Schiffrin (2003) - Retelling A Narrative

Discourse Studies
http://dis.sagepub.com We Knew Thats It: Retelling the Turning Point of a Narrative

Deborah Schiffrin Discourse Studies 2003; 5; 535 DOI: 10.1177/14614456030054005 The online version of this article can be found at: http://dis.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/5/4/535
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A RT I C L E
535
We knew thats it: retelling the turning point of a narrative

Discourse Studies Copyright 2003 SAGE Publications. (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi) www.sagepublications.com Vol 5(4): 535561. [1461-4456 (200311) 5:4; 535561; 036308]
DEBORAH SCHIFFRIN
G E O RG E T O W N U N I V E R S I T Y
A B S T R A C T A paradigmatic means of conveying a turning point in a narrative of danger is the line we knew thats it (Labov, 1972). In four tellings of a single narrative about danger during the Holocaust, a narrator varies this line in ways that maintain its collective focus on knowledge, but alter what is known. An analysis of changes in the we knew [x] line reveals its relationship with the changing structure of the narrative and with the shift toward multi-vocalic means of external evaluation. Also suggested is the relationship of the overall narrative changes to the changing place of Holocaust discourse, narrative and oral history in memory culture, and the larger discourse of resistance and survival. KEY WORDS:
collective memory, constructed dialogue, identity, narrative, oral history, performance
1. Introduction
Danger of death stories have a special signicance in sociolinguistic research on everyday oral narrative. In his seminal introduction to this area of study, Labov (1972; Labov and Waletzky, 1967), pointed out the advantages of studying narratives that answer the question Have you ever been in a situation where youve been in serious danger of being killed? When you said to yourself this is it? A positive answer to such a question makes a strong claim I was in extreme danger and I was able to survive and justifying such a claim is expected to lead to a fully formed narrative, complete with abstract, orientation, complicating action, resolution and coda, richly layered throughout with evaluation. Equally important, the narrators involvement in the drama of the story itself, rather than the interview procedure per se, is expected to lead to the use of a casual style that could reveal the patterns of the speakers vernacular, rather than a formal style suited to the demands of a research interview. Stories of danger do sometimes achieve all that they promise and more (see examples in Labov, 1972, 1981, 1997). In addition to being highly developed
536 Discourse Studies 5(4)
narratives, dramatic and full of evaluation, they are stories in which characters are polarized on opposite ends of a moral continuum, events escalate to the point of near irreparable adversity, and the conict between good and bad ends with a dramatic (maybe even triumphant) resolution of the danger. So powerful are these stories that listeners sit, spellbound, unwilling (or unable) to move until the story is completed. When I began studying the oral histories of Holocaust survivors several years ago, I found myself wondering whether the stories told within them t into the paradigmatic expectations of danger of death narrative. The mere ability to provide an oral history automatically positioned one as having survived the threat of death not just once, but usually many times. Yet these stories were not typically stories of triumph. Early stories in which one rebelled against the burgeoning restrictions imposed by the Nazis were replaced by stories in which one puzzles over ones luck or ponders the arbitrariness of the means by which Nazis selected some people for life and others for death. Research on Holocaust survivors and survivor discourse (Eitinger, 1998; Greenspan, 1998, 1999, 2001; Hartman, 1994; Langer, 1991; Reiter, 2000) likewise suggests that survival is rarely portrayed as an accomplishment, let alone as heroic. Even at the moment of liberation, when it was clear that the Nazis were no longer in absolute control over ones destiny, many survivors felt defeated, sometimes to the point of feeling the most extreme of dualities that one self has died, another self has lived (Greenspan, 1999: 459; Langer, 1991: 489). Indeed, survivor identity (and discourse) remain split decades after liberation. Although some survivors are portrayed as heroes, symbols of hope, recovery and redemption (Greenspan, 1999; see also Langer, 1991: 16371), other survivors are portrayed as ghosts, shells of their former selves, silent, estranged. I was thus surprised to nd a variant of the classic narrative realization of the danger of death we knew thats it in an episode from an oral history from a survivor (Susan Beer) whose life story I had been studying. In the episode, Beer had been recounting how her family, desperate to escape the increasing persecution and deportation of Jews from 1944 Budapest, decides to participate in a secret rescue mission (organized by disenchanted German soldiers) to return refugees to liberated Slovakia (their homeland). It turns out that the plan is really a trap. The Gestapo capture and imprison the family, then deport them to Auschwitz. Since I had access to four oral histories provided by Beer, I checked to see how she had reported this turning point in the groups experience in all four versions. I found the following variants:
1982 1984 and we knew thats it and we knew right away that we were ... yknow it was uh- a scheme, to get us, to get the money 1995a And we felt if its supposed to be a secret mission, how could there be spotlights
Schiffrin: We knew thats it 537 1995b And we knew right away when theres a secret mission you dont turn on oodlights.
Each variant of the turning point in Beers capture story internalized (through knew or felt) a collective (we) reaction. This was surprising: how and why would someone report the epistemic or emotional state of a group? Also surprising was the content of the groups internal reaction. The simple thats it in 1982 was replaced in 1984 by a description of the captors real goals (to get us, to get the money). In the two 1995 versions, Beer focused on the still more complex contrast between what the group had expected (a secret mission) and what they actually encountered (spotlights, oodlights), the latter providing evidence of the true nature of the supposed rescue mission. In this article, I analyze the four versions of we knew [x] in Beers capture story. After discussing the knowledge/action relationship in narrative, life story and oral history, I describe Susan Beers life, life story, and oral histories. My comparison among the four different versions of we knew [x] begins with an overview of its relation to other structural and evaluative changes and then focuses on changes in form, meaning and use of we knew [x] itself. My conclusion discusses the relevance of the analysis for the study of Holocaust discourse.
2. Oral history narratives about the Holocaust

