Disorderly discourse: Narrative, conflict, and inequality ed. by Charles L. Briggs (review)

REVIEWS625 Disorderly discourse: Narrative, conflict, and inequality. Ed. by Charles L. Briggs. (Oxford studies in anthropological linguistics, 7). New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. Pp. ii, 248. $49.95. Reviewed by James Stanlaw, Illinois State University Most anthropologists and linguists would agree that narratives are critical devices that can be used to establish social organization, convey values, reify power structures, and solve disputes. Few would also deny that conflict, on any number of levels, is part of our daily lives. But as Charles Briggs, the editor of this volume, says, conflict and narrative have usually been treated in relative isolation (3). This collection of essays—which grew out of a special session of the American Ethnological Association meetings in 1988—is an attempt to examine them together linguistically in an ethnographic context. In a long introduction, B sets a theoretical grounding for how narrative might sustain, create, and mediate conflict. In essence, this is a review essay of about 175 sources examining most of the critical literature through about 1994. But more than that, B, in lucid detail, discusses how ideology articulates with hegemony, how power meets with resistance, as well as how symbols, icons, and indexes operate in discourse and metadiscursive practices. The logic behind why the following eight papers are presented is clearly stated. The book's first chapter is Donald Brenneis's discussion of conflict resolution using talanoa 'gossip' and pancayat 'mediation' in an East Indian community in the Fiji Islands. The former is raucous, quick, and entertaining while the later is staid, formal, and deliberate. Gossip holds people together through a kind of friendship diat is often difficult to achieve in this 'perilously flexible social world' (47) while formal mediation sessions reinforce the egalitarian sense of community where everyone has the right to have their say. Besides helping to resolve specific disputes, these two narrative devices extol culturally salient models of discourse and behavior. In the second article, Ellen Basso examines Taugi, me trickster figure of me Kalapalo of central Brazil. Tricksters—who are both mythological culture heroes and clowns who violate the most sacred of social taboos—are found throughout the world's societies, particularly in indigenous America. They have long been objects of fascination for anthropologists and psychoanalysts alike. By considering tricksters as 'narrativized selves' (54) we can see how Taugi creates his ambiguous persona through his self-referential discourse (by such means as not using evidential particles in his speech). In the book's third chapter, Michael Herzfeld discusses the creation of 'honor among thieves' in a society of sheep-poachers. He explores a number of narrative and linguistic devices some highland villagers in Crete use to suggest that they have no choice but to resort to thievery, even though they may be quite cognizant of the legal and moral sanctions they have violated. This moral ambiguity is compounded when two moral codes—that of the village and that of the nation-state (which share a partially common rhetoric)—can be played off one another. The fourth entry takes us to that most exotic of field sites, the American dinner table. In this article, Elinor Ochs, Ruth Smith, and Carolyn Taylor describe the kind of talk that often occurs between parents and children over the evening meal as the events of the day are related to other family members. One particular form of discourse—what the authors call 'detective stories'—is seen as being 'co-narrated' by both speaker and listeners. A detective story here is one where some participants feel there is missing information critical to the plot or the motivation of the characters. In Lieutenant Columbo-like fashion, an interrogator may persist in seeking information beyond the initial version of the story, which (at least in some sense) could be considered already complete. For instance, in one example given, a young girl describes her incredulity at a classmate only getting a detention for an infraction (lifting up her dress in front of the boys) that she felt should have merited at least a suspension. However, on closer questioning by her brother, it turns out the girl has also had a detention in the past—a fact that for obvious reasons...