Primus inter pares:storytelling and male peer groups in an Indo‐Guyanese rumshop

Language is centrally implicated in the semiotic organization of socio‐political realities and in the maintenance of both social equality and social differentiation. Conversations in a rural Indo‐Guyanese village, during which men collectively reconstruct past events, allow for differential participation in the activity of storytelling. In the sequential organization of interaction, and the actions embedded therein, the participants display to one another a preoccupation with age, rights to knowledge, and social differentiation based on these criteria, [storytelling, social organization, knowledge, age, Guyana]