adversarial mirroring

[Jim Wilce]

Hi David,

I would say Candy Goodwin's early work on format tying in oppositional 
interactions would be very relevant:

Goodwin, Marjorie Harness
    1990    He-Said-She-Said:  Talk as Social Organization among 
Children. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Goodwin, Charles, and Marjorie H. Goodwin
    1987    Children's Arguing. In Language, Gender, and Sex in 
Comparative Perspective. S.U. Philips, S. Steele, and C. Tanz, eds. Pp. 
200-248. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.


David Boromisza wrote:
> Dear All,
>
> I am starting to work on an article addressing a discursive pattern or routine that I like to call adversarial mirroring. I use this term to refer to exchanges that usually involve (1) a first speaker using a folk term for communicative action in an allegation ('You are a liar.'), (2) and the target of the allegation responding by accusing the first speaker of having performed the communicative action s/he is accusing the target of through the very act of the allegation ('The fact that you've just called me a liar proves that you are the real liar.') I call this pattern adversarial mirroring because the target "mirrors" the first speaker's allegation with the intent of discrediting them and their allegation.
>
> Could any of you point me to literature that discusses this or similar kinds of phenomena?
>
> Thanks very much in advance,
>
> Cheers, DBH
>
> --
> David Boromisza-Habashi, Ph.D.
> Assistant Professor
> Department of Communication
> University of Colorado
> 270 UCB
> Boulder, CO 80309-0270, USA
>
> office location: Hellems 78
> work phone: +1 (303) 735 5076
> work fax: +1 (303) 492 8411
>
>   


-- 
Jim Wilce, Professor of Anthropology
Northern Arizona University

Visiting Researcher 2008-2009
Institute for Cultural Research
Dept. of Folklore Studies
Helsinki University
jim.wilce at gmail.com