Recognizing the dialogic nature of oral narrative performance, Borland's current book project considers the intersubjective dimensions of identity construction through a careful examination of narrator positioning, co-narration, ventriloquism, artistic refashioning, and the symbolic in a corpus of oral personal narratives and local character stories about early 20th century Maine. Dr. Borland highlights the heterogeneous, improvisational nature of oral discourse and the constant interaction of written and oral forms in literate societies. She focuses on the storytelling event to tease out dimensions of narrative complexity that are obscured by an item-centered approach to discourse that, separating text from context, treats story as a discreet, bounded unit for analysis.
