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- Volume 24, Issue, 2014
Narrative Inquiry - Volume 24, Issue 1, 2014
Volume 24, Issue 1, 2014
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Agency in illness narratives: A pluralistic analysis
Author(s): Lora Arduserpp.: 1–27 (27)More LessIn this essay, I argue that structural approaches to narrative articulate identity and agency as internal constructs. As such, these analyses neglect the roles of institutional and social factors. A pluralistic analysis of these illness narratives, such as the one offered in this essay, can help narrative scholars better understand how these forces interact with the individual experiences of people living with illness in supporting and constraining agency.
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The write stuff: Relationships between narrative content and psychiatric illness
Author(s): Robin Freyberg, Cindy K. Chung, Zachary Freyberg, John Barnhill, Stephen Ferrando and James W. Pennebakerpp.: 28–39 (12)More LessClinicians often wonder if the single sentence from the Folstein Mini-Mental Status Exam (MMSE) offers meaningful information about the patient. We compared single sentences derived from the MMSE generated by 3 groups of participants — hospitalized medically-ill patients with psychiatric comorbidity, hospitalized medically-ill patients without psychiatric comorbidity, and non-hospitalized non-psychiatric participants. These sentences were analyzed for themes using manual thematic coding and a semi-automatic computerized method, the Meaning Extraction Method (MEM). We found that thematic content obtained from as little as a single sentence could differentiate between participant groups using both methods. Specifically, psychiatric patients used more power themes, focused on states other than the present, and were less interpersonally engaged than the other groups. Thematic content also indicated cognitive status through scores on the Clock Drawing Test (CDT) and MMSE. Our findings suggest that a single sentence can provide meaningful information about patients with medical and psychiatric comorbidity.
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The development of coherence and cohesion in monolingual and sequential bilingual children’s narratives: Same or different?
Author(s): Judy Kupersmitt, Rachel Yifat and Shoshana Blum-Kulkapp.: 40–76 (37)More LessStudies of monolingual narrative production have revealed interacting paths in the development of coherence and cohesion across languages but less is known about bilingual narratives, where a gap may exist between socio-cognitive and linguistic abilities. The present longitudinal study explores the relations between measures of coherence and cohesion in the picture-based oral narratives elicited from 23 sequential bilinguals at two times — 2nd and 4th years of exposure to Hebrew as L2 (ages 6 and 8, respectively), compared to those produced by age-matched Hebrew speaking monolinguals. Measures of coherence included reference to story components, and to four types of causal relations: psychological, motivational, enabling and physical. These analyses served as a basis to explore cohesion in terms of (1) inter-clausal connectivity, and (2) the linguistic encoding of the causal chain, which in this context demanded reference to a complex motion event. We found that reference to narrative components and causal relations improved with age in both L1 and L2, but were largely delayed among bilinguals at age 6, particularly regarding the most complex scenes. While coherence measures reached to a parallel level among the 8 year-old children, measures of cohesion showed a different path of development in L1 and L2. Thus, the constraints imposed by language use in organizing the discourse resulted in a poorer connectivity between the clauses, and in less accurate lexico-grammatical encoding of the events in the bilingual narratives. The study underscores the mutual attraction between local and global principles of narrative construction, which may become dissociated in a bilingual situation, and pinpoints to vulnerable domains of L2 discourse-embedded acquisition.
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Narative journalism in the contemporary newsroom: The rise of new paradigm in news format?
Author(s): Hoon Shimpp.: 77–95 (19)More LessThis study examines the journalistic discourse in American trade publications toward a storytelling format, competitive in contemporary daily papers, which has long been considered as not appropriate for objective news writing. Thomas Kuhn’s concept of ‘paradigm’ was employed in examining and analyzing narrative discourse in trade journals. The outcome of text-analysis revealed that assenters in narrative news writing outnumbered the dissenters; narrative upholders have vividly attempted to construct a friendly perspective toward a storytelling format by eulogizing the prose style, battering the old form of news production, and distancing the previous literary movement from contemporary narrative news writing. The author concludes that the change of journalistic perception toward the narrative style documents the hierarchical relationship between the occupational ideology and the market ideology within which the journalistic paradigm of news writing can be modified and replaced when the established one — the inverted pyramid news writing — fails to satisfy the concerns of the media industry.
