Narrative Inquiry - Volume 25, Issue 1, 2015

The transition from being well and fully functioning to being suddenly disabled by an acquired brain injury (ABI) and having to start a recovery process has a huge impact on a person’s life and, presumably, identity. However, research is still sparse on the psychosocial consequences of ABI, and there is a lack of identity research based on interviews with clients, i.e. exploring how clients themselves construct their situations, and recovery processes following ABI. The present study aims to fill this gap by investigating identity (re‑)construction after ABI and possible changes throughout the recovery process. The data is part of a larger mixed-method longitudinal study and focuses on narrative identity constructions. This paper draws on interviews (semi-structured) with 42 Danish adults aged 18–66 years with moderate or severe ABI. The participants were interviewed twice. The first interview was conducted while they were hospitalized and the second one-year post injury in their own homes. This article describes the key patterns of identity construction in this cohort, and explores those patterns more explicitly through the use of a single case study. It investigates re-constructions of identity through self-narratives by appeal to methods of discourse analysis, drawing especially on the concept of positioning, and placing particular focus on changes and developmental processes in these self-narratives. The narrative re-constructions point to a developmental change of identity in the course of the different phases of the recovery process, including conflicting voices from society, service providers and other adults with ABI. Results will be discussed in the light of current identity research.

This paper proposes that literary narrative is the result of an unconscious computation in the brain, a computation that arises from the dynamical interaction of specific innate and representational lower-order neuronal circuits and mappings. It is also proposed that these specific circuits constitute the fundamental building blocks of literary narrative. The analysis further suggests that as literary narrative evolves in the brain, its development is influenced by an evolutionarily-biased broad class of attractors known as archetypes. In this context, a description of literary narrative is devised, and six phases leading to the production of literary narrative are then identified. The description presented here may have applications in the production of literary narrative by artificial systems.

The purpose of this study is to explore the link between autobiographical memories and personal narratives and to assess whether the emotions present in memories are maintained or transformed when memories are narrated. In a Memory Fluency Task a total of 72 Italian undergraduates (35 males and 37 females) were asked to recall memories from their last period of life (from adolescence to present), to select one of them and to choose the emotions connected to this memory from an eleven-item list. Then, they were requested to write this memory in detail and again to select the emotions connected to the narrative from the same list of emotions. The emotions were distinguished as simple positive, simple negative, simple neutral, and complex (positive and negative). The results showed, on the whole, that participants expressed more emotions and a greater number of complex emotions in narratives than in memories. The authors interpret these results using a Vygotskyan frame of reference and considering the narratives as a form of external speech that makes memories more explicit.

This article sets out presenting the methodological toolbox created for the study of very specific reality: the gathering of oral information in the study of armed conflicts. Taking as a valid reference the oral history technique, we explored new methodological processes that allowed us to reach the lives and stories of the people interviewed more deeply, with a closer approach to their lives, but at the same time respecting and ensuring maximum access and confidentiality. To do this, the oral history methodology was reviewed with the main contributions of feminist epistemology. Thereby, we created ex profeso new methodological processes adapted to study the role of women as violence perpetrators in armed conflicts. Our proposal expands up to 5 different phases with either technical or emotional functions. The validity of this new methodological toolbox has been tested through an extensive research in the armed conflict of the Basque Country (Spain) performing oral histories to 25 women and 10 men.

This article analyzes parent narratives in Basque and Spanish by means of a story aimed at boys and girls between ages of 3 and 8 in order to investigate the similarities and differences in the narrative input provided by parents, paying attention to structural and organizational features in terms of their narrative forms and functions. We used a quantitative methodology that recorded the frequencies of the different variables under study: narrative length, structure, cohesion (connectors and verb tense), and the types of interaction between adults and children in both languages. The results show differences in narrative input relative to the age of the child and the language used. With older children, parents used a less interactive style in both Basque and Spanish. Furthermore, there are differences in narrative structure as a function of the age of the child: with the 3–4 year olds, more clauses were used to explain the details of the action taking place outdoors. Finally, narratives in Basque made greater use of temporal connectors, while narratives in Spanish used more subordinating connectors.