The four versions of Beers capture story provide an ideal site for examining knowledge and action in narrative, life story and oral history. Since narratives typically recount what happened, representations of events might seem more central to the actual telling of a story than representations of knowledge. For example, we speak of events as providing the foreground within the complicating action of a narrative, but states of mind as background orientation clauses that either preface or interrupt the action. Whereas events can be established for credibility, internal states are inherently private and unprovable, thus illustrating the two different kinds of reality that linguists and philosophers have spoken of as transparent vs. opaque contexts. Analysis of Beers four variants of we knew [x] will show that reporting a mental state, and thereby creating a referentially opaque context, plays a critical role in narrative. Talking about knowledge can reveal story world characters reactions to what has already happened, help an audience understand what happened and why it was signicant, and orient listeners to what is about to happen next. Analyses of knowledge statements in narrative are also relevant to two broader analytical domains: the distinction between narrative competence and narrative code; the mediation of life story/oral history by ex post facto information and experience.
2.1
N A R R AT I V E A N A L Y S I S
Two perspectives on narrative are important for my analysis and its interpretation.1
First is a competence-centered perspective that analytically privileges the internal rules and logic through which we organize experience. Here the focus is on the potential of narrative form as a means of organizing and constructing experience (e.g. Polkinghorne, 1988). For psychologists, sociologists, and anthropologists who adopt this perspective, narrative is akin to a template that underlies a possible text. Within this template, people and their actions are (1) organized into a structured representation of what is expected to happen; and (2) emplotted in a structured representation of what actually does happen. The structured representations central to this perspective move uidly between cognition and culture. Narrative templates serve as individual repositories for personal memory and experience, and, as cultural resources for knowledge and collective memories. Although one can investigate the modus operandi of individual consciousness (Chafe, 1990) and ways of thinking (Bruner, 1986), such processes can also be conceptualized, and studied, at collective levels (Tonkin, 1992, Wertsch, 1998): they can operate as persistent and communal systems of knowledge, beliefs, and ideology. Second is a code-centered perspective that focuses primarily on the language of narrative. Scholars whose research is rooted in sociolinguistics (both variationist and interactional) and conversation analysis view narrative primarily as a mode of language-based action and means of social interaction. Despite wide variation in methodology and assumptions about the co-construction of structure and meaning (cf. e.g. Jefferson, 1978, to Labov, 1997), this perspective analytically privileges the language of stories, i.e. the code in which they are conveyed. Narratives are assumed to be (1) relatively bound units of talk, whose beginnings, middles and ends are formally and functionally different from one another; (2) composed of a set of smaller units (e.g. clauses, utterances, idea/intonation units) that are sequentially arranged in regular patterns; and (3) often performed through the speech of one person, at one time, to one audience, in one setting. The distinction between narrative competence and code parallels, at a broader and more theoretical level, the knowledge/action distinction on which I will focus in Beers story: a narrative schema (knowledge) is transformed into the language used to recount (action) a story. Just as knowledge and action are intertwined in Beers story, so too, narrative competence and code complement one another in narrative theory and research: analyzing narrative language can provide information not only about how stories are told, but also about how experience is organized. As I explain below, however, narratives about the Holocaust (and indeed other traumatic events, both personal and collective) reveal several potential tensions between experience and language.
2.2
N A R R AT I V E S A B O U T T H E H O L O C AU S T
In the early post-Second World War years, the death of 6 million Jews was not frequently distinguished in academic, mass media, or private discourse from the general discourse of the Second World War (Dawidowicz, 1981; Hertzberg,
Schiffrin: We knew thats it 539
1996). Although Jewish survivors themselves were sometimes vocal about their experiences within their own communities, they maintained a relative silence in relation to the outside world. When personal stories of the Holocaust began to appear in oral history projects in the 1970s, observers noted that what had been experienced was not easily reconstructed or conveyed through language. Dori Laub, a psychiatrist who helped initiate one of the rst Holocaust testimony projects, observes:
Because of the radical break between trauma and culture, victims often cannot nd categories of thought or words to contain or give shape to their experience. That is, since neither culture nor past experience provides structures for formulating acts of massive destruction, survivors cannot articulate trauma even to themselves. (1998: 802)
Laubs comments suggest that traditional narrative templates (categories of thought) could not provide the discursive scaffolding through which survivors could call forth the language (words) necessary for emplotting their catastrophic loss of community, friends, and family. According to Lawrence Langer (1991), a literary scholar who has written extensively about Holocaust testimonies, stories about loss, suffering, atrocities and overwhelming death during the Holocaust are buried in different sites of personal memory (e.g. deep, anguished, humiliated) in which the Holocaust remains simultaneously part of but separate from ones current life world. Other observers address the limitations not of narrative schemas, but of language itself, noting the trope of silence pervading Holocaust literature (Horowitz, 1997) or the turn to visual or physical media as alternative means through which to represent traumatic memories (Hirsch and Suleiman, 2001). A breakthrough into narrative language is thus viewed as a pathway toward overcoming the trauma of the experience. As Dominick LaCapra, a historian who has applied psychoanalytic theory to trauma, observes:
when the past becomes accessible to recall in memory, and when language functions to provide some measure of conscious control, critical distance, and perspective, one has begun the arduous process of working over and through the trauma. (2001: 90)
Mediating trauma through narrative templates and narrative language, then, can enable survivors to confront, cope with, and possibly overcome, the pain of their past. Wieviorka (1994: 25) conveys this contradiction: victims are certainly beyond words, and yet, dispossessed of everything, words are all they have left. Words which will be the sole trace of an existence. By the 1990s, what came to be called the Holocaust had become a centralizing symbol for American Jews (Novick, 1999) and a familiar topic in American discourse (Schiffrin, 2001). Among the many social, political and cultural factors contributing to, as well as simultaneously indicating, this transformation in collective memory were oral history projects. What had begun as a handful of projects in the late 1970s had grown to roughly 180 collections of tens of thousands of Holocaust oral histories.
540 Discourse Studies 5(4) 2.3

H O L O C AU S T O R A L H I S T O R I E S
Like all oral histories, those now told about the Holocaust serve different functions. In addition to providing material for public commemoration (e.g. video sections appear in documentaries and museum exhibits), oral histories serve scholarly interests (e.g. for historians and sociologists). Oral histories also serve an autobiographical function: they provide a venue for Holocaust survivors to tell their life stories, sometimes for the rst time. This blend of commemorative, scholarly and autobiographical functions creates complex participation frameworks that create identities that are both relatively concrete (e.g. interviewee, storyteller) and abstract (e.g. witness to a 20th-century tragedy). Participants thus balance the need to provide historical facts with the desire to create video clips that show and sound well on a screen, but still manage to respect the privacy of what can be a highly personal and painful story. Because oral history thus depends on the shifting balance between the personal and the social, between biography and history (Portelli, 1997: 6), it is an inherently multivocalic genre (Portelli, 1997: Chapter 2). Multivocality arises in oral histories in relation not only to participant shifts in footings and goals, but also in relation to the means by which information is acquired and when it is done so (Schiffrin, 2003b). Although interviewees explicitly identify some information as retrospective knowledge (e.g. what we didnt know then was that . . . or we only learned later that . . .), other ex post facto information is seamlessly integrated into the overall texture of what is said. Included in the latter is the incorporation of English itself (a language that most survivors did not know during the Second World War), survivor myths (Wiervocka, 1994) and others experiences that have become important emblems or icons of collective (rather than personal) experience (Schiff et al., 2001). Even more sweeping than the inux of ex post facto information is the non-chronological impact of time. Langer (1991: 40) observes that Holocaust testimonies embed memories and reect experiences in ways that are concerned less with a past than with a sense of that past in the present (my emphasis). The uidity between past and present is taken further in Brockmeiers analysis of how autobiographical representations of past deeds end up having more of a teleological (goal-oriented) focus in our stories than they did in our lives, and still further in Mishlers (forthcoming) development of Ricoeurs (1980) view that time itself moves forward and backward. As Mishler (forthcoming) suggests, a double arrow of time inltrates not only the way we tell stories about what happened (i.e. narrative code), but also the arrangement of events into a plot, and how both event and plot are cognitively dened and located within memory (i.e. narrative competence). Although the double arrow of time is especially evident in turning points (pivotal transitions) within life stories (Mishler, 1999), the overall process pervades narrative as an ever-widening context of later experiences that provides gradual understandings of what happened and leads to reconstruction of the meanings of past experiences.
The nexus between posterior knowledge (what I know now) and prior action (what I did then) helps dene Beers capture story as a turning point in her life story. When the plan to escape fails, and the family is captured and taken to a Gestapo prison, what had previously been viewed as dangerous can be reconstructed as less so simply because of its contrast to the terrible dangers (e.g. Auschwitz, a death march) that followed. A knowledge/action nexus also underlies the plot of the capture story itself: Beer has to present the plans to escape after having realized that the plan to gain more freedom has actually led to the total loss of freedom. It is this reconguration of schema that is articulated in the collective voices of we knew, the turning point in the capture story.
2.4
S U M M A RY
In sum, Beers story of capture provides an ideal site for examining knowledge and action in narrative, life story and oral history. The story is pivotal in reconstructing the meanings of earlier events within her life story, as well as the more recent past in which the family had anticipated greater freedom. The four retellings of the capture story add still another advantage. It is not only time and circumstance that add to the ever widening contexts of later experiences that reconstruct the meanings of the past, but also story telling itself. Thus Beers rst public telling of her capture becomes part of the scaffolding of knowledge that underlies how she will retell the past again.
3. Life and life story

