In this article I am discussing an excerpt from a conversation between five 15-year-old boys with an adult moderator engaging in the act of slut-bashing by way of telling a minimal story about an incident of female promiscuity. The analysis proceeds micro-analytically in a three-step procedure detailing the positions (as actively occupying discourse spaces) (i) from where the thematic content of what the story is about comes to existence; (ii) from where a speaker-audience relationship emerges; and (iii) how the participants position themselves vis-à-vis particular dominant discourses and in doing so construe themselves as young, but adult-like males. The discussion centers on the role of narrative and interaction in the micro-genetic construal of identity. (Identity, micro-genesis, narrative, positioning, gender, masculinity, youth)

Identity Construction in Narrative and Discourse

The fact that we seem to design 'who we are' in narrative form (and as 'narrative content') has been increasingly pointed out over the last two decades. Numerous authors (Bruner, 1986, 1990, 1993, 1999; Carr, 1986; MacIntyre, 1981; Ochs & Capps, 2001; Polkinghorne, 1988; Sarbin, 1986) have put forward the idea that identity and self are narratively configured, and ways of using narrative analysis in order to analyze selves and identities have soared over the last years (Bamberg, 2000b; Brockmeier & Carbaugh, 2001; Crossley, 2000; Holland, Lachicotte, Skinner & Cain, 1998; Holstein & Gubrium, 2000; Linde, 1993; Riessman, 1990). Not only do we plot our lives retrospectively when we pour it or its episodes into narrative format, but we also seem to construct what we call 'our memories' in narrative configurations (see Brockmeier, 2002). Possibly we even construe what we assume to be 'our very own experiences' in already preformatted units that are of narrative origin: We segment the flow of time as if it actually occurred in the form of happenings, events and episodes, i.e., by way of attributing temporal boundaries to an imagined left and an imagined right of the created unit, and 'experiencing' them in sequence with a seemingly intrinsic forward orientation.

However, in spite of the fact that speakers quite often tell stories 'about' themselves, it can be argued that the sharing of seemingly intimate information about the self is not necessarily the result of good rapport between focus group participants and moderator, giving unmediated access to authentic experiences and/or identities. First, narrative talk is situated in interactive settings and tailored for a particular audience, i.e., it is always designed in terms of particular interactive purposes (cf. Bamberg, 1997, 2000a ). Second, the way selves are designed in narratives, i.e., how the 'I' is positioned by the narrator vis-a-vis other characters in the story world, is equally dependent on the discursive purpose of the interaction. And third, talk that thematizes the self of the speaker or experiential phenomena such as divorce (e.g., Riessman, 1990), terminal illness, child abuse (e.g., Crossly, 2000), emotions (Bamberg, 1997b, 2001) and the like, is most likely pre-configured by interview techniques and institutional constraints (Atkinson & Silverman, 1997). In other words, the order constructed in the form of stories is first of all an order that only exists inside the stories; and whether (or how) this storied order is reflective of life, selves and identities, requires further exploration. Nevertheless, 'first person' and 'past-experience' narratives seem to carry with them the connotation that they provide some kind of better and more direct access to experience and identities than traditional psychological means of investigation. And it seems to be also for this reason that they are the privileged type of discourse format for identity research, particularly in the business of psychologists.

In this article I examine a segment of a group discussion on the topic of promiscuity as part of a larger analysis of adolescent male identities. The particular piece of interaction occurred within a two hour-long focus group interview between a male moderator and five 15-year-old boys, who had come together laying out their views about what it means to be a 15-year-old male adolescent. Promiscuity was by no means the only and central topic of the discussion. It came up, seemingly from out of nowhere, and 3½ minutes later it was replaced by another topic. However, as in the case in most talk, not just among adolescents, such topics are rarely discussed in the abstract, without reference to concrete others or appeals to one's own experience. In the course of the 3½-minute discussion that I will discuss in more detail below, the five adolescent participants talk very specifically about one particular character, who is a female, and is said to have engaged in sexual activities. In this sense, their talk is not just about the general topic of promiscuity. It is exemplified with references to a particular case that seemingly has originated in their own life world: The girl is identified as one of their classmates, and her actions are said to bespeak the issue of promiscuity. Thus, by bringing into this conversation particular characters, grounding them in their own life world, and describing their actions in a temporal arrangement, the five participants appropriate a particular discourse format to represent their claims and make them authentic: They tell a story about the actions of this girl and appraise these actions (and thereby the girl herself) from a particular vantage point. And by way of designing this story in a very specific way, they establish a particular moral ground which they claim to be their own: 'This is who we are - we as individuals as well as 15-year-old males'.

Although the narrative segment chosen for further explication and analysis of identity formation processes in adolescent boys is not primarily thematizing the speakers of the narrative (as 'selves' of the narrators), the claim will be made that the same analytic procedures can be applied as when analyzing 'first person' or 'past experience' narratives. First, when speakers interactively move to claim the floor for an extended turn in order to share an incident from the past and claim this incident to be currently relevant, they typically order characters in time and spatial locations in a specific narrative way that gives insight into the position from which the particulars of the narrative format become recognizable. This 'position' is not necessarily part of a pre-existing plan, idea, or intention. Rather, just as characters in the course of the telling gain their shape as protagonists and heroes, or antagonists and villains (or simply as agents, undergoers and sufferers), the teller of the story gains his/her interactive position as advice giver, teacher, gossiper, advice seeker, or as male and adolescent. In sum, the position from which narrative order comes to existence emerges in the course of delivery of the unit of narrative; the order comes to existence in the process of actively trying to occupy a particular 'discourse space', usually in the presence and in close interactive monitoring with others. And in order to be able to analyze such positions, we need to pay close attention to the order within the story unit, where in time and space characters are positioned vis-a-vis one another, as well as to the order that emerges in the situation of telling the story, where narrator and audience are entering a particular type of 'discursive relationship'. Both order inside the story and order in the telling are interwoven and relevant for the outcome of the interaction and the construction of 'who we are' in terms of emerging selves and identities.

