The results are presented and discussed first in relation to the overall organisation of the stanzas to show how different themes and ideas are picked up and developed; then exploring repetition patterns and prosodic features.

Transcript 2 shows the narrative grouped into stanzas, with prosodic features and contextual comments added. Certain aspects emerge which were obscured in the previous analysis.

Transcript 2: Stanza Analysis, Bad Leg Cat

Stanza 1.

1. A: where did Fluffy go↑ 2. V: vet               ((looks at A)) 3. A: that’s right 4. A: And what did Fluffy have done↑ 5. V: an injection 6. A: and a= 7. V =tablet ((loud voice, smiling, looks at camera)) 8. N: ↑ooh 9. B: [Ali↑Ali↑] 10. A: [because Fluffy’s got ↑bad ((slaps leg))] leg 11. B. ↑Connor (1) xxx 12. V: ((taps leg)) leg ((looking at A, serious face)) 13. N: [↑o:↓oh] [↑de:↓ar]

Stanza 2

14. V: [ Han↑nah ] ((turns right and looks at H)) 15. bad leg 16. H: got a bad ↑leg 17. N: Fluffy’s got a bad ↓leg

Stanza 3

18. V: ↑Connor ((turns and looks left at C)) 19. C: yes 20. V: bad leg 21. C: bad leg cat 22. N: bad leg

Stanza 4

23. V: Al:↑ice ((looks ahead to A, serious)) 24.      bad leg 25. A: oh ↑no

                         (2 seconds)

Stanza 5

26. V: injection 27. A: injection injection going to make it ↑better? 28. V: yea:h 29. B: ↑o:↓oh ↑no:↓o 30. N: [oh↑no, Barney] 31. H: [gotta look after gotta look after Fluffy, don’t we↓]

Stanza 6

32. V: [ Mich↑ael bad le:g Michael] ((V looks left at M serious face)) 33. N: ye:ah 34. B: ↑o:↓oh ↑no:↓o 35. A: oh ↑no poorly cat 36. V: bad le:g

(M leans in to hear her. They look at each other, then V leans back and looks at the camera and pauses for 3 seconds before speaking again:)

37. A: bad leg 38. H: [who’s got a bad leg? ] tell him who’s got a bad leg, Victoria

Stanza 7

39. V: [°hospital°] ((to M, serious face; he is still leaning in)) 40. A: [injection] you’ve had an injection, haven’t you↓ ((to B)) 41. V: °hospital° ((to M, serious face, M leans back, nods)) 42. B: ↑o:↓oh ↑no:↓o 43. V: yeah ((to B and M, then looks towards A and N)

                                                  (2 seconds)

Stanza 8

44: A. gotta look after the cat haven’t ↓we

Organisation and coherence: Stanza analysis suggests an overall patterned coherence in the narrative, with the initial facts about the event followed by refrains that pick up and highlight elements of the story. The analysis also shows how call and response sequences function as a platform for Victoria to tell the story independently. When we look at event structure elements within the stanza analysis, her ability as a narrator is revealed, distributed across stanzas, each one progressing the narrative through the specification of one key structural element:

Attention getter—name of individual Abstract—bad leg Action—injection High point—hospital Coda—yeah

Of course, there are numerous ways of analysing such minimal narratives, and it may be argued that hospital is purely an orientation answering the original question, Where did Fluffy go? equivalent to the vet with which the story began. However, the accompanying nonverbal behaviour, and the serious emphatic delivery, give the sense of a climax to hospital not only because it provides the fulcrum of the conversation but also because of the personal and social context of the story, discussed later.

Repetition patterns: No fewer than 57% (25) of the 44 utterances include pronounced repetitions; the most frequently repeated words being bad leg (13), followed by oh no (5), injection (5), yeah (2), the names (Alice, Michael, Connor, and Fluffy, 6 in total), gotta look after (2), and hospital (1). Two repeats of injection are in the aside by Alice to Barney, which stands outside the main dialogue, because no one else picks it up. By contrast, Hannah’s aside, “gotta look after Fluffy/the cat”, is used by Alice as the final resolution and coda combined.

The patterns of repetition are mutual and intertwined. There are seven instances of staff and visitor (N) echoing tenants, eight of tenants echoing staff, seven of staff echoing each other, one of tenant echoing tenant, and 12 self-repetitions. The choice of repetition is largely governed by Victoria, who selects the topics (bad leg and injection). It’s of interest to consider her options. All repeated items are present in the first stanza, from which she could select: vet, injection, tablet, fluffy, bad leg. That she chooses to repeat bad leg is no accident—this is a stressed phrase that functions effectively both to sum up the event and to evaluate it. Victoria, therefore, is highly sensitive to what is most significant in the story. Injection, her second choice of theme, is perhaps more salient than the alternative, tablet—everyone here takes tablets, but injections are “reportable” (Labov & Waletzky, 1997) (line 40)—she is emphasising a central event. Names, yeah, and oh no are all significant as antiphonal elements. Note that yeah is totally different to Connor’s yes—yes is no more than an acknowledgement, whereas ye:ah, drawn out and emphasised, reinforces the shared importance of the telling and is deployed by Victoria to sign off the story as a coda: It is worth noting that the staff had a choice how to respond to Victoria—they could have seen her repetitions as evidence of impairment (short-term memory loss or inappropriate demand) and attempted to close her down.

Prosodic patterning: Prosody is used to segment the dialogue into its component parts and to look for echoes and regularities, identifying what is happening at a poetic, musical level. Victoria and Alice, as we might predict, are echoed most frequently. However, what looks from the transcript like a lead from one person can turn out to be deceptive. It is evident that although Barney (29) is indeed repeating Alice’s initial oh no (25), he is deploying his own cadence. Likewise, it’s clear that Victoria’s prosody for bad leg dominates throughout, with stress on the second syllable, echoed by staff. Although lexically the repetitions alternate between staff and tenants, musically it is Victoria who leads on bad leg, whereas Barney takes the lead on the oh no response.

Looking at prosody also provides a different slant on Barney’s interjection in stanza 1 (identified by staff as an extraneous comment). Structurally, it is irrelevant to the narrative, but it may provide a contribution to the poetic pattern because it is possibly his call to Alice that prompts Victoria’s call and response sequences that follow.

Metrically, the rhythms are dictated by the stress patterns of the vocabulary, and because the phrases are very short, there is not much opportunity for extended patterning. However, there is a musicality to the interchange, which is conveyed through the alternation of two patterns; Victoria consistently stresses the second syllable in both her name calling and bad leg. Barney’s o-oh no-o is produced as a sequence of four syllables, in the pattern stressed/unstressed. The two tenants, who are dominant in the interchange, act in counterpoint, and the repetitions and prosody work together to form the texture of the narrative.

In fact, Victoria can vary her prosody. At (32), Victoria turns her attention to Michael, who has till now been a passive observer, and draws him insistently into a private conversation. The prosody of bad leg changes from the low fall of call and response to a rise fall cadence, with vowel extension on the second articulation of “le:eg”. She is conveying information to him rather than purely inviting acknowledgement, as she does in the call response cadence.