Identity Research, Narrative Approaches,

and ‘Small Stories’

OVERVIEW:• New questions in Psychology

• How discourse + narrative have started to “move in”

• The turn to discourse

• The turn to narrative

• Psychology - Discourse - Narrative Dexus4, Aalborg 2006

Michael Bamberg

What’s rocking ‘Psychology’?three interesting dilemmas (aporias/illusions?)

– the identity dilemma• How can we construct ourselves as same in the face of constant

change?

– the uniqueness dilemma• How can we construct ourselves as (radically) different (same) from

others in the face of commonality/sameness (difference)?

– the construction dilemma (“who’s in charge”?)

• How can we construct (make sense of) ourselves in light of being constantly (or “always-already”) constructed (made sense of)?

– world-to-person direction of fit– person-to-world direction of fit

• Narrative & Discourse as having to ‘say something’<contribute - not resolve>

the depiction of ambiguity• ‘lenses’ and ‘dialectics’

– figure & ground – GROUNDING Activity <<guided by ‘effort for meaning’>>

– what/who is “behind” taking a particular perspective? - why do we see a vase and why do we see two faces?

views of the world + the person “the construction business”

‘the qualitative stance’

• viewing the person as actively + agentively involved

• taking the personal, local, subjective perspective

• taking the communal, social and historical as “built into” the local, contextual practices

• viewing identity as constantly (re-)constructed (and open to change)

• with communicative (discursive) practices as the sites where these constructions take place - where a sense of self and a sense of ‘the other’ emerge -where a sense of constancy + change can co-exist

Discourse

• Two traditions– A more cognitive/conceptual orientation

• as interested in the discursive devices (formal properties)– as resources or as products? {‘Discourse Processes’}

– A more constructionist/process oriented perspective• as interested in the production of formal devices and

repertoires - how these devices are made use of ((their contextual and emergent properties)) {‘Discourse Studies’; ‘Discourse & Society’}

• Both with different research agenda

Discourse - perspective IInarrative as a ‘special kind of discourse’

• discourse - talk - interaction• as taking place in “real” - i.e., mundane,

everyday, situated (contextual), local, communal practices

• that’s where notions (“illusions”?) of selves, continuity, differences (+ sameness + uniqueness) come together (emerge)

• with ‘talk’ as the central site

The centrality of discourse

• Talk/Discourse: – grammar/syntax; lexicon; pronunciation; intonation

(contours) (prosody); segmentation (pauses, silences); gaze; gestures; bodies

• discourse “über alles” - ‘not everything is discourse’

• phenomena analyzed (in concert) in the service of ‘doing talk’ in order to do interactive, relational, conversational, dialogic business --- within which these impressions of sameness, continuity + difference, otherness emerge - as interactional accomplishments

• A radically empirical program

Narrative“the narrative perspective”

• Choice between two perspectives– A more cognitive/conceptual orientation

• as interested in lives and experiences of people– as resources or as products?

– A more constructionist/process oriented perspective• as interested in the production of lives and experiences - and

sense of self as a process

• Both with different research agenda

Perspective I the “Big Story” perspective

Confronting your self ‘reflectively’:

---F Schuetze - W Fischer & G Rosenthal - T Wengraf & P Chamberlayne (the biographic interview)

---Rukmini Bhaya Nair (stories as life’s platform)

--Mark Freeman (hermeneutic textual version)

---Hubert Hermans (voices/dialogicality)

---Dan McAdams + Jerome Singer (self-forming memories)

---Katherine Nelson + Robin Fivush (autobiographic memory)

Narrative - perspective I (A+B)(cont.)

• Stories and a ‘sense of self’ (identity/subjectivity)– A. In stories people come to express (re-present) their

experience/life and through that their sense of continuity + change (the unity of character, time + place - formed into a coherent whole)

• consisting of <partly> pre-formed <socially available> plot lines with individually experienced events woven into them

– B. In stories people form/construct their sense of continuity (stories as facilitators to form representations of self as coherent) - a more constructivist view

Both pay little attention to the situated, interactive, local dimensions of ‘discourse’

• Narrative as a ‘discourse genre’ (=perspective II)• stories as accomplishing interactive business

Narrative as discursive practices - perspective II

• stories as interactive (dialogical) accounting• language forms and discursive devices used to

accomplish interactive accounting – interviews (clinical or biographic): no exception!

• no direct link from the use of particular language/discourse use to the mind/inner self

• all interpretation has to go through an analysis of the devices used to accomplish local, interactive business

• dealing more with the non-interview-elicited conversations

Small story identity construction

• Narrative as social interaction <narrating>– stories-in-interaction (= “small stories”) as

‘navigating’ through ‘interactive trouble’– stories are situated actions <with ‘selves’ as coming to

existence in interaction - where only subsequently a sense can be called up through ‘reflection’>

Ritualized/habitual performances - sedimented through iterative performances - hailing subjects into being (potential of resulting in ‘identity’)

Where selves (identities) come to existence (EMERGE) position themselves and are positioned

Positioning Analysis

• Three levels of POSITIONING– Characters are positioned vis-à-vis one another

• Who is doing what to whom?

– Speaker and audience are positioning each other• Lecturing, advice giving, accounting, etc

– Speaker positions ‘a self’ / his/her ‘identity’• Expert identity, hetero-sexual self, masculine identity

<positioning vis-à-vis master narratives>

• Positions as interactively accomplished (in and through the use of discourse)

The Davie Hogan Story

• Using a film clip to teach positioning analysis:

– Level one: who are the characters and how are they presented

– before and after the story: story negotiation– How can we use level 1 and level 2 analysis as

indices for identity claims

A methods class

What is the story ‘about’?

• A boy <a fat boy - Davie Hogan>

• A fat boy who always gets teased• A pie-eating contest• A huge barforama• A revenge• Davie’s revenge for always getting teased• A kid taking on an adversary environment• A kid taking on the adult world• Teenage fantasies (in America?)• Growing up in the American culture (the 60ties?)• Coming of age

In order to be able to say something about the identities of these four boys, we start out by determining closer, how they are framed/positioned IN the story

Who ARE these for boys?

• CAN we make assumptions about the participants:– How do they <want to?> come across by their

contributions to the story?– How do they arrange themselves sequentially?– How do they accomplish ‘a sense of who they are’?

• How do we arrive at OUR interpretations?

LET’S HAVE A CLOSER LOOK: working with story negotiation BEFORE and AFTER

exercises

• Britney Spears

• Shaggy

• Heidi Story

• Betty tells her story

‘Shaggy’• It wasn’t me

Honey came in and she caught me red-handed

it wasn’t me

CHORUS:

but she caught me on the counter

it wasn’t me

saw me banging on the sofa

it wasn’t me

I even had her in the shower

it wasn’t me

she even caught me on camera

it wasn’t me

Heidi used to call me her little honeyfor some STRANGE REASON

we used to go to preschool together, rightand there was that big matlike it was a big pillowin the little in the reading areaand I used to like to get there wicked earlycause my Dad used to work for the city, rightand I used to hide in that pillowso Heidi couldn't find me, rightand she used to run up thereand she used to pounce on the ballshe said Victor I'M GONNA FIND YOUand then I just sit there going oughhhh <ducking down – shaking hands>

<short pause> <little laughter>