Sequential Aspects of Storytelling in Conversation11This is a revised version of a paper presented at Seminars in Ethnomethodology, Graduate Center, City University of New York, April 1973. Great appreciation is extended to Doug Maynard, Candy West, Tom Wilson, Don Zimmerman, and Roger Mandlebaum.

This chapter focuses on story beginnings and endings. Stories emerge from turn-by-turn talk, which is locally occasioned by it, and upon their completion, stories re-engage turn-by-turn talk, which is sequentially implicative for it. The re-engagement of turn-by-turn talk at a story's completion is a matter of sequential implicativeness in both senses, that is, at a story's ending, two discrete aspects similar to those observed for local occasioning can be found. A story can serve as a source for triggered or topically coherent subsequent talk, and a range of techniques are used to display a relationship between the story and subsequent talk. While re-engagement of turn-by-turn talk may be the primary issue upon a story's completion, there are other matters to which a storyteller may be oriented. Specifically, there may be orientation to what a recipient makes of the story and, thus, what the story has amounted to. The chapter presents a dramatic instance in which recipient displays appreciation and understanding of a story at a possible completion point.