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- Volume 9, Issue, 1999
Narrative Inquiry - Volume 9, Issue 2, 1999
Volume 9, Issue 2, 1999
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What Children Say When They Talk About the Past
Author(s): Elaine Reesepp.: 215–241 (27)More LessThe study of children's spontaneous talk about the past is critical to understanding narrative and autobiographical memory development. Mothers of 59 New Zealand children recorded their spontaneous talk about past events. In Study 1, mothers recorded children's verbal memories at 25 and 32 months. Study 2 consisted of one child's verbal memories from 14.5 to 19.5 months of age. The results from both studies revealed that children progressed from talking about absent objects and locations to mentioning more complex aspects of events. At first, children's verbal memories were largely cued by the environment, but children were capable of internally cued memories from a very young age. Children's verbal memory development was not completely dependent on their language skill. Children's spontaneous memories focused on much more mundane events than those adults chose to discuss with their young children. The shift in what children find interesting to encode and discuss, along with their skill in narrating events to others, may contribute to the beginning of autobiographical memory.
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Gender-Stereotyped Lessons About Emotion in Family Narratives
Author(s): Chris Chance and Barbara H. Fiesepp.: 243–255 (13)More LessThe present study investigated the prevalence of gender-stereotyped messages in family stories told to preschool age children. Based on previous research and theory it was expected that mothers would frame their stories with sadness and fathers would frame their stories with themes of anger. It was further expected that sons and daughters would be presented with stories that differed in emotional themes. One hundred and twenty families with preschool age children participated in the study. Mothers and fathers were asked to tell their child a story about when they were disappointed as a child. Two hundred and four stories were coded for themes of sadness, anger, mixed sadness and anger, and no emotional frame. Contrary to predictions, there were relatively few stories told with an anger frame. Mothers overall tended to tell disappointment stories with a frame of sadness. Fathers overall were more likely to use no emotional frame in their stories. Mothers were more likely to tell stories with sadness frames to their daughters than to sons. Two examples are provided that illustrate an instrumental focus of fathers' stories and the emotional content of mothers' stories. The process of creating meaningful stories may be an important avenue that parents use to impart gender-related values to their children.
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Telling It How It Was: A Comparative Analysis of Children's Evidential and Non-Evidential Narrative Accounts
Author(s): Michelle Aldridge and Joanne Woodpp.: 257–277 (21)More LessWhile a number of weaknesses have been identified in children's eyewitness, or evidential narrative accounts (e.g., Aldridge & Wood, 1998; Richardson, 1993; Walker & Warren, 1995), analyses of children's non-evidential narratives indicate that children as young as two years can be competent narrators (e.g., Fivush, Gray & Fromhoff, 1987). A variety of factors might contribute to the child's reported poorer performance in the evidential setting. For example, the interview topic (and associated consequences) is likely to be more stressful, the child is less likely to be familiar with the interview setting and the interviewer, and the child is less likely to be prompted for an answer in the evidential setting.This study examines young children's narrative performance in an evidential and in a non-evidential (experimental) setting to investigate which factors might contribute to differences in narrative performance. Findings suggest that, while children's narrative competence develops with age, situational factors largely account for the differences in performance in children's evidential and non-evidential narratives. However, we do suggest that interviewers could do more to facilitate, in a non-leading fashion, children's evidential narratives. More specifically, we propose that children should be offered a 'second chance' to tell their story before the interviewer moves on to specific questioning.
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Modality and Tense in Children's Autobiographical Accounts
Author(s): Jean Quigleypp.: 279–302 (24)More LessThis is a study of modal time in the autobiographical narratives of a group of five, eight and twelve year old children. Specifically, it is a description of the discourse functions associated with the English modal auxiliaries in conjunction with tense markings in the narratives. The auxiliaries {can, could, will, would, may, must, might, shall, should, ought) are a set of grammatical functors that express a range of related concepts such as ability, permission, possibility, desire, intention and obligation. The narratives are discussed based on a form of variation analysis focusing on both the grammatical and the discursive shape of the stories. It is part of a wider exploration of the role played by language and grammar in the construction of self and identity.{Child language, Narrative development, Tense and modality, Functional linguistics, Grammatical analysis)
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Nostalgic Narratives: An Exploration of Black Nostalgia For the 1950s
Author(s): Janelle L. Wilsonpp.: 303–325 (23)More LessThis study is an exploration into the sociology of nostalgia. Interviews with African-Americans who grew up in the 1950s demonstrate the juxtaposition of painful recollections of segregation with pleasant nostalgia for family, community, and church during that decade. The data are interpreted by drawing upon the work of Fred Davis. It is suggested that nostalgia facilitates the continuity of identity. Other functions of nostalgia are suggested as well. It is significant to note that the nostalgia expressed by informants is for the collective—e.g., the strength of family relations, church membership, and neighborhood ties. This study addresses the nature and experience of nostalgia and discusses the role of nostalgia in the process of constructing and maintaining identity.
