CHAPTER 3: NARRATIVE ANALYSIS: RESEARCH PROCESS, CONCEPTS, AND METHODS
When we began to study the stories from co-authors' interviews, we had no official training in
narrative analysis. According to Ruthellen Josselson, Amia Lieblich, and Dan McAdams, founding
researchers in the field, "[n]one of us now teaching narrative research were ever ourselves 'taught' how to
do it . . . [w]e all learned it 'on the road,' learned it while doing it - and we are still learning it" (Josselson,
2003, 3). Even though there is now an established body of research on how to identify, analyze, and
interpret stories, we chose to do much of our learning "on the road" as well. While I had done some indepth reading, my co-researchers had not. Rather than directing them to textbooks and articles on how to
do narrative research, we talked through our data before actually reading the theory. Together, we thought
about and discussed what we heard/read in our interviews, identified what we thought counted as stories,
and tried to identify how the stories in our conversations "worked." This on-the-road training provided us
with the experiences and examples that we needed to understand the ideas and language of narrative
theory.
This chapter presents some of the particular strategies and methods for narrative analysis that coauthors found useful. It also illustrates how an approach that more or less "re-invents the wheel" can be
especially well suited to participatory projects with student researchers. We present strategies for
identifying key stories and selecting sets of stories; for using transcripts as part of analytic process; and for
identifying, classifying, and interpreting story structures and language choices. Sections in this chapter are
both the next installment in the story of our research process, and an overview of some of the specific
approaches co-authors used in the analyses in their chapters.
When read in order, this chapter presents a research process that moved from co-authors' close
observations and intuitive understanding of patterns in data - to their use of analytic practices from narrative
research to theorize those patterns. When read as a reference rather than a story, this chapter can provide
point-of-need information about differences between big stories and small stories, surface stories and deep
stories, and polished stories and growth stories. It provides strategies for finding a focus, choosing an
analytic approach, and identifying features of story forms. It offers a short-list of analytic practices, and
provides references to the primary research..
1. Re-inventing the wheel
We chose to re-invent the wheel - rather than go directly to research textbooks for established
theory and practice - for two reasons. First, we didn't have enough experience with narrative theory to
understand most discussions about how narrative analysis worked; and second, we weren't exactly sure
about what kinds of questions we wanted to ask about our data. This second problem made it so that even
if our understanding of approaches to narrative analysis had been up to speed, we wouldn't have known
which narrative features or analytic approaches applied to our work.
Terminology in narrative analysis - like language used to talk and write about discourse analysis can be technical (and intimidating), and it varies from discipline to discipline (Gee, 2008). What Gee refers
to as Discourse, narrative researchers refer to as identity stories, and composition researchers throw in
terms like "mainstream stories" and "discursive identities." Narrative researchers use language from
discourse analysis, along with specialized terminology to describe story structures and their functions. By
beginning with close attention to stories in our interviews, we gained experience with a shared set of
concrete examples that illustrated how stories work. This allowed us to connect to intuitive understandings
of what stories were and how they worked, and to check in with each other to make sure we understood
stories in similar ways. In group meetings, each co-author talked about what s/he saw happening in stories
from their own interview, and we compared what we saw across interviews. We noticed who directed the
conversation, the "flow" of talk, whether the overall feel of a story was positive or negative and what factors
contributed to that feeling. This attention to how stories were built and what story forms did allowed us to
recognize theoretical definitions from the readings in terms of specific examples from the transcripts.
Reinventing the wheel also allowed us to frame research questions grounded in our data. Similar to
approaches in grounded theory, we focused on data to develop theory, rather than trying to fit our data into
existing models. This allowed us to focus on local, context specific patterns we would need to explain in
order account for what was happening in our data, and it allowed us to identify the concepts and storytelling
patterns that we would need to learn more about (Birks & Mills, 2011; Corbin & Strauss, 2007; Glaser &
Strauss, 1967).

Overview of analytic process
The timeline for collaborative work varied from individual to individual. Work to develop Molly and
Maureen's literacy narratives took place primarily through one-on-one conferencing, while work to develop
Lorena, Ryan, and Angela's chapters took place through a combination of group meetings and one-on-one
conferences.
Work with both Molly and Maureen followed a similar pattern. Molly's work was part of an
independent study on literacy and technology issues faced by returning adult students. We designed a
course where she used analysis of transcripts from Maureen's interview and from her own to write a paper
that she would present at the 2008 College Conference for Composition and Communication. After talking
through what we saw happening in the transcripts, we identified key narratives - stories that seemed to
illustrate important realizations, turning points, accomplishments, or patterns in her life. She then looked for
logical, emotional, or associative threads that might connect these stories in ways that could reveal larger
themes. Maureen and I used a similar approach. We identified important issues in our interview
conversation, noticed and characterized key stories, and looked for patterns in conversations that
connected key stories. With both Molly and Maureen, after we had a general idea for a focus, I would
suggest two kinds of readings: articles with relevant findings, and articles presenting relevant methods for
narrative analysis. Molly and Maureen graduated before the project was complete, and were not part of
group work after 2008. Both continued to meet with me, and to provide comments - both oral and written as we worked through final drafts for their chapters.
Beginning in spring 2009, Ryan, Lorena, Angela and I met as a group to study transcripts, read
about concepts and methods associated with narrative analysis, and identify analytic concepts relevant to
the storytelling in their literacy narratives. They presented a panel at the 2010 College Conference for
Composition and Communication where they presented findings from this work. The following summer we
were funded by a Kean University Students Partnering with Faculty Researchers award, and we again met
as a group, and one-on-one. We continued drafting and revising chapters, and prepared two additional
talks: one for the 2010 Thomas R. Watson Conference, and one for the 2011 College Conference for
Composition and Communication. As indicated in Chapter 2, coupling co-authors' methodological training,
data analysis, and drafting with credit bearing courses, travel to conferences, and funded research
positions was essential to the projects' success.

