Narrative Inquiry - Online First

The digitalization of oral history (OH) has resulted in the availability of multiple interviews conducted with the same narrator under different circumstances. To explore the comparability of such materials, we analyze interviews with a Holocaust survivor from the Fortunoff Video Archive (1979) and the Visual History Archive (1997), focusing on instances in which she tells the “same” episode. We demonstrate that life-story segments before and after the episode provide clues for sense-making and reflexively constitute the narrative environment. The specific interactional features of OH as a situated practice contribute to the story’s recognizability and discursive alteration. Similarities and differences are detectable due to the coherence established by the social setting of OH, including its availability in a digital archive, which guarantees comparability and incorporates a broader chronology. The main contribution of our paper is methodological, as it outlines an apparatus for the comparative analysis of OH across multiple databases.

This study explores the discourse expressivity of Chinese JFL (Japanese as a foreign language) learners’ Japanese narratives in terms of the variety and use of evaluative strategies, and analyzes how the evaluation system in their first language (L1) may be evident in their second language (L2) performance. For this reason, using the wordless picture book Frog, where are you?, we examined the oral narratives produced by adult Japanese native speakers, adult Chinese native speakers, and Chinese JFL learners. The findings suggest that the absence of “utterance attitudes” in the Chinese-language narratives is evident in the Japanese-language narratives of the Chinese JFL learners; thus, the evaluation of JFL stories is somewhat more direct, and the stories are easier to understand than those of adult JNS. However, the evaluations of the Chinese JFL learners’ narratives also diverged from those of the adult CNS in the direction of the target language’s norms.

We study co-constructed narrative exchange in online storytelling. Our test case is the Finnish YouTuber Niilo22, an unemployed person who broadcasts frequent video clips of his everyday activities while chatting on stock issues and interacting with his followers. Followers engage in lively commentary and team up to make evaluative interpretations of Niilo22’s life on the go. The interpretive frames imposed draw on pre-existing story templates rooted in culturally shared actor categories. We propose the concept of storybaiting to denote the two-way dynamic between Niilo22 and his followers whereby responses triggered by the clips produce further input in the narration, resulting in shared and circularly progressive authorship. This action blurs the ownership of the story and dilutes the teller’s privileges. Life storying in online platforms turns into interactive storybaiting where everybody involved gives and takes cues to evaluate the social media personality and position him in regard to repeated story templates.

Thus far, few studies have investigated the evaluative points narrators may convey through the sequential features of reported exchanges in their stories. In this article, we conduct a micro-oriented narrative analysis on how epistemic and deontic status-stance relations are depicted by narrators in sequences of reported turns. We thus uncover how hierarchies and potential transgressions between the characters in the storyworld are “shown” rather than “told” to the story recipients, who are in this way equipped to evaluate the story as a whole and the story characters’ accountability for their interactional behavior in particular. Furthermore, we argue that the narrators’ discursive set-up of epistemic and deontic relations in these reported exchanges also displays their emic perspective to them. Therefore we believe that our approach can pave the way for a novel approach to epistemics and deontics, complementing the insights gained in the conversation-analytic examination of these phenomena in situ.

Determining how narrative identity relates to psychological functioning is important for understanding how psychopathology develops and is maintained. The present study investigated whether transdiagnostic factors mediate and/or moderate associations of narrative identity with psychological functioning. We analysed data from n = 245 University students who completed an online survey measuring turning point narratives, transdiagnostic factors and psychological functioning. Results indicated that rumination and emotion dysregulation, but not overgeneral memory, mediated the relationship between lower causal coherence and psychological functioning. Contrary to predictions, neither attachment security nor memory tone moderated any relationships between narrative identity and psychological functioning. These pathways may be particularly important for understanding the development and maintenance of psychopathology.

This paper advances the field of narratives by focusing on the narratives of personal experience disclosed by students with mental health conditions, in particular depression, anxiety and borderline personality disorder, in medical consultations. I draw on sociolinguistic and discourse-analytic approaches to the analysis of narratives in interaction, viewing language as a tool for constructing social reality, and examine the content, structural properties and functions of the stories ( Labov & Waletzky, 1967 ; De Fina & Georgakopoulou, 2011 ). Engaging in self-disclosure and sharing stories of stressful and traumatic experience in medical consultations allows the students (1) to explain symptoms and interpret causes of their current health problems, (2) manage accountability, and (3) confront and cope with their painful experience and stigma.

Individuals create both personal and culturally shared meaning through narratives; however, sparse research has explored the specific ways in which individuals might use such cultural narratives in creating meaning from developmentally important experiences. In this study, we examine how emerging adults narrate positive romantic relationships, both because emerging adulthood is critical for the development of intimacy and because romantic relationship narratives are pervasive in cultural media. Thematic analysis of 31 narratives from mostly European-descent students attending a private liberal arts university in the Southeast US (mean age 19; 16 self-identified females) revealed three major narrative arcs, Love Grows, Firecrackers and Fairytale, which varied in coherence, coda, and mutuality of the relationship, but did not differ by gender. Further examination and discussion of these narratives suggest how emerging adults are making sense of their first romantic relationships in ways that inform efforts to educate and intervene to promote healthy and positive relationships.

This article focuses on how the concept of “turning points” can be used in narrative research when studying people’s (professional) identities and identity formation. By examining various understandings of turning points, we aim to show how they can be identified and used as analytical tools in different ways when conducting narrative analyses of (professional) identity formation. A case study from a research project on police identity is used to illustrate the application of various perspectives on turning points. The article offers guidance for researchers on choosing a context and focus for analysing turning points, as well as on the theoretical perspectives that come with these choices, and thereby suggests directions for analytical attention. The article shows how different perspectives on turning points have consequences for the understanding of professional identities.