What is.narrative research

1

• What is.narrative research?
• Research Methods Festival, 2008
• Corinne Squire
• Centre for Narrative Research
• University of East London
• http//www.uel.ac.uk/cnr/index.htm

2

• Why is narrative research so popular?
• Apparent universality
• Interdisciplinarity
• Bridges theory and practice academic, yet
  accessible
• Said to mediate between modernism and
  postmodernism
• Offers different levels of analysis, from
  microstructure, through
• content, to large-scale context
• Thought to enable relations between politics and
  research
• Pleasurable

3

• Problems of narrative research
• Universalised expectations about narrative
• Reification of the narrative object
• Reduction of lives to narratives
• Diversity and incompatibility of approaches
• Lack of generalisability of findings

4

• So what is narrative research?
• Narrative research in the social sciences focuses
  on
• Material that symbolises temporal, spatial and/or
  
• causal sequences, and that has particular
• objects/subjects
• Significance of these sequences (intrapersonal,
• interpersonal, social, cultural, political)
• Narrative research in the social sciences studies
  
• symbol sequences that are oral, written,
  linguistic,
• paralinguistic, visual, and behavioural
• Narrative research in the social sciences
  involves
• eliciting, finding or constructing narratives
• analysing narratives
• narrative analysis

5

• Approaches to narrative
• Narrative syntax Studying the structure of
  naturally-occurring personal event narratives
  (Labov) defined by narrative clauses studying
  the functional structure of narratives (Propp)
• Narrative semantics Studying the content of
  stories that express experiences eg those that
  map the violation and restoration of canonicity
  (key/fatal moments) Bruner those that describe
  some or all of a biography (Rosenthal) those
  that include unconscious elements (Hollway and
  Jefferson)
• Narrative pragmatics 1 Studying the
  co-constructed performance, across conversational
  turns (Georgakopoulou) or interviews (Riessman,
  Phoenix) of identity stories
• Narrative pragmatics 2 Studying the
  gathering-together of interpretive communities
  through story genres (Plummer) studying the
  relations between personal and cultural
  narratives (Malson)

6

• Norriss story (Labov, 1972)
• a When I was in fourth grade -
• no, it was in third grade-
• b This boy he stole my glove.
• c He took my glove
• d and said that his father found it downtown on
  the ground
• (And you fight him?)
• e I told him that it was impossible for him to
• find it downtown
• cause all those people were walking by and
• just his father was the one that found it?
• f So he got all (mad).
• g Then I fought him.
• h I knocked him all out in the street.
• i So he say he give.
• j And I kept on hitting him.
• k Then he started crying

7

• Problems with the syntactic approach
• Individual, thematic and cultural variations
  (Patterson) in the material that put the
  universality of (eg) event narratives in question
• Cognitive focus at the expense of language
• Significance of the analysis

8

• Problems with the semantic approach
• Content focus at the expense of narrative
  sequence
• Content focus at the expense of language
• Assumptions about the relation between narrative,
  experience and selfhood
• Therapeutic assumptions about good narratives
  (temporal sequencing considering and resolving
  conflict expressing and reflecting on emotions
  reaching an ending)
• Elision with politics through emphasis on giving
  voice

9

• Problems of the first pragmatic approach
• Assumptions about canonic interaction patterns
  based on little relevant contemporary
  sociolinguistic data
• Assumption of the containment of large narrative
  patterns within small ones

10

• Problems of the second pragmatic approach
• Need for supporting evidence
• Lack of generalisability of the genres
• Neglect of smaller-scale phenomena, such as
  individual stories
• Aspects of personal and social experience that
  cannot be narrated in all stories (Frosh)

11

• Short narrative bibliography
• Andrews, A., Squire, C. and Tamboukou, M. (2008)
  Doing Narrative Research. London Sage
• Andrews, A., Day Sclater, S., Squire, C. and
  Treacher, A. (2004) Uses of Narrative. New
  Brunswick, NJ Transaction
• Bruner, J. (1990) Acts of Meaning Cambridge, MA
  Harvard University Press.
• Elliott, J. (2005) Using Narrative in Social
  Research Qualitative and Quantitative
  Approaches, London, Sage.
• Freeman, M. Identity and difference in
  narrative inquiry, Psychoanalytic narratives
  Writing the self into contemporary cultural
  phenomena, Narrative Inquiry 11
• Frosh, S. (2002) After Words. London Palgrave
• Georgakopoulou, A. (2007) Small Stories,
  Interaction and Identities. Amsterdam John
  Benjamins
• Hollway, W. and Jefferson, T. (2000) Doing
  Qualitative Research Differently Free
  Association, Narrative and the Interview Method,
  London, Sage.
• Labov, W. (1972) Language in the Inner City
  Studies in the Black English Vernacular Oxford
  Basil Blackwell also see his website
• Malson, H. (2004) Fictional(ising) identity?
  Ontological assumptions and methodological
  productions of (anorexic) subjectivities. in
  M.Andrews, S.D.Sclater, C.Squire and A.Treacher
  (eds) Uses of Narrative. New Brunswick, NJ
  Transaction.
• Mishler, E. (1986) Research Interviewing
  Context and Narrative. Cambridge, MA Harvard
  University Press.
• Patterson, W. (2002) (ed.) Strategic Narrative
  new perspectives on the power of stories. Oxford
  Lexington.
• Phoenix, A.(2008) Analysing narrative contexts.
  In M.Andrews, C.Squire and M.Tamboukou (eds)
  Doing Narrative Research. London Sage.
• Plummer, K. (2001) Documents of Life 2. London
  Sage.
• Riessman, C. (2007) Narrative Methods for the
  Human Sciences. New York Sage
• Ryan, M-L. (2004) Narrative Across Media The
  Languages of Storytelling. Lincoln University of
  Nebraska Press
• Seale, C. (2000) Resurrective practice and
  narrative, in M.Andrews, S.D.Sclater, C.Squire
  and A.Treacher (eds) Uses of Narrative. New
  Brunswick, NJ Transaction
• Narrative Inquiry