Narrative Inquiry - Volume 31, Issue 2, 2021

Abstract

Victim/survivors of domestic violence are asked to tell their stories many times, in different contexts, and for different audiences. These stories are contextualized for the new context and audience at the same time that they become texts – entextualization – in that context. This article argues that narrative is produced via the co-processes of entextualization and contextualization (Silverstein & Urban, 1996). The co-processes of entextualization/contextualization in domestic violence narratives about staying and leaving violent relationships produce stories that comport with the status quo, as it is envisioned in the stories of the victim/survivors. Using staying/leaving stories of domestic violence victim/survivors, I show that entextualizations/contextualizations are (1) socioculturally saturated processes and (2) rhetorical arguments. I argue that narratives entextualize/contextualize events of domestic violence in ways that involve and comply with the status quo. Ultimately, these processes create discursive resources that reinforce domestic violence.

Abstract

Museums offer rich material environments for studying narration as jointly accomplished by institutions and audiences. Following the narrative and participatory turns museums have taken, the research explores the narrative actions audiences’ texts perform vis-à-vis museums’ narrations. It examines audience participation in two history museums, as elicited by response vehicles – onsite media that serve to invite and capture audience written responses. The research argues that museum response vehicles offer narrative affordances and entitlements, which shape how audiences negotiate participation as publicly documented and displayed. Comparative findings indicate that participation is shaped by response vehicles’ spatio-material affordances, including how brief textual segments function as audience-based contributions in and to the historical narration. A range of audience-generated narrative actions, entitlements, and speech acts are discerned and discussed, which typically conform with, but sometimes ‘override’, museums’ affordances. These narrative actions shed light on the mechanics, politics and policies of public narration and agency.

Abstract

This study employs small story theory (Bamberg, 2006; Bamberg & Georgakopoulou, 2008; Georgakopoulou, 2006, 2015, 2017) and narrative positioning analysis (Bamberg & Georgakopoulou, 2008) to explore stories that are told by interpreters of Aboriginal languages and Aboriginal Liaison Officers (ALOs) when they discuss how they do their work and the challenges they face when interpreting for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander patients in hospital settings. Findings indicate that the interpreters and ALOs draw on stories to contribute their understanding of complexities of interpreting for Aboriginal patients and do so through the multiple, shifting positions they attribute to themselves as other social actors in the stories they narrate. These positions are reinforced in the ongoing interaction but are also located across the dataset, illustrating that capital-D discourses or master narratives are invoked to frame the role, skills and attributes of the professionals in this study.

Abstract

From a social constructionist perspective, this study examines three gay Indian immigrants’ coming-out narratives as the locus of the discursive construction of both one’s physical and social location within the changing context. It advocates reconceptualizing “coming out” as dynamic and situated in interaction. Also, it investigates the intersection and construction of identities by analyzing coming-out narratives in sociolinguistic interviews conducted in Washington, DC. Drawing on Bamberg’s three levels of positioning (1997), the analysis highlights how narrators bring about their identities as they contrast the social constructs in India, i.e., the absence of such concept, and in the US, e.g., the acceptance of homosexuality, by reenacting dialogue before and after migration. This study adds to positioning theory and contributes to the cross-cultural dimension of research on coming-out narratives. The qualitative analysis also provides a linguistic perspective that views narrating coming out as an interactive process for constructing intersected identities.

Abstract

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to qualitatively analyze metacommunication during the digital storytelling (DST) workshop process for patients undergoing hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT).

Methods: HCT survivors who had undergone transplant within the past 2 years were recruited at a cancer center in the Phoenix Metropolitan area. Participants (M age = 51.5 years) attended a 3-day DST workshop telling and creating digital stories around their HCT experiences. Using a constructivist grounded theory approach, line by line coding and content analysis were conducted with four research team members.

Results: Four themes emerged from the data: (1) communal connection; (2) expressing and processing emotions; (3) self-empowerment; and (4) multi-dimensional coping. Participants described telling and sharing their story with other HCT patients as therapeutic.

Conclusion: DST shows promise as a potential coping tool and offers multiple dimensions of the role of narrative as a coping technique, in community building, and in patient-centered contexts within HCT.

Abstract

A comprehensive theoretical review suggests that tellability can be used to understand life stories, how stories are constructed, the social context shaping storytelling, and how stories function as a mode of thought. However, the complex and multi-dimensional nature of tellability has been overlooked. This study analyzes one Chinese teacher’s storytelling of six entrepreneurs’ stories as an example, aiming to demonstrate that tellability is structurally embedded within an entire story. Interpreting the stories with reference to the classroom setting reveals that entrepreneurial narratives are tellable because they institutionalize culturally salient values and beliefs about entrepreneurship, they are pedagogically meaningful, and they provide an epistemological tool for listeners to constitute their future reality. This paper argues that an analysis on tellability, informed by multiple theories and recognizant of its structural, social, ontological and epistemological nature, is effective to understand teachers’ storytelling in classrooms and unpack the meanings of stories in more detail.

Abstract

This article examines characteristics of stories in self-improvement books and the values they promote. The analysis of 36 stories from four self-improvement books shows that they are used to illustrate advice. By focusing on grammatical features (e.g., personal pronoun you, interrogative clauses) in the story components (e.g., evaluation, coda), my study shows that these stories promote the idea that individuals, as the primary agent, are responsible for improving their lives (i.e., happier and more fulfilled lives). A study of the coda components also shows that human beings are viewed as having the ability and freedom to choose to improve their status quo. My study shows that stories in self-improvement books are a resource for promoting values.

Abstract

The present study aims to provide a conceptualization of how narratives function in TED talks. It uses Bamberg’s positioning theory as a theoretical framework to build a communicative model of TED Talk narratives. TED narratives are “small stories” that are told, indeed performed, in the presence of an audience and designed to accomplish particular rhetorical aims. The model specifically investigates (1) how genre features affect the design and rhetorical aims of TED talk narratives, (2) TED speaker’s narrative positioning and multi-modal narrative performance, (3) evidence of the audience’s engagement in the narrative and finally, (4) TED narratives as a scaffold for potential individual and social change. Using a multi-modal discourse analysis approach, the model is applied to the narratives used in Guy Winch’s TED Talk (Winch, 2015). The model provides an analytical tool for investigating the dynamic interaction and semiotic signaling involved in the communicative performance of TED Talk narratives.

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