Not only is the narrative shared between the15-year-olds and the moderator not centrally 'about' themselves as characters in the story, but about someone else, it should also be noted that the narrative is at best a 'minimal narrative', consisting of very few references to 'bounded events' that may be taken as representatives for past experiences. In addition, the unfolding of the story as a whole, although implemented by one of the boys as central narrator, is not pushed through by only one contributor. A second speaker takes on a central role in the sharing of the narrative as a whole by reformulating central events and pressing for the evaluation of the character, followed by all other teenagers, who join the telling in one or another way. As will be shown, even the moderator contributes considerably to the way the narrative is being performed. Since the interactive situation consists of several parties, here at least the two groupings of interactants and respective audiences (consisting of the five boys and one adult), it should not come as a surprise that the interactants may pursue different communicative ends with their participation in the discussion. However, these factors do not interfere with our central claim that we can differentiate between the positions of the participants, the way they emerge in the ongoing discussion. Since it is assumed that such positions are always interactive achievements, we are about to enter the site, where such constructions take place. In other words, I am starting from the assumption that self and identity are not in any way givens, but are constantly re-negotiated, whereby communicative, interactive situations are the grounds where this re-negotiation process takes place in the form of 'project drafts'(Bamberg, 1997a). The discussion between the five boys and the moderator is just one of those situations, in which all participants present themselves - projecting a sense of who they are onto the others, though most often in a draft-like format, as something that is not totally ready, that can be taken back and remodeled, if necessary.

Starting with this notion of self and identities as projects that are constantly under revision, the discursive field, where such projects are tested out by interactants, here by the five 15-year-olds (and also to some degree by the moderator), is the arena where identities are micro-genetically performed and consolidated, and where they can be micro-analytically accessed. Here I am borrowing from developmental and conversation-analytic practices that analyze the sequential structuring of talk interaction out of which context and meaning, the concept of selves and others, and what is shared as cultural, are built up and come to existence. Again, this should not be taken to imply that such notions are not existent previous or outside the discourse situation. However, for analyzing talk in interaction, I would suggest that it is fruitful to bracket these kinds of categories so that we can be open to the analysis of how participants in interactive settings do their work. Entering this orientation from a socio-linguistic/ethnographic vantage point, I will try to embrace a way of dealing with narrative and identity-work that focuses on the active and interactive 'occupation of discursive spaces', making particular use of the notion of contextualization and contextualization cues (cf; Gumperz, 1981, 1992, 1996; and Bamberg, 2000a).

In sum, for the current exploration of how young 15-year-olds are making sense of themselves as 'adolescents' and as 'males' I am starting from the assumption that neither youth and adolescence nor masculinity and being male are anything that was given by nature in pre-fabricated and non-revisable ways. Rather, our ways of making sense of one another, and in particular of ourselves, are mediated in and through talk; talk that is organized socially in interactive situations, locally, and for the purpose of identity construal. It is here, where positions of how we come to understand ourselves (and others) originate and consolidate; and it is here, where we are able to study such positions from the perspective of the interactants with as little (adult and gendered) knowledge carried into the situational settings as possible. It is our aim to follow the group of interactants in what they are doing on line; and in this process of sequentially arranging and modulating each other, they themselves generate discourse spaces (positions) within which they are making sense of each other. It is these forms of understanding that is the focus of this analysis – with the aim to gain a new and fresh look at what it means to be 'male' from a 15-year-old perspective.

Positioning and Positioning Analysis

Central to the interpretive framework for the analysis of narrative interaction is the notion of positioning. According to Hollway, 'positions' always in a way seem to be something that is given by pre-existing social forms of communication (Discourses), but also in another way something that is taken. She writes: "Discourses make available positions for subjects to take up. These positions are in relation to other people" (Hollway, 1984, p. 233). Similarly, Harré & van Langenhove (1999, p. 17) argue: "With positioning, the focus is on the way in which the discursive practices constitute the speakers and the hearers in certain ways and yet at the same time, they are a resource through which speakers and hearers can negotiate new positions" ). In line with this notion of positioning narrative interactions can be analyzed as being constrained by, and to a large degree determined by such pre-existing social forms of communication we can term 'capital-D-discourses'(see Gee, 1990).

This interpretation of human activities as positions that are viewed as constrained and more or less determined is turned upside-down (or better: from its head onto its feet) by a view of the person as agent who more or less willfully (and consciously) positions him-/herself, and in the process of self-positioning actively engages in the construal of self and one's own life world, as well as ultimately also in what can be viewed as 'capital-D-discourses'. According to this orientation people engage interactively in the discursive construction of how they make sense of themselves and where they belong. The way they think and interpret themselves is not a reflection of already existing social ideologies or capital-D-discourses, but is micro-genetically constructed in local, everyday situations, together with others, because it is aimed to be understood by others.

Now, this seemingly irresolvable contradiction between the view of the person who is characterized in terms of their free will and an unbounded life-orientation, and the person who is subjected to and constrained, if not determined, by already existing social capital-D-discourses may potentially become resolved by the assumption that we as individuals are 'free within limits', i.e., we can pick among a variety of already existing discourses that we may 'experience' as in competition with one another. Edly & Wetherell's notion of 'interpretive repertoires' (Edley, 2001; Edley & Wetherell, 1997; Wetherell & Edley, 1998, 1999) can be seen as suggesting this line of making sense of human interactions and activities. However, it appears that the contradictions between the two views of the person as interacting with the world (one as agent, the other as undergoer) are two rather distinct views of two very different and separate centers of construction and motivating forces, and two very different directions of fit ('person to world' and 'world to person') which both have their affordances and explanatory power as distinct metaphors that are irreconcilable. And to view these two metaphors as part of the same 'dialectic process' may very well be equally misleading. They are metaphors that guide our every-day talk and conceptions about the relationship between person and world, which simultaneously organize investigations and studies of human action and development.

In order to show, for analytic purposes, how narratives can be analyzed as a particular type of talk-in interaction, let me briefly lay out an approach to narrative as a special kind of discourse mode with a close eye on the processes in which personal and cultural meaning are coming to existence. In previous work (Bamberg 1997a, 2000b; Korobov, 2001; Talbot, Bibace, Bokhour & Bamberg, 1996) we have suggested three different levels of ordering activities into which narratives can be partitioned.

First, in talk about others and about self we linguistically create characters at the plane of what the talk is about. We usually describe them in words and attributes so that they gain physical, emotional, and motivational contours, before we attribute actions to them. Then, again, by use of linguistic means we create positions from which they appear as characters in relationships with regard to one another. Last, but not least, we linguistically create these characters and their positions as orderly in time and space, and we order their relationships vis-à-vis one another as developing, remaining stable, or deteriorating across time and space. At this level, characters are arranged from a particular point of view in terms of descriptive details and in terms of their activities vis-à-vis one another so that they gain their roles as prot- or antagonists, as perpetrators, by-standers, or as victims. For example, at this level of analysis we target the linguistic means that assist in the construction of agents as being 'in control', so that the action appears to be willfully inflicted upon the other character; or, we scrutinize the formal devices that result in a central character who is helplessly at the mercy of outside (quasi 'natural') forces, or who is rewarded by luck, fate, God, or personal qualities (such as bravery, nobility, or simply 'character'). In sum, at this level of analysis we scrutinize the linguistic means that establish the characters in the story – how they are characterized, and how they are placed in relationship with one another – so that we are able to answer the question what the story is 'about' (positioning level 1).