From an interpretive, post-structuralist perspective, this paper analyzes the discursive constructions of fluid migrant identities through the lens of narrative practice. I describe the presentations of the Self /the Other which get inscribed in a series of truncated stories mobilized by three unsheltered Ghanaians who lived on a bench in a Catalan town. I explore their self-attributed /other-ascribed social categories and argue that these multifaceted identity acts are a lens into how heterogeneous migrant networks apprehend social exclusion in their host societies. I show that a narrative approach to the interactional processes of migrant identity construction may be revealing of these populations’ social structuration practices, which are ‘internally’ regulated in off-the-radar economies of meaning. I problematize hegemonic conceptions that present migrants as agency-less, decapitalized storied Selves, and suggest that stagnated populations may also be active tellers who act upon companions and rivals, when fighting for transnational survival in contexts of precariousness.

The product story, an emerging genre increasingly used in creative industries, introduces the product by means of storytelling. Unlike a typical personal narrative, which reports events, the product story, which usually includes one or more pictures showing the item for sale, uses the past as a resource to tell a story about a new product pertaining to human experience. This study uses the notion of multimodal figuration to characterize the co-presence of narrativity and visuality in product stories. The notion simultaneously refers to three key features of product stories which are co-produced by word and image: participants (i.e. product and human), the generation of plots, and emotionality. In the interactions between participants exists a tension between objectifying and animating forces. Two other phenomena result from the interconnections among the three senses or layers of multimodal figuration: crossing experience and creating empathy, in both of which metaphor plays a central role.

This study examines how storytelling is manipulated in culturally meaningful ways for persuasive purposes by describing patterns of storytelling in Chinese criminal courts and analyzing ways in which the court manipulated the form and content of storytelling in order to accomplish multiple persuasive goals — to convince defendants of their guilt, to create an image of justice, and to educate the public about legal and moral conduct.

In the United States today, Muslim women are portrayed as weak, submissive, one-dimensional, and occupying a place of contradiction. These master narratives of Muslim women as uncivilized or anti-American lead them to be misunderstood at best and victims of hate crimes at worst. In this environment, a space emerges to explore counterstories, or narratives that depict a group as desirable in the face of a detrimental dominant narrative. In order to study how Muslim women construct their identities in this environment, a thematic analysis of stories told by Muslim women in an online setting was conducted. Findings reveal four prominent constructions or responses to this narrative: (1) I am multidimensional, (2) I am strong, (3) I change the world, and (4) I am special. Implications for the study of counterstories and future directions for research are discussed.

The goal of this research is to understand how Native American storytellers challenge stereotypes and reclaim ‘authentic identities’ for themselves and their listeners with the stories that they tell. Employing qualitative methodology — thematic analysis, grounded theory, and narrative analysis — I examine one hundred and three stories featured on two affiliated websites that have recorded stories told by Native American elders, historians, storytellers, and song carriers. I find that the storytellers construct subversive narratives that challenge “the Native American” stereotypes, mythologies, and formula stories that circulate through the dominant culture. Temporal shifting, a new concept I develop in this paper, facilitates in the construction of what the storytellers believe to be an “authentic” identity. Temporal shifting, as I define it, is the past/present division in the double-consciousness of a marginalized person — it is a tool used to construct subversive stories. This research expands sociological understanding of Native Americans in general and Native American storytellers, in particular. I also introduce a new concept, temporal shifting, to the fields of critical race theory, cognitive sociology, and symbolic interactionism as an analytical device to use when looking at marginalized peoples’ narrative identities.

The purpose of this essay is to examine the relationships between “the oral” and “the written” in a particular application of narrative research (life rendering research). First, we examine a functional and valuing contrast between oral and written language within oral history methods. Second, we present a critical examination of the use of these linguistic predispositions as they impact life history narratives. Next, we examine a particularly close analogy between oral history and psychiatric patient write-up. Finally, the historical oral/written tension located in oral history practice is located within the frameworks of newer, media-based literacies. The tensions that these intentions create are particularly acute in power-based relationships, such as those between interviewers and informants. Therefore, the organization of the paper is a series of issues that combine to form a critical look at the use of informants’ words in the written narratives of the oral history as a form of discourse synthesis (Spivey, 1997).