Repeating, Reframing, Rekeying -- Tannen 2006 and 2010

I was fortunate to actually hear the plenary address at the 2010 LSA meeting and therefore be introduced to the 2010 reading verbally; however, there are always differences between a spoken and written version of the same text (if there weren't, we'd have much less to study), and it is useful to be able to examine them both.

Tannen's framework is perhaps one of the more useful for my own work in that it seems apparent that the process of white-knighting is one of re-keying. In the 2006 article, she focuses in on an extended discussion of a text which is repeated, reframed, and rekeyed over the course of several discussions. The discussion moves from a simple discussion about whether or not a husband is willing to take a box to the post office to a more general discussion of whether or not the husband will be supportive in the instance that the wife's job becomes extremely stressful upon the inauguration of a new president. This pattern is readily recognizable in a number of interpersonal arguments of this nature, but the framework of tracing the way the conversation comes up again repeatedly (repetition), is marked as both argument and humor (rekeying), and is changed from a discussion about one thing to a discussion about another (reframing) gives useful insight into how we can better unpack the complicated layers of discourse that are present in such interaction.

Most useful to me from the 2010 talk is perhaps this issue of the taking on of voices, as Natalie does in the bath. As she permits herself to take on both her mother's and her own voice, through her doll, she separates herself from herself, and is able to comment on her own actions through her mock disapproval of her own behavior. The taking on of voices is something which happens quite a bit in the context of white-knighting; sometimes from the interactants themselves, and sometimes from "sockpuppets" who are pretending to be anyone from the characters from the original novels or the characters from the fic that is being discussed. Looking at the way this taking on of voices enables the commenters to provide an additional layer of commentary will, I believe, prove fruitful in my own analysis of the ways white-knighting is constructed.