Susan Beer (then Suzanna Eisdorfer) was born in Budapest in 1924. She grew up in Topalcany, a small town in what was then Slovakia. When the Germans seized control of Slovakia in 1943, discrimination against Jews in Topalcany escalated: families had to give up their material possessions and their civil liberties; Beers father (a physician) was forbidden to practice medicine; deportations began. It was after Beer received an order to report for a transport to a labor camp that her parents arranged for her to go illegally to Hungary, a country that was then safer for Jews. Beers parents eventually escaped to Hungary also and they all lived clandestinely with false identities until the incident to be focused upon here. In 1944, under the leadership of Adolph Eichmann (head of the Gestapo section dealing with Jewish affairs), the fulllment of the Final Solution for Jews in Hungary was fully underway. Jews had been forced into ghettoes; deportations then proceeded geographically. After Beers father was caught with false identication papers (and narrowly managed to escape from his captors), he led his family toward a decision to take a chance on what was supposedly a mission of rescue organized by a small contingent of disenchanted German Wehrmacht who wanted to return Jews (for a fee) to a small part of Slovakia supposedly liberated by partisans. The mission was really a trap: the family was captured and spent 31/2 weeks in a Budapest prison. Being captured and imprisoned ended the familys period of relative success in avoiding active persecution by the Nazis. It
also began their transition to total immersion in the Final Solution: the family left prison aboard a train to Auschwitz. Thus Beer and her family were three of the almost 450,000 Jews from Hungary (220,000 Jews from Budapest alone, onethird of the population) who had been sent to Auschwitz by July 1944 (Cesarani, 1999; Rothkirchen, 1986). Beer and her parents survive Auschwitz. She and her mother are together on a death march; they suffer starvation, dehydration and disease in other camps and hiding places. After liberation, Beer and her mother are re-united with Beers father, who has again begun practicing medicine. Beer marries a fellow survivor and moves to the United States; her parents (because of restrictive immigration laws) move to Canada. Beer spoke about her life in four oral history interviews. Whereas two interviews were conducted in the relatively early days of such projects (1982, 1984), two were conducted more than ten years later (1995), one by the Shoah Foundation, the other by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Since this is exactly the period of time during which Holocaust discourse developed as a more public genre, we may be able to nd two kinds of linguistic change in the four versions of her stories: rst, as a template develops through which language can t experience; second, as a performance develops through which language can be t to audience. The story to be analyzed here the story of capture was not in and of itself one in which the family overcame an immediate threat to their lives. These threats followed after the family was captured, imprisoned, and then transported to Auschwitz. Yet it is a pivotal transition in Beers life story. Being captured ends a phase in the familys life during which they had been able to escape the everwidening scope of Nazi persecution. The capture per se is also the last phase of a longer narrative in which Beer recounts the events that led up to the capture. Space prevents analysis of these earlier orientation phases here (but see Schiffrin, 2003b; forthcoming). However, since what occurs in these earlier phases is crucial to understanding the changes in the capture per se, I summarize these changes below. As noted above, Beers family was desperate to ee Budapest. After Beers father had escaped from the police who had found him with a false identity card, the family quickly left an apartment where they had been living clandestinely. The family stayed with a Rabbi when Beers father made arrangements for the family to be part of what he (and they) believed was a plan to return them (and others) to a section of Slovakia liberated by partisans. The rst phase of the overall narrative describes the arrangements in detail: who will help the family escape, why, where, when, and how. At the point that we hear this phase of the story, we assume that the plan is not only necessary, but also plausible (it can be done) and credible (it is, in fact, a plan to rescue the family). After being blessed by the Rabbi with whom the family is in hiding, Beer anticipates what will happen as the family escapes. Neither of these early phases of the story gives any indication that the plan is actually a trap to capture the family. What
happens in the last phase what I am calling the capture story is a complete surprise. Although all four versions of Beers story provide basically the same information, the form in which they do so differs. In the 1982 version of Beers story, the early phases are recounted in a stanza style (Gee, 1989). In stanza-based narratives, the speaker recursively builds up a theme, whose links are based on form (e.g. parallelisms) and/or content (e.g. repetition, paraphrase). Between the recursive thematic development is information that comments upon, elaborates and provides a framework within which to understand the theme. The two initiating phases in the 1982 text contribute to a theme of escape. Between the rst event (the father arranges the plan to escape) and the second event (the Rabbis blessing sancties the plan) are lengthy descriptions and explanations that reinforce the escape plan by establishing its necessity, credibility and plausibility. The capture in the 1982 text has a very different structure than the initiating phases: the capture is recounted in a linear structure, identiable through relationships of temporal juncture between events. Post-1982 versions of both the initiating phases and the capture are uniformly recounted in a linear structure. Initiating phases have event clauses that appear in temporal order. Lengthy descriptions and explanations that appeared in the 1982 text are condensed or removed. Thus the textual contrast between what was expected (freedom) and what actually occurred (capture) is no longer textually marked.
4. Retelling what happened and what we knew

