Om Efterkonstruktioner – Drömmar, Anekdoter och Hemligheter

Sammanfattning: This thesis seeks a sociological explanation of how and why thirteen interviewees told and constructed the telling of their dreams, anecdotes and secrets. Using Erving Coffman’s theories about impression management, this thesis was able to show how the interviewees prepared their telling of dreams, anecdotes and secrets via post hoc circumstances. I.e. to make their telling more socially appropriate – so the stories could be told to other people – the interviewees said that they actively selected and changed their stories after they occurred. The interviewees often motivated this selective telling due to egoistic or altruistic reasons, for example; they changed their telling of dreams, anecdotes and secrets because they wanted to be more funny or more interesting to others, or they wanted to tell funnier stories to others in order to make them happy or satisfied. Analysis also showed that the interviewees used two main strategies to adapt, change and select their telling; excess and censoring. I.e. the interviewees exaggerated sequences of their telling to make the stories more interesting, etc., or they removed or reduced sequences of their telling in order to make the stories more (less embarrassing) socially adequate. I call this process the post hoc construction of the telling of dreams, anecdotes and secrets.