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’ <<ambiguous - slippery --- but interesting>>

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 <more informed> claims about who I am • in WHAT is said & HOW it is said • They are producing Speaker-Audience relationships • They <interactively> 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 <forms> • Analysis of social contexts <functions> • 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 <micro-genesis> • 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’ <locally> • 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. 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 Micro-genesis vs. Macro-genesis

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