In this section, I examine variation in we knew [x] in the four versions of Beers capture story. After an overview of how we knew [x] is integrated into the four different capture stories (4.1), I concentrate on the form and meaning of the we knew [x] variants themselves (4.2). The four versions appear together in Appendix 1; an overview of their structural and evaluative changes is given in Appendix 2.
4.1
A C T I O N : F RO M R A P I D C H A N G E T O C U M U L AT I V E C H A O S
All four versions of Beers capture present basically the same information. The group is about to meet their rescuers in a park when they are confronted by lights. They realize that this is not the rescue for which they have prepared. They are kicked into a truck and taken to prison. Despite these referential similarities, change in grammatical and lexical aspect, verb collocation, clause type, and lexical choice work together to alter the subjective depiction of the experience from rapid change (1982 version) to cumulative chaos (post-1982 versions). 4.1.1 Capture in the 1982 text In the 1982 version of her capture story, Beer uses a sequence of event clauses to show how the plan to escape to Slovakia turns out to be a trap.2 I have arranged them in a table to show their syntactic parallels. E indicates a clause that reports a sequentially ordered occurrence; numbers indicate the inferred order of occurrences:
conjunction E1 (1) and E2 (2) and E3 (3) and E4 (4) and E5 (6) and
subject we the ashlight we they they
verb came lit knew kicked [us] took [us]
phrase into this little park into our eyes thats it into the truck to the Gestapo headquarters in Buda
The sequential structure of the capture story differs from that of the earlier phases in which Beer described and anticipated the plan to escape. Whereas earlier phases were thematically organized in a stanza structure, the capture appears in a linear structure and is almost completely action-based. Each of the parallel structures of the ve E-clauses typies the simple syntax of a paradigmatic narrative clause (Labov, 1972). The use of and to link the parallel structures further unites the sequence of events and highlights a series of spatially grounded experiential transitions. The transition begins with a change in physical space (into the park), continues with perceptual space (into our vision) and mental space (what we knew), and ends with another shift in physical space (into the truck, to the Gestapo headquarters). The progression of these transitions without interruption iconically creates a sense of rapidity: all this happened quickly, one thing after another. The event sequence also dismantles the plans that had been detailed so carefully by Beer. Rather than go back and deconstruct each detail of the earlier plan, however, what Beer does is reveal the true intentions of the captors by displaying their duplicity through actions that are experienced by the group. The proximal deictic come (and we came into this little park (E1 (1)) reinforces the park as the groups destination and denes it as a physical center of reference. The anaphoric tie between this little park (1) and a park (in an earlier anticipatory line we were supposed to meet in a park) helps establish E1 as a contrast between what was expected and what actually happened. When the ashlight lit into our eyes (E2 (2)), the group is physically confronted by evidence that their entry into the park has not initiated the arrangements that they had anticipated. We knew thats it (E3 (3)) the turning point in the story is embedded within this portrayal of the capture. Like the other clauses, we knew thats it (3) is syntactically simple (both the main clause and its complement) and is conjoined by and within the string of clauses. We knew thats it is also similarly grounded in the experiential and deictic center of the group. In addition to extending the spatial grounding of the experience from physical and perceptual, to cognitive, it also symbolically moves the group knowledge back to the deictic center of the collective story world through a shift to the present tense of reported speech: thats it, rather than that was it. What the group actually knows is not specied. Although both that and it are indexical, thats it does little more than establish the completion of a prior
experience (note the role of distal that rather than proximal this) and a transition to something quite different. It says nothing specic about what it was in that experience that provided the evidence for so sharply punctual a turning point. Nor does it tell us what happens next. This we learn through the next E-clause: they took us straight to the Gestapo headquarters in Buda (E5 (6)) is a transitional action that bridges the story world of the capture with the upcoming story world of imprisonment. To sum this far: the violation of expectations appears in the capture story as a linear sequence of events in which the groups experience is physically, perceptually and cognitively recreated. Recall that the initiating phases of the overall 1982 story of being captured had followed a stanza-based narrative structure. The radical shift to a linear structure creates a break from prior textual convention that replicates the contrast between what was expected and what actually occurred. Thus, we knew thats it is part of a rhythmic chain of events whose simplicity and brevity not only create a sense of rapidity, but also contrast with the descriptive sequences and informative details provided earlier. By altering what had been prior textual structure, Beer iconically represents through her story world the schematic violation of her life-world. 4.1.2 Capture in the post-1982 texts Post-1982 versions of the capture differ in several crucial ways. The main change involves event structure: aspectual adjustments of stativity/activity and addition of semantically/pragmatically compatible events. These linguistic changes shift the overall mood of the capture from rapid change (e.g. this happened so fast that we barely knew what was going on) to cumulative chaos (e.g. so many confusing things were going on at once that we barely knew what was happening). It is within these different experiential contours that changes in we knew [x] appear. The rst several clauses of the capture story illustrate adjustments in aspect: the type of occurrence (e.g. duration, boundaries, goal-orientation) represented by the verb (lexical aspect) and its morphological modications (grammatical aspect) as embedded in the grammatical structure of the sentence. For example, the 1982 text is the only version in which the group actually enters the park in an E-clause. In the post-1982 texts, Beer transforms this accomplishment into an ongoing activity through progressive aspect (italicized) and dependent clauses (initiated in bold):
1982 1984 1995a 1995b (1) (a) (b) (1.) (A) E1 we came into this little park E1 and we were coming to that park and as soon as we approached that truck and as we were getting closer to the park at night and as we were approaching the park
The progressive verbs and dependent clauses in post-1982 versions bring the group to the place where they are about to meet, portraying them in activity that is logically necessary to the anticipated meeting. This shift has two evaluative
consequences. First, it suspends the action that is supposed to lead into the groups meeting with their rescuers, thus preventing them from accomplishing the rst part of their anticipated goal. Second, it creates an overlap between entry to the park and the lights shine, the rst piece of evidence that the group is caught. This overlap portrays the captors as ready to pounce on the group as soon as possible: it not only highlights their efciency and preparedness, but also intensies their zeal for their mission. Aspectual variation (again italicized) in the next event the lights shine works along with lexical and syntactic differences to present the perceptual evidence for capture as enduring, encompassing and inclusive:
1982 1984 1995a 1995b E2 (2) E2 (a) E2 (1.) E1 (B) and the ashlight lit into our eyes ashlights were lit into our eyes, we see spotlights, aiming at us. there were big oodlights turning on us.
In the 1982 text, the ashlight lit continued prior canonical narrative syntax: ashlight was the subject of the relatively punctual action lit. With the 1984 shift to the passive, what happened can be interpreted as more durative. The 1995 texts invoke even more durative interpretations. In the 1995a text, two grammatical features add duration: the use of historical present in we see and the progressive aiming (Schiffrin, 1991). In the 1995b version, duration is conveyed through the existential predicate there were and the progressive turning on us. The aspectual shift towards endurance is complemented by lexical and grammatical shifts that present the perceptual evidence for capture as encompassing and inclusive. The lexical shift from ashlight(s) (1982, 1984) to spotlights (1995a) and oodlights (1995b) enlarges the physical scope of the trap, increasing the degree to which the group feels trapped. The impact of the lights upon the group becomes less metonymic: whereas lights are lit into our eyes (1982/1984), they are specically aiming (1995a) or turning (1995b) more inclusively at us (1995a) and on us (1995b). The endurance added by shifts toward stativity in the lights shine thus combines with the encompassing lights directed at an inclusive target to create a sense of cumulative chaos and confusion as the group is trapped in what appears to be an ever-widening trap. The addition of semantically/pragmatically compatible events also alters the temporal parameters of what happened and adds to the sense of chaos. Below, a recurrent verb (kick) co-occurs with verbs from the same semantic/pragmatic eld:
1982 1984 1995a 1995b (6) (d) (7.) (8.) (H) (I) (J) E5 And they kicked us into the truck, E3 and we were kicked into the truck, E3 and they kicked us E4 and beat us E3 and they hit us, E4 kicked us into the truck E5 beat us up
The addition of verbs of physical force beat us (up) (1995a, 1995b) and hit (1995b) enlarges the eld of activity in which the group is physically caught. 4.1.3 Summary of the capture The structural changes in the capture story show different ways of conceptualizing, representing and evaluating occurrences. The sense of ongoing chaos and confusion that these changes create is in sharp contrast to the rapidity portrayed through the string of parallel action clauses in the 1982 text. Thus, rather than interpret the capture as happening so quickly that the group can process no more than the numbing realization that thats it (1982), the group is immersed in a swirl of cumulative and confusing sensations that lead them to a more gradual realization that what they face is not freedom, but capture.
4.2
K N O W L E D G E : F RO M C O DA T O I N F E R E N C E
Variation in we knew [x] is consistent with the linguistic shifts through which the capture is rst portrayed as rapid change (1982) and then as cumulative chaos (1984, 1995a, 1995b). To understand how we knew [x] is part of this overall shift, however, we also need to consider Beers evaluative strategy at a somewhat higher level of analysis. In the 1982 text, evaluation appeared through a textual contrast between early phases of the overall story (stanza) and the capture itself (linear) that mirrored the radical change in the life world. Once a linear structure was adopted in all phases of the post-1982 texts, however, evaluation of the capture could no longer rely upon iconicity between story world and life world. The locus of evaluation shifts: rather than depend upon a textual contrast between stanza and linear structure, it relies upon syntactic complexity, relationships between adjacent clauses, and abstract reective voices that make explicit the information critical to grasping the signicance of the experience. The shifting locus of contrast is concentrated in we knew [x]. Central to this shift is the internal and private foundation of mental activity what I earlier called referential opacity and the difculty of projecting its content onto a collective plane. As we see below, Beer compensates for gaps in group epistemology by using intratextual ties to invoke both intersubjectivity and veracity. 4.2.1 Indexicality to intratextuality What the group knew in the 1982 text (thats it) established the completion of a prior experience and a transition to something quite different. Despite its indexicality (because of the demonstrative and the pronoun), thats it serves as a coda without telling us anything specic about what it was in that experience that provided closure. The post-1982 versions of what we knew replace the indexicality of the 1982 thats it with more complex relations of intratextuality that create representations of what the group knew/felt. By relying upon prior text, and inferences based upon and drawn from it, these representations clarify for the listener the disruption of the plans and the duplicitous intentions of the groups supposed rescuers.
In the 1984 text, a straightforward manifestation of intratextuality repetition pervades the capture story. Notice, rst, that the predicates in each clause repeat were:
(a) (c) (d) (e) we ashlights we we knew right away that we were coming were lit were kicked were...
The repetition of were, especially the passive were ((c), (d)), initially provides a syntactic frame for what the group knew in we knew [x] (e). Rather than continue the syntactic pattern (e.g. we were caught), however, Beer switches to a more global strategy that both draws upon, and provides, more information about the rupture of the plan:
1984 (e) E4 we knew right away that we were... yknow it was uh- a scheme, to get us, [Right] to get the money,
After the self-repair from we were, yknow to mark shared knowledge and a brief word search (uh-), Beer redenes the plan as a scheme with two goals: to get us, to get the money. The term scheme is important: it lexicalizes the inferred disjunction between the anticipated plan and the actual plan, juxtaposing prior expectation against duplicity. This contrast reies a crucial shift in perspective on the arrangements reported in earlier phases of the story: it incorporates the alternative teleological structure underlying the arrangements and anticipated actions. Thus a perspective that had not been arranged and previewed in earlier parts of the longer story is incorporated into the groups realization and simultaneously labeled for the audience. Also intratextually based are the goals of the scheme. What the group now knew contrasts with two prior aspects of the plan: the fathers goal and the fee. The 1984 text opened with the fathers goal: And uh my father went next day, in search of a way to get us back to Czechoslovakia. Whereas the fathers goal is to get us home, the goal of the scheme is to get us (v). Earlier phases of the story also mentioned that a fee was a requirement for the Wehrmachts help: and they want to help us escape on their truck and this would cost money. Rather than use the money to help the group escape (h), the Wehrmacht want to get the money (v). Thus the scheme and the captors goals both draw upon intratextually based contrasts: repetition and lexicalization recongure the prior arrangements as a scheme with very different goals than those presented in earlier parts of the story. 4.2.2 Grounding an inference in text Evaluation in the 1995 texts becomes more complex both formally and functionally. Both 1995 versions of we knew draw upon (1) performance features of constructed dialogue; (2) repetition between constructed dialogue and prior text; (3) syntactic, semantic and pragmatic
features within the constructed dialogue; and (4) repetition between constructed dialogue and posterior text:
1995a 2. E1 we see spotlights aiming on us, 3. E2 and we felt well if its supposed to be a secret mission, how could there be spotlights, 4. well of course we were taken, 5. you know it was no mission, 6. it was a mission to take us, 1995b (B) E1 there were big ood lights turning on us. (C) E2 And we knew right away when theres a secret mission, you dont turn ood lights on. (D) But we couldnt run away anymore, (E) we were caught (F) And it was no mission of rescue. (G) It was a mission that we were caught in
Reported speech, or in Tannens (1989) terms, constructed dialogue, is a textual site whose raison dtre is the construction of multivocality. According to Bakhtin (1981), any act of reporting speech is both an appropriation of anothers words and a transformation of the original act. Although all reported speech is constructed (Tannen) or transformed (Bakhtin), direct quotation requires deictic and grammatical transformations that represent authors words through their own deictic center (they are the I, their time is now, their place is here). What is said can also be performed (Hymes, 1981; Wolfson, 1978) or demonstrated (Clark and Gerrig, 1990) through a wider range of expressive devices (intonation, prosody). Although direct quotations are not necessarily accurate representations, then, their deictic and prosodic shifts create an aliveness that adds a tone of authenticity and veracity. When we turn to the content of the constructed dialogue in we knew [x] of the 1995 texts, we nd that the syntax, semantics and pragmatics of what is reported provide critical textual routes to the important evaluative contrast between expectation and actuality. Both texts use preposed clauses (conditional (1995a), temporal (1995b)) that provide given information (Ward and Birner, 2001) or topic (Schiffrin, 1991); they report information that is already common ground or intended to be treated as such. This information becomes a background against which new information or a comment is foregrounded. Consistent with their informational role, both the if clause (1995a) and the when clause (1995b) present the groups prior understanding of the plan. Rather than reify what the plans are now known to have been (i.e. a scheme (1984)), the plan is rmly situated in the groups initial perspective through present tense stative predicates ((its supposed to be (1995a) and theres (1995b)) and the noun phrase a secret mission. Yet evidence has been accruing (the shining lights) that this perspective cannot be sustained. Indeed, this conception of the
plan is counter-factual: the proposition this is a secret mission is one that Beer (along with the others in we) does not then believe to be true. The counter-factuality of this is a secret mission is established through sentence form and meaning, intratextual relations, and an assumption of shared knowledge. Consider, rst, the typical connection inferable between the preposed and postposed clauses: a cause/result in the conditional if X, Y (1995a) and temporal when X, Y (1995b).3 Thus, in a statement such as if/when theres a secret mission, people travel clandestinely, we would infer that a secret mission leads to, or results in, clandestine travel. Notice, however, that the relationship between X and Y in the 1995 texts is quite the opposite: a secret mission does not entail bright lights. One contribution to the cancellation of the cause/result inference between secret mission and lights is linguistic form and meaning. Because existence of a secret mission has been posed as background information, whatever appears in the following clause is assessed in relation to that context. The following clause reveals doubt about the compatibility of the foregrounded shining lights with the backgrounded secret mission. The rhetorical question how could there be spotlights? (1995a) questions the possibility of lights. The declarative you dont turn oodlights on (1995b) negates the use of lights and gains generality through indenite you and the present tense. Lexical repetition in the foregrounded clauses also contributes to the dismantling of the inference. Repetition of spotlights (1995a) and oodlights (1995b) recalls their appearance in the groups initial perception of their capture (we see spotlights (1995a (2.)), there were big oodlights (1995b, (B)). Repetition thus ties the cognitive grounding of the capture to the already presented perceptual evidence. As important as language is for conveying counter-factuality, so too, is our knowledge of the world. Here I draw on the early 20th-century sociologist Georg Simmel (1950: 34576) who argued that two internal relations are critical if a group of people is to rely upon secrecy as its form of existence: The rst internal relation . . . is the reciprocal condence among its members. It is required to a particularly great extent, because the purpose of secrecy is above all, protection (Simmel, 1950: 345, italics in original). Both condence and protection are crucial to the relationship between Beers family and their supposed rescuers. Earlier parts of Beers story established that the family has condence in the other members of the secret society, i.e. the renegade German soldiers (Schiffrin, forthcoming). Establishing condence is not surprising: it is a prerequisite for protection (Simmel) and the need for protection pervades the mission. Most relevant in the short term is the protection of information: accomplishing the mission requires that knowledge of its who, what, where, when and how is kept secret. In the long term, carrying out the mission requires protection: Beers family assumes that the German soldiers will protect them from the Gestapo during their escape. The completion of the mission then creates protection: delivering the family to a section of Slovakia liberated by partisans will help shelter them from the Nazis. Establishing condence, then, enables the protection central to the mission.
It is precisely the need for protection, however, that is so sharply violated by the lights that were lit (1982), aiming at us (1995a) and turning on us (1995b). As Simmel (1950: 345) points out, of all protective measures, the most radical is to make oneself invisible. By publicly illuminating those the hopeful escapees who had so crucial a stake in invisibility, the lights shatter the presumption of solidarity between the escapees and their purported rescuers: far from sharing a secret, the potential escapees have been deceived and betrayed by their supposed rescuers. Thus, the groups prior perspective is dismantled in the 1995 texts. The increasing scope of the lights that targeted the group has re-appeared in what they now know: perceptual experience has provided the warrant through which to infer the counter-factuality of this is a secret mission. Beer further validates the inference that the plan is null and void by using repetition, negatives, and contrast in an afrm/deny/afrm sequence to assert the duplicity underlying the rescue plan:
1995a AFFIRM DENY AFFIRM 4. well of course we were taken, 5. you know it was no mission, 6. it was a mission to take us, 1995b (D) But we couldnt run away anymore, (E) we were caught (F) And it was no mission of rescue. (G) It was a mission that we were caught in
First, the capture is afrmed through concrete actions taken upon the group (we were taken (1995a (4.), we were caught (1995b (E)). Next, the validity of the prior schema is explicitly denied through negation (it was no mission (1995a (5.), 1995b (D)). Third, the true goals of the captors are re-afrmed (1995a (6.), (1995b (G)). Repetition links the three parts of the sequence. In both 1995 texts, the afrmations are locally cohesive through repetition (underlined above). The switch in polarity from denial to afrmation is also strengthened through repetition (italics above). The violation of expectation is thus conveyed not only inferentially as an internal evaluation: it is also concretized through an afrmationdenialafrmation sequence that explicitly asserts the rupture of expectation. The changes in we knew [x] mark not only a shift in the role of collective knowledge in the capture story, locus of contrast and source of voicing, but also a shift in presumption of mutual knowledge. Those who hear Beers story including not only the interviewer, but also the potentially broad and anonymous audience for the publicly accessible oral history do not know at its outset how the plan will actually turn out. The capture in the post-1982 texts thus makes explicit the contradiction between the plans of the group (what was expected) and the plans of the captors (what actually occurred). This clarity positions the audience not only to grasp what happened, but also to understand the signicance of the experience for Beer and her family.
552 Discourse Studies 5(4) 4.3

