Culture and Language Use – serie

This book presents an account of the lively multiparty storytelling practices of the Umpila and Kuuku Ya'u of Cape York Peninsula, Australia. Umpila and Kuuku Ya'u storytellers describe their narrative style as "we all talk one time", with multiple narrators taking turns or co-producing turns, echoing, questioning and elaborating each other's narration as they jointly build up the story. The study uses person reference as a lens for understanding how this storytelling is organised. Drawing on Conversation Analysis, narrative studies and interactional linguistics, it shows that person reference functions to highlight themes and develop pragmatic actions, along with managing narrative structure and the cultural preference for multiparty storytelling. The book provides the first detailed description of these narrative practices, which have been noted elsewhere in Indigenous Australia but never comprehensively described. The analysis also contributes new insights into how person reference and storytelling work across different cultural and linguistic contexts.