Small stories and identities analysis as a framework for the study of im/politeness-in-interaction

Abstract Although (socio)linguistic studies of im/politeness and identities present many parallels in their disciplinary trajectories, not least the shift toward interactional approaches, there is still scope and need for bringing the two traditions together and fruitfully exploring their intersections in method and analysis. In this paper, I put forth a proposal for studying im/politenessin- interaction on the basis of small stories as a framework for narrative and identity analysis. My analysis shows how focusing on the stories’ ways of telling, sites, and tellers and drawing on the concept of positioning sheds light on the tellers’ management of particular im/politeness norms in the uses of and behavior in new media sites. I show how im/politeness and identities construction are interwoven in such cases.