A C T I O N A N D K N O W L E D G E I N R E T E L L I N G S O F T H E C A P T U R E S T O RY
Structural and evaluative changes work together to alter the story of the Beer familys capture. Although all four versions of the capture story follow a linear structure, their adoption of this structure incorporates variation in the internal conguration of occurrences. In the post-1982 texts, the distinction between actions that have a clear forward motion (E-clauses), and those that do not (non-E-clauses), becomes open to manipulation. This blurring of an otherwise clear distinction provides a resource through which to convey an altered sense of time and action, and thus, chaotic and disruptive circumstances. Rather than interpret the capture as happening so quickly that the group can process no more than the numbing realization thats it (1982), the group is immersed in a swirl of cumulative and overlapping sensations that lead them toward a realization that they have been captured. The we knew [x] turning point relied upon the manipulation of another familiar distinction between action and knowledge. Alongside the use of constructed dialogue in we knew [x] to create a sense of veracity, adjacent text added external validity to reported knowledge. In the 1995 texts, the inference this is not a secret mission relied not only upon linguistic form, meaning, and world knowledge about secret missions, but also a prior action in the story world: we see spotlights aiming at us (1995a (2.)), there were big oodlights turning on us (1995b (B). Because the lights shattered the invisibility required for protection, the reappearance (and syntactic foregrounding) of the shining lights provided the warrant for dismantling the groups belief. Actions following we knew [x] also heightened veracity: well of course we were taken (1995a (4.), we were caught (1995b (E)), and the cluster of actions around being kicked, all show that capture appears not only in an epistemic world, but also in a physical world. Changes in the cognitive grounding of experience are consistent with those in its physical and perceptual grounding. Whereas the 1982 thats it quickly ended the prior story world of cautious optimism, the post-1982 descriptions of captors goals, and of the processes whereby duplicity was realized, showed the group reaching an understanding of how they had been deceived. By substituting cognitive reection for sudden recognition of the loss in freedom, the changes in we knew [x] add an altered means of knowing to the already altered sense of time and action. Representations of action and knowledge thus work together to portray and evaluate experience. Knowledge was but one facet of a series of spatially grounded transitions that began with physical space, incorporated perceptual space, and concluded with physical space. The sum of these differently grounded transitions created a multi-faceted experience whose scope forecasts the breadth of the changes the group is about to experience as they become unwilling victims of the Nazis. Just as we knew [x] is a turning point in the groups reconguration of past knowledge and expectation, then, so too, the capture story is a turning point at higher levels of textual and personal signicance. Beers knowledge
of what happens later the total subversion of individual life and experience to the goals of the Final Solution thus provides a larger context in which to understand what happened and through which to reconstruct the meaning of this one experience.
5. Knowledge and action in Holocaust discourse

