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- Volume 21, Issue, 2011
Narrative Inquiry - Volume 21, Issue 1, 2011
Volume 21, Issue 1, 2011
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Elaboration and regulation of lived emotion in preschoolers’ autobiographical narratives: The role of maternal conversational cooperation
Author(s): Nicolas Favezpp.: 1–23 (23)More LessThis research assesses the influence of maternal conversational cooperation upon preschoolers’ narratives of a lived event. Mothers and children (N = 46) were seen in a laboratory for the Geneva Emotion-Eliciting Scenario (GEES). Mothers were directed to ask the child to tell the story of what she experienced, both immediately after the event (T1) and two weeks later (T2). Narratives were micro-analyzed for illocutionary acts (mothers) and content (children). Results show different maternal styles, ranging from emotional facilitation to active omission and disengagement. Children of mothers with an emotional facilitation style (i) produce longer narratives than the other children, (ii) mention the scenario’s high point more often, and (iii) describe the chronology of the events with greater accuracy. Empathetic formulation and insistence are the two main factors that explain these effects.
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‘It was Emma’s army who bullied that girl’: A narrative perspective on bullying and identity making in three girls’ friendship groups
Author(s): Marie Karlsson and Ann-Carita Evaldssonpp.: 24–43 (20)More LessIn the present article, we explore identity making in narrative interaction in preadolescent girls’ friendship groups. The data draw on focus group discussions with three groups of preadolescent girls who in the presence of a moderator narrate different versions of an incident that was recognized as bullying by the authorities at their school. The constructions of multiple narrative versions of ‘what happened’ display the girls’ ongoing negotiation of potentially contradictive and multiple constructions of what it is (or should be) to be a girl, bully, victim, friend, etc. In so doing, the girls agentively position themselves vis-à-vis a normative discourse on bullying, based on predefined characterizations of individuals as either bullies or victims, that is being tested and put up for negotiation within and through narrative interaction.
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Standardized relational pairs in interviews with former slaves: Construction, negotiation and alignment
Author(s): Dorien Van De Mieroop and Jonathan Cliftonpp.: 44–67 (24)More LessWe investigate the use of standardized relational pairs (SRPs) and the way narrators align with these in two interviews with former slaves which were conducted in the 1940s. In particular, we look at stories in which slaves are compared to animals, thus not only invoking the SRP master/slave, but also the SRP owner/property. On the one hand, the interviewees negotiate their alignment with the ‘slave-property’-part of the SRP depending on the type of story that is told, which is based on the narrator’s personal involvement. On the other hand, the slave owners remain noticeably absent throughout these stories and by rendering this part of the SRP almost invisible, the development of another SRP, namely that of perpetrator/victim, is avoided. As such, through these SRPs, the hegemonic order of the slave system is (re)constructed in these stories, while the interviewees’ shifting alignment with them shows an orientation to personal face concerns.
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“If only” and “despite all”: Narrative configuration among young people living in residential care
Author(s): Anne Jansen and Hanne Haavindpp.: 68–87 (20)More LessFirst-person narratives are meaning-making devices that can be used as powerful tools to direct developmental changes. For young people who have endured difficulties in their lives, the selection and configuration of such experiences may contribute in significant ways to how they come to understand themselves and what possibilities they hold. Repeated interviews with young people living in residential homes provided by Child Protection Services have demonstrated how the young people give accounts of their past and present as well as their future prospects. Some tell stories that speak of how things have turned out well despite everything that has troubled them. The hindrances to their development are turned around and adversity is spoken of as something from which they have benefitted. Others dwell on how things might have been better if only previous conditions had been otherwise. They get “stuck” because the things that could have made a difference belong to the past. The exploration of narrative configurations in the format of ”Despite all” and ”If only” may illuminate how personal accounts of events have significance in terms of subjectivation and further development. The configuration of self-narratives offers alternative understanding of how out- of-home placement sometimes fails as a measure to support development and how some young people manage despite adversity.
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Accounting for discovery: Genetic scientists’ narratives
Author(s): Cathy Sampson and Paul Atkinsonpp.: 88–108 (21)More LessThe paper presents an analysis of genetic scientists’ accounts of a 1992 scientific breakthrough. Members of the research team were interviewed in the course of a wider study of the history of the discovery and its implications for clinical practice. The isolation of the genetic basis for myotonic dystrophy was an important milestone in the development of contemporary genetic medicine and a significant event in the lives and careers of the scientists involved. Despite the significance of some key publications on scientists’ discovery accounts, the paper argues that there has been a neglect of scientists’ narratives and accounting practices, despite the increased visibility of narrative analysis in the social sciences, the increasing sophistication of qualitative research methods, and the expansion of qualitative research on scientific work and practice. The paper outlines a number of themes in the scientists’ autobiographical work and their methods in recounting the discovery.
