Aggression in conversational storytelling performance

This article explores the forms and functions of aggression in conversational narrative performance based on a range of corpora representing a wide variety of storytelling types, speakers and contexts. The primary teller of a conversational narrative may report aggression and hostility in story content, while storytelling also provides a forum for the expression of aggression by all participants toward features of story content. Moreover, recipients and co-tellers may display antagonism toward the primary teller, including contradiction, correction, finding fault with the telling performance and direct assault on the teller as well as denying the relevance of the story. The interaction of aggression with humor in conversational storytelling will be investigated to round out the picture.