Narratives in talk-in-interaction: organization and construction of cultural identities

Abstract

This paper takes its point of departure in material which was established as part of the European research project INES, International Negotiations in Spanish: linguistic and cultural issues, in which researchers participated from the business school ESADE (Barcelona), Wirtschaftsuniversit?t Wien, and Copenhagen Business School/Roskilde University. The objectives of the INES project were to study the language of negotiations as well as the cultural aspects of this activity type and of the international business community in Spain. The empirical part of the project is composed of focus groups, individual interviews, and simulated negotiations; all of the material was videotaped. In our focus group material, a salient communicative resource is the narrative. In this article, I want to look into the narratives used in the focus group interaction, and specifically within a culturally mixed group of business people operating in the Barcelona area.