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How are alternative stories created in a self-help group?: Applying positioning analysis to narrative practice
Author(s): Atsushi Kitamurapp.: 96–112 (17)More LessThe aim of this article is to reveal how alternative stories and identities are constructed through narrative practice in a self-help group. An analysis using the concept of positioning was conducted with a SHG for the parents facing their children’s delinquency. I use data that were collected in the framework of participant observation and interviews with group members. The results show that parents were describing themselves in two manners: in relation to social discourse and in relation to an emerging group narrative. The group narrative provides support for parents trying to break free from their negative position as imposed by the dominant social discourse. Another important piece of the construction of alternative stories is the positioning that differentiates the past self from the present self. Thereby, the parents acquire a position from which they can criticize the social discourse that was part of the foundation of the past self.
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Evaluative devices as a narrative tool for enacting relational complexity: A window into implicit meaning in adolescents’ narratives
Author(s): Svetlana Jovićpp.: 113–131 (19)More LessIn the present article, I explore how urban youth use narrating for self-presentation as they relate to diverse contexts and audiences. Diverse narrative genres employed in this study were used as a socio-cognitive tool for looking into enactments of relational complexity — a skill of adjusting one’s communications to audiences and contexts. Thirteen adolescents were asked to narrate about the most important aspects of their lives, using two different genres and addressing two different audiences. I explored youth’s systematically varied use of psychological state expressions, as they navigated through different genres and audiences. As adolescents narrate either about the negative experiences or for the imagined peer audience, their narrating involves more cognitive than affective expressions. This indicates that systematic changes take place in narrating as a socio-cognitive process when there is a need for more intense work around issues, either to figure out what is happening, or to try to present oneself in the best light to salient others.
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Narrative assessment: Differences between anxious and depressed patients
Author(s): Berta Vall and Lluís Botellapp.: 132–152 (21)More LessStudies on clients’ language processes in psychotherapy have focused on specific non-narrative aspects rather than on narrative processes. This study’s goal was to test the commonalities and differences between a group of narratives from 15 depressed patients and 14 anxious patients. Patients’ narratives were obtained through self-characterizations written by the client and, were analyzed by means of the Narrative Assessment Grid — a combination of narrative analysis dimensions. Results indicated that both groups could be distinguished by six of the 22 dimensions assessed: (a) Variety of characters, (b) Objectifying, (c) Intelligibility/Clarity, (d) Cognitive Subjectifying, (e) Metaphorizing; and (f) Intelligibility/Stability. Clinical implications of our results are discussed.
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“Happily ever after”: Are traditional scripts just for fairy tales?
Author(s): David Purnell and Jim Bowmanpp.: 175–180 (6)More LessThe domination of a happy narrative frame has gradually broadened to include different kinds of endings, but a positive resolution is still often expected. Do narratives need an optimistic ending? Do hopeful endings begin to loose their credibility? Should we buy into the Hollywood scripts presenting an ending that solves or completes the plot by the end of its telling? Endings point to a potential future, and culturally we have been conditioned to write this future optimistically. Not everything ends well, however. Sometimes, things just end. Narrative conclusions can be optimistic and have catharsis, but not end with a “happily ever after” (Purnell, 2013).
Volumes & issues
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Volume 34 (2024)
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Volume 33 (2023)
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Volume 32 (2022)
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Volume 31 (2021)
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Volume 30 (2020)
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Volume 29 (2019)
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Volume 28 (2018)
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Volume 27 (2017)
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Volume 26 (2016)
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Volume 25 (2015)
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Volume 24 (2014)
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Volume 23 (2013)
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Volume 22 (2012)
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Volume 21 (2011)
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Volume 20 (2010)
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Volume 19 (2009)
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Volume 18 (2008)
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Volume 17 (2007)
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Volume 16 (2006)
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Volume 15 (2005)
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Volume 14 (2004)
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Volume 13 (2003)
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Volume 12 (2002)
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Volume 11 (2001)
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Volume 10 (2000)
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Volume 9 (1999)
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Volume 8 (1998)
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