A Narrative-Discursive Approach to Self and Identity

1. A Narrative-Discursive Approach to Self and Identity michael bamberg Clark University Department of Psychology Worcester, MA, USA

2. What Is the Self?Mark Leary: Editorial in Self &Identity, 3 (1) 5 ways in which Self has been appropriated: • as a synonym for person • as a synonym for personality • self-as-knower • self-as-known • self as decision-maker and doer Self as speaker/narrator - responding to the question: Who Are You?

3. Three Kinds of Narrative Approaches to the Study of Self and Identity • Life-Story Approaches • Life-Event Approaches • “Small” Stories • Short narrative accounts • Embedded in every-day interactions • Unnoticed as ‘stories’ by the participants • Unnoticed as ‘narratives’ by researchers • But highly relevant for identity formation processes

4. Life-Stories Dan McAdams (1993) + Gabi Rosenthal (1998) Elicitation Technique Analysis of lives Focus on coherence + health Life-Events Most narrative research Elicitation is focused on particular events or experiences Analysis of focused area Meaning of event in one’s life Life-Stories + Life-Events

5. Merits of narrative ‘life research’life-history + life-event approaches • Accentuates and brings to light lived experience • Forces participants to focus on the meaning of THAT event in their lives • Accentuates the continuity of experience • And sheds light on aspects that appear discontinuous • Assumes a unified sense of personal identity -- against which ‘experience’ is constantly sorted out

6. potential shortcomingsor open questions • How does this ‘unified sense of self’ come to existence? • How does the person ‘learn’ to “sort out” events against what is called ‘life’? • Overemphasis of stories about the ‘self’ • Cutting out all those stories about others • Overemphasis of ‘long’ stories • Cutting out everyday, “small” stories

7. why? • Influences of ‘traditional’ psychological inquiry • Interests in selves + self-coherence • Influences of traditional narratology • Work with texts (written texts) • Assuming authors as behind the texts • Assuming criteria of goodness for narratives • Interviews as windows into selves

8. Narrative Dimensions(Ochs & Capps, 2001) • Tellership • one active teller vs. many • Tellability • high vs. low • Embeddedness • detached from surrounding talk vs. situational embeddedness • Moral stance • one moral message vs. different + conflicting messages • Linearity & Temporality • closed temporal + causal order vs. open + spatial

9. with this in mind:Let’s turn to SMALL stories • Characteristics of “small” stories • Functions of “small” stories • in everyday conversations • in the process of identity formation • in learning to present ‘coherent’ selves • What these small stories accomplish in everyday situations

10. Stories about others:the Davie Hogan story Positioning with Davie Hogan. Stories, Tellings & Identities. Chapter in: C. Daiute & C. Lightfoot (Eds.), Narrative analysis: Studying the development of individuals in society.  London: Sage. (2003)

11. Topic: gay kids at school J: actually I know a few of them  I don’t know them but I’ve seen them Ed how can you tell they’re gayAlex yeah you can’t really tellJ:no like how do I know they’re gayEd yeahJ:well he’s an 11th grade student  the kid I know  I’m not gonna mention namesEd alright who are they (raising both hands up)J:okay um  and I’m in a class with mostly 11th gradersJosh: and his name is (rising intonation)

12. ah and and ah  and  um  a girl  who is umm very honest and nice she has she has a locker right next to him and she said he talked about how he is gay a lot when she’s there  not with her  like um  so that’s how I know  and he um associates with um a lot of girls not many boys  a lot of the  a few  of the gay kids at Cassidy

13. Pre-Story Negotiation +Fine Tuning • Pre-Negotiations • “I don’t know them but I’ve seen them” • Challenge: “how do you know?” • “how do I know they’re gay?” • “he’s an 11th-grader” + “I’m in a class with 11th-graders” • Fine-Tuning • Why does he claim not to “know” them (and only having “seen” them)? • Why is his witness “honest” + “nice” • Why is she “a girl”? • Why is the gay boy not talking to her <that he is gay>? • Why is he ‘mentioning’ that the gay boy “associates with a lot of girls” rather than boys?

14. Positioning • Vis-à-vis his audience • I know about gays • I’m not “close to them” (= don’t get the wrong idea!!!) • Vis-à-vis the master-narratives of heterosexuality + liberal discourse • Gays as ‘others’ • Self as tolerant person • Vis-à-vis a ‘sense of self’ • Practicing/working toward/testing out a sense of “this is me”

15. Characteristics of “SMALL” stories • Short • Conversationally Embedded + Negotiated • before • during • after • Fine tuned positioning strategies • fine-tuned vis-à-vis the audience • fine-tuned vis-à-vis dominant + counter narratives • multiple moral stances (testing out and experimenting with identity projections) • Low in tellability, linearity, temporality + causality

16. Functions of “SMALL” stories • Practice in doing identity work • Continuous editing of experience • Retelling of experience • Re-tuning these tellings according to • different audiences • Different master-narratives • different (developing) senses of ‘who-I-am’ • Resulting in some sense of coherence • though one that is constantly reworked

17. conclusion • So, rather than assuming the existence of identity + sense of self – and viewing narratives as reflections thereof, I am suggesting to study the emergence of a sense of self by way of exploring the SMALL stories people tell in their EVERYDAY interactions