Narrative Research Corinne Squire Centre for Narrative Research University of East London

Why is narrative research so popular? Narratives often appear in qualitative data Narratives’ apparent universality Bridges theory and practice: academic, yet accessible the-World/Museum of London - Life stories & oral history 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 Community Stories | Treatment Action Campaign Pleasurable

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

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: a weak definition Significance of these sequences (intrapersonal, interpersonal, social, cultural, political) Narrative research in the social sciences studies symbol sequences that are: oral, written, paralinguistic, visual, and behavioural Narrative research in the social sciences involves: eliciting, finding or constructing narratives analysing narratives narrative analysis

Approaches to narrative Narrative syntax: Studying the structure of naturally-occurring personal event narratives (Labov) defined by narrative clauses (Research uses existing/naturalistic material). Studying the functional structure of narratives (Propp). Investigating stanzas: (Gee). Research uses existing or elicited material 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 express ‘life as a story in its nascent state’ (Ricoeur); those that describe some or all of a biography (Rosenthal); those that include unconscious elements (Hollway and Jefferson). Research uses existing and elicited material Narrative pragmatics 1: Studying the co-constructed performance, across conversational turns (Georgakopoulou) or interviews (Riessman, Phoenix) of stories. Research uses existing, elicited and co-constructed material Narrative pragmatics 2: Studying the gathering-together of interpretive communities through story genres (Plummer); studying the relations between personal and cultural narratives (Malson). Research uses existing, elicited and co- constructed material. Other elements of narrative: metaphors, paralinguistics, visual materials Mixed methods

Norris’s story (Labov, 1972) Components of personal event narratives: abstract, orientation, complicating action, evaluation, resolution, (coda) a When I was in fourth grade - no, it was in third grade- bThis boy he stole my glove. cHe took my glove dand said that his father found it downtown on the ground (And you fight him?) eI 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? fSo he got all (mad). gThen I fought him. h I knocked him all out in the street. iSo he say he give. jAnd I kept on hitting him. kThen he started crying land ran home to his father. mAnd the father told him nthat he ain’t find no glove

Can this story be given a Labovian analysis? (from Squire, 2007) Michael: ok I went to (clinic 1) but, I was, I, I, I was looking around for the guy who can took me the test, they, they showed me ‘no this guy can do’, the guy started to ask me everything, ‘why are you coming here for the HIV test?’ I told him ‘no the point is that my, I mean, I’m not I’m not well with my health and I’m suffering too much from the STDs and then thirdly I don’t know what’s happening with my, with myself, with my body. So I want to know clear, I want to be clear what’s really, what’s really happening’ /mhm/ ok the guys, ask me that ‘ok you want the HIV test, ok let me ask you one thing if you, you as you come here to do the HIV test, ok you told me that, these things that made you to come here what if, what if your blood can find H, I mean do you think about your blood, will your blood be negative or positive?’ I, I told, I told him straight that ‘no my blood will be positive no doubt’, ok he told me, he told me, he ask me that ‘no if your blood will be positive how would you behave? Would you be ok or what?’ I told him no I would be ok, I would accept myself you know /mhm/ ‘Would you accept yourself?’ ‘No I would accept myself’. Ok things were fine. We started to do, to take my blood again. Then it was fine. I went back I told my girlfriend ‘no I done the HIV test’ but the results were still not, were still not ca, came back /mhm/ you know. I’m still waiting for my results. Ok that was fine. The results came back positive ok, the guy told me ‘no what you, say what you say to me, what you told me it’s really like that’. Ok I told him ‘no I want to see it physically don’t tell me like that you know /mhm/ show me the paper, the papers you know, let me see it, you should see that the man is HIV positive’ ok it was fine ‘How do you feel now’, now I started to become shock now, I looked up the sky like that, I looked up the sky, the guy asked me ‘how do you feel’ ‘no, I mean I’m just ok’ you know, but there’s that question in my mind, ‘hey this is really, this is really true that you are HIV positive’ that is in my mind. Ok the guy told me ‘no it is like this you know. What you should know is this, this is not end of the life, is not a death sentence being HIV positive, you can live longer than up to twenty years, but is just that if you can just behave yourself as you are, be yourself in all those things and then accept yourself then you can see what is it’, and, he, he advise me the, the balance diet and all those things just like that.