Exploring definitions of stories and story features
Narrative researchers make clear that strategies for narrative analysis depend on the kind of story that is
analyzed (Andrews, Squire, and Tamboukou, 2008). Before we began our analytic work, we needed to
define what we meant by stories. We each had an intuitive feel for what a "story" was, but we needed
some clear, mutually agreed upon features to define both what different kinds of stories "do," and how to
"know one when you see one."
We worked backwards from intuitive understandings to develop definitions based on group
discussion of interview transcripts. That way we built on what we already knew - identifying story features
in terms of our own language - and then connecting those features to the theoretical language from the
research. Co-authors took an initial read through interview conversations, and then came to a group
meeting with everything they would name as a story marked in the transcript. In this initial read, co-authors
connected to assumptions about stories that came mostly from literature classes: they looked for setting,
plot, character, style, and resolution. They also noted context: features that determined what stories were
"about" and how they were told; relationships between how speakers took turns talking and how the story
developed; and different patterns for organization - logical, associative, and thematic. We wrote down all
our observations and gave examples from transcripts so we were clear about what we meant by each
feature.
Subject positioning. This work led to discussion of how we took on different relationships to story
materials. Sometimes we represented ourselves as capable and in-charge - the "hero" in the story's action.
Sometimes we were apprentice learners or novices, and sometimes we were "clueless." Narrative
researchers have named the relationship between storytellers and the material they narrate subject
positionings. We talked about how subject positionings created a kind of identity for the narrator that
moved through and beyond the content of the story itself. We also noticed that subject positionings were
influenced by and responsive to conversational interactions and the topic of conversation. These
observations and similar conversations provided us with a concrete basis for understanding subject
positioning as it is defined in the research literature.
Agency. Co-authors also paid attention to patterns in conversation that seemed to give them more
or less control over or connection to the subject of conversation. For example, they noted how, as
interview subjects, they sometimes took charge of conversational focus or told “unasked for” stories. They
also noticed that story topics often unfolded through collaborative interactions, rather than as long sections
of uninterrupted text - what might traditionally count as a story.
The number and kind of unasked for stories in our conversations varied from participant to
participant, and prompted us to talk about interview subjects' agency or leadership in directing the focus of
conversation. For example, Lorena noticed that in talk surrounding the ESL test story, when Sally asked if
she remembered taking the test, she answered "Actually not. I really don't . . . " and then went on to talk
about the consequence of passing the test and the fact that she was placed in a classroom where she had
no friends. She provided this information even though it was not something Sally had asked about. Angela
noticed more subtle examples where she moved interview conversation either deeper into or away from
topics introduced by Sally's questions. She also noticed how she moved among first person (I), second
person (you), and first person plural (we) as a way to shift her connection to the subjects we were talking
about. These shifts positioned her with varying amounts and different kinds of responsibility within the
stories she told

Creating a roster of stories
At this point, we went back to transcripts and identified individual stories by breaking interview
conversations into sections. Each story was given a title that summed up what it was about. We used line
breaks to mark where one story ended and another began. Some sections of talk did not fit any of our
definitions for stories, and these sections were left untitled. In our first run through, we identified The ESL
test - but some sections of text that later turned it into Friends remained unmarked. Story boundaries and
names were constantly reconsidered and revised as we continued to work on transcripts. We used this
roster of stories to deepen our definition of what counted as a story, and to continue identifying the
theoretical language we would need to talk about how stories are built and what they do.
Big stories versus small stories. As we looked at unmarked talk surrounding The ESL test, we
realized that even though talk went back and forth between Sally and Lorena, that in some ways, the
conversation itself created a story. We used a closer look at that material to identify different boundaries
for the story central to this section of the interview (see Chapter 2). This analysis gave us a basis for
thinking about differences between big stories - with a formal organization corresponding to featues
identified by Labov (Riessman, 1993; Patterson, 2008) and small stories - with more of the conversational,
in-process story-telling exchanges that make up interview talk (Bamberg, 2004; Bamberg and
Georgakopoulou, 2008).
Small story researchers are less concerned with static or literary features of stories - the elements
identified by Labov - and more attentive to interactive and contextual features. Analysis of small stories
places more emphasis on what stories do than on formal features. Small stories function both to make
sense of past experiences and to provide tellers with a "constructive means" to create and explore different
selves; those selves are then "instrumental for the creation of positions vis-a-vis co-conversationalists"
(Bamberg and Georgakopoulou, 2008, p. 379). In other words, small stories allow storytellers both to focus,
sum up, and bring coherence a past experience - and to invent, "try on," and revise different identities with
respect to those experiences (as when Lorena tells her story about the ESL test several times in
succession, each time with a slightly different evaluation). The exploratory identities associated with small
stories contribute to the subject positionings that can act as a kind of script for the story itself. The study of
small stories focuses on relationships among what a story is about, how it is told, and how it functions in the
storyteller's experience (Phoenix, 2008; Squire, 2008).

Exploring possibilities for a theoretical story
Reviewing interview talk can be startling: almost like seeing oneself on film. When we heard/saw our words
in voice recordings and transcripts, we recognized them as our own – but by virtue of being recorded they
had become objects of analysis: data we could slow down and study for as long as we needed. Close
examination of interview conversations allowed us to identify the concepts from narrative analysis that we
would need to learn more about, and it helped co-authors to choose an analytic frame for their individual
literacy narratives. We used group discussions to identify content or ways of talking that caught our
attention or seemed part of larger patterns, and we asked questions about why one story was evoked or
followed by another, or about features of our storytelling patterns. These questions pressed us to think
about how stories and sets of stories fit together, and about the language and concepts we would need to
use to develop an analysis for co-authors' literacy narratives. For Ryan, these initial conversations allowed
him to make connections between his patterns for talk and a kind of double identity that eventually became
the focus of his chapter.
As Ryan listened to the voice recording for his interview, he heard himself striving to be a good
subject - where being a good subject meant providing detailed information about what (he thought) the
interviewer wanted to hear. In response to each question, he made sure he understood what was expected
by saying back the question and clearing up uncertainties. He then gave very precise, direct answers with
little elaboration. These answers had few stories and sometimes there were long pauses between the
question and his answers. He also noticed that after this first answer, he gave a second answer. During
this second answer - which was always after the first "down to business" answer - Ryan talked extensively
about gaming and building computers, topics that were of great personal interest to him but which he didn't
necessarily see as having a strong bearing on what the interviewer wanted. These answers were rich in
stories told with "funny voices" and much laughing.
We reasoned that this pattern arose at least partially from genre expectations. The first answer
connected to assumptions associated with research interviews, medical histories, and witnessing. Within
these genres, subjects provide on-topic, accurate information that does not necessarily include opinions,
interests, feelings, or subjective experiences. The second answer would then connect to interview genres
associated with entertainment, talk shows, and celebrity. Within this understanding, subject's personal
perspective and rambling reflections, rather than accurate information, are the object of inquiry. The fact
that Ryan gave his answers in two different forms suggested he had different relationships to materials
discussed in those answers, or that he saw and felt differently about them. Further analysis suggested that
first answers were grounded in values associated with school literacies (his assumption of what the
interviewer defined as 'literacy'), and the second answers reflected values and beliefs associated with the
more free-wheeling, self-directed, and creative understandings of online literacies. Tensions between
Ryan's relationships to these two different literate identities became the focus of his essay.
First impressions allowed us to compare what we saw in the data, to try out ideas about what
stories meant, and to begin connecting our observations to what researchers have written about similar
findings. They laid the groundwork for interpretations that might (or not) lead to compelling theoretical
stories. By theoretical stories, we mean logically compelling explanations of relationships between
subjects' representations of literacy experiences and larger cultural stories for talking about those
experiences and representations.
As we looked at interviews more carefully, we used the analysis of particular conversations and the
role particular conversations played within the overall interview as ways to create theoretical stories. It is
important to remember that theoretical stories are, in themselves, stories. Their interpretative explanations
are posed in terms of the complex, sometimes conflicting, often plot-driven logic of narrative. For example,
discussion of Molly's different relationships to literate identities in Chapter 2 present her as both a self-
directed, active, learning-through-doing participant within digital literacies, and a frustrated and "not getting
it" newcomer. This central conflict prompted a theoretical story to explain where and how Molly steps from
one identity into the other in terms of the two storytelling positionings - an in-charge position, and a
"clueless" position. Any theoretical story to explain her literate identity would need to go beyond
mainstream theoretical stories where returning adult, minority learners are generally represented as stuck
in print-based patterns for learning or hampered by resistance (Monroe, 2004). Clearly something about
Molly's identity (African American, female, returning adult learner) set her up to be a "savvy" digital learner
- but something about that identity was also holding her back in terms of the academic use of new
literacies. Our challenge was to imagine a theoretical story to explain both the fit and the conflicts between
Molly's particular stories and larger cultural stories. Co-authors' theoretical stories account for what their
literacy narratives "were about" - and in that way provide the focus for their chapter essays.
Within group discussions, each speaker was the primary interpreter of her or his own interview:
Ryan’s reflections on what he intended or meant were weighted more heavily than speculations by the rest
of us. At the same time, the rest of the group read all transcripts, and we were pretty free about offering
just about any interpretation, idea, or connection to literacy scholarship that came into our heads. These
were primarily brainstorming sessions - with each interview subject as moderator for her/his discussion.
We used collaborative discussion as a process to define what we meant by "stories;" to identify key stories
and groups of related stories; to find, read through and practice strategies for narrative analysis; and to set
up a focus for each co-author's essay. We kept blogs - to network our findings - and we often worked from
blog entries during collaborative talk.

