Framing: Topic, Time, and Place

While Lanning’s narrative provides a clear premise by explicitly referencing the experience he will recount, Johnston and Springer use shorter and more casual language to introduce their topics, requiring the audience to work harder to build an interpretive framework with which to understand their stories. Their introductory frames still indicate the beginning of a narrative, distinct from casual conversation, but these narrators do not tell the audience specifically that they will describe how they first used computers. Lanning’s introduction suggests that what he considers important is the novelty of the computer use he describes: these are his first experiences with technology, which have shaped his later interactions with computers (discussed in “Performance” section). In Johnston’s and Springer’s narratives, the premise of the opening frame is less clear, and the viewer has to glean the basis for selecting these specific memories from the body of narrative itself. However, unlike Lanning’s narrative—in which he tells the audience what’s coming and what to watch for—the undisclosed purpose of Johnston’s and Springer’s narratives serves in some ways to highlight the organizing principle of their stories. The fact that viewers have to identify the premise themselves draws them into the construction of the narrative itself, and may even allow them to participate in defining the focus and meaning of Johnston's and Springer's stories.