Second, since we are dealing with talk-in-interaction, speakers are continuously arranging (and re-arranging) themselves vis-à-vis one another. To achieve this, they first of all need to draw up a point of view from which the characters are depicted in the story: They want to be understood as neutral, as involved, as taking sides with one or more of the characters they are talking about - for the purpose of making an accusation, giving an apology, or simply to let the co-conversationalist know their 'position' from where they view what the talk is about. In doing so, we arrange ourselves as experts, as giving advice, as authorities - or, as advice seeking, as helpless, or as innocent. We also display ourselves as polite, pushy, strong or weak. Again, we assume that this type of information is signaled with linguistic and supra-linguistic means so that interactants come to some kind of understanding of the business at hand, i.e., how the individual actions feed into some kind of interactive communicative understanding. It is at this level, again for analytic purposes, that we ask why a story is told at a particular point in the interaction – or more specifically: Why does the narrator claim the floor at this particular point in the conversation to tell the story? What is he or she trying to accomplish with the story (positioning level 2)?

Although positioning level 1 and positioning level 2 are analytically quite separate (level 1 targets the story content, level 2 the interactive realm), the boundaries between these two are nevertheless somewhat fluid, particularly, because often the same linguistic devices serve as indexes for both types of positioning. Analyzing positioning at level 3 is potentially even more difficult, because it is here where we as analysts are more likely to make use of categories that are more interpretive and culturally loaded. Working up the characters in the story for the purpose of the here and now of the communicative situation, a moral position is drawn up for which the speaker can be held accountable — irrespective of whether the speaker him-/herself has been the theme or whether anonymous others have been thematized. The speaker 'transcends' the level of characters in the story and the interactional level of 'how I want to be understood by you, the audience' and attempts to construe a (local) answer to the question: "Who am I?". In doing so, the speaker/narrator positions him-/herself vis-à-vis cultural discourses, either by embracing them, or by displaying neutrality, or by distancing, critiquing, subverting and resisting them. We assume that it is here, where a discursive space is drawn up in the form of a position, locating the speaker in a more general sense. Whatever s/he tried to accomplish locally with his/her interactants by sharing the story, this story can be told about the speaker elsewhere (see Whitebrook's differentiation between 'self' and 'identity', 2001). It carries the potential of gaining some independent status above and beyond the situation for which it was originally claimed. This is the risk and danger of engaging in story-telling activities, but at the same time it is essential for claiming some form of identity that others will work with, and can build and rely on, because it is oriented toward culturally shared forms of 'continuity', including the potential for 'coherence' (positioning level 3).

In sum then, the analysis of the first two positioning levels is intended to progressively lead to a differentiation of how speakers draw on cultural discourses and position themselves vis-à-vis these discourses in their claims as to 'who they are', i.e., in their identity work. It is along these lines that speakers develop 'subject positions' that can consolidate and ultimately lead to a sense of continuity and a 'sense of self'. Two noteworthy caveats are nevertheless in order at this point: First, it should be pointed out that any attempted answer to the 'who am I?' question is not necessarily one that holds across contexts, but rather is a project of limited range, or, as Holstein & Gubrium call it "a practical project of everyday life" (2000, p. 70). My second caveat draws on the fact that the self as positioned vis-à-vis cultural discourses is an outcome of relational work in terms of what is projected into the text as well as what is produced in the co-authoring-relationship between the participants. The moral position that is indexed as the space inhabited by the speaker is jointly generated by the participants of conversations. It is along these lines that the positions at level 3 vis-à-vis the cultural order can also be characterized as a form of positioning vis-à-vis 'the self' or, more strongly, that a notion of 'self' comes to existence at this level of positioning.

The sequential arrangement of these three positioning levels from one to three is not coincidental. For analytic purposes, it seems to be appropriate to start from what seems to be 'most explicit' at the level of textual arrangement, working up from there to the level of how speakers interactionally arrange themselves, and from there to how these speakers come to make sense of themselves – rather than the other way around. However, in ontological terms, we traditionally seem to lean toward an understanding of language and text production that starts with the 'self' as the firm and central unit, which is able to interactionally (and responsibly) 'position itself' (but most often is viewed as being positioned by or subjected to 'society', 'ideologies' or 'capital-D-discourses'), and then, locally and situationally engage in descriptions, accounts, and stories. Without wanting to pursue these issues any further here, I will turn next to the analysis of a story in discourse, where I aim to demonstrate how youth and masculine identity are being performed as local arrangements, and how these arrangements turn into identity claims that may be consequential for further arrangements and re-arrangements.

Constructing the Other

The story to be discussed in the following originated in a focus group encounter of five 15-year-old males who had agreed to get together within the project of exploring "What it means to grow up as a young male". Within this project we collected written (journal entries) and oral accounts in different discursive contexts (individual one-on-one interview, focus group, and peer interactions) on topics of friendship, girls, feelings + body, and future orientation from 10-, 12-, and 14/15-year-old boys. The individual as well as focus group interviews were open-ended discussions, both working through the same list of topics – from (1) friends and friendships to (2) girls, to (3) self/feeling/body, to (4) adulthood and future orientation. All five participants of the group discussion shared quite a bit of interactional history, within which they seemed to have established particular speaker and listener roles. At the time of the interview they were 9^th-graders in a larger metropolitan city on the East Coast of the US. The project had been explained to them and they seemed to be aware of the fact that we were interested in how young males grow into young men, and that the aim was to find out, 'from their perspective', what it means to be a 15-year old teenager.

After warming up and talking about the last weekend, being with friends and what it means to have 'best' friends, at about 25 minutes into the group interview, the moderator shifted the topic from friends/friendship to the second topic, girls. After a brief discussion of what girls find attractive in boys and boys in girls, Fred had mentioned that "a lot of ugly people have girlfriends", which he claimed "is beyond me". When challenged by the moderator why this is beyond him, he jokingly withdraws his bid by saying "ah forget it, erase that too", something that is picked up on in Bert's turn in lines 2/3 of the transcript.

The conversation then turns to a female classmate, who in the upcoming conversation is being characterized as having engaged in promiscuous sex, in the course of which she may have become pregnant, and who discussed her situation in a letter that fell into the hand of one of the boys of this group. Ted, who authors the account making it currently relevant for his peers and the adult moderator, figures in the story-line as the person who describes and accounts for the girl's actions from the perspective of a central witness, since he claims to have had access to the letter the girl wrote. While the fact that one of their classmates has become pregnant definitely fulfills the criterion of tellibility, it is not really this that seems to be the focal point for making it currently relevant. Rather, what seems to be focal and reportable in the context of this group discussion is the characterization of the female classmate as the central character of this story, i.e., who this girl is, how she deals with her situation, and her moral standing.

