What is….narrative research? Research Methods Festival, 2008 Corinne Squire

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. Norris’s 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 l and ran home to his father. m And the father told him n that he ain’t find no glove

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 Inquiry11 • 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 ofNarrative. 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