Resumen de Leading the way and showing affiliation: participatory roles in a semi-structured narrative interview

Katie Paredes, Marisa Cordella

• This paper outlines the participatory roles of narrators and interviewers in the process of unfolding personal stories. Fifteen secondary school students of Hispanic-Australian background enrolled in intermediate Spanish classes in Melbourne (Australia) were asked to talk about a series of topics allowing them to explore and develop personal stories.

  For the purpose of providing a comprehensive corpus this manuscript focuses on the 11 personal stories that emerged in Spanish and English around the topic of �the worst holiday�.

  The results show that narratives are not initially volunteered by students, being prefaced by an initial denial of negative experience. Nevertheless, the interviewer�s participation dissipates the narrator�s initial attitude allowing students to construct narratives guided by the interviewer�s expectations. Interviewer strategies include requests for clarification, prompts for story development and co-authorship. Also crucial to the interaction is the use of laughter as a form of personal affiliation.