This volume collects and amalgamates recent work by Georgakopoulou, building on the notion of small stories developed by Bamberg and herself (Bamberg Reference Bamberg2004; Georgakopoulou Reference Georgakopoulou2006, among others). It critically questions our assumptions about narrative and contributes to our understanding of narrative-like discourse often marginalized in past research. Georgakopoulou calls her approach Linguistic Ethnography, concerned as it is with participants’ own ways of making meaning in interaction. The early chapters set up the analytical framework, and the later chapters apply this framework in careful investigations of interesting data. Two extended examples appear in an appendix, along with pictures of the town where the data were collected. In these two examples, each turn appears in the original Greek with an English translation immediately below. By contrast, in the text, examples are entirely in Greek followed by English translations of the whole passage, unless an excerpt derives from one of the extended passages in the appendix, in which case only the English version appears in the text.

From the outset, Georgakopoulou declines to specify or delimit the structures and functions of the small story, choosing instead to leave the notion “small story” very general as an “umbrella-term that covers a gamut of underrepresented narrative activities” including even “tellings of ongoing events, future or hypothetical events ... but also allusions to tellings, deferrals of telling, and refusals to tell” (p. vii; cf. 148). Though I fully sympathize with Georgakopoulou’s goal of extending our analytical scrutiny to texts outside the traditional narrative canon, I personally feel we gain nothing and sacrifice precision in applying the word “story” to chunks of discourse that are demonstrably distinct from narratives in obvious ways. Referring to a “small stories perspective” only compounds the problem. As it is, Georgakopoulou ends up including in her purview an array of discourse practices shared by small groups of young Greeks in their verbal and even written e-mail interactions with one another.

Chapter 1 provides an introduction to the methodological and theoretical underpinnings, along with the data of the study. The research is based on two sets of data. The first set consists of 20 hours of taped conversations between three women friends (and occasionally a fourth), wearing audio-microphones, at various stages from 1998 to 2000, along with 60 pages of field notes in diary form, and interviews before, during and after the period of audio recordings. The second set consists of a corpus of e-mail messages exchanged among three women and three men friends, supplemented with interviews before and after the collection period. In motivating her focus on small stories and discourse practices, the author maintains that we need a “systematic development of a typology of narrative genres” (7), but much work in this vein has already begun and it remains largely uncited, including research on troubles telling (Jefferson Reference Jefferson1980, Reference Jefferson1988), duetting (Falk Reference Falk1980), second stories (Sacks Reference Sacks and Jefferson1992), varieties of the life story (Linde 1993), twice-told tales (Norrick Reference Norrick1997), families of stories (Goodwin Reference Goodwin1997), collaborative fantasies and diffuse stories (Norrick Reference Norrick2000), and forms and functions of transgressive narratives (Jefferson, Sacks & Schegloff Reference Jefferson, Sacks, Schegloff, Button and Lee1987, Jones Reference Jones2002, Coupland & Jaworski 2003). Her thoughts on entextualization and recontextualization (11) would have benefited from a discussion of work on retelling (Norrick Reference Norrick1998, Chafe Reference Chafe1998).

In chapter 2, the author seeks to establish a place for small stories by contrast with canonical narratives in linguistic research. As types of small stories, she mentions allusions to “stories to be told” at a later time, breaking news, projections and shared stories. She considers projections as bids for co-construction (49), as prefaces to establish mutual reference, and as argumentative devices (52). Even bare references to shared stories count as “types of small stories.” In this chapter one finds lots of briefly considered examples, but no extended analysis. The discussion of tellability here and elsewhere suffers from lack of references to newer literature: see, for example, Norrick Reference Norrick2004 on tellability and humor, and Norrick Reference Norrick2005 on the dark side of tellability.

Chapter 3 concerns the narrative structure of small stories, building on “a whole post-Labovian in nature line of inquiry” (62). Here Georgakopoulou finally engages in some micro-analysis of examples, but really just looks at a couple of verb forms (77). By contrast with big, life stories, the consideration of small stories requires that we redirect analysis and reconceptualize structure away from teller versus audience, teller ownership of stories, and past events, and toward sequential, emergent, temporalized, dialogic, recontextualizable, variable, potentially fragmented, multiple genres. The author investigates openings and closings, in particular references to time and place in projections. She notes especially the significance of spatiotemporal frames of reference in emplotment, and the negotiation of time and place in the telling performance, leading her to include orientation within the sequential structure of narrative – by contrast with the separation of the two in Labov’s account of narrative (Labov & Waletzky Reference Labov, Waletzky and Helm1967, Labov Reference Labov1972).

In chapter 4, the author turns to the role of small stories in the creation of identity. The same small stories serve as examples, but here the analysis is based on features such as initiation, plotline construction, evaluation via character assessment, and embedded stories, including evaluations ratified/accepted. There is an interesting discussion of local telling signals and situational identities, and how these link to transportable identities. In section 3 of this chapter, Georgakopoulou finally engages in some careful analysis of a chunk of data, concerning herself with telling roles, question-answer sequences, repetition, allusion, and discourse markers. Interestingly, the data excerpt chosen is neither small nor a story as such, but a projection 224 lines long. In section 4.3.2, she explores another projection, focusing on a comparison of telling roles, plotline versus evaluation, rejecting stories, self-lamination (113–14), stories as argumentation, and contesting stories. The conclusion here, “Small stories and identities in social practice,” is particularly strong. It contains new perspectives on the relationship between the small, local identity in storytelling participation roles and large, detachable social identities. Georgakopoulou suggests that the kinds of small stories her subjects exchange are practices central to them as indexes of their youth identities. She draws out the significance of specific types of co-construction and interactional history among the participants she studied.

Chapter 5 is concerned with positioning in small stories via Membership Categorization Devices and stylizing phenomena like nicknames, assessments, and stylizations. The author argues that positioning is like footing, stance, and involvement: All are meso-analytical concepts between micro-level discourse analytic concepts and macro-level social identity. She shows how nicknames develop associations of masculinity, place, family, and so on, and how quotes, dialect forms, and allusions “locate” men in the physical environment with social connotations. These can lead to assessments (often via Membership Categorization Devices) of past actions and projected actions. Further, their relation to established sets of attributes and roles links them to men’s transportable identities. The small stories analyzed also draw comparisons between men, gendering men on a scale of soft/childlike/shy to hard/local/older/tough/sexually experienced via nicknames, stylization etc. The author notes, moreover, an ambivalence of gender stereotypes – hard is also dangerous, soft more desirable as partner – and the double bind of the old macho versus the new sensitive man. Using their established grid for men, the young women simultaneously position themselves as: heterosexual, feminine, and along a scale of sexually active to passive and preferring certain types of men. Women are sometimes clearly involved in parody and “acting out.” Small stories even provide a means of “rehearsal” for participation in the heterosexual marketplace (144), while fantasies have the potential for psychoanalytic approaches – desire, identity and the like.

The conclusion brings together the recurrent themes: from big to small stories, small stories as social practice, small stories as new perspective in narrative analysis–and reviews the premises and implications of the whole study.

Unfortunately, the book often suffers from decidedly non-native grammatical constructions and lexis, in particular complex prenominal adjectivals like “the commonly discussed in the literature full retellings” (50) or “this un-Labovian in spirit ‘function’” (79), and confusing word choices as in “evoke stereotypical imageries of children” (138).

This is the sort of monograph one could assign to advanced students in courses on identity and/or narrative. The treatment of identity and positioning is particularly readable and convincing in chapters 4 and 5, where it applies directly to concrete examples in detailed analyses.