It should be noted that Ted's account consists only of two references to past events, namely that their classmate "had … sex" (line 10) and that "she wrote a letter!" (line 40), which by no means constitute a full-blown narrative. We can assume, however, that both events, though the second one more in terms of what the letter actually said, definitely range in the category of what is 'tellable', in the sense that they are somewhat outside the usual and ordinary, the mundane and what is to be expected in the everyday run of our lives. The way, however, these events are inserted into the talk is reminding in a number of ways of how narratives are typically woven into ongoing conversations. At both occasions, in line 4 and lines 35/39, the speaker positions himself in terms of his body posture (leaning forward) and signals by use of his gestures (hand and finger pointing upward) and his eye gaze (in both cases directing his gaze toward the moderator with the opening of the turn) that he is orienting to enter the floor for an extended turn, and, in addition, a turn that is contrasting with the more descriptive and evaluative utterances of his peers before he could insert his turn. Opening his turn in line 4 with the marker actually, Ted clearly marks the shift in topic, and by immediately inserting the temporal and spatial coordinates of the event under consideration („last year", and „a girl in our class"), he orients the audience to a potentially upcoming story. Furthermore, the way Ted in his delivery of his turn in his use of supra-segmentational devices subsequently holds on to and manages the floor for several utterances, also resembles typical story-telling activity. Thus, in spite of the fact that we do not find the structure of a fully developed narrative in the excerpt, there are clear hints that point toward narrating as the intended type of discourse activity. The same can be said of the way Ted tries to redirect the conversation in line 35, though at this point unsuccessfully, where he attempts to reenter the floor („yeah... and also"), and lines 39/40 („yeah, yeah, yeah".. „she wrote a letter to a kid"), where he dismisses the orientation of the previous turn by Fred, and successfully reconnects to the girl as the already previously established topic by inserting new and eventive information.

In overall terms, the chosen excerpt consists of two references to past events that are inserted into the discourse by the same person, positioning him in the role of a narrator. There is no further reference to other eventive information - apart from what was argued to be written in the letter. All other talk follows up on and surrounds these two events by way of elaborating them in a descriptive and evaluative fashion. According to Labov & Waletzky (1967/97), these two events can be said to form the skeleton around which we find evaluative information, though with the interesting difference that while we usually expect more sequentially ordered events interspersed with less evaluative information, we find the opposite relation in our excerpt: Most of the talk is occupied with evaluating the events in moral and ethical terms, while the eventive information itself is relatively sparse.

While it seems from a somewhat retrospective point of departure that the main purpose of the interaction between the boys was to engage in a character evaluation (and assassination), and that the sparse references to what actually had happened, i.e., the facts, are of secondary relevance, we nevertheless will return to the question of why the events were mentioned at the point in the conversation, i.e., what function they served in terms of how they helped to establish the narrator's authority, his credibility and trustworthiness, and how the conversation as a whole could result in an affirmation of themselves in terms of a (new?) group identity.

Positioning level 1: Who are the characters? And how are they positioned vis-à-vis one another?

The narrative under analysis contained only one central character, namely 'the girl'. There are no other singular, individual agentive characters mentioned in the story. The only one who might qualify as an individual character and who is explicitly referred to is the recipient of the letter that the girl wrote: „a kid, another child in our class" (lines 39/40). Then, there is the plural mention of other boys in „she had sex with boys" (line 10), and finally there is a reference to other girls in „most girls are not like that" (line 30). In other words, the girl in question as potential main character is positioned as relatively "relationless" in a story-world that consists only of pluralized characters who are referred to as kids, children, boys, and girls. Of course, these others all might have been individuals who have proper names, but the speakers have chosen not to present them as individuals with their names, but in more generalized and abstract contours.

Turning next to the analysis of how these characters are positioned vis-à-vis one another in terms of their action descriptions, we are left with very little. The girl as our main character is positioned in a somewhat agentive role in as much as she is mentioned in subject position - it's not that "other boys had sex with her" or that "another kid in our class received a letter", but she seemed to have initiated these acts willfully, and seemed to have been in full control. Overall, it is clear that the story told is about her, this particular classmate of the group of interview participants, who happens to be female: She is the topic, and we are faced with the question as to why she has been topicalized at this point in the ongoing conversation.

The details of how the girl is characterized are nevertheless much more drawn out and relevant for further analysis. The main narrator (Ted) starts with an account of who this girl is in terms of her history of intentions: Last year <in 8^th grade> she didn't get the attention she wanted, resulting in the fact that this year, which was actually over the summer, she had „a lot of sex with boys". Ted does not suggest that this girl simply 'had sex', but she had „sex with boys" (plural), and even worse, she had „a lot of sex with boys", thereby clearly marking his evaluative stance and evoking the image of promiscuity. Furthermore, Ted attributes 'to gain attention' as the motivating force behind her actions, placing her in the vicinity of 'deserving acknowledgment by others' and 'wanting to gain popularity'. Whether Ted, by assigning motives to her actions, can be assumed already at this point to demarcate his 'social location', as Mills (1940, p. 445) suggests 'vocabularies of motive' do, may be left open for now. However, it should be noted that Ted takes elaborate effort to underscore that she engaged in sexual activities as part of her desire and efforts to be socially accepted by others.

At this point Fred enters the floor. He corrects, and then elaborates Ted's account that it wasn't "just sex but everything" (in line 12), summing up the characterization of their female classmate (in line 15) as "a slut". The self-correction from "she's got the reputation" to "she earned the reputation" (in line 13) is additionally revealing because here we have a choice of form that prefers the attribution of her as the one responsible for the characterization that others attribute to her. And it is also interesting to note that Fred does not take the responsibility himself by saying "I call (or 'would call') her a slut"; neither are others given a more agentive semantic role as in potentially: "Others call her (or 'would call her') a slut". What she did led to what she got; it was deserved: She „earned" this reputation - this is a fair deal.

When asked by the moderator to consider the girl's perspective, i.e., how she might feel about this characterization, Fred and Ted follow through by attributing to her the internal state of joy and satisfaction, because she succeeded in gaining the attention she desired, and Ted additionally characterizes this in line 22 as "horrible", and her as "worthless". When challenged by the moderator in lines 23, 26 and 29, who seems to be taking this passage to constitute a claim vis-à-vis girls in general, Fred is willing to acknowledge in line 29 that "most girls are not like that", but that the 'popularity motive' as laid out by Ted earlier is the driving force for not only what happened, but consequently for her characterization as a person.