Selecting key stories and story sets
Whether researchers are interested in stories or ideas, processes for choosing which parts of a text to
analyze - and which parts to leave out - will shape the focus and outcome of their study. Key stories
present the primary themes, storytelling practices, or interpretive moves characteristic of a particular
narrator or conversations. They are often told over and over, usually in set forms with recurring themes
and phrases. With respect to identity development, key stories emphasize features that are central to who
we are (McAdams, 1993), and individuals "develop key narratives as a result of important events or
processes in their histories. . . "(Phoenix, 2008, p. 67). Although "repeated retelling [can hone] key
narratives so that they become well structured, polished, and ready for presentation at any time," key
stories can also be re-thought, re-worked, and rearranged in ways that allow storytellers to grow and
change. Within interviews, key stories often include features that are important either because of their
significance with respect to the subject's identity, or because they represent a dominant pattern for form or
content.
Story sets are groups of stories that, when taken together, illustrate representative patterns within
the interview as a whole, or a particular focus with respect to the research question. The selection of stories
and story sets can open up or close down particular theoretical stories. To build or "discover" new theories
- rather than simply revisiting old ideas - it is important to choose rich, complex even contradictory sets of
stories where "rich" may mean just plain confusing: filled with language and forms that don't "fit" with the
other data. As in Ryan's choice of stories representing his two different patterns for talk, conflicting
materials can indicate the narrator is caught between ideas or moving toward a new perspective that without attention to the contradictions - might not seem central to his/her identity.
While the polished, repeated, and thematic elements can make selection processes feel objective,
identification of key stories and story sets is often only partially conscious. Identification and selection can
be driven by the hope to prove an unacknowledged hypothesis rather than to explore how different
hypotheses might also explain data. A project's focus or research question indicates which parts of a text
are relevant in a general way, and reflective examination of criteria for selecting particular stories - or for
defining the boundaries of talk to designate what counts as a story - can both deepen and challenge
researchers' understandings of theoretical stories that may not yet be fully acknowledged or interpreted.
For example, Lorena chose to define Friends, rather the shorter representation of the same
experience offered by The ESL test as the focus for analysis. Through selecting Friends, as opposed to
The ESL test, Lorena opened more complex interpretations of her experience with literacy, public
education, testing, academic tracking, and so on. Also, this choice provided a detailed example of her
storytelling process which might otherwise have been summed up as simply resolving "bad" experiences
into "good" endings. Within Friends, four of the five story segments pose positive resolutions, but one story
segment ends on a clearly negative note. The neighborhood is getting better (segment 1); she passed the
test (segments 2 & 3); and Lorena got a group of new friends (segment 5 and overall conclusion) are all
positive conclusions, but in segment 3 Lorena says "that 's what I get for passing the test - I have no
friends!" This is not a positive ending! While it is true that most of Lorena's stories have positive endings,
this story includes a problematic segment and suggests something about her processes for creating
positive endings. What is going on here is not a simple overwriting or erasure of negative outcomes, but
rather a more considered, conceptual re-organization of past experiences.
Narrative researchers have proposed a variety of approaches for choosing groups of stories as the
focus for analysis (Alexander, 1990; Schultz, 2003). Three features of storytelling that can be used both to
identify key stories and to generate sets of stories include: primacy, repetition, and uniqueness. Primacy
refers to the "firsts" in a story's overall organization or in repeated groupings. It is often useful to
characterize the firsts - including the first story in the overall interview and the first story on a new topic extensively in terms of plot, theme, story characters, positioning, causality, resolution, function, and so on.
These characterizations can serve as a basis for looking for repetitions - stories with similar features.
Connections between firsts and repetitions can be subtle, especially if re-tellings are thematic rather than
literal. When using uniqueness to generate a set of stories for analysis, the issue is usually to figure out
what seems unique and to theorize how this uniqueness echoes or perhaps determines the structure and
function of other seemingly unconnected stories. Unique stories can also serve to challenge or enrich
general interpretations of a project's overall focus.
Storyteller’s emphasis can also guide researchers in selecting important stories. Emphasis
includes "overemphasis (attention focused on something typically considered commonplace); under
emphasis (little attention paid to something important); and misplaced emphasis (excessive attention paid
to aspects of a situation that seem clearly less significant than others)" (Schultz, 2003, 158). Negation is
generally considered a kind of emphasis. Researchers should note stories where storytellers deny or
contradict the truth, importance, nature, or relevance of stories. Errors, incompleteness, and/or
contradictions can also indicate a story's importance; these features can indicate "in process" thinking.
Identification of stories with particular ideas, or in-process reflections, can help researchers identify useful
story sets.
As co-authors began to identify story sets, we reviewed what narrative researchers have written
about story selection and brainstormed a list of theories for how to identify and select story sets (see Table
1). Our list offered variations on the strategies set forward by researchers. Co-authors strategies for
identifying story sets focused on looking for stories with connected content or formal features. Because coauthors were analyzing their own stories, they had more inside information on how to identify “important”
stories than do researchers who work with other people's stories. As a result, our strategies for identifying
story sets were both about looking for stories with powerful theoretical connections, as well as about
discovering what was important to individual co-authors.
Co-authors' story sets formed the basis for their theoretical stories. As in most qualitative research,
we went back to data repeatedly before settling on explicit, fully developed theories to explain the data. We
proposed an initial focus based on a close reading of the transcript, returned to data, revised and rethought that focus in light of what we saw as important stories, proposed a revised focus, and then returned
to the data again - and again.
Table 1: Strategies for choosing sets of stories to analyze
1. Random + connection: code / analyze a random story using one of the methods; identify significant
features, and then look for stories which seem likely to share those features.
2. Interest: pick stories where you talk about your interests and/or agenda within the interview. These
would be stories either focused on your interest by the interviewer (Sally's questions) or by the way you
chose to answer the questions (e.g. stories from Ryan's interview that focused on gaming).
3. Thematic: look for a group of stories all focused on a particular issue/idea/relationship (e.g. stories from
Lorena's interview that focused on rules). You might not have consciously chosen this topic during the
interview, but you might notice it now that you are stepping back and looking at the interview as a whole.
4. Then/now: you might look for stories where you represent something that you understood one way at
an earlier point in your life, but that you differently during a later point in your life. As Angela pointed out - if
you use this method, you might also consider how you seeing what you said in your interview provides yet
another chance to re-interpret/understand what you thought (then) differently (now).
5. Turning point: stories that are used to make causal connections about how/why you changed your
ideas/behaviors as the result of a particular experience.
6. Agency: look for stories where you represent yourself as in control / not in control of the storyline (what
happens); choosing stories for agency might also include choosing stories in which you took control of the
interview by: introducing new topics, not answering or re-focusing the question asked, asking for more
information and evaluating the worth of a particular line of discussion, etc.
7. Conflicts: Look for stories that illustrate conflicts between interviewer and subject's understanding of
meanings, conventions for doing interviews, etc (as in Sally & Molly's 'negotiation' of the meaning of
literacy in the example we analyzed).
8. Chronological: You might look for sets of stories to represent each of the important time periods in
your life; this strategy for selecting stories is characteristic of literacy narratives.
9. Focus from interview protocol: the protocol emphasizes early experiences with literacies at home, at
school, with friends, at work, etc. In each section it asks about setting, first experiences, any routines,
books, images, and values. You might use this structure to select + organize a set of stories.
10. Literacy sponsors: you might looks for stories that introduce/feature people, institutions, programs etc
that supported/made possible literacy learning,
11. Setting: select stories based on setting (either same or different).
12. Community identity: look for stories that present representative experiences with the different
communities where you learned to talk about/use the language to describe the new experiences you were
having on the computer - these stories will connect to the communities/groups you "talked" to about
computers and are the places where you learned the "discourse" you use to talk about computers/internet
etc.
2. Transcription as analytic process
The identification and selection of key stories and story sets was strongly connected to repeated
readings and repeated (re)representations of what co-authors saw in their transcripts. The form of
transcripts used to discover theoretical stories moved through many different versions so that the actuall
form of the data changed as we moved through the analytic process. An on-going series of transcripts
were created to represent our evolving understanding of the interview's focus - and the theoretical story that
would explore and interpret that focus. Because of this, transcripts and theoretical stories evolved together.
The purpose of transcripts to support the theoretical stories in co-authors' chapters is different from the
purpose of transcripts we used to create those theoretical stories. Transcripts in co-authors' chapters
provide readers with enough evidence to follow (and evaluate) interpretations of stories and story sets.
These transcripts clearly do not - and should not - attempt to represent everything that happened in the
interview. Rather, they present only features relevant to the chapter's theoretical story. (Re)representing
interview content and form was an on-going part of analytic process. The following discussion fills in
practices for creating and analyzing some of the intermediate transcripts that do not appear in co-authors'
final essays.
As illustrated in the draft transcripts from Chapter 1 and 2, initial representations may or may not
pay attention to pacing, overlap, and other features of talk. These drafts give an overall impression of what
was said, as well as a map for identifying and locating particular stories within larger conversations. We
used first drafts to identify themes, stories, and (a first take on) story sets; and to get a rough idea at which
sections of the interview might be worth taking a closer look at.
Developing a series of transcripts. As individual co-authors developed their theoretical stories,
they created transcripts to help them visualize and understand relationships between data in the transcript
and their theories. As a result, co-authors' particular representations of interview conversations vary from
chapter to chapter, and they varied throughout the analytic process. After identifying important stories in
draft transcripts, co-authors created a series of intermediate transcripts that allowed them to count or
classify particular moves or words, or to analyze larger patterns. These intermediate transcripts paid
attention to the specific story features the author wanted to analyze.
To continue the example from Lorena's ESL/Friends story, we present a working transcript based
on representational strategies developed by James Gee (Gee, 1991; 1986). These strategies allow
researchers to study story forms and language choices in that they reproduce most of what was actually
said, within a spatial organization that emphasizes larger groupings for how talk was conveyed. We used
this particular transcript for a group discussion that explored how changes in speaker influenced storyline.
Through numbering lines of talk and creating a gloss, we were able to see where different themes were
taken up, and how themes from one section connect to another.
The ESL test, the partial version of this transcript presented in Chapter 1, primarily represented
“who said what.” The following transcript allows us to see The ESL test as part of a larger story, and to
notice a pattern for positive story resolutions at the end of story segments and at the end of the overall
story. Some researchers use detailed systems to identify spoken features of talk (for example see Bloome
et al, 2004) and linguists’ versions of this approach often use grammatical structures (phrases) as a basis
for separating conversations into lines. These representations were not suited to our level of training.
Because we are not trained linguists, we identified lines intuitively. When the focus seemed to shift, we
marked the new focus with a new line number. The form presented here helped us focus on the overall
organization of conversation in terms of speakers, topics, and connections among topics. Specifically, it
allowed us to see at a glance:
1) what, how much, and in what order each speaker contributed to the conversation;
2) how many and what kinds of different topics each speaker raised;
3) inter-connections among the different topics in the overall conversation.
This version erases most of Sally's "yeah's" and "mm hm's," verbalizations to signal the reception (and
encouragement) that fostered Lorena's talk, with the result that the conversation takes a rhythm that is
different from the earlier transcript. Here, the focus is on story segments rather than the back and forth,
interactive nature of this talk (as in Chapter 2's version). .
Friends
prompt for story
1 Sally
OK, all right, so let's go back to your schools and tell me a little bit about what they were like.
2
So what was your, ah you know, talk about, about you know, what the school was like what the
building was like, what the kids were like, and how it made you feel about learning, particularly
reading and writing.
3
So let's start with Roosevelt.
background and frame for story: friends and danger
4 Lorena Roosevelt. Number 10 school is more like in an urban area. So it would be
5
Minorities, you know.
6
Hispanic and Black people.
7
And you know, a lot of bad kids, a lot of gangs, so my block where I used to live, it was, and I
couldn't go to the corner, cause it was, you know, a bunch of gangs. It was really like, the 10
school?
8
I don't know, like your friends, you have to watch who, who they were, because, you know? It
was really dangerous
9 Sally
Even when you were little? (sounds surprised)
10 Lorena (matter of factly) Yeah,
11
Sherman Street, downtown, it was dangerous.
12
Back in the day, now it's a little better,
focus on school and ESL test (Lorena initiates shift)
13
But thank god my teachers were always really good
14
I was um, I started kindergarten in the ESL program?
15
and you know they like teach you English,
16
since I grew up in a Spanish speaking house
17
and you know? At first I had a hard time reading and writing, but then first grade I took a test,
so I could be in an all English class?
18
and you know those tests, it was all reading and you know, asking questions,
19
and you have to write it all, like a picture prompt
.
20
and I passed it. So, second grade was a all English class, and it was, you know? It was easy
for me. I can say, I didn't struggle too much.
21
Reading and writing.
22
Math, another story. But English, is O – always been OK with it.
23 Sally
(laughing) math is another story
24 Lorena Yeah.
focus on how Lorena felt about the ESL test (shift initiated by Sally)
25 Sally
OK, so how did you feel when you, what was the test like? (talking very fast) Were you scared
when you took it, how you said, what was that
26 Lorena I was so scared.
27
I was like, Ma I'm not going to pass it,
28
I'm not, cause you know, I was taking it with a lot of friends, and the (grade?)
29
so they go - you know you can't really study?
30
and yeah they give you, they practice everything in class but it was like my first time taking an
actual like test –
31
you know, that you have to (stay apart?)for an hour, I was like oh my god
32
it was really like nerve shocking,
evaluation of ESL test - introduced by Lorena
33
but - I guess I did good, cause I passed it (laughing)
particular memories about taking test - dead end topic introduced by Sally
34 Sally
Do you remember taking the test?
35 Lorena Actually not, I really don't.
consequences of the test - introduced by Lorena
36
I remember like the next - what was like next month we got the results. I got a letter like, you're
moved to a new room, and I had no idea, I'm like, I have a new teacher it's bad, and I already
have friends in my old class
37
so when I walked in I remember, it was like Mr. Marshall, and I didn't know anyone, and I'm like
oh - that's what I get for passing the test
38
I have no friends
39 Sally
Oh. Did your friends pass it?
40 Lorena No.
41
I had like one boy that I knew, but my close friend, Paula
42
she was also Colombian, she didn't pass it
43
and she stayed in ESL until like 4th grade
re-evaluation of test experience - prompted by Sally
44 Sally
Oh. What was that like for you?
45 Lorena Well I guess, you know, a new experience. I met a lot of friends I still talk to now
46
in that class, so, you know, for the better.
47 Sally
OK, so you met a lot of friends you still talk to now in the new class?
48 Lorena Yeah, in the new class.
49
I got a new group of friends. It was good.
This new transcript uses shift in focus, speaker pauses, and listener comments to help define
boundaries between stories and parts of stories. Its organization indicates both the overall order and
connections among thoughts and feelings that organized the conversation. It does not provide a great deal
of information about how the story sounded - volume, emphasis, tone of voice, and so on – though
organization does intimate a general rhythm for talk. This version contains information relevant to exploring
theoretical stories about conflicts among mainstream success stories, connections to home communities
(friends), and the contrast between school literacies (with success-based values) and internet literacies
(with friend-based values). If analyzed in light of The ESL test and the earlier version of Friends this
transcript could provide data for theorizing: Lorena's conflicting values associated with friends and
education; the role of conversational interactions in creating this particular story; and variations in Lorena's
evaluations as part of the overall story's meaning. It also suggests questions we might ask about the
interview as a whole: were there additional instances where intermediate reflections changed/challenged
the original interpretation of stories? what kinds of stories included these kinds of conflicts? what kinds of
stories remained consistent with their original (positive) interpretation?
The level of detail in transcription ranges from multi-dimensional, detailed, visual representations of
many features of speech (Bloome et al, 2004), through representations of the rhythms and cadences of
speech with less attention to details of talk (Gee, 2006; 2008; Reissman, 1993), to general representations
that actively edit out interruptions and digressions for the purpose of making a more coherent, readable
document (Lieblich, Tuval-Mashiach & Zilber, 1998). Interview excerpts in co-author's essays use one or a
combination of these three approaches.
Similar to other narrative researchers, we saw the creation of transcripts as an active step in
interpretive process (Gubrium & Holstein, 2001; Mishler, 1991). Decisions about how and what to
represent will mark some features of interview talk as important and set others aside as not important. The
particular features of talk we choose to analyze also influence choices about how to represent language on
the page.
3. Identifying and analyzing story forms
Co-authors' initial discussions of transcripts provided an experiential basis for defining story forms
and functions, and for identifying an intuitive map for a theoretical story. At this point, we had sufficient
familiarity with data to begin thinking about particular story structures and content elements that might
serve as evidence for a theoretical story, and about relationships between co-author's storytelling and the
structure, form, and function of larger cultural stories such as the literacy myth. This closing section
provides an overview of features and methods co-authors chose to study in their literacy narratives.

