Co-constructed storytelling as a site for socialization in parent–child interaction: A case from a Malay-English bilingual family in Singapore

Abstract This study investigates how socialization takes place at the micro-level of everyday parent–child interactions by examining one extended storytelling sequence from the perspectives of Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis (EMCA). Close examination of the sequential organization of the episode selected from approximately 12 hours of audio- and video recordings of parent–child interaction reveals 1) how the child's described event is interactively reconstructed and co-constructed through the child's recollecting and the father's inquiring, and 2) how the child and parent orient subtly to different underlying concerns: the child focuses on his emotional reactions to what happened while the father shows orientations to accountability, normative behavior and the moral order. The analysis illustrates how the daily experience of the child is given shape through the discursive practice of the co-constructed storytelling. By showing how members' sense-making procedures are made observable through the process of co-constructed storytelling, the study suggests that storytelling becomes a site for socialization. The study contributes to the limited but growing body of research on children's storytelling in parent–child interaction from an EMCA perspective.