In lines 35 and 37 Ted attempts to reenter the floor - or to continue what he had started but not completed with his reference to the sexual activities of their classmate. Indexing by way of falling intonation („yeah-yeah-yeah" – line 39) that the conversation of the others was not heading anywhere, he successfully cuts off Fred and reenters the floor in order to reestablish the story with „she wrote a letter" in line 40. He confirms in line 43 that he actually had read the letter, and in line 42 accounts briefly that there was no wrongdoing in his reading, because again it was her own intent („she wanted everyone to read it" - line 43), again attributing motives to her that are in support of his general characterization of her as a notorious 'attention getter' and 'popularity achiever'. Line 45 establishes the fact that makes the sequence of events even more tellible, namely that this classmate had claimed that she was pregnant. It is worth noting here that this is not stated as factual in the form of an event clause, but as reported in the letter. Presenting the pregnancy as a claim by the letter writer, instead of simply stating that she was pregnant (as a presupposition for writing the letter) - seems to be a carefully chosen rhetoric tactic in order to avoid a clear commitment with regard to the truthfulness of what was quoted, and thereby, to downplay and minimize the fact of the pregnancy - leaving the adult participant in the dark as to whether she actually had been pregnant.

The ambiguity with respect to the factuality of their classmate's pregnancy is further corroborated by Fred's mention of her talk about the pregnancy in line 56: „she said she thought she might be pregnant". Fred's use of modality markers verbs of cognition at this point indexes a very distanced perspective, most efficient in underscoring their classmate's undecidedness and indecision with regard to her stance toward abortion and further undermining her moral resoluteness and standing as a person.

With line 48 the principle narrator (Ted) prefaces the potential list of "about seven options" how "she was deciding to get rid of the child", of which three are actually mentioned (lines 49-59), concluding the narrative by way of falling sentential intonation with line 59. The lexical choice of 'getting rid' clearly signals his condemnation of the procedure by which the protagonist was considering abortion as an option. In addition, the characterization of slipping into the girl's internal perspective in line 49 ("starve myself" - in contrast to a possible 'starve herself') seems to serve the preparation of the juxtaposition in the form of the external, very distanced and rational stance, namely that she had forgotten with this option that she would actually die first. In sum, the way both options are presented by the narrator ultimately serve the characterization of the female protagonist of the story as not only irresolute and irresponsible, but also as stupid.

The moderator in lines 60 ("do you guys discuss this with your mom and dad?"), line 69 ("when you heard about this first, was that a little bit shocking?"), and line 80 ("that's definitely a topic you guys talk about after 10 o'clock at night?") tries to probe deeper into the meaning of this experience for the group of five boys. The answers given by Fred are somewhat contradictory: While he describes her as "worthless" and "horrible" (line 22), and asserts in lines 75/6 that it definitely was a shock to hear this at first, he seems to shrug the whole affair off at the end of this excerpt as not caring much for her (line 83) and not really worrying much about the events. In addition, while they admit that their parents might want to know about these kinds of things, or at least that their sons would share with them these kinds of stories, Ted also claims that this information is „not important" (line 63).

Positioning level 2: How does the speaker/narrator position himself vis-à-vis his interlocutors?

Turning next to positioning level 2, it is important to start with the same caveat mentioned above, namely that this excerpt is not a typical story - or better: It is a more complex story: First, there is more than one story-teller - with the adult moderator as the audience; and second, for the individuals authoring the story, there are their peers, who are co-authors as well as audience. Thus, we have to be aware that the choice of linguistic forms and performance features serves to design positions vis-à-vis two audiences: the adult moderator, who has been claiming that he needs to be informed about what it is like to be a young male, and the age mates, who kind of know who the speaker is as a boy/adolescent - at least in the context of this group.

Summarizing what we know from our level 1 analysis, the female character is depicted in the narrative as having done something that ordinary others, i.e., 'good' girls, wouldn't do. In addition, the motives that were attributed to her created a persona who is best characterized as unstable, maladjusted, and irresponsible, i.e., the prototype (from an adult perspective) of a juvenile, not adult-like person. Thus, the story-world that is construed for the ears of the moderator serves as an exemplar for a moral order that is clearly not defendable from the tellers' perspective. The characterization of the girl's actions as deviant and untenable becomes even more marked in the way her letter is slipped into the discourse. First of all, a letter to be read by everyone is a highly problematic way to talk about something that under normal circumstances is construed as a personal and secretive dilemma. Secondly, writing notes and placing these notes into the hands of 'overhearing audiences' (for the purpose of 'attention-getting') is something that is typical for juveniles, who haven't made their transition into the world of young adults.

Furthermore, starving oneself to death or having a baby without anyone noting, while freely talking about these choices along with abortion in a semi-public letter, are designed in Ted's version of the story to ridicule the girl's credibility and her general accountability as a person. The classmate is characterized as blameworthy, but she doesn't know any better, seems to be very unstable in her values and opinions, and at best is a victim of her own ambition to actively seek popularity – she is 'morally blind' (see Fine, 1986, for the distinction between three types of assigning blame by 'moral defect', 'negligence', and 'moral blindness'). She is characterized as blinded by attractiveness and popularity which, according to many authors (Eckert, 1989; Holland, Lachiotte, Skinner & Cain, 1998; Thorne, 1993; Widdicombe & Wooffitt, 1995) are the emerging characteristics of the "marketplace of popularity" in junior high within the larger peer-controlled "marketplace of identities" (Eckert, 2000, p. 14). However, Ted's and Fred's position vis-à-vis these marketplaces is one of disapproval and rejection: In order to remain decent and respectable, they seem to suggest, you either stay away from any engagement in these marketplaces, or you engage in them in moderate ways and in accordance with proclaimed standards. The position from which the classmate's acts, and through these acts her worth as a person, are characterized reveals these standards as a moral high-ground that is characteristic for a rationality that is detached, not committed, impartial, and claiming objectivity. In sum, Ted, supported by Fred, 'teaches' the adult moderator who we, as young boys - in contrast to this girl – are: smart, rational, in control of our minds and actions, stable, well-adjusted. In sum, we are responsible, young adults who make their decisions on the basis of commonly shared, adult-like standards.

