨bingen, pp. 173–182. Norrick, Neal R., 1993. Conversational Joking. Indiana University Press, Bloomington. Norrick, Neal R., 1997. Twice-told tales: collaborative narration of familiar stories. Language in Society 26, 199–220. Norrick, Neal R., 1998. Retelling stories in spontaneous conversation. Discourse Processes 25, 75–97. Norrick, Neal R., 2000. Conversational Narrative. Benjamins, Amsterdam. Norrick, Neal R., 2001. On the conversational performance of narrative jokes: toward an account of timing. Humor 14 (3), 255–274. Ochs, Elinor, Capps, Lisa, 2001. Living Narrative: Creating Lives in Everyday Storytelling. Harvard University Press, Cambridge. Oring, Elliott, 2003. Engaging Humor. University of Illinois Press, Champaign. Ryave, Alan L., 1978. On the achievement of a series of stories. In: Schenkein, J. (Ed.), Studies in the Organization of Conversational Interaction. Academic Press, New York, pp. 113–132. Sacks, Harvey, 1974. An analysis of the course of a joke’s telling. In: Bauman, R., Sherzer, J. (Eds.), Explorations in the Ethnography of Speaking. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 337–353.

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Sacks, Harvey, 1987. On the preferences for agreement and contiguity in sequences in conversation. In: Button, G., Lee, J.R.E. (Eds.), Talk and Social Organisation. Multilingual Matters, Clevedon, pp. 54–69. Sacks, Harvey, 1992. Lectures on Conversation, vol. 1–2. Blackwell, Oxford. Schegloff, Emanuel A., 1987. Analyzing single episodes of interaction: an exercise in conversation analysis. Social Psychology Quarterly 50, 101–114. Schiffrin, Deborah, 1987. Discourse Markers. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Schiffrin, Deborah, 1994. Making a list. Discourse Processes 17 (3), 377–405. Shuman, Amy, 1986. Storytelling Rights. Cambridge University Press, New York. Neal R. Norrick holds the chair of English Linguistics at Saarland University in Saarbru¨cken, Germany. His research specializations include conversation, narrative, verbal humor, and formulaicity. In recent years, Professor Norrick has focused his research on spoken language. Professor Norrick acts as Co-Editor in Chief of the Journal of Pragmatics, and serves on the advisory boards of the journals Discourse Processes, Humor, International Review of Pragmatics and Text & Talk. His monograph Conversational Narrative (Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2000) was reprinted in a paperback edition in 2010.