Plot
Plot is generally defined as what happens in a story: the organization and presentation of the line of action.
Different definitions for stories imply different definitions for plot. In Labov's model, plot moves through
orienting material and complicating circumstances to arrive at a resolution; in small stories, plot may be
composed of a series of conversational moves to establish an identity or to negotiate relationships between
speakers. Co-authors used plot analyses to establish the basic "what happened" within both individual
stories and within story sets, and to name and classify stories in their conversations. For example, Lorena
found that she told primarily told a particular form of redemption story narrative researchers have named
springboard stories: stories with plots where difficult events are turned around to produce (more) favorable
outcomes.
One particularly useful approach to classifying plot structure is to describe the overall sense of
progress or movement from a story's beginning to its ending. Researchers have identified three basic
patterns: progressive, regressive, and stable (Tuval-Mashiach, 2006). "In a progressive narrative, the story
advances steadily. . . . In a regressive narrative there is a course of deterioration of decline. . . . In a stable
narrative the plot is steady" (Tuval-Mashiach, 2006, p. 252). More detailed forms, such as trial and error
plots, slowly ascending plots, and risk and gain plots combine episodes of progressive, regressive, and
steady plots to create more complex representations of overall progress (Lieblich, Tuval-Mashiach, &
Zilber, 1998, Ch. 5).
For example, a trial and error plot, if represented as a graph, might look like the ripples on the
surface of a pond - with a line of action where successive trials offer rising hope and the error causes
disappointment and a downturn in possibilities. The analysis of sub-plots and of multiple stories within
interviews can map storytellers' patterns for organization, both within individual stories and within the
overall interview. Analysis of these patterns provides information about storytellers' choices, patterns
where the teller will produce a particular plot in response to one narrative context but not another. Perhaps
more importantly, analysis of plot structures can indicate whether and how storytellers' plots fit into
dominant storytelling forms.
Within narrative research it is widely assumed that plot preferences influence both the perception
and representation of experience, and that plot analysis allows researchers to construct fuller, more
comprehensive understandings of the narrator's relationship to the experience s/he is talking about. For
example, we might notice that Lorena's stories often fall into plots identified with hero stories (Williams,
2004). Within hero stories narrators face a series of obstacles and overcome them. In a 2004 study
focused on (middle class) adolescent storytelling patterns for traumatic events, a version of the hero story
was found as the dominant storytelling form (Thorne & McLean, 2003). Fitting the messy, unresolved
events of everyday experiences into dominant plots can erase or overwrite the "what happened" of
individual stories (Baddeley & Singer 2007; Bruner, 1990; Greenspan, 2003). Because dominant plots can
make it difficult to tell experiences that are not a good fit, attention to other story features - such as subject
positioning, interactions between speakers, and language choices - can help paint a more detailed picture
of what storytellers might say if different plot structures were available. While co-authors' analyses usually
began with a focus on plot, they almost always moved to consideration of how plot was developed through
the moves and structures discussed in the following subsections.