If we were to assume that the goal of narrative is an objective representation of what happened, then the inability of a narrator to know about group knowledge would be problematic. But once we assume that an equally important goal of narrative is evaluation, then referential opacity no longer hinders narration: rather, it becomes a creative resource for conveying the signicance of an experience. Referential/veriable and evaluative/unveriable modes of representation are important not only to our own personal narratives, but also to the narratives of historians (Schiffrin, 2003a). Verication clearly matters simply because historians seek facts: something that happened in history that is there independently of the historian, and can be veried . . . through the traces history has left behind (Evans, 1999: 66). Yet one of the clear values of oral histories is that they complement the search for facts with an interest in more individuated and subjective sides of the past. In this section, I turn from the interstitial role of evaluative knowledge and concrete action in one oral history narrative to its role on broader planes of social and historical interpretation. All four versions of Beers capture story serve autobiographical, commemorative and historical functions. Despite these functional similarities, changes in the mode of evaluation, from concrete/internal to abstract/external, suggest that the story of the capture has also become a performative narrative. In Schiffrin (2002), I suggested that some oral history narratives show signs of frequent telling, not just through their introductions, performance features, and mode of delivery, but because they present characters, and construct plots, that seem designed for a broad audience with little background knowledge about the Holocaust. A comparison between the contexts of the 1980 and 1990 interviews suggests that the latter were conducive to performative narratives. In 1982, Beer spoke on audio tape to an archivist associated with what was then a small, in progress, collection for what was to later become the Museum of Jewish Heritage; in 1984, she spoke to a community member interviewing local survivors for the National Alliance of Jewish Women (Cleveland Branch). The 1995 interviews were supported by major institutions: in 1995a, Beers interview was sponsored by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; in 1995b, by the Shoah Foundation, commonly known as the American lm-maker Stephen Spielbergs group. The broadened base of support for the collection of oral histories reects the familiarity of the Holocaust in American discourse by the 1990s. Yet this larger stage upon which memory culture was situated not only created a larger audience, but one with different degrees of familiarity with Holocaust narratives exactly the conditions that could motivate performative narratives.
Many of the linguistic changes in the 1995 texts do suggest a shift toward performativity. The lexical shift from ashlights to spotlights and oodlights widens the scope of perceptual evidence for capture, thus making it more obvious to an audience that the group was unable to escape. The forms and meanings of constructed dialogue not only tell the audience that the group was deceived, but also explain how the group itself reached that knowledge. Re-voicing action as knowledge (the spotlights/oodlights reappear as what the group knew), and knowledge as action (the concrete actualization of knowledge as physical actions of capture), helps reveal to the audience that the group has been deceived and captured. Hence, the shift toward performative narrative is suggested by the use of language to create a story world for those whose knowledge may be an insufcient background for understanding what happened. Analysis of the retelling of Beers capture story also intersects with broader social and historical planes of discourse through what Berel Lang (2002), a philosopher who has written extensively on history, ethics, art, and memory, calls certain mischievous questions about the Holocaust. What makes a question mischievous is that:
the answers invited by them misrepresent important facets of the Holocaust. It is not only that the questions cited are leading questions, but that the directions in which they lead are specious, both from the standpoint of the person asking the question and in the representation conveyed. (2002: 15)
Lang cautions that his goal is not to answer a mischievous question, but to understand why the question is specious. The mischief in two of Langs questions arises by bisecting the knowledge/action interface and shifting it from linear to bidirectional time. The two questions themselves both of which address agency return us to the topic mentioned at the outset of this article: the portrayal of survivors in Holocaust narratives and Discourse in general. The rst question is Why didnt they just leave? (Lang, 2002: 12). What makes this question specious is one of its underlying assumptions: it should have been obvious to . . . Jews that the future would be much worse than the past, putting their lives at risk (2002: 13). The dictum that something should have been obvious evokes Mishlers double arrow of time: the meaning of an event has been reconstructed by what became known only after the actual event itself. Thus reconstruction through retrospective knowledge pervades not just personal narratives of an individuals ongoing life story. It can also invade the collective narratives of groups of people whose death prevented them from reinterpreting their own stories of what could (or could not) have been done to avoid their destruction. Also assumed in why didnt they just leave? is personal agency but only minimally: to avoid danger, one can do little more than remove oneself from the place of danger. A second question posed by Lang, why didnt they resist? (2002: 37), evokes an assumption of stronger agency. Resist not only
presupposes an offense: it also allows the possibility of defending oneself ghting back against danger. Lang points out that the question of resistance overlooks the Nazi achievement of complete control, and thus, the absence of the very conditions allowing agency (i.e. the ability to make choices). The question of resistance also presupposes its absence among Jews only (the implicit referent of they), not among other groups targeted and captured by the Nazis (including some 3 million members of the Soviet armed forces (2002: 5)). Langs question thus implies a lack of heroes: a lack of those whose stories about the danger of death might end in triumph over an enemy. His incipient answer explains why:
In the context of the systematic brutality of the Nazi regime, resistance on all fronts, in all circumstances including circumstances much more favorable to resistance than those in which the Jews found themselves was far from common; it was and would be out of the ordinary, notable just because it was exceptional. (2002: 5)
Langs comments on specious questions about leaving and resisting suggest that survival is rarely a matter of choice or even an option (see also Hilberg, 1992: 18890; Langer, 1996). The depth of persecution and dehumanization beyond ones expectations of normality in the Holocaust drastically limited the degree to which individuals and groups had options and could make choices, let alone act upon them. Ironically, the very pervasiveness of those measures reaching far into both the minutiae of everyday life (eating, working, listening to the radio, going to school) and into the very basis of life (the right to exist) had the effect of providing small choices that could themselves constitute acts of agency. Everyday acts keeping a diary, getting food, engaging in a religious practice, staying with ones family have thus been redened as acts of resistance (Rohrlich, 1998) that help constitute survival. The capture story analyzed here ts into this wider discourse of survival. Various scholars have noted the value placed upon, and possible benet arising from, staying together. Striving to remain with ones family (Langer, 1991), banding together in mutually protective units (Bartrop, 2000; Neiberger, 1988), or keeping alive the hope that ones family will be re-united (Greenspan, 2001) have been noted to provide, if not always physical protection, at least psychological protection. The story that Susan Beer tells and retells about her familys capture is just one of the many stories in her oral history in which her family builds upon reciprocity, makes sacrices, and remains persistent in their efforts to stay together. Beer and her parents (together with 41 other people carefully detailed in all four versions of earlier phases of the capture story (Schiffrin, forthcoming)) stay together not just through their perceptual and physical experiences, but through what they come to know and how they know it. The group is together as lights shine into their eyes, as they are kicked into the truck, and as they realize that they are captured. Thus, telling and retelling what we knew not only portray a dangerous turning point in a life story: they also reveal danger and survival as a process in which we stay together.

