Life Event Stories episodic interviews

1
Life Event Storiesepisodic interviews

• Detailed narrative accounts of particular
  experiences
• In connection with life histories - standing
  alone
• Interview-style ranging between more open-ended
  and structured (semi-structured)
• Topics chronic pain, my first kiss, divorce
• ? Work with some DATA (Betty tells her story)

2
Why analyzing stories?

• GUIDING QUESTIONS
• What are narratives?
• What are they used for?
• Identity and identities
• Identity analysis

3
What are narratives?

• Narratives in narratology
• Narratives as texts
• Narratives as themes
• Narratives as discourse
• as talk-in-interaction
• as actions that do jobs
• Narratives as sense-making devices
• ltltambiguous - slippery --- but interestinggtgt

4
Dimensions (Ochs Capps, 2001)life event
approaches vs small stories

• Tellership
• one teller versus multiple co-tellers
• Tellability
• high versus low tellability
• Embeddedness
• detached versus contextually and situationally
  embedded
• Moral stance
• certainty versus uncertainty
• Linearity, temporality, causality
• closed temporal causal order versus open
  arrangements

5
What are narratives used for?

• they engage in projects such as
• Tellership
• Tellability
• Embeddedness
• Moral stance
• Linearity, temporality, causality
• They are making ltmore informedgt claims about who
  I am
• in WHAT is said HOW it is said
• They are producing Speaker-Audience relationships
• They ltinteractivelygt establish IDENTITY

6
Identity and Identity Analysis

• Constructions of answers to who are you?
• In all talk-in-interaction
• With narratives as talk in social interactions
• Analysis of such constructions
• Analysis of narratives ltformsgt
• Analysis of social contexts ltfunctionsgt
• Narratives as tools // heuristics
• For the analysis of subjectivity and selves
• For the analysis of interactive situations
• Linking subjectivity and social interaction into
  the empirical site where both are emerging

7
Implications for narrative analysis
ltmicro-genesisgt

• No direct access to selves and identities through
  the stories of story tellers
• Indirect access to how story tellers want to be
  understood here now ltlocallygt
• Starting with the story
• Analyzing the construction of characters in space
  time of the story-realm
• Adding the interactive context
• Analyzing the discursive context of telling the
  story

8
Micro-genesis vs. Macro-genesis

• Microgenesis
• As a form of analysis
• Bottom-up
• Selves in interaction as agents
• Analysis of interactive structures
• Advantages disadvantages

• Macrogenesis
• As a form of analysis
• Top-down
• Macrostructures as social agents
• Analysis of social structures
• Advantages and disadvantages

9
Positioning Positioning Analysis

• Level 1
• Positioning characters in the story (referential
  plane of what the talk is about) --- (characters
  can be I and you)
• Level 2
• Positioning myself as speaker vis-à-vis my
  interlocutors
• Level 3
• Positioning myself vis-à-vis myself --- drawing
  up a position vis-à-vis dominant discourses
  (master narratives)
• Analysis proceeds from level 1 to 3

10
Some DATAthis morning

• Sequencing exercise
• What are events - what is a sequence?
• Betty positioning her friends herself
• What is the sequence of events?
• What is the theme?
• What does her story mean?
• Positioning with Davie Hogan
• Stories about others - embeddedness - tellability

11
This afternoon

• Positioning self gays (by way of a girl)
• Stories about self others - embeddedness
• Positioning self Linda Larssen
• Stories about self - embeddedness - who am I?
• Role of the interviewer in group interactions
• Doing research agenda - question of authenticity