Using Identity Ascription to Disqualify a Rival Version of Events as "Interested"

Abstract

The central point of this article is to show how identity ascription can work to do a very specific job-to be a "disqualifier." It can disqualify a listener's apparent claims on a story one is telling, or a version of events one is offering. If the story recipient or version recipient discharges his or her obligations as a listener inappropriately, then the speaker's ownership and authority over the events might be threatened. We examine a case in which a speaker who starts as a storyteller treats the listener as being (roughly speaking) "too enthusiastic" in her reception of the narrative, and of the version of events and vocabulary that it involves. We see how the speaker builds a series of rejections of the hearer's responses, culminating in an identity ascription that disqualifies the hearer's claim on the story content and vocabulary. By attributing the listener with an identity hearably outside the interaction, the storyteller explains away the hearer's responses as issuing from someone with a personal stake in the matter.