The role of the adult moderator in all this is oscillating between one of collaborator and challenger. After Fred attempted to display himself as an authority with regard to sex, one who knows more accurately (and better) how to appraise the events than Ted, the adult moderator challenges the group of five boys by placing them in the category of 'too young for this' ("you guys are fifteen, right?" - line 14), implying the unspoken 'only' and also potentially implying that he considers them more in the category of 'children'. Addressing the group with "you guys", the moderator cues for a context of alignement and solidarity. However, the overall question in this slot is more likely to cue for a context of difference: You are 15, and I'm an adult. The second challenge in the form of asking the boys to take the girl's perspective ("and how would she . how does she feel?" - line 17), as well as the moderator's display of surprise in light of the revelations in lines 23 ("I mean you guys know who you are talking about right?") and 26/29 ("is that really true? . is that really the case?" and "but that she likes it . that girls like to") all serve as contextualization cues to read the moderator as speaking from an adult position and result in taking an even stronger condemnation of their classmate vis-à-vis the moderator, aligning themselves individually and as a group with his position as an adult, thereby distancing themselves more clearly from the category of children.

With his question in line 60 ("do you guys discuss this stuff with your mom and dad?"), the moderator also cues for a context in which he is viewed as speaking from an adult position, but takes on a position that places him into a more colluding relationship with the group of participants, though to no avail: None of them opens up and reveals why they are sharing these details with him, but not with their parents or teachers - and most likely not with any other adult. While it could be argued that the information shared by the group of adolescent participants in this focus group is special to the particular kind of relationship between moderator and participants, I would like to claim that we may be facing a typical feature of institutionally organized discourses: In their role of 'advice givers' on issues of 'what it means to be a 15-year-old boy', the participants share some events that they do not necessarily share with other adults in order to come across as authentic and trustworthy. Thus, it can be argued, that the sharing of seemingly intimate information is not necessarily the result of 'good rapport' between participants and moderator, but rather a typical feature of what needed to be accomplished in the institution of focus group interactions. Nevertheless, what becomes increasingly clear here is that the group of adolescents attempts to altercast with the group of parents: Although our parents would like to know, we have our own world. It is not necessarily the case that our parents don't care, but they have their own relevancies as adults, and we, as young adults, have ours.

Of particular interest in this discussion is the fact that the principle narrator (Ted), and Fred as the one who echoes and amplifies Ted's story, seem to oscillate between two conflicting positions. On the one hand, they want to come across as utterly concerned about events that are characterized as shocking and unbelievable, and display their horror about the 'worthlessness' of the person who engaged in such horrible and unspeakable acts. On the other hand, however, they claim that this is not really the kind of stuff they share with their parents or with one another in more intimate situations. They actually claim, in line 86, they could care less about the girl and this kind of ordeal. It seems that this type of contradiction is actually quite common for the type of interaction we are dealing with in this excerpt. The appraisal of their classmate was shaped between two discursive forces, one of closely identifying with the person talked about, being in her head and having intimate knowledge about her motivations; the other of not wanting to be identified with her at all: declaring one's distinctive (here moral) identity in contrast to her. It is within these dynamics that a moral perspective is generated and comes to existence (cf. Fine, 1986, p. 420).

Of similar interest is Fred's response, this time echoed and supported by Ted, to the moderator's question (in lines 69 & 70) for their emotional reaction to when they first heard the 'story'. Fred 'speaks for' Ted and reports that he (Ted) was very shocked upon hearing about it on the first day of school after the summer vacation, although Ted could certainly have given a more detailed and more authentic account. But Fred, as the interpreter and amplifier of the moral impact of the story events continues in his role of instructing their audiences about the moral magnitude of what had occurred. Ted's "telling everyone about it", in line 75, on the one hand echoes and supports Fred's account: He had heard of it, because she had told everyone about it; so he was the eyewitness, and what Fred is reporting here is correct. On the other hand, he can also be heard as emphasizing why he was morally so indignant: Not so much by what she had done, but because she had shared it publicly with everyone, most likely in her 'obsession to gain popularity'. As if it wasn't really the issue of promiscuity, but the fact that it was talked about so openly that disturbed and violated the space of what is proper and decent.

I am hesitant at this point to call the moral ground that is constructed in this interaction a particular type of masculinity or 'male discourse', because girls reportedly engage in the same, if not worse acts of slut-bashing (see Tanenbaum, 2000). However, the way this particular classmate is construed as similar but different from other girls opens up the ideological position of 'good girls' versus 'bad girls', where good girls do engage in 'moderate' popularity work, but do not use their physical attraction to engage in sexual activities and do not have any sexual desires. As Fine (1988) and Tanenbaum (2000) argue, within this ideology girls have sex because they are pressured or coerced - or else they are sluts. The construction of this particular girl as different from 'other girls' is significant here: Not only is she characterized as 'other' in terms of her standing with regard to an adult morality that is appropriated by the five boys, but in addition, she is also 'other' from how the boys construe 'girls' as different from boys.

Positioning level 3: Positions taken vis-à-vis capital-D-discourses and 'self'

This leads directly into some remarks concerning positioning level 3. The discursive function of this story within the interaction sequence as a whole can be described as follows: On the one hand, the boys as a group give an example for how they morally construe themselves as responsible young adults. As such, they cue for a context in which they come across as advice givers and "deliver" the kind of advice the moderator had asked for at the onset of the group discussion (= positioning level 2). At the same time, the five boys do relational work with each other: They try to present themselves as a relatively solid block in terms of their moral position, with Ted and Fred setting the discursive orientation for the others to follow. In Charles Antaki's words, they evoke and develop a portfolio of identities which are available to be carried on into new conversations. They are building, reproducing and constituting culture as they talk. In terms of their sense of who they are, something they may be able to potentially role into new discourse settings and situations, the five participants have successfully re-established very traditional and normative gender roles around the sexual double standard as a prototypical norm or guidepost.

In addition, the particulars of how the activity of drawing up their moral position has been achieved also point to aspects of a male position: The category of girls, as in general 'good girls', is established as a middle ground in between 'sluts' and 'us', depicting a space that is created as distinct from the space the five boys claim for themselves. And girls, who traditionally or 'naturally' engage in 'popularity work', run the risk to overdo it, become victims of their own desire to be popular, and may end up as sluts. Thus, being or becoming a slut is something that is only possible for those who occupy that middle-ground, i.e., other girls, who engage in 'popularity work'. They, as boys could never slide into this, simply for the reason that they are not girls and do not need to engage in the same kind of 'popularity work'. In terms of their claim to adolescent or adult responsibility vis-à-vis the adult moderator, there is the implicit message that girls in general can not make the same claim - due to the fact that the grounds from which their relational positions among one another can be achieved require different types of 'popularity work'. The grounds of competing with one another over who is more popular and who is less, simply do not exist for them as boys, because they place themselves as above this type of activity and thereby display a certain way of 'cool' (see Frosh, Phoenix & Pattman, 2002). The business of getting attention, being popular, and being attractive is a social space that is defensively claimed to be of no relevance for their own identities. And therefore, the danger of 'overplaying' their currency in that kind of business simply does not exist for them as males.