AC K N OW L E D G E M E N T S
The Center for Advanced Holocaust Study (at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC) and a Senior Faculty Research Fellowship (Georgetown University) provided material and symbolic support for research leading to this work: I am grateful to both. I also thank the Cleveland Alliance for Jewish Women, the USHMM and the Shoah Foundation for permission to cite excerpts from the 1984 and 1995 interviews with Susan Beer. I thank Bonnie Gurewitsch (Museum of Jewish Heritage, New York) for permission to use material from her 1982 interview with Susan Beer.
NOTES
1. For other perspectives on narrative, see Britton and Pellegrini (1990), Ochs and Capps (2001), and Mishler (1995). 2. Line (5), you know like the army trucks, on two sides there were benches, is a detail absent in subsequent versions of Beers story in which the truck appears in earlier sections of the story. 3. In the conditional, the cause/result is semantically inferable; in the temporal, it is pragmatically inferable through a principle of informativeness.
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APPENDIX
F O U R V E R S I O N S O F T H E C A P T U R E S T O RY
1982 (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)
E1 And we came into this little park E2 and the ashlight lit into our eyes E3 and we knew thats it. E4 And they kicked us into the truck, you know like the army trucks, on two sides there were benches E5 and they took us straight to the Gestapo headquarters in Buda, the other side of Budapest.
Schiffrin: We knew thats it 559 1984 (a) (b) (c) (d) (e) IVER: (f) 1995a (1.) (2.) (3.) (4.) (5.) (6.) (7.) (8.) (9.) (10.) (11.) 1995b (A) (B) (C) (D) (E) (F) (G) (H) (I) (J) (K) (L)
E1 and uh we were coming to that park, and as soon as we approached that truck E2 ashlights were lit into our eyes, E3 we were kicked into the truck, E4 and we knew right away that we were. . . . yknow it was uh- a scheme, to get us, to get the money,= Right E5 =and they took us straight to the Gestapo Headquarters. And uh so uh as we were getting closer to the park at night, E1 we see spotlights, aiming at us. E2 And we felt well if its supposed to be a secret mission, how could there be spotlights, well of course we were taken, you know it was no mission, it was a mission to take us, E3 and they kicked us E4 and beat us, and thats how we ended up in the truck, E5 and they sped the truck into the Gestapo headquarters up in the Buda?, it was in the part of Budapest thats Buda, And as we were approaching the park E1 there were big oodlights turning on us. E2 And we knew right away when theres a secret mission you dont turn oodlights on. But we couldnt run away anymore, we were caught And it was no mission of rescue. It was a mission that we were caught in, E3 And they hit us, E4 kicked us into the truck, E5 beat us up, E6 and sped to the Gestapo headquarters to Buda, thats where it was.
APPENDIX
S T RU C T U R A L A N D E VA L UAT I V E C H A N G E S I N T H E C A P T U R E S T O RY
1982 STRUCTURE the park lights the turning point into the truck to headquarters EVALUATION violation linear E-clause [entry] E-clause E-clause (know) indexical 1 E-clause 1 E-clause (take us straight) structural shift contrast textual structure
1984 linear E-clause [approach] dependent clauses [approach] E clause E-clause (know right away) lexical item 1 E-clause 1 E-clause (take us straight) structural continuity contrast lexical
1995a linear dependent clause [approach] E-clause E-clause (feel) conditional comparison >1 E-clause 1 E-clause (speed) structural continuity contrast syntax/text conditional rhetorical question parallelism negation hypothetical/actual dependent temporal clause suspends action lexicalized: secret mission detail (destination) detail: verbs (into the truck)
1995b linear dependent clause [approach] E clause E-clause (know right away) temporal comparison >1 E-clause 1 E-clause (speed) structural continuity contrast syntax/text temporal indenite you parallelism negation intensier dependent temporal clause suspends action lexicalized: secret mission detail (destination) detail: verbs (into the truck)
dependent temporal clauses suspends action lexicalized: scheme detail (destination) detail (destination)
D E B O R A H S C H I F F R I N has been teaching courses in discourse analysis, pragmatics and sociolinguistics at Georgetown University since 1982. Her main publications are Discourse Markers (Cambridge University Press, 1987) and Approaches to Discourse (Blackwell, 1994, 2nd edition forthcoming). Edited collections include Handbook of Discourse Analysis (Blackwell) with Deborah Tannen and Heidi Hamilton, a forthcoming collection of her own articles as Language, Text and Interaction (Cambridge University Press), and a forthcoming collection on Discourse and Identity (Cambridge University Press) with Anna DeFina and Michael Bamberg. A D D R E S S : Department of Linguistics, Georgetown University, Washington, DC 20057, USA. [email: schiffrd@georgetown.edu]

