ABSTRACT
This chapter explores similarities and differences between generations in terms of both the specific connotations readers drew from their underlined words in the basic lexicon, and the encyclopaedias respondents used to situate the excerpts into the collective memory. Stories are co-produced in the interview in the form of situated talk, recorded in a manner the narrator allows, carefully transcribed, edited and published eventually in their entirety or in selected chunks. The chapter explores the reader's adjustment to a story, how the reader interprets a story in order to meet their or someone else's expectation. Drawing on the findings the author suggests three arguments for it. First, the reader construed a narrator of the story. Second, readers interpretively actualised those attributes of the story, which were relevant to their knowledge or experience of the past. Third, one and the same excerpt made possible several interpretations of its putative narrator and what the story was about.