Stanza structures (Gee): Narratives are distinguished by their global organisation in terms of personal life and sense and thus is thematic (falling into stanzas) rather than descriptive Analyis uses: idea unit/, line (with central idea), stanza, strophe, part Norris’s story has 1 part and 1 strophe THEFT: When I was in fourth grade - /no, it was in third grade-/This boy he stole my glove. LIE: He took my glove/and said that his father found it downtown on the ground (And you fight him?) /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? FIGHT: So he got all (mad). Then I fought him. I knocked him all out in the street. So he say he give/And I kept on hitting him. AFTERMATH: Then he started crying/and ran home to his father. And the father told him that he ain’t find no glove

Stanza structures (Gee) Michael: This story has 3 parts (over half an hour.) We have looked at Part 3. GOING FOR AN HIV TEST (AGAIN): ok I went to (clinic 1) but, I was, I, I, I was looking around for the guy who can took me the test, they, they showed me ‘no this guy can do’, WHY DO THE HIV TEST? the guy started to ask me everything, ‘why are you coming here for the HIV test?’ I told him ‘no the point is that my, I mean, I’m not I’m not well with my health and I’m suffering too much from the STDs and then thirdly I don’t know what’s happening with my, with myself, with my body. So I want to know clear, I want to be clear what’s really, what’s really happening’ /mhm/ WHAT WILL YOU DO IF YOU ARE POSITIVE: ok the guys, ask me that ‘ok you want the HIV test, ok let me ask you one thing if you, you as you come here to do the HIV test, ok you told me that, these things that made you to come here what if, what if your blood can find H, I mean do you think about your blood, will your blood be negative or positive?’ I, I told, I told him straight that ‘no my blood will be positive no doubt’,

Stanza structures (Gee): Does this help? ok he told me, he told me, he ask me that ‘no if your blood will be positive how would you behave? Would you be ok or what?’ I told him no I would be ok, I would accept myself you know /mhm/ ‘Would you accept yourself?’ ‘No I would accept myself’. Ok things were fine.

Problems with syntactic approaches Individual, thematic and cultural variations in materials that put the categories in question Cognitivism The ‘so what’? factor Larger elements

Semantic approaches What is the theme of Michael’s story? Where does it start? Where does it end? How does it get there? What does it tell us about Michael? What does it do for Michael?

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’

The first pragmatic approach Who is speaking as and to? (How) does the story achieve this positioning? Who is Michael speaking as and to? (How) does the story achieve this positioning? What more might we need to know to analyse the story in this way?

Problems of the first pragmatic approach Assumptions about canonic interaction patterns and their violation, on which interpretations depend, are often based on little relevant contemporary sociolinguistic data Assumption of the containment of large, socially-structured narrative patterns within small, interpersonally-structured narrative patterns

The second pragmatic approach Within what stories are Norris and Michael speaking? What do Norris’s and Michael’s stories do, socio-culturally? What more might we need to know to analyse the stories in this way?

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)

Other narrative elements Speed of speech Tone of speech Rhetorical strategies (eg indirect speech) Other paralinguistic elements Problems with other narrative elements Where should analysis stop? What counts as narrative? Relation to other methods What about using other kinds of analyses? What about using other methods of investigation?

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. 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. Hyvarinen, M., Korhonen, A. and Mykkanen, J. (2006) The Travelling Concept of Narrative. Helsinki: Collegium 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. (2008) Narrative Methods for the Human Sciences. New York: Sage 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. Simon, L., Lachlean, J. and Squire, C. (2008. Shifting the focus: sequential methods of analysis with qualitative data. Qualitative Health Research 18: