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Welcome! The purpose of this blog is to investigate interdisciplinary perspectives on issues of communicating across difference as they relate to the teaching of language and composition. If this is your first time visiting the Annotation Station, you can orient yourself more quickly by knowing I view issues of language, identity, and literacy as ideological issues (rather than neutral), multiple (rather than singular) and fluid and dynamic (rather than fixed and static). I am therefore very interested in translingual, transmodal, transcultural, and transnational communication practices with a critical eye to how power discrepancies shape these issues. Feel free to use this blog as a resource if it meets with your own research and teaching interests, and definitely use the comments feature to suggest any connections and insights of your own.

Saturday, November 12, 2016

Narrative Inquiry - Kathleen Wells

Wells, Kathleen. Narrative Inquiry. New York: Oxford, 2011.

Wells writes about narrative inquiry from the perspective of social sciences and specifically social work.  However, the most useful part of her book relates to the ways that discourse analysis and narrative analysis can be used productively in relation to one another.  In Appendix 1 on pg. 125-126, she outlines various approaches.  The analytic focus for most of the approaches is on narrative structure, but the last two (Critical Narrative Analysis and Contextual Discursive Analysis) consider narrative in context and incorporate discourse analytic methods and concepts into the narrative inquiry. 

Emerson and Frosh's study given as an example focuses on an individual - a sexually abusive boy - while Squire's study requires immersion in issues with HIV participants, communities, and policy documents in South Africa.  Their definitions of narrative are respectively "a relatively coherent personal story, with a beginning, middle, and an end, that is co-constructed [possibly embedded in long stretches of talk between an interviewer and interviewee] by an interviewee and interviewer in relation to foci on which an investigation is to focus" and "a story of a specific event or of a broad condition, which unfolds over time and with consequence within a specific social cultural milieu" (101, 106).  Both of these definitions and approaches underlyingly assume narratives to be co-constructed and performative and less formulaic than earlier approaches.


Analytic Focus Source Central Question Major Concepts
Holistic Content Lieblich, Tubal-Mashiach, & Zilber, 1998 What is the core pattern in the life story? Global impression, theme, early memory
Narrative Identity McAdams, 1993 What identity is constructed in the life story? Narrative tone, personal imagery, thematic lines, ideological settings, pivotal scenes, and conflicting protagonists
Shared Narrative Shay, 1994 What is the meaning of a shared experience to a group? Common themes, themes in relation to a common story, common story in relation to a fictional story
Sequence of Clauses Labov, 1972 How can a narrative e identified in the flow of talk? elements of a narrative, types of evaluation clauses
Poetic Structure Gee, 1991 What is a defensible interpretation of a narrative? Levels of textual structure
Surface-Deep Structure Gregg, 2006 How is identity represented in discourse in relation to its structure and implicit plot? Bi-polar contrasts in relation to self, others, and events; mediating terms; episodic-plot structure; and foundational contrast and mediating term
Critical Narrative Analysis Emerson & Frosh, 2004) How does this person, in this context, get to give teh account he or she does? Organization of narrative as speech, plot, subject, and focus
Contextual Discursive Analysis Squire, 2007 How do individuals use and remake teh representational forms on which they draw in order to tell the stories of their lives? Genre, audience, symbolic representation