Working towards common understandings: Collaborative interaction in staffroom stories

This article suggests that previous research into staffroom talk, which has been based on fieldnotes and interviews, has identified general features of such talk but failed to take adequate account of the process by which it is constructed. The article focuses specifically on staffroom stories and argues that these represent an important professional resource. Based on data collected from the staffroom of a small language school over a period of 15 months, it examines the process of establishing the audience as co-author and introduces the concept of making prototypical to represent a situation where universality can be established without sacrificing the vital element of personal experience which is central to the success of all stories. It analyzes the story openings to show how the idea of local occasioning, the process by which stories develop from foregoing talk, may need to be widened to embrace the concept ofa sanctioned topic. Analysis of an unfolding story reveals the role which tense selection, interactional routines, prototypicality, accounting and imagery play in the process of establishing professionally relevant shared ownership. The article also suggests that in a collaborative context it is incumbent on the teller to frame his or her story in such a way as to maximize the opportunity for such joint ownership.