Logical structure, causality, and the springboard effect
Logical connections are the bones of a story and their structural frame both organizes story events and
directs the interpretation of what the story is about. Logic is often connected to plot and it is a fundamental
basis for making coherence. Making coherence - identifying relationships among events as a way to create
a simple one-sentence understanding of what experience is about - is a fundamental function of stories,
particularly stories about who we are and what our lives are about (McAdams, 2003). Strategies for
creating coherence are built into a story's temporal sequencing. They are directly stated in narrator's
reflections - the explanations and evaluations that are part of the story itself - and they are implicit to the
flow of story events. Patterns for organizing and reflecting on meanings are tied to storyteller's assumptions
about what happened first and what caused what to happen. Analysis of causality can provide information
about storyteller's personal relationships to subject matter, and about his/her relationship to larger cultural
stories.
An important part of our analyses studied causality using an approach described by Jennifer Pals.
Pals looked at how patterns for causality correlate with storytellers' growth and learning. Within this
approach, Pals first identified causal connections within personal narratives. She then characterized
particular causal connections in terms of: the nature of the experiences associated with the causal
connection; the impact on the teller (the changes the teller represents as resulting from the experience);
and how the storyteller represented events in the story and causal connections between events. These
characterizations focused on what happened, when and where experiences took place, and whether they
were generally perceived as good or bad (valence). The impact on the teller was coded for valence, as
well as for the particular kinds of changes experiences brought about. Narrative processes were
characterized in terms of how "active-creative versus passive-receiving the [narrator was] in determining
the meaning of the impact on self" and how open the teller was to using past experiences as a basis for
learning (Pals, 2006, 180).
Pals' approach explored how and whether the way tellers represented causality in their stories
correlated with personal growth. Her findings suggested that storytellers who used causality to connect
negative events (losing a job, failing a test) with positive outcomes (getting a better job, learning the
material much more thoroughly for the re-test) experienced what she named a "springboard effect": an
effect which enabled them to learn and grow more easily than individuals who did not construct positive
logical connections.
We applied Pals' approach for slightly different research objectives. We looked at causality as a
way to understand patterns associated with: particular cultural identities; conflicts in individual identity
relationships (particularly relationships to literacies and school learning), and indications of individual efforts
and difficulties in telling stories that fall outside widely available mainstream stories. As pointed out by
narrative researchers, analyzing causal connections "as building blocks of broader patterns of self-defining
meaning [can] constitute a bottom-up way of approaching coherence that does not presuppose an
overarching structure or adherence to a grand narrative and allows for many different and potentially
contradictory self-defining narratives to coexist within a person's life story" (Pals, 2006, 178). We also used
causality as a way to explore individual narrator's relationships to literacies and to larger cultural patterns.
For example, Lorena told many examples of springboard stories and in doing so she positioned
herself with more control over her story material than if she had told the story differently. Without closing
the story by saying that passing the ESL test was "for the best" and that she made new friends, the logic of
Friends would position Lorena as a victim of the educational system for testing and tracking. But she did
not tell that story. She told a story where here experience was "for the best" and as a result, she is
positioned within a version of the Literacy Myth where she is both empowered and successful. We take up
a more in-depth reading of Lorena's relationship to the Literacy Myth both in her chapter, and in Chapter 9.
Descriptions of men versus women's patterns for storytelling provide another example of how
logical structures correlate with larger cultural formations.
While women [in middle age and late life] employ story plots that reinforce the importance of social
interdependence (events happen, and other people help you deal with them), men more often act
independently in their stories and employ plots that present fate as being in their own hands
(success or failure is a result of one's individual efforts and activities (Ray, 2000, 92).
Men and women resort to two different systems for causality to "tell" their lives. Because men construct
stories where they are directly responsible for actions, causality rests with their decisions and actions. In
contrast, women represent themselves as operating within larger social structures. This shifts their causal
role from one of directly instigating or obstructing events, to one of working with individuals and groups in
response to what "happens."
These gendered, cultural scripts suggest how identities - in addition to life experiences - can direct
causal patterns for representing causality within life stories. Ray's analyses goes on to point out that
"changes in cultural scripts lag far behind [changes] that take place in individual lives" (104). In other words,
even after individuals have encountered experiences that conflict with logics they learned early in life, they
tend to continue to represent causal relationships in terms of the scripts they were socialized in. In other
words, it is easier to change the content of our stories than it is to alter the forms we use to tell them. As a
result and throughout our lives, story forms remain deeply connected to (unconscious) identities.