For this reason, it can be argued that slut-bashing when done by boys, at least the way it is accomplished in the situation under discussion here, is different from slut-bashing by girls: While boys can engage in this activity from a moral ground that is claimed to be higher than that of girls, girls are forced into a constant marking of their moral position as a good girl vis-à-vis those 'bad girls'. As an alternative, they can cross consciously or voluntarily into the category of 'bad girls', thereby potentially evading the moral pressure exerted by the entitlement of a male-based, high ground position. It may be against this background that girls' temporary explorations of the status of badness in their own behaviors may be interpretable as attempts to evade the type of male morality that is displayed here in the excerpt as typical for male interaction forms, and it may also serve as a potential explanation for why female slut-bashing can become much more physical and openly aggressive than boys' slut-bashing (see Tanenbaum, 2000).

In terms of the identity work performed within the frame of the particular interactive setting, all five boys (in co-operation with the moderator) succeeded in giving a number of answers to the 'who am I?' question. In the way they drew up a position vis-à-vis the particular girl in question, and girls in general, they evoked a sense of self among one another that confirms a strong consensus in terms of what it means to be male. First, their joint interactive positioning generated the same kind of rationality that has been identified in terms of a male traditional discourse forming historically the basis for the scientific rationality of mainstream modernism (Giddens, 1988; Haraway, 1995). Second, their joint engagement in slut-bashing also can be said to have resulted in the type of double-standard typical for a male hegemonic exploitation of sexuality that runs counter emancipatory goals of gender education and better understanding between the genders. It is interesting to see that their strategy to position themselves as responsible, young adults served as a presupposition in order to come across as 'male'. In other words, to position themselves as smart, mature and cool, and thereby clearly demarcating their position from that of children, the five boys were able to draw up a space that they were then able to occupy as grounds for their position as males.

It is also noteworthy that within this process of generating an identity as a group of 15-year-old boys (i.e., as individuals of a particular age cohort and as males), their critical stance toward the 'marketplace of popularity' was only employed when it came to the way others (here: girls) were occupying this space. This type of contradictive stance is paralleled in their ambiguity with regard to their appraisal of the relevance and shock value of the girl's actions, as well as in their appraisal of what they are sharing with their parents. It seems to be more relevant in this context to view their own positioning strategy and therefore their own identity stance as a group as 'defensive': The story about the girl in question serves as an example for the fact that girls in general more actively seek to occupy a discursive space with talk about themselves, their own bodies, sex and promiscuity, threatening their own discursive space, where this type of talk is 'off limits' - at least in 'public' and/or with one's parents or other adults. Therefore, the grounds for seeking to occupy this discursive space is discredited in terms of 'popularity seeking', a marketplace of popularity, a space that we as boys don't need to and don't want to publicly compete for.

In more general terms, it should be noted that the positions taken by the five boys were not always as cemented as it may have appeared from our analysis. Rather, their positions are often drawn up as contradictive, fragile and (relatively) open to negotiation. This is an important point for developing pedagogical strategies of how to enter the discursive space of adolescents and 'convert' young men from positions that we, as adults, find problematic and potentially detrimental for their future development, to positions that we consider more empowering for a healthy relationship between the genders, but also among one another as males.

Conclusions

A narrative about some other character who is reported to have had sex and to have written a letter is hardly a full-blown or interesting story. In spite of the fact that these two events could have been woven into a highly dramatic sequence of concomitant happenings and events, it is more likely that the two events that were drawn on here came to the awareness of the narrators in the course of hearsay-interactions, i.e., by way of gossiping with others (although Ted claims that he actually saw the letter). Furthermore, the fact that the self of the speakers is not thematized at all, i.e., they do not play any agentive part in the story world, does not speak for any relevant borrowing of cultural narrative or collective experience to furnish claims as to who the narrators are. In addition, it is very likely that the events when they originally surfaced in the talk among the group of boys (and others) did not have the same significance as they have in the focus group situation. Taking all this together, I would like to suggest that the significance of the reported events is a result of the here and now of the interactive situation. The two events that formed the skeleton of the narrative came in 'handy' - so to speak - to cue a context of educating the adult moderator as to who these five boys 'really' are: although still somewhat young, in appearance, they actually are very mature and also already quite responsible; young males who can make justifiable claims about their moral standing vis-à-vis others just the way adults seem to make these kinds of claims. In other words, the significance of the key events that were assembled in this narrative is a local product of the interactive situation facilitated and co-produced together with the adult moderator in the focus group interaction. They do what they do in the here-and-now of the group interaction.

Again, this is not to imply that the kind of double moral standard may never have entered the consciousness of the five participating boys (or the adult moderator) before, just as the activity of slut-bashing may not have been a totally new practice all of them engaged in for the first time (although this is possible). Both are existent outside and before the activity that is reflected in the transcript, and most likely all five boys had been exposed to aspects of them way before the focus group interaction took place. However, there seemed to have been a special interactive pull to become engaged in the particular kind of slut-bashing practice and to (re-) produce the double standard in the here-and-now of the interaction with the adult moderator: It became an easy and ready-to-hand means for positioning the selves as mature young adults. And although the intention of the participants to present themselves as mature and responsible originally may not have included any appeal to their maleness, the male positions slipped in, so to speak 'under-handedly', i.e., they made the discursive work more believable.

In sum, the activity of slut-bashing in the interview context became what Thorne calls 'borderwork' (Thorne, 1993), i.e., for the purpose of underscoring ones own maturity, borders between boys and girls needed to be erected, so they can be argumentatively drawn upon (see also Frosh et al, 2002, p. 72). In their attempt to emancipate themselves into the moral domain of mature adults, the principle narrator (Ted) and his amplifier (Fred) empower and entitle themselves and the group as a whole as males. And it is in this sense that a form of 'collective experience' is being generated, i.e., not necessarily intended and not necessarily with 'masculinity' written all over, but in rather subtle, highly contradictive, and often probably even unwanted ways.

