The construction of embarrassment in Mandarin conversation
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 24217498 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Lijun Xin (Shandong University of Technology), Guodong Yu (0000-0003-1139-9021, College of Foreign Languages, Ocean University of China , No. 238 Songling Road , Laoshan , Qingdao 266100 , China) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Publication date | 2026-10-02 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Text and Talk (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1860-7330 • E-ISSN: 1860-7349 |
| Publisher | Walter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE) |
| DOI | 10.1515/text-2025-0099 |
| OpenAlex | W7218913375 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 47 |
Experiences of embarrassment recur in social life, and this study focuses on experiences that are oriented to by participants as embarrassing and examines how social members construct embarrassment in their tellings. Drawing on a dataset of approximately 41 h of audio recordings and adopting conversation analysis as its analytical approach, this study reveals that embarrassment might result from interactants’ category specific activities which are mismatched with the interactants’ local categories in the setting(s) of privacy exposure and/or privacy intrusion. Furthermore, tellers not only recurrently build the “tension” into their story to foreshadow something unexpected at story completion, but technically downplay their embarrassment through interactional resources. This article sheds light on what makes a telling recognisable as embarrassing in the moment-by-moment unfolding of an interaction.
Embarrassment · interactional resources · privacy leakage · privacy violations · Storytelling · Emotions and Moral Behavior · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies · Linguistics and Language Analysis
“At first I thought”
Glossary of transcript symbols with an introduction
Collaboratively pursuing student uptake of feedback through storytelling
Narratives as a resource to manage disagreement
Storytelling as a portal to deeper wisdom in the curriculum studies of education and nursing
Extreme case formulations
Managing Awkward, Sensitive, or Delicate Topics in (Chinese) Radio Medical Consultations
Embarrassment and Embarrassability
Nonverbal behavior and the theory of emotion
Face-saving following experimentally induced embarrassment
Response Cries
Storytelling as a resource for pursuing understanding and agreement in doctoral research supervision meetings
Acknowledging and legitimizing the embarrassment
Couples sharing stories
The dark side of tellability
Some considerations of a story told in ordinary conversations
Sharing the experience' in enactments in storytelling
Social Embarrassment
Place reference in story beginnings
Instigating
Embarrassment and the Analysis of Role Requirements
Embarrassment and Social Organization
| Highly cited | No |
|---|