10-jaehrige Jungen zum Thema: ‘Warum Maedchen “eklig” sind’

1. 10-jaehrige Jungen zum Thema: ‘Warum Maedchen “eklig” sind’ michael bamberg clark university department of psychology worcester, ma, usa

2. disgust + yuckification“Ekel + Yuckifizierung” • Maedchen haben “Cooties” • Als Eigenschaft der Maedchen • Als ‘Empfindung’ der Zuschreiber (Jungen) • Entwicklungsstadium/-stufe auf dem Weg zum Erwachsen-Sein • Diskursaktivitaet von Jungen <Maennern>

3. Britney Spears:‘pretty’ or ‘disgusting’? • Vic: Brendan Smith loves Britney Spears • B: no not that that’s fine • Mod: I don’t really want to talk about her exclusively but she’s kind of pretty • M: yeah • Vic: uagh <expression of disgust> • W: I have her poster in my bedroom • B: so do I

4. Was veranlasst Victor zu ‘disgust’ vis-à-vis Britney Spears? Was veranlasst andere zu dem Ausspruch: “I have a poster of her in my bedroom”? …die Frage erhebt sich: …und meine <vorlaeufige> Antwort lautet das es nichts <oder nur wenig> mit BS zu tun hat, sondern eher damit wie die Teilnehmer sich mittels ihrer Maennlichkeit ‘positionieren’

5. The Project • 5-year-long pilot project of 10-15-year-old males <lower class children> <3rd year> <300h of audio + video of 54 boys in the first year> • Cross-sectional + longitudinal data <10-, 12-, & 15-years of age> • DATA: • Observational • Writing • Interview • Group discussions • After-school non-adult guided interactions • TOPICS: -friends, -girls, -emotions/body, -future

7. Small Stories Episodes that are low in tellability, co-narrated + situationally embedded Identity Confrontations Interactants confront each other in terms of their ‘identity claims’ Positioning Analysis How speakers position characters in the ‘text’ How interactants position themselves + each other How speakers position themselves vis-à-vis ‘master narratives’ <by which they are positioned> Method of analysis

8. 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

9. 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

10. 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

11. 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

12. 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

13. 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

14. 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

15. 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)

16. Short Video Clip:“You always hung around that fruit-punch girl” The Rhetorics of ‘Yakkification’ • Interactional encounter between four 10-year-olds (+ adult male moderator) • Theme: ‘liking a girl’ - ‘attraction’ • Topics: Katherine, Valerie, Melanie + Briana • Identity Positions: • Victor: masculinity project of ‘disinterest’ • Bart: masculinity project of navigating between ‘interest’ and ‘disinterest’ <competing discourses> • the fine-tuning of displaying BOTH interest AND disinterest • Dilemmas of normative heterosexuality + what counts as “mature”

17. Vic: Bart used to like KSBart: there are two more that I liked Vic: KS as unlikable - except by Bart Bart: I kind of liked her Vic: <mocking> Bart: there are two more “people” I like, Stephanie and Shannon

18. Characterizations of Kimberly + Shannon (and to a lesser degree of Britney + Stephanie): Kimberly: VIC: fruit punch lipps BART: no chapped lipps VIC: all over her mouth BART: no - just here Britney + Stephanie Shannon: VIC eeuw + ugly, I hate her BART: annoying VIC: she’s a tettletale

19. as a way of concluding… • Descriptions and evaluations of girls as situated and grounded in local practices of SEEKING and AVOIDING trouble in ‘attraction talk’ • Two different ‘maturity Projects’: • displaying ‘disinterest’ • by describing potential partners as unattractive <‘yakkification> • by positioning others as ‘interested’ • displaying ‘interest’ <though not too much>

20. as a way of concluding… <cont.> • Displaying interest <though not too much> • admitting to interest • rules out the ‘offensive’ positioning of others as ‘interested’ • rules out display of overt disgust • walking a fine line <fine-tuning> between interest and non-interest display features <continuous down- & up-grading in the description and evaluation of others> • making yourself ‘vulnerable’ and learning to negotiate ‘vulnerability’ • Getting caught up in dilemmas of normative heterosexuality and what counts as ‘mature’

21. “Bart never had a girlfriend”Participants: M – Moderator; V – Vic; W – Wally; B – Bart; P – Paul 01 M: is it important what girls look like (1.0) 02 B: yeah 03 M: yeah (.) like //what °like what° 04: W: //I don’t know 05 B: cute 06 M: cute 07 W: it depends 08 M: yeah 09 V: Like Bart used to say he had a girlfriend but he never did 10 B: yeah I did 11 V: which one which one 12 B: Karen 13 V: ((shaking his head)) I remember that one Leah and uhm// 14 B: //Rachelle 15 V: no Leah and Ashley saw you at the movies 16 B: oh yeah (1 sec) and then I saw Leah at the last lot where we met 17 B: okay (1 sec) now is she following my back or something 18 M: I think so coz that was funny (1 sec) that’s just hilarious

22. 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 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 Kurz-Geschichten