Elinor Ochs & Lisa Capps, Living narrative: Creating
lives in everyday storytelling. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 2001. Pp. xii, 352. Pb. $20.50.
Imagine a book on conversational narrative that draws from the fields
of linguistics, psychology, literary theory, and anthropology. Now,
imagine this book as compelling as a favorite novel and as convincing as a
well-designed research report. The nexus of these fields and the artful
marriage of these vastly varying genres can be found in the profoundly
interdisciplinary and genuinely collaborative book Living
narrative. In this volume, Elinor Ochs, a linguistic anthropologist,
and Lisa Capps, a developmental psychologist, speak both to those who come
to narrative with literary concerns, and to those discourse-analytic
minded social scientists who understand spoken, personal narrative as a
means to link linguistic phenomena to development of culture and society.
Through the course of the book, the authors illustrate how these literary
and social concerns need not be dichotomous. Living narrative
instills a simultaneous appreciation for the aesthetic and the political
aspects of everyday conversational narrative.