What 'simply' happened in the course of constructing this minimal narrative was the following: The minimal references to past events served as an appeal to something all boys participating in this conversation knew something about, here a collectively shared (and most likely also 'talked about') experience of a girl they all knew from last year. And although the account as a whole was shared and co-constructed by all the participants (including the moderator), it was orchestrated chiefly by two of the 15-year-olds, with one (Ted) predominantly responsible for the establishment of the factual, eventive information, and the other (Fred) as mainly engaged in echoing and amplifying this information in terms of its evaluative (and moral) implications. The two past events inserted into the conversation served as the backdrop for a character appraisal with the aim to establish an authorial position (on the specific topic of sex, talk about it in public spaces, as well as moral issues in general) from where the events and the characterization of the protagonist merged into a framework of givens - so that everything appeared as if it couldn't be otherwise. Thus, the joint construction of this type of discourse framework effectively altercasts this particular character with 'us' as a group of male youths, resulting in the collective identity claim of 'us' as young, though mature and responsible, and in this sense 'adults'. As such, this construction process prolongs and strengthens the positions that emerged and can be argued to have the potential to contribute to their perpetuation.

The way the five boys have worked up a position of how they want to occupy (and fill) their own discourse space, as a space vis-a-vis the one occupied by parents (or adults), and vis-a-vis the potential threat of how girls claim their space for their 'popularity work', is remindful of an outlining and claiming of territory that is simultaneously 'male' as well as 'adolescent'. While it seems to be a common characteristic of youth cultures to question and potentially subvert adult and gendered norms, the boys in our conversation in their attempt to 'be different' and altercast parents and girls, re-erect very normative boundaries that are much in agreement with adult, male territories common to the traditional adult world. It is this contradiction that came as most surprising from the analysis, again reflecting the contradictiveness of local, micro-developmental processes.

Of course, at this point, the critical question remains what we as adults and as educators can make of this. Although I am by no means able to draw any far reaching conclusions from the particular example discussed here in detail, I nevertheless would like to raise two issues: First, showing slut-bashing as an interactive achievement, we are able to view this activity in its fuller interactional context as an accomplishment that serves a number of (interactive) purposes. Using a particular form of positioning analysis, it could be shown how slut-bashing in this particular discursive situation was instantiated in order to claim a mature and adult-like position. At the same time, it accomplished the establishment of a moral high-ground as the platform for one's own morality, with a claim to one's position as male vis-à-vis 'the female' – as something that may not have been conversationally planned and intended, but as emerging within the constraints of the conversation as 'tacitly agreed upon'. As such, slut-bashing can be said to be part of the fabric of adolescence, but it is by no means a 'normal' nor a necessary way of 'growing-up'. While it strengthens the cultural (double) standard "that men and boys are free to express themselves sexually, but women and girls are not" (Tanenbaum, 2000, p. xix), it also perpetuates and potentially cements this and other standards as 'natural' differences between boys and girls. This tendency to 'naturalize' cultural versions into facts of life that couldn't be otherwise may very well contribute to the "ideological dilemma" (see Billig 1987, 1991) of a logic of accountability that is detrimental for a more healthy development of male identities.

As a second and concluding point I would like to suggest that investigations of how identities are micro-genetically developed and locally construed in different discourse sites seem to be a very important site for pedagogical considerations. While it may be necessary and important to judge and condemn such activities like slut-bashing as ostracizing, degrading and despicable, i.e., as something 'good kids' simply shouldn't engage in, it is of utmost importance to become clearer about the processes that are involved in the accomplishment of such activities as well as their identity generating functions. It is my conviction that such investigations into the micro-organization of discursive positions will result in the development of communicative strategies of adults (teachers and parents as well as educational policy makers) for how to work more productively with positions that typically are not representative for adult discourses though common in adolescent discursive practices. Deeper insights into how these positions become pieced together early on in particular discourse situations will most definitely result in better pedagogic strategies than a therapeutically misconstrued way of helping a deprived and deficient young male on his way to become a more responsible and reflective person.

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to all who helped shaping this article in one or another way on route to the shape it is in. I have been talking about this particular segment at several conference meetings and in several colloquia before students across the US, Brazil, Denmark, Germany, Hungary, and Japan, and there were simply too many people involved in transforming this paper from its earlier stage into the present one that I could list by naming. However, special thanks go to the volunteers of my study and to my assistant Neill Korobov. Without them, my insights still would have been at the point where they were three years ago.

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Transcript of focus group conversation between five 15-year-old boys and a moderator:

[Apologies for the formatting here, Michael. Your typist has a strange grasp of how to set the original text up, and it would take me hours to undo and reformat for html. However, the essential information is still there :-) Andy]

M:         Moderator (adult)

B:         Bert

F:        Fred

T:        Ted

W:        Wil

A:        Al

TOPIC: GIRLS

Previous topic of conversation: 'looks' <what do looks (of boys) mean to girls, and what do looks (of girls) mean to boys

F		…there are a lot of ugly people that have girlfriends
		which is beyond me
M		why is that beyond you?
F		it's . it's . it's not . ah forget it . erase that too
		<short pause before moderator launches a new question>

1 Mod		eh . but why . why should girls like . ok what what do girls//
2 B								//you can't really say
3		at the end erase that, erase that <following up on Fred's turn above>
4 T		actually, a girl, a girl in our class . last year she was like .
5		she was always a little bit crazy
6		she always wanted a lot of attention
7		and she didn't get it
8		she didn't get the attention she needed
9		and so this year .
10		she's had a lot of sex with boys
11		in order to ehm gain attention of others around //her
12 F						//and not just sex but everything
13		she's got earned the reputation//
14 Mod				//you guys are fifteen right?
15 F		yeah . she's earned the reputation of being . a slut
16		that's how everyone knows her

17 Mod        and would she . how does she feel?//

18 T						//she likes it
19 F		I think she likes it
20 T		she needs the attention
21		she likes the attention

1. I think she enjoys the attention so much that I think she is worthless . she's horrible

24 F + T        yeah

25 W		no I don't
26 M		is that really true? . is that really the case?
27 T		Wil doesn't know her this year but last year
28 W		yeah, I know her

29 Mod        but that she likes it . that girls like to//

30 F						//she . most girls are not like that
31		but for some reason
32		you know how they say
33		negative attention is better than no attention at all
34		she really likes the attention she's getting
35 T		yeah .. and also//
36 F			//now everyone knows who she is//
37 T							//once
38 F		oh yeah she is the slut who <inaudible>
39 T		who who .. yeah yeah yeah [falling intonation]
40		she wrote a letter to a kid
41		to another child in our class
42		and I read the letter
43		because . ok well she wanted everyone to read
44		and it said
45		she said she was pregnant

1. and she was deciding how to get rid of the child she was carrying

61 T + F         no - no

62 T		I would
63 F		I wouldn't mind doing it but//
64 T					//it's not important
65		my mom would like to
66		my mom would like to give me advice
67 F		our parents would like us to
68 T		my mom …

1. Modso, ok, are you guys when you heard about this first