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‘Rebuilding after the storm’: Stories of young motherhood
Author(s): Jan Warnes and Anna Daichespp.: 109–129 (21)More LessThis research aimed to listen, and make sense of, stories of young motherhood from the perspectives of two cohorts: ‘mothers of young mothers’ and ‘young mothers’, and to explore how shared stories of motherhood were constructed in particular social, interpersonal and cultural contexts. A narrative approach was taken to the interviews and analysis. Twelve women were invited to ‘tell their story’ about becoming and being a mother and a mother of a young mother. There were a number of shared plots as well as diversities across and within cohorts, with three acts resembling a series of progressive and regressive phases: (1) derailment; (2) a bumpy, terrifying and fun ride, full of surprises; (3) coming to terms with reality: better equipped for the future. Located within personal stories were key cultural narratives which demonstrated how mothers’ individual experiences were informed by societal expectations. The contribution of these narratives to existing theoretical literature; wider clinical implications; the political context; and future research are discussed. The process of conducting this research has clearly illustrated the power, diversity, and authenticity of listening to mothers’ stories at different stages of their mothering journey.
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Chronotopes of madness and recovery: A challenge to narrative linearity
Author(s): Alison Tornpp.: 130–150 (21)More LessNarrative methods have been extensively used to study the subjective experience of physical illness with only a handful of studies looking at narratives of madness. However, much of the research on both physical and mental illness has focused on isolating specific narrative structures and thematic categorisation. As traditional temporally linear forms of narrative are often not available to those experiencing psychological distress, there is the risk that such individuals become narratively dispossessed (Baldwin, 2005). This paper challenges the usefulness of a traditionally linear narrative approach in first-person accounts of madness, by presenting an analysis of the narrative of Mary Barnes, a resident in R.D. Laing’s Kingsley Hall in the late 1960s. In order to go beyond the confines of linear narrative research and the textual confines of discourse analysis, Bakhtin’s concept of the chronotope is used to examine the different ways in which time and space are represented in the narrative, revealing not only the temporal complexities of the narrative structure, but also, through Bakhtin’s concept of unfinalizability, the meaning of the embodied phenomenological dimension of lived experience. I shall argue that by engaging with more ancient chronotopes in the throes of madness and rejecting modernist, linear conceptions of timespace, Barnes loses her finalised identity, becoming other, and, as such, is able to construct meaning out of chaos and distress, which critically impacts on her experience of recovery. Using Bakhtinian concepts as analytic tools has implications for the way researchers engage with, and construct meaning from, narratives of both physical and psychological trauma, which in turn highlights the complex, multi-dimensional nature of recovery.
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Constructing and pre-constructing coherent accounts of the social world
Author(s): Elena T. Levypp.: 151–174 (24)More LessThis is a follow-up to an earlier article (Levy, 2008) on the microgenesis of narrative pre-construction (Labov, 2006) in elicited third-person retellings. As in the earlier study the focus is on the formation of anticipatory goal statements, summaries of characters’ motivations for their actions, feelings and beliefs. In the present study I examine how narrators construct inferences about characters’ mental states, comparing onto- and mesodevelopment in seven- and twelve-year olds’ repeated retellings of stories; especially the use of their own earlier speech to link descriptions of non-observable mental events to descriptions of observed activities. The data suggest the development of two discourse processes across both spans of time, one an expansion of discourse and the other a shrinking of it. The findings support the proposal that, in microgenesis, the ability to interpret events in advance of speaking results from the automatization of discourse activities learned during the long course of ontogenetic development (Werner and Kaplan, 1963; McNeill, 2005). This article presents an approach to studying the pre-construction of generalized interpretations of events, and in this sense to studying how discourse can serve a constitutive function.
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“The problem is…”: Narratives as resources in criminal case work
Author(s): Kati Hannken-Illjespp.: 175–188 (14)More LessThis paper relates to recent discussions in narrative research focusing on the actual everyday practices of participants when telling and taking up stories. The field of practice under consideration is that of criminal case work. First, I shall introduce very briefly the status of narrating in criminal case work. Second, I will discuss the double meaning of positioning and positionality used in this paper. After introducing the data and the broader methodological context of the underlying fieldwork, I will show how in lawyer–client meetings narratives are called upon and cited in order to achieve a coherent strategy understandable to both lawyer and client. The purpose of the paper is more a theoretical-conceptual than an empirical one. I want to show that in criminal case work narrative is on the one hand a central means to establish plausibility while on the other hand most of the time told in fragments.
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)
Most Read This Month
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Autobiographical Time
Author(s): Jens Brockmeier
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