Narrative Inquiry - Volume 26, Issue 1, 2016

The question of use of second language speakers’ personal narratives-in-interview as data has been widely debated in the applied linguistics field. I subscribe to scholars before me who argue for an analysis beyond content but one that also takes into consideration context and form. Bamberg’s positioning theory (1997; 2004) guides this analysis as I examine the storied world, the storytelling world, and the existing discourses in the personal narratives-in-interview by a woman from the island of Chuuk residing in Hawai‘i. I discuss the linguistic, rhetorical, and interactional properties of her narratives, how she positions herself in relation to ideologies of language and identity that have value in her spaces, and juxtapose them against sociolinguistic and socio-historic contexts in which they were produced. I argue that by looking at the interdependence between all positioning levels (i.e., context, content, and form), it is possible to understand how the narrator positions herself with regards to societal discourses on language and identity both in the micro and macro contexts of the interview space and of Hawai‘i.

With a focus on enacted narratives, this ethnographic study addresses how people with mental illness communicate returning home after a treatment stay at a psychiatric centre. Data were analysed based on Ricoeur’s theory of narrative and action. Our analysis consisted of three analytic layers: the significant issue of discharge, identifying three stories of how being on the way home is enacted, and a further interpretation and discussion. The narrative analysis shows how significant issues of returning home are enacted among persons in everyday activities at one centre, and how an inherent ambiguity raised some challenges within the field of mental health. This study shows how conducting everyday activities enable people use the available narrative resources to negotiate the self; hence they reflect and create thoughts about the return home that are shared among persons at the centre.

During the Great Recession, discourses of what constituted prosperity flooded the global landscape. The concept of prosperity became a prominent master narrative that dictated the ways families operated and made decisions. The goal of this study was to examine how 82 married couples experiencing economic uncertainty in California (re)negotiated their family narratives of wealth and prosperity in the wake of the Great Recession. The findings revealed that few, if any, couples were able to communicatively re-define prosperity in a way that wholly resisted or rejected the master narrative of material wealth. The narratives demonstrated how this master narrative held many of these families captive by restricting their ability to reconstitute their understanding of prosperity in productive ways even when the taken-for-granted meaning of prosperity-as-wealth was challenged during the Great Recession. The families who successfully re-defined prosperity depended on other dominant discourses such as health, faith, family quality and relationships to refuse or repudiate the master narrative of wealth as prosperity. The findings support Lindemann-Nelson’s (2001) argument that successfully overcoming a master narrative often requires a patchwork of resistance strategies that permeate daily discourse, before they begin to chip away at the larger dominant discourse.

Over the last few decades, increasing interest in oral narratives as a point of entry into understanding self-presentation and construction of personal and social identities has led to several studies which adopt a contextualized approach to analyses of everyday conversational narratives. In this study, adopting a similar contextualized approach but focusing on a less spontaneous and more institutionalized type of oral storytelling, I examine the narrative told as an introduction to a professional storyteller before her storytelling performance, as well as the oral tale inscribed with institutional messages told during her storytelling performance. I discuss how the construction of storyteller’s identities in the narrative of introduction preceding the telling of an oral tale was an important strategy that enhanced the communicative effectiveness of the storytelling performance in disseminating the institutional messages. The study extends our understanding of the ways in which various institutions in contemporary society have been using storytelling performances by professional storytellers as a communicative, educative and meaning-making tool.

Drawing on narrative theories of personality this study proposed a model of narrative integration to explain how traumatic experiences are incorporated within the self-construct. A qualitative design was employed, using semi-structured interviews and thematic analysis of interview data. The sample included former asylum-seekers now living in Australia after spending two years or more in mandatory detention centers. Ten males aged between 19 and 51 recalled their experiences of mandatory detention within the context of their lives. Findings supported the use of the proposed model of narrative integration for understanding trauma associated with mandatory detention. Thematic analysis revealed disturbances to people’s narratives as a result of detention, with attempts to adapt to narrative disturbance adhering to constructs outlined in the model. Three groups representing different levels of narrative integration were identified using the model, including: robust integration, limited integration, and fragmentation. This study extended the narrative approach by offering a conceptual framework for assessing narrative integration following a traumatic event. Findings suggest scope for further research applying the model of narrative integration to other trauma populations, and exploring the utility of the model in a therapeutic context.

Although past research has explored the experience of bereaved fathers, few attempts have been made to situate this experience within a pre-existing theoretical framework. This article demonstrates how the narrative moral framework of the philosopher Paul Ricœur, known as his “Petite éthique” can help illuminate some of the features within this experience that contribute to the high rates of mortality and morbidity among these men. To demonstrate its utility, this framework is explored through a secondary analysis of data collected in an earlier phenomenological study that explored the moral experience of bereaved fathers. By clarifying some of the nuance and complexity of the experience of bereaved fathers, Ricœur’s “Petite éthique” framework has implications for health-care professionals, bereaved families, and bereaved fathers themselves.

The ability to tell one’s own, culturally valid life story emerges in adolescence — the process that has been metaphorically termed “getting a life”. Between early adolescence and the verge of adulthood, autobiographical stories gain broader temporal perspectives and show greater complexity. But do adolescents use the same narrative story structure when talking about their close ones, such as their parents? We analysed 348 texts written by adolescents and early adults concerning their parents. We demonstrated that, with age, communication changes from a descriptive, present tense format to complex life stories. We used specific indicators of narrative form: text structure, intentionality, temporal perspective, and point of view. Results indicate that early adults are more likely than are younger individuals to use narrative structure and content in their communication. We conclude that, by the end of adolescence, parents are increasingly given their own life stories in the voices of their children.

This article presents a conversation analytic examination of a telephone call in which a teenage girl updates her friend about developments in a relationship. The telling is in three phases, from initial reluctance, through first kiss to first sexual contact. Drawing on the notion of lower and upper bounded tellability, I analyse the talk for what is constructed as tellable and as taboo. Eminently tellable, the kiss is a directly named activity, details are sought, and it is assessed in a delighted way. In contrast, the sexual activity is not named and instead is referred to as ‘stuff’. The details of ‘stuff’ are not pursued, and the activity is assessed with (playful) disapproval. The telling speaks to normative gendered sexual expectations for teenage girls in the UK. In talking about personal experience of sexual conduct but without talking in any detail, these speakers position themselves as morally respectable.