Narrative Inquiry - Volume 25, Issue 2, 2015

This article analyses the narrative disruption processes and quality of life of adolescent immigrants in Spain. Furthermore, it also provides a new methodological approach to assess meta-subjective and narrative quality of life. Participants were 30 adolescents (15 immigrant and 15 autochthons) selected form a sample of 884 adolescents (from which 204 were immigrants). Data regarding quality of life was collected applying the Friendship Quality Scale and the Vancouver Index of Acculturation to all the participants (n = 884). According to the punctuation of the questionnaires a subsample was chosen, the Biographical Grid was applied to 30 participants; the immigrants group was also asked to write a text. Results indicate that both perceived quality of life and self-esteem of immigrant’s group are lower than the autochthons’ while narrative disruption is higher. A deeply explanation about some of the causes of these results is provided by the narratives’ analysis.

Autobiographical narrative is “a selective reconstruction of the ruminative past” and an account that serves to explain, for the self and others, how the person came to be whom s/he is at present (McAdams, 2011) and thus can provide a rich source of data for sociolinguistic analysis and a speculation in the studies of identity construction processes and narrative combined. The present paper aims to investigate how narrators — through the subtle exploitation of tense patterns manage to reflect an integrated vision of their identity and evaluate these identity construction processes. To do this, I will a) develop a model of identity construction and evaluation processes in autobiographical narrative that is based upon the writings of McAdams (1985 & 2011) and Luyckx et al. (2011)’s identity model; b) closely examine how narrators subtly use tense patterns to combine the acts of narrative with moments of reflection and finally, c) relate these linguistic features of autobiographical narrative to the process of identity construction and evaluation. For this purpose, I use as data two speeches by two females each representing a different socio-cultural background: an ex-female slave from pre-civil war America and a Lebanese author in which both reflect upon their ruminative past and how they became who they are at present. The model and the analysis give empirical evidence that a close investigation of tense patterns in autobiographical narratives is an effective analytical and explanatory tool that shows how narrators reflect their evolving self, display, and evaluate identity on its individual, relational and collective levels and make a stance on social constructs such as race and gender.

This study examined the issue of Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) from the perspective of young adults. The focus was on how participants actively imparted meaning to themselves and others, and how they constructed and performed their identities through the situated interaction of the research interview. Students at the University of Cape Town (ages 18–25), were invited to participate in unstructured individual interviews and/or focus groups about IPV and intimate relationships. A total of 24 young adults volunteered to participate. The results revealed that young people are knowledgeable and concerned about IPV. Participants underscored the importance, intensity and timing of intimate relationships in their lives- and signaled its significance and consequence for their current identity projects. Female participants had specific investments in how their talk achieved selfpresentation goals: they used their narratives as a resource to account for their experiences, negotiate and present their preferred identities, and manage their reputations.

Narrative researchers are faced with the challenges of ethically co-constructing human data and writing meaningful, readable research texts, which protect participants’ anonymity. This article adds to the conversation of qualitative, and especially narrative, inquiry by presenting one creative approach to these challenges. It proposes that using extended literary metaphor and known literary characters, as analytical and structural tools, develops allegoric layers of meaning while preserving participant anonymity. Situating narrative research in the realm of imaginative story may help readers and researchers, like Alice in her Wonderland adventures, return from their journey through the research storyworld portal with new insights, and heightened understandings, of those phenomena being revealed and illuminated through narrative.

Life-stories are usually seen as showing considerable coherence even where they include turning points. More recent work has in contrast noted that “living” or “small narratives” do not follow this rule but contrastingly enable the pondering of unresolved life-events helping to develop understanding. This potential is particularly valuable in contexts of fundamental regime-change where changes of the value-system, such as after transition from state socialism to democracy, pose considerable challenges to narrative coherence. The article suggests reconsidering the question of coherence in life-stories and draws on two examples of individuals who experienced life in East Germany and German unification to argue that struggles for coherence in the life-story can be indicative of the lack of wider shared frameworks for the understandings of national events and historical problems.

Narrative researchers need to carefully consider if and how they represent the words and worlds of people/s who do not yet have the power to represent themselves. This paper explores the dialectic of speaking for or of Others, and posits that making manifest the co-constructed nature of narrative research to both research participants and research audiences can address some of the ideological, political, and ethical considerations involved in re-presenting the narratives of Other/ed people. In particular, it identifies that artistic forms of communication enable the researcher to speak with Other/ed research participants by making explicit the dialogic nature of narrative re-presentation, and can fully engage audiences in the content of narrative research so that the stories of Other/ed people get heard. Therefore, it’s posited that the form of academic communication is central to the debate about whether/how we might re-present Other/ed stories.

This qualitative study explored the long-term significance of aliya (Jewish immigration) to Israel for 32 immigrants/refugees who settled along the Israeli-Gaza border. The participants shared their life stories and discussed life in this war-torn region. We found that the interviewees presented three major meanings of aliya: (1) Zionist ideology, sustained throughout life; (2) the need for finding a safe haven, and seeing their region as such a place in spite of the rocket attacks; and (3) immigration as a forced choice, connected to feelings of discontent with how their lives evolved. We conclude that by better understanding the long-term psycho-social meaning of immigration for Israelis, we can also better understand why and how they continue to live in an area marked by ongoing political conflict, and use this knowledge to inform individual and community resilience and socio-political policy.

What happens in narrative-biographical interviews? The present article answers this question by drawing on biographical (big story) and practice-based (small story) approaches. It starts from a practice theoretical reading of Harrison C. White’s identity theory and conceptualizes narrative-biographical interviews as arenas of storytelling practices that engage in identities of different forms and levels of positioning. Interviewees devise small identities, embed them in contexts and nest those identities-in-context with one another in the course of interactions with the interviewer. Meanwhile, the approach reflects autobiographic big storytelling as highly scripted and contextualized endeavors. It moves beyond the big story script by suggesting “style” as target concept for autobiographical analysis. This conceptual shift goes hand in hand with a move away from single-sited interviewing to multi-sited narrative research. The argument is exemplified using rich data on a nascent self-employed artist.

Engaging in collaborative inquiry creates a shared authorship in storytelling, but does not ensure that the final report will reflect the plurality of voices that contributed to the narrative. This paper describes how involving respondents in the research design, data analysis, and dissemination of research findings enables researchers to ensure equal representation of perspectives of individuals involved in health research.

Ted Sarbin was born on May 8, 1911 in Cleveland, Ohio. He died on August 31, 2005, in Carmel, California. He was born into a poor Jewish family from eastern Europe, and died at his home — beloved by his friends and family, and acclaimed by his professional colleagues as a psychologist of distinction. This article traces the course of his life — with special attention to the formative influences in his education as a psychologist. As a psychologist, he became a significant critical voice — arguing for a psychology that would embrace narrative as a principle of understanding human life, and contextualism, as opposed to mechanism, as a world view.