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A Sense of the Sacred: Altering or Enhancing the Self-Portrait in Older Age?
Author(s): Helen K. Blackpp.: 327–345 (19)More LessFifty white and 12 African-American elderly, middle class women were interviewed regarding their life history, self-concept and financial circumstances. The middle class women were a contrast group to women living in poverty. The latter was the focus group for the research project, "Chronic Poverty and the Self in Later Life." Using two case studies (1 from each middle class group), the women's spirituality was explored through their narratives. The study shows that aspiration to middle class norms, such as financial security and acquiring the accouterments of success, holds a complex relationship to a spiritual worldview. Spirituality meshed with the family, work and volunteer oriented lives of the women. Themes of gender were complexly interwoven into women's spirituality. Material acquisitions and financial success remained important to the women interviewed. Age did not lessen a need for, or enjoyment of "things" in the women's lives. (Ethnographic narration, Older women's identity, "Middle-class" spirituality)
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Narratives and Lives: Women's Health Politics and the Diagnosis of Cancer For Des Daughters
Author(s): Susan E. Bellpp.: 347–389 (43)More LessThis paper considers how social structure and available cultural discourses are connected to and reflected in narratives by two DES cancer daughters—women who have had vaginal cancer as a result of their prenatal exposure to DES, a drug prescribed to their mothers to prevent miscarriage. In a narrative analysis of in-depth interviews, it shows how the construction of scientific knowledge about DES, and social/political knowledge produced by women's health activists, shaped relationships between DES daughters and their doctors when they were diagnosed with cancer. It locates terrains of power and resistance in their lives, placing them in historically and culturally specific medical and feminist contexts, in order to highlight the presence and play of power in their relationships with and responses to the news of cancer given to them by their doctors. It also explores the joint production of narratives by interviewer and subject, as well as the influence of dominant and emerging discourses on the researcher's and subject's sense making strategies and knowledge production.
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The Psychology of Time-Travel: Ambivalent Identity in Stories of Cross-Cultural Contact
Author(s): Kevin McKenziepp.: 391–426 (36)More LessThis paper explores how the temporal disjunction established in the production of narrative affords a way of managing the tension between competing demands for accountability in settings where the issue of cultural difference features as a participant concern. Specifically, in speculating upon the nature of cultural variation and cross-cultural contact, interview participants employ narrative accounts to manage the tension between the demand to formulate their concerns in an impartial and unprejudiced fashion on the one hand while displaying an appreciation of and sensitivity to cultural difference on the other. Such interactional work is considered for its theoretical significance to recent developments in discursive psychology. The deployment of narrative is therefore examined for how it relates to the situated production of social scientific investigation itself as a form of social activity in which speakers manage the reflexive implications of their own participation in an undertaking where knowledge of cultural difference is worked up as the outcome of the situated activity in which they are engaged.{Narrative, Discursive Psychology, Culture, Identity, Reflexivity)
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Narrative Identity: Preschoolers' Self-Construction Through Narrative in Same-Sex Friendship Group Dramatic Play
Author(s): Amy Kyratzispp.: 427–455 (29)More LessRecently, researchers have been interested in narrative as a conversational point-making activity. Some of the features of narrative (e.g., its "objectivity", Benveniste, 1971) render it ideally suited for self-exploration and positioning of the self with respect to societal institutions (Polanyi, 1989), especially in the context of conversations within friendship groups (Coates, 1996). While past research has often focused on self-constructing and political uses of narratives of personal experience, the present study examines such uses with respect to narratives produced during preschoolers' dramatic play in friendship groups. An ethnographic-sociolinguistic study that followed friendship groups in two preschool classrooms of a California university children's center was conducted. Children were videotaped in their two most representative friendship groups each academic quarter. Narrative was coded when children used explicit proposals of irrealis in one of three forms: the marked subjunctive (past tense irrealis marking in English, e.g., "they were hiding"); the paraphrastic subjunctive (unmarked irrealis proposals such as "and I'm shy"); and pretend directives such as "pretend" ("pretend we're Shy Wizards"). Also, instances of character speech were counted as narrative. Children used con-trastive forms (subjunctive, coherence markers vs. absence of subjunctive; pitch variation) to mark different phases within narrative. Collaborative self-construction was seen in the linguistic forms they used (pretend statements; tag questions; "and-elaborations") and in the identities the children constructed for their protagonists. Girls' protagonists suggested they valued qualities of lovingness, graciousness, and attractiveness. The protagonists the boys constructed suggested they valued physical power. Girls had a greater reliance on story for self-construction than boys did. It is notable that the dramatic play narratives produced during children's play in friendship groups serve some of the same functions in positioning participants with respect to one another and exploring possible selves collaboratively with one another that personal experience narratives serve in adult intimate social groups.
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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