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Discourse Studies

http://dis.sagepub.com We Knew Thats It: Retelling the Turning Point of a Narrative

We knew thats it: retelling the turning point of a narrative

collective memory, constructed dialogue, identity, narrative, oral history, performance

536 Discourse Studies 5(4)

2. Oral history narratives about the Holocaust

538 Discourse Studies 5(4)

Schiffrin: We knew thats it 539

540 Discourse Studies 5(4) 2.3

Schiffrin: We knew thats it 541

3. Life and life story

542 Discourse Studies 5(4)

Schiffrin: We knew thats it 543

4. Retelling what happened and what we knew

544 Discourse Studies 5(4)

subject we the ashlight we they they

verb came lit knew kicked [us] took [us]

Schiffrin: We knew thats it 545

546 Discourse Studies 5(4)

Schiffrin: We knew thats it 547

548 Discourse Studies 5(4)

Schiffrin: We knew thats it 549

550 Discourse Studies 5(4)

Schiffrin: We knew thats it 551

552 Discourse Studies 5(4) 4.3

Schiffrin: We knew thats it 553

5. Knowledge and action in Holocaust discourse

554 Discourse Studies 5(4)

Schiffrin: We knew thats it 555

556 Discourse Studies 5(4)

1982 (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)

560 Discourse Studies 5(4)

Schiffrin: We knew thats it 561

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