Deep stories and surface stories
As we tell stories, we generally move back and forth between the presentation of story events and
reflection (Pasupathi, 2006). Story events are the "what happened" of the story; they report the details and
the action. Reflective elements are interpretations of what the story means. In big stories, reflective
elements can be part of the abstract, the introductory material where the storyteller sets up "what the story
is about." They can also be part of the resolution and the coda; they unfold most consistently and directly in
the evaluation - where the narrator directly interprets the significance of story events. Within the more
conversational structures of small stories, reflections comment on the value, importance, or meaning of an
unfolding story. They can also be part of on-going interpretations, like a gloss where the storyteller points
out what s/e is talking about. They tend to sum up or generalize story meanings so that the "aboutness" of
story events is directly stated.
Taken together the event-driven focus of details and action, coupled with the summing up,
generalizing and interpretative statements of reflective comments can create two simultaneous stories: a
surface story and a deep story. Surface stories illustrate and respond to the reflective, evaluative
comments that tell the listener how the narrator wants his/her story to be interpreted. Surface stories
generally offer logical connections between story events, characters, and contextual features in a way that
creates some kind of coherence and draws the story to a close. These interpretations are usually most
fully developed in the story's conclusion, but they may also unfold as comments or observations throughout
the story. The defining feature of a surface story is that its meanings are explicitly stated within the
narrative itself. Deep stories unfold in terms of unexamined details. They are made up of story events that
are not directly summed up or interpreted. The primary difference between surface stories and deep
stories is that the narrator directly states the meanings of surface stories, but deep story meanings - the
interpretations and explanations for random details and conflicts - remain unstated.
Often, surface stories and deep stories can seem to be telling the same story. But sometimes they
don't. For example, in Friends, the surface story is made up of reflective comments that interpret story
events. Lorena makes a number of interpretive reflections: the main ones are presented below in the order
they appear in the story:

[school] was really dangerous . . .back in the day, now it's a little better (and) thank god my
teachers were always really good;

since I grew up in a Spanish speaking house. . .at first I had a hard time [but passing the
test] was easy for me;

I was so scared . . . it was like nerve-shocking, but I guess I did good, cause I passed;

[taking the ESL test was] a new experience, I met a lot of friends. . so [it was] you know,
for the better.
Curiously, the story's one negative interpretation is presented from within a narrative scene in the story
itself. Lorena presents herself as walking into her new class and not knowing anyone "and I'm like 'Oh,
that's what I get for passing the test. I have no friends'." Because it is presented as part of the story's
actions - as what she says when she walks into the classroom - it does not really "step outside" and reflect
on story meanings. Instead, it is part of "what happened," and in that way it is part of an uninterpreted deep
story.
So while Friends' surface story - the overt summing up of the experience of taking the ESL test - is
positive and casts the experience as about success and overcoming hardship, an unstated, deep story
might unfold through interpretation of quoted dialog, the story's settings (a city school where students are
"tracked" by language and Lorena's bilingual home), the characters (the identities of friends, Lorena's
parents) and cultural stories about power and identity. Unpacking the deep story - particularly in terms of
how it connects to mainstream cultural stories - was one strategy we used to interpret Lorena's literacy
narrative.
It is hard to say whether the owner of a story (the storyteller) or a "neutral" researcher will do a
better job at interpreting deep stories. We felt that both perspectives had advantages and disadvantages
and that working together was the best approach. Storytellers can remember additional circumstances
surrounding story events, and they may know which mainstream stories and aspects of their identity
prompted them to tell particular stories the way they did. But storytellers are often invested in particular
representations of themselves, or they may not be aware of how larger cultural stories connect to their
identities. This kind of awareness is difficult for any storyteller to tap into. Researchers' "outsider"
perspectives can help identify interpretive assumptions and values storytellers may not be aware of. Both
perspectives are valuable for theorizing deep stories' connections to larger cultural contexts.

Subject positioning and agency
As indicated earlier, subject positionings "refer to the real or imagined" relationships between the storyteller
and the material in the story (Thorne & McLean, 2001, 171). As we tell stories, we position ourselves with
respect to story events and characters, and with respect to listeners. Researchers characterize
positionings through noting the storytelling style and tone, and through paying attention to content
indicating the narrator's relationship to listeners and to story material. Statements indicating narrator
stance or relationships can be stated directly or implied. Examples of direct statements from Friends
include statements such as, "I did good, cause I passed it" and "I didn't struggle too much, reading and
writing." These statements position Lorena as in control and as a kind of a hero - someone who
successfully overcomes a series of obstacles and who ultimately succeeds.
Later sections of Friends indicate that passing the test was not entirely successful and imply a
more vulnerable, less successful positioning. In reflective discussions about the ESL test Lorena states
"that's what I get for passing the test. . . . I have no friends." The fact that Lorena was separated from her
"close" friend, Paula, suggests a more complicated positioning for this story, rather than a perfect fit with
traditional hero stories. Tensions and contradictions within storyteller's positioning, like the exploration of
surface and deep stories, often correspond with conflicts between how stories "feel" and culturally available
stories for representing what happened. Lorena's hero story is undercut by her observation that passing
the ESL test didn't feel like success. Such conflicts offer clues for the exploration of storytellers'
relationships to literacies.
Subject positionings provide additional clues about relationships to mainstream stories. Hero
stories, rebel-victim stories, and prodigy positionings are commonly assumed within mainstream student
writers' literacy narratives. Although it may seem as if narrators choose or are in control of positioning
within their stories, in practice, narrators do not create new positioning, rather, they generally tell stories
from within culturally available roles or positions. In addition, research in composition studies suggests that
mainstream positionings are projected onto students through institutional practices and teacherly
perspectives. The institutional positioning for literacy learners who do not perform in accordance with
academic expectations has been variously labeled as "slow reader, late reader, disabled reader, at-risk
reader, and more recently struggling reader" (Alverman, 2001), and there are pedagogical and personal
consequences for these positionings.
A review of articles from The Journal of Basic Writing suggests that abstract, disciplinary theories
about student success and literacy influence how instructors imagine or conceptualize basic writing
students (Gray-Rosendale, 2006). Over the years of Gray-Rosendale's study, from 1999 - 2005, student
identities were theorized in terms of current theories of the day: first as "constructed in situ" (responsive to
context), as created in accordance with academic theories about discourse; and, most recently, as
consisting of participation within a set of practices (Gray-Rosendale, 2006, 5). In this example, composition
teachers' theoretical explanations of students can be seen as a kind of mainstream story; this story directs
interpretive process. The assumptions and values implicit to academic theories direct teachers (and
researchers) perceptions of positionings within literacy narratives. When students see themselves in
different ways - there will be conflicts - and excellent possibilities for new theory!
Finally, as indicated in the discussion of plot, psychological research suggests that there are
dominant subject positionings both for different kinds of stories and for different narrators. When narrators
step outside of these mainstream positionings, listeners have difficulty receiving and interpreting the
resulting stories (Thorne & McLean, 2003). Positioning is interactive in that it is not only about what the
narrator says, it is also about how what is said is received. Identification and characterization of
interactions between storytellers and the audience - between subject and interviewer - can help
researchers understand the multiple levels of communication within literacy narratives. It can also help
researchers explain why and how different representations within literacy narratives function.

