Display of understanding in a second story: second teller’s reenactments and reuses of the prior teller’s resources

Abstract In everyday conversations, after a story of an event or one’s experience is told, the recipient often tells a second story, similar to the previous one in terms of content and structure. A second story exhibits, rather than simply claims, its teller’s understanding of a prior story. While stories are often told with reenactments of an event, this study specifically examines the cases in which second tellers produce reenactments similar to that presented by the prior teller through reusing similar verbal and bodily conduct produced by the prior teller. Drawing on conversation analysis using a total of approximately 16 h of Japanese videotaped everyday conversation, this study explores how reenactments of similar moments contribute to the display of understanding and what they further accomplish. The findings reveal that the second teller’s reenactments similar to the one presented by the prior teller exhibit the understanding of not only the contents, but also the main focal point of the prior story while demonstrating different stances towards it. This study contributes to the body of research on the embodied display of understanding by showing how performing an operation on already shared verbal and bodily resources embedded within the ongoing sequence can exhibit multiple levels of understanding.