Direct Speech, Self-Presentation and Communities of Practice

This book deals with speech representation in Greek adolescents’ storytelling and investigates how members of different communities of practice present themselves and other characters as interactional protagonists through the stories they tell. The work puts forth a dynamic approach that examines (direct) speech representation at the local and the broader socio-cultural context in which it is embedded. The concept of community of practice accounts for direct speech variation, and direct speech is seen as the linguistic manifestation of shared repertoire of particular communities of practice. The book combines qualitative with quantitative methods of study and brings together relevant theories of speech representation, narrative analysis and self-presentation.