Journal of Narrative and Life History - Volume 6, Issue 3, 1996

AbstractAs a rule, people have related to the external (political or security) difficulties impeding the peace process since the signing of the Oslo agreement. At the basis of this approach lies the assumption that when these difficulties are solved, the psychological difficulties of the individual that may delay the actualization of this most beautiful vision—a real peace between us and our Arab neighbors—will disappear by themselves. Therefore, there is no real need to relate to them at this stage. In this article, we try to undermine this basic assumption. By using narrative analysis of an interview with a student—an officer who spent most of his regular army service in suppression of the Intifada—we try to demonstrate the discourse through which the young Israeli confronts the question of his identity in connection to relations with the Palestinians. The officer (we call him Adi) was chosen because the interview with him exemplifies many of the issues that came up also in other interviews with young Israelis who were involved in the Intifada. The interview demonstrates both the positive qualities as well as the major problems that we found in the other interviews. Throughout the entire interview, we encounter Adi's attempts to maintain his interpretative system even when it no longer matches the reality within which he is acting. (Behavioral Sciences)

AbstractThis study investigates the origins of subversiveness and innovation with regard to existing master narratives on the topic of pregnancy. Two interviews of pregnant women who are defined as "at risk" are analyzed for how these two women positioned themselves discursively vis-a-vis others, particularly other pregnant women and the group of medical experts. Furthermore, the discourse was examined with regard to the moral positions and identity claims that were drawn upon in their claims of how their personal experience counters those that are considered "normal." (Discursive Psychology, Identity Claims, Positioning)

AbstractThe purpose of this study was to investigate the narratives of parents addressed to their children of different ages. The study had two major aims: first, to describe the formal and functional aspects and relationships in these Hebrew-speaking parents' narratives; and second, to describe the social-interactional exchanges that take place in the parental storytelling activity and trace a developmental pattern in such interactions. Using the Frog, Where Are You? picture book (Mayer, 1969), 75 monolingual Hebrew-speaking parents were asked to tell the story to their children (child's age groups: 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7+ years old) in their homes. Sessions were recorded by the parents. The stories were transcribed and coded by two independent raters. The findings show that the parental narrative input to which children are exposed at various ages is different. There is a developmental trend in this input in terms of structure and interaction. As far as structure is concerned, parental narrative input shows similar developmental traits to those observed in the narratives produced by children of the same age groups. As far as the interactional aspect of the parental narrative input, a three-stage developmental model of the socio-interactional nature of the input is proposed.