Interactions between speakers - polished stories and invention stories
After we identified stories and story sets, we characterized plot structures, and read and applied
Pasupathi's work to analyze moves between telling and reflecting (Pasupathi, 2006). As co-authors
continued to work with transcripts, they tried out additional analytic approaches; attention to interactions
between speakers was essential for effective application of almost every interpretive approach. Subjectinterviewer interactions are central not only to story plots, but also to logical construction, and the narrative
voice which makes stories come to life (Bamberg and Georgakopoulou, 2008; Pasupathi, 2006).
Conversational interactions provide important clues to storytellers' identities, and indicate the social scripts,
ideologies, stereotypes, and identity communities that tellers resort to as they create those identities
(DeFina, 2008). In other words, analyses of how stories are created through talk tell us about relationships
"between the interaction at hand, and social roles and relationships that transcend the immediate concerns
of interactants involved in local exchanges" (DeFina, 2008, 422).
For example, in Maureen's interview, conversational interactions provided a basis for distinguishing
between polished stories - set pieces that often connect to larger cultural scripts - and what we named
invention stories: stories where Maureen and Sally developed shared ideas and language that represented
or explored material from polished stories in new ways. Invention stories were small stories, where ideas,
reflections, and evaluations evolved through fluid, conversational exchanges, as co-creations rather than
individual presentations. Analysis of word choices in these conversations illustrated how Sally and
Maureen developed shared vocabulary during the course of the interview. That is, Sally picked up and
used Maureen's "summing up" words - and vice versa; in particular, Sally's language choices connected
new literacy learning experiences to cultural stories where learning is "scary" or stressful, presumably due
to evaluation components associated with school, while Maureen's language choices emphasized learner's
preferences and responsibilities, and connected to larger stories about being a good student and student
agency.
In addition to providing evidence of connections between speakers and to larger cultural stories,
interactive storytelling patterns can indicate how much and what kind of agency an individual asserts within
a given conversation. As in Ryan's observations about his different ways of talking about school literacies
and gaming literacies, tone of voice, volume, pacing and/or fluency in talk, as well as language choices and
directness can signal agency or investment with respect to a given subject position or topic.

Language choices
As co-authors looked for larger patterns in their stories - themes, plot, subject positioning, logical structures,
and so on - they paid attention to the language choices. Because we are not trained linguists, our analyses
of language choices drew primarily from our experiences as native speakers. Researchers who study
language forms in narrative note that ". . .in comparison with the quest for identity through contents of the
life story, the structural aspects of a narrative are more attuned to the deeper levels of personality, less
easy to manipulate, and perhaps more revealing. At the same time . . . the distinction between form and
content is not as clear-cut as it seems" (Lieblich, Tuval-Mashiach & Zilber, 1998, p 168). Like other
researchers, we used analysis of language choices to reveal aspects of speakers’ assumptions, values,
and beliefs that they might not be able to state directly, and we paid attention to relationships between
content and form.
Analysis of language choices can help researchers characterize relationships to story content. For
example, as Angela read through her transcript she noticed that she represented some experiences in the
first person (I) and some experiences in second person (you). Sometimes she said, “I learned to. . . “ or “I
was. . .”, and sometimes, rather than presenting herself as the subject of the sentence, she generalized or
shifted her level of involvement by presenting information in forms like “You went to school and they taught
you to . . . .” As she read through her transcript, she noticed when she used first person and when she
used second person, and decided that when she was uncertain or undecided about her relationship to the
experience she was describing, she used “you,” and when she was more confident about how she felt or
what she wanted from the experience, she used “I.” This observation raised questions that directed a
more in-depth reading of her transcript. What other factors influenced her shift from "I" to "you"? Did she
represent experiences related to print and digital technologies differently? What issues related to identity,
self confidence and literacy seemed to shape these and related patterns for self representation? This last
question became central to her analysis.
We used work by James Gee (2005; 2000), Bloome et all (2005), and Lieblich, Tuval-Mashiach &
Zilber (1998) as a basis for identifying language choices that ethnographers and linguists use as indicators
of relationships to identity. In particular, we used Lieblich, Tuval-Mashiach & Zilber's discussion of
connections between language choices and narrative analysis. The following list of language features and
interpretations of what those features imply served as one starting place for analysis of transcripts,
● Adverbials such as suddenly may be indicative of how expected or unexpected an event may
be
● Mental verbs, such as I thought, I understood, and I noticed may be indicative of the extent to
which an experience is in consciousness and is undergoing mental processing.
● Denotations of time and place may be indicative of attempts to distance an event or bring it
closer to the narrator.
● Past, present, or future forms of verbs, and the transitions between them may be indicative of a
speaker's sense of identification with the event being described.
● Transitions between first-person, second-person, and third-person speakers may be indicative
of a split between the speaking self and the experiencing self due to the difficulty of reencountering
a difficult experience.
● Passive and active forms of verbs may be indicative of the speaker's perception of agency.
● Intensifiers such as really or very or de-intensifiers such as maybe or like raise questions about
whether intensifiers consistently appear in connection with markers of the magnitude of an
experience and whether de-intensifiers always appear in conjunction with expressions of
helplessness and inability.
● Breaking the chronological or causal progression of event by way of regressions, digressions,
leaps in time, or silences may be indicative of attempts to avoid discussing a difficult experience.
● Repetitions of parts of the discourse (syllables, words, sentences, ideas) may indicate that the
subject of discussion elicits an emotional charge in the speaker's narrative.
● Detailed descriptions of events may be indicative of reluctance to describe difficult emotions
(Lieblich, Tuval-Mashiach & Zilber, 1998, p. 156).
To ensure that we had a common understanding both of what was meant by particular language choices
and how to interpret those choices, we read through Lieblich, Tuval-Mashiach, and Zilber's list as a group,
and picked examples from transcripts that matched the list's categories. We used this exercise to unpack
some of the generalizations about what the different language patterns might imply, and to create
examples. In some cases, we identified the suggested generalizations as overly broad. Exploring multiple
examples in terms of features from co-author's transcripts helped us to think about more complex, more
individualized ways language choices create identities. Co-authors then worked on transcripts, as a group
and on their own, to identify what they saw as significant patterns for language choices in their talk. At the
next meeting, each of us talked about what we found. It was during this meeting that Angela identified her
different patterns for self representation, and decided on agency or control as one focus for her analysis.
Chapter summary
Our approach to analyzing data was collaborative, reflective, and cyclical, with talk and writing as
central to each step in the research process. Processes for analyzing data, defining important concepts,
connecting to existing research, and developing theoretical stories were inseparable from group discussion,
and resort to individual and shared writing. Our process" reinvented the wheel" in the sense that we began
with close readings of our data, and only after identifying what we saw as ideas and questions did we go to
the scholarly literature to see how researchers had named and explained the concepts and problems we
saw in the transcripts. As we moved back and forth between analysis of the interviews and theoretical
readings, we developed an on-going series of transcripts to represent the changing focus of our analyses.
As we became more familiar with approaches to narrative analysis, we applied them to our data, refined
our questions, and began to compose a theoretical story to explain what we saw in our data.
Chapters in Section II present a fuller account of the processes and ideas co-authors used to
construct theoretical stories.