Bou Ayash, Nancy. "Conditions of (Im)Possibility: Postmonolingual Language Representations in Academic Literacies." College English 78.6 (2016): 555-577.
Bou Ayash brings attention to the "complex dialectic between students' language representations and practices, their interrelationship with dominant language representations and practices of the academy and its local institutions, and the material implications of the negotiation of these" and urges readers to view academic literacies as embedded, rather than removed from changing practices (574). Reductive representations of language practices can have a limiting effect on students' performance of literate acts. She uses examples of four university students in Lebanon to show how translating and incorporating resources across and beyond languages are encouraged (or not).
Thursday, October 13, 2016
Wednesday, October 12, 2016
Using Narrative Inquiry - Leonard Webster & Patricie Mertova
Webster, Leonard and Patricie Mertova. Using Narrative Inquiry as a Research Method: an introduction to using critical event narrative analysis in research on learning and teaching. New York: Routledge, 2007.
Webster and Mertova's conviction that narrative is a human-centered may limit some narrative approaches that incorporate actor network theory. However, in identifying the value of narrative inquiry, they point out that "people usually encode their experiences in some form of narrative, partiularly in those experiences dealing with other people" (21). They are therefore socially situated practices that represent human conciousness. They also present narrative as "an event-driven tool of research" and that both construction and reconstruction of stories are useful for highlighting complexity (71). They advocate for focusing on critical events, which has possible connections to "rich events" in ethnography. Such an event "reveals a change of understanding or worldview by the storyteller" (73). This may be related to the performance of or impact on the storyteller. The longer amount of time that has passed between the event and its telling, the more likely it is to have been processed and become critical in that person's encoding of its significance. Events can be categorized according to the following terms (79):
Webster and Mertova's conviction that narrative is a human-centered may limit some narrative approaches that incorporate actor network theory. However, in identifying the value of narrative inquiry, they point out that "people usually encode their experiences in some form of narrative, partiularly in those experiences dealing with other people" (21). They are therefore socially situated practices that represent human conciousness. They also present narrative as "an event-driven tool of research" and that both construction and reconstruction of stories are useful for highlighting complexity (71). They advocate for focusing on critical events, which has possible connections to "rich events" in ethnography. Such an event "reveals a change of understanding or worldview by the storyteller" (73). This may be related to the performance of or impact on the storyteller. The longer amount of time that has passed between the event and its telling, the more likely it is to have been processed and become critical in that person's encoding of its significance. Events can be categorized according to the following terms (79):
- critical event: an event selected because of its unique, illustrative and confirmatory nature
- like event: same sequence level as the critical event, further illustrates and confrms and repearts the experience of the critical event
- other event: further event that takes place at the same time as critical and like events
Varieties of Narrative Analysis - James Holstein & Jaber Gubrium
Holstein, James and Jaber Gubrium, eds. Varieties of Narrative Analysis. Los Angeles: Sage, 2012.
This volume presents a variety of approaches to narrative research methods. The introduction identifies narrative inquiry as coming from a "narrative turn" in the social sciences.
Narratives are collaborative actions "conditioned by social context, discursive resources, and communicative circumstances" (7) The variety of approaches is actually quite diverse, so I've excerpted highlights from some of the most relevant chapters.
"Practicing Dialogical Narrative Analysis" by Arthur W. Frank
"People's stories report their reality as they need to tell it, as well as reporting what they believe their listeners are prepared to hear" (38). He further says that stories are both subjective and external as well as being unfinalizable. The purpose of commiting to DNA is "to open continuing possibilities of listening and of responding to what is heard" by highlighting stakes, but not prescribing responses (37). Not all narratives are stories, so analyzing them requires selection. Frank recommends phronesis as discovering insider-perspective significance from many stories as a whole to select based on "specific value commitments" (43). Crucially, Frank insists that "In DNA, stories are first-order representations of life, and writing about stories is a second-order act of narrative representation" (43). Research "findings" (a word he rejects due to unfinalizability) then are seen as a type of narrative representation. For the process of analysis, he suggests identifying narrative resources, circulation, affiliation, identity, and stakes.
"Narrative Practice and Identity Navigation" by Michael Bamberg
Bamberg recognizes "analysis of narrative practices as a poly-modal field of interactive practices" and that crucial to analyzing narrative practices is looking at functional purposes (120). He also outlines three dimensions of identity navigation in narrative practices including agency (as directionally self-to-world agent or world-to-self undergoer), affiliation of similarity or difference to others, and constancy/change across time (diachronic and synchronic identity navigation). Since narratives manage relationships as well as build identities, analysis can focus on the purpose of the narrative or the effect and/or uptake by the audience. He uses three oral interactional interviews with the mysterious-past "Clark Rockefeller" to show how identity narrative is created in interaction.
"Exploring Narrative Interaction in Multiple Contexts" by Amy Shuman
Shuman uses the example of asylum seekers to show how narratives are intertextual and dialogic, but need to be approached interactonally to investigate how entitlement can be undermined, tellability compromised, and positionality manipulated. She writes that "tellability refers to a relationship between tellers and listeners that takes account of what is reportable and of who can tell what to whom in what circumstances" (130). Entitlement deals with who has what right to these stories, and the limits of tellability include stigma, trauma, and cultural issues. She also puts forth that "narrative is one means for establishing one's footing, or alignment with others" (131).
"Speaker Roles in Personal Narratives" by Michele Koven
Koven's speaker role analysis model suggests analytical coding of singly and doubly voiced speaker roles: narrator, interlocutor, character, interlocutor-narrator, narrator-character, interlocutor character to "show systematically how storytellers straddle current and narrated interactions and identities" to find if "individuals have routinized ways of narrating experience that they transport across context." She uses examples from French and Portuguese bilinguals and acknowledge the impact of co-narration with the researcher.
"Situational Context and Interaction in a Folklorist's Ethnographic Approach to Storytelling" by Ray Cashman
Cashman presents "performance as a heightened mode of communicative action and as a resource for conducting social life" (181). In his own research on storytelling and folklore among Catholics in Ireland, he therefore takes an ethnographic approach to narrative performance and points to the importance of participant-observation, where the researcher functions as a collaborator or co-author to produce discourse, rather than prioritizing the process of hunting through a self-contained text. Crucially, he states that "all communication is mediated, so part of our interpretive project must be tracking interactional influences while being reflexive about the nature of a given situational context and our roles in it" (197).
"Analyzing the Implicit in Stories" by Martha S. Feldman & Julka Almquist
Feldman and Almquist start by identifying that "narratives play a variety of important roles in the enactment of public projects" (207). They put forth two forms of analysis for the implicit aspects of narratives - rhetorical analysis and narrative network analysis. They reestablish that narratives can be used "as objects of inquiry, as method of inquiry, and as product of inquiry" (208). The propositional logic translating speech to syllogisms, enthymemes, and oppositions seems a bit contrived to me, but NNA, on the other hand, "has been developed to analyze routines as narratives" and referencing Latour's ANT approach, "maps the sequences of specific actions that connect various human and non-human actants in accomplishing a task" (219). This can help to identify "abstract patterns" and potential variations (220). An image from pg. 223 is included below:
They use public updates about progress on Great Park in Los Angeles as
their example in which they reveal "values embedded in the parking
system" by what is made possible by the relationship (or possible
relationships) between different actants (224).
"The Empirical Analysis of Formula Stories" by Donileen R. Loseke
Loseke says that heterogeneity and moral fragmentation (of a Globalized, mediated world) lead social relations to become more based on preexisting images such as typifications or collective representations of others (252). Formula stories are stories that circulate with predictable, recognizable plots, characters, and morals for their audiences. "[systems of] expectations are contained in socially circulating formula stories, and stories reflect and either perpetuate or challenge understandings of symbolic and emotion codes" (254). Whereas personal narratives usually come from interviews, formula stories can be found in public realms and texts. The research procedure moves from establishing social context to close reading to categorizing explicit descriptions of story characters to unpacking symbolic and emotion codes. It should move beyond just a descriptive process to interrogate consequentiality and what work these narratives are accomplishing.
This volume presents a variety of approaches to narrative research methods. The introduction identifies narrative inquiry as coming from a "narrative turn" in the social sciences.
Narratives are collaborative actions "conditioned by social context, discursive resources, and communicative circumstances" (7) The variety of approaches is actually quite diverse, so I've excerpted highlights from some of the most relevant chapters.
"Practicing Dialogical Narrative Analysis" by Arthur W. Frank
"People's stories report their reality as they need to tell it, as well as reporting what they believe their listeners are prepared to hear" (38). He further says that stories are both subjective and external as well as being unfinalizable. The purpose of commiting to DNA is "to open continuing possibilities of listening and of responding to what is heard" by highlighting stakes, but not prescribing responses (37). Not all narratives are stories, so analyzing them requires selection. Frank recommends phronesis as discovering insider-perspective significance from many stories as a whole to select based on "specific value commitments" (43). Crucially, Frank insists that "In DNA, stories are first-order representations of life, and writing about stories is a second-order act of narrative representation" (43). Research "findings" (a word he rejects due to unfinalizability) then are seen as a type of narrative representation. For the process of analysis, he suggests identifying narrative resources, circulation, affiliation, identity, and stakes.
"Narrative Practice and Identity Navigation" by Michael Bamberg
Bamberg recognizes "analysis of narrative practices as a poly-modal field of interactive practices" and that crucial to analyzing narrative practices is looking at functional purposes (120). He also outlines three dimensions of identity navigation in narrative practices including agency (as directionally self-to-world agent or world-to-self undergoer), affiliation of similarity or difference to others, and constancy/change across time (diachronic and synchronic identity navigation). Since narratives manage relationships as well as build identities, analysis can focus on the purpose of the narrative or the effect and/or uptake by the audience. He uses three oral interactional interviews with the mysterious-past "Clark Rockefeller" to show how identity narrative is created in interaction.
"Exploring Narrative Interaction in Multiple Contexts" by Amy Shuman
Shuman uses the example of asylum seekers to show how narratives are intertextual and dialogic, but need to be approached interactonally to investigate how entitlement can be undermined, tellability compromised, and positionality manipulated. She writes that "tellability refers to a relationship between tellers and listeners that takes account of what is reportable and of who can tell what to whom in what circumstances" (130). Entitlement deals with who has what right to these stories, and the limits of tellability include stigma, trauma, and cultural issues. She also puts forth that "narrative is one means for establishing one's footing, or alignment with others" (131).
"Speaker Roles in Personal Narratives" by Michele Koven
Koven's speaker role analysis model suggests analytical coding of singly and doubly voiced speaker roles: narrator, interlocutor, character, interlocutor-narrator, narrator-character, interlocutor character to "show systematically how storytellers straddle current and narrated interactions and identities" to find if "individuals have routinized ways of narrating experience that they transport across context." She uses examples from French and Portuguese bilinguals and acknowledge the impact of co-narration with the researcher.
"Situational Context and Interaction in a Folklorist's Ethnographic Approach to Storytelling" by Ray Cashman
Cashman presents "performance as a heightened mode of communicative action and as a resource for conducting social life" (181). In his own research on storytelling and folklore among Catholics in Ireland, he therefore takes an ethnographic approach to narrative performance and points to the importance of participant-observation, where the researcher functions as a collaborator or co-author to produce discourse, rather than prioritizing the process of hunting through a self-contained text. Crucially, he states that "all communication is mediated, so part of our interpretive project must be tracking interactional influences while being reflexive about the nature of a given situational context and our roles in it" (197).
"Analyzing the Implicit in Stories" by Martha S. Feldman & Julka Almquist
Feldman and Almquist start by identifying that "narratives play a variety of important roles in the enactment of public projects" (207). They put forth two forms of analysis for the implicit aspects of narratives - rhetorical analysis and narrative network analysis. They reestablish that narratives can be used "as objects of inquiry, as method of inquiry, and as product of inquiry" (208). The propositional logic translating speech to syllogisms, enthymemes, and oppositions seems a bit contrived to me, but NNA, on the other hand, "has been developed to analyze routines as narratives" and referencing Latour's ANT approach, "maps the sequences of specific actions that connect various human and non-human actants in accomplishing a task" (219). This can help to identify "abstract patterns" and potential variations (220). An image from pg. 223 is included below:
"The Empirical Analysis of Formula Stories" by Donileen R. Loseke
Loseke says that heterogeneity and moral fragmentation (of a Globalized, mediated world) lead social relations to become more based on preexisting images such as typifications or collective representations of others (252). Formula stories are stories that circulate with predictable, recognizable plots, characters, and morals for their audiences. "[systems of] expectations are contained in socially circulating formula stories, and stories reflect and either perpetuate or challenge understandings of symbolic and emotion codes" (254). Whereas personal narratives usually come from interviews, formula stories can be found in public realms and texts. The research procedure moves from establishing social context to close reading to categorizing explicit descriptions of story characters to unpacking symbolic and emotion codes. It should move beyond just a descriptive process to interrogate consequentiality and what work these narratives are accomplishing.
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