Telling, listening to, and making
sense of in-depth personal narratives
Novella Node of NCRM
Training event
Molly Andrews
m.andrews@uel.ac.uk
Centre for Narrative Research
www.uel.ac.uk/cnr/index.htm
Agenda
• Relationship between narrative and story
– Personal story exercise
• Looking at data
– Interview questions
– Transcripts
– Making meaning/analysis
• Narrative and ethics
PART ONE:
INTRODUCING
NARRATIVE RESEARCH
Key narrative questions
• How are stories structured?
• Who produces them and by what means?
• What are the mechanisms by which they are
consumed?
• How are narratives silenced, contested or
accepted?
• What are other stories which give this story
its meaning (counter-narratives)?
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Universality of narrative
Narrative is present in myth, legend, fable, novella,
epic, history, tragedy, drama, comedy, mine,
painting…., stained glass windows, cinema, comics,
news item, conversation. Moreover, under this
almost infinite diversity of forms, narrative is present
in every age, in every place, in every society; it begins
with the very history of mankind (sic) and there
nowhere is nor has been a people without narrative…
it is simply there, like life itself.
-Roland Barthes
Riessman’s additions to Barthes’ list
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Memoir
Biography
Autobiography
Diaries
Archival documents
Social service and health records
Other organisational documents
Scientific theories
Fold ballads
Photographs
Other art work
A word of caution…
One might think that a concept which brings
together the world religions, all of Western
philosophy, large-scale statistical correlations
in the social sciences, every biography and
autobiography that’s ever been written, every
work of fiction and my account of losing a pet
cat obscures more than it illuminates.
Narratives are stories and stories are not simple.
- Ian Craib
Wide range in definition of narratives,
but….
A fundamental criterion of narrative is surely
contingency. Whatever the content, stories
demand the consequential linking of events or ideas.
Narrative shaping entails imposing a
meaningful pattern on what would otherwise
be random and disconnected.
-Phil Salmon
The classic model (Aristotelian)
• Action: representation of events, experiences and
emotions
• ‘of a certain amplitude’ (size)
• Classic structure: beginning, middle, end
• Emplotment: the ordering of the incidents, the
‘lifeblood of the narrative’
• ‘peripeteia’ – a breach in the expected state of things
Narratives depict a rupture from the expected, interpretive
because they mirror the world, rather than copy it exactly.
- Adopted from Riessman 2008
What do narratives ‘do’?
…narratives, as sense-making tools, inevitably do things – for
people, for social institutions, for culture, and more.
-Mark Freeman
Narratives are strategic, functional, and purposeful…
Individuals use the narrative form to remember, argue, justify,
persuade, engage, entertain, and even mislead an audience.
Groups use stories to mobilize others, and to foster a sense of
belonging. Narratives do political work.
-Catherine Kohler Riessman
PART TWO:
PERSONAL NARRATIVES
The self is a story which is forever being
rewritten (Bruner 1994)
The importance of stories
"human beings think, perceive, imagine and make
moral choices according to narrative structure”
Theodore Sarbin
The activity of being human is intricately tied to the
activity of telling and listening to stories. Stories are
not only the way in which we come to ascribe
significance to experiences we and others have had;
they are one of the primary means through which we
constitute our very selves.
Personal narratives
• Event vs. experience narratives
• One, amongst many, forms of narrative
• Even when stories are told by individuals, they are
always located within a wider context; ‘cultural
stockpot of stories’
• Stories of the self changing over time
• Audience – for whom, and to whom, is this story
told? Stories are always shaped by their ‘listeners’
• Relationship between what is said, and is not, and
perhaps cannot be said?
Relationship between narratives and
identity
• Stories relate not only to a self who is, or was,
but also to a self who might have been, or still
might be; critical role of imagination and the
world of the possible
• Location/positioning; Indicators of belonging;
who is ‘us’ and who is ‘them’
• Constructing/accessing framework of meaning
of ‘the other’
“Narrative is radical, creating us at the very moment
it is being created"
Toni Morrison, Nobel Laureate lecture
But…
• Which stories do we tell?
• Which stories do we omit?
• When do we start the story in this place? Why end it
here?
• Who do we tell these stories to?
• What stories do we tell ourselves?
• How do we interpret the stories of others?
• How do we interpret their attempts to make sense of
our stories?
• Do we ever tell the same story twice?
Cultural memory and
personal narratives
• Critique of traditional notions of memory; memory is
located in culture
• Relationship between individual and cultural
memory/amnesia; memory frames and social practices;
memory as a ‘cultural vehicle’ (Lambek and Antze 1996)
• The concept of memory is a cultural-historical
phenomenon
• Rupture and continuity of narratives
• Relationship between told and untold aspects of
experience; social conditions and tellable stories
What happens when we ‘lose’ our stories?
Work-shopping stories
Pair off
Take two copies of text – give one to me, one to your
partner
Without looking at the text, describe to your partner
the experience you wrote about
Now let your partner read what you have written
How is it different? Similar? Which rendition do you
think more accurately reflects your experience of the
story you are telling?
Now change roles, and repeat.
Your stories
• Choice of footwear
• professional stories
– Getting on a course
– Attending a conference
– First day of a course
– Professional placement
• Engagement stories
• Class reunion
• Migration
• 9/11
• Revisiting childhood decisons/experiences
• Getting a pet
Your story
• How did you pick this particular story?
• Who did you think of as your audience
• Difference between writing and telling of story
• The past in the present
• Considerations of ‘tell-ability’; cultural
context, emotional exposure, etc.
PART THREE:
LOOKING AT NARRATIVE DATA
Studs Terkel
“Listening, and keeping
a curiosity is the key… I
am curious about all of
it, all the time.
‘Curiosity never killed
this cat’ – that’s what
I’d like as my epitaph.”
Listening
The first thing I’d say to any interviewer is…
‘Listen.’ It’s the second thing I’d say too, and the third and the
fourth… ‘Listen… listen… listen… listen.’ And if you do, people will
talk. They’ll always talk... Don’t push them, don’t rush them,
don’t chase them or harass them with getting on to the next
question. Let them take their time… Listen and wait are the two
essentials, with watch and be aware a close third. A laugh can be
a cry of pain, and a silence can be a shout. And God knows how
many different meanings there are to a smile. It’s what a person
says and how they say it, and where they’re saying it to – to you,
to themselves, to the past, the future, the outside world. Those
are the basics.
Elizabeth and I are sitting in her living room. The age difference between us is roughly fifty
years. This excerpt comes from our first interview together. We have been speaking for
more than an