'Sharing the experience' in enactments in storytelling

This study explores a particular kind of enactment in storytelling sequences where a story recipient is recruited by the teller as a designated character in the scene being acted out. Using the conversation-analytic methodological approach, we found that the enactment under investigation often occurred where a response (from the recruited recipient or another recipient) to some matters in the on-going telling was treated as misaligned or inapposite. We then show that the recipient may be recruited either implicitly or explicitly by (not) receiving specific instructions from the teller as to who or what to be enacted. We also show that the one being recruited was able to manage, during his/her enacted participation, the dual roles as a recipient of and a character in the story through multi-modal resources. We argue that such enactments are one of the distinctive ways in which personal experiences are transformed and shared in mundane everyday life. Data are in Mandarin and Cantonese. (C) 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.