Rethinking coherence through contradiction

Abstract

This article examines how narrative coherence is achieved in conversational storytelling when speakers confront morally and emotionally ambivalent experiences. Using a naturally occurring conversation in which a narrator reflects on losing romantic feelings for a close friend, the analysis explores how she negotiates critique and care while justifying that loss. Drawing on Duranti’s (2006) notion of existential coherence and Ochs and Capps’s (2001) tension between narrative coherence and authenticity of experience, I argue that contradiction is not a threat to narrative integrity but a generative resource within it. Specifically, I identify three narrative strategies through which the narrator pursues self-justification: ( 1 ) casting past action as warranted, ( 2 ) utilizing but to negotiate contradictory stances, and ( 3 ) evaluating the self against others. I introduce the concept of “coherence through contradiction” to capture how competing evaluative stances are interactionally patterned such that moral ambivalence becomes a stable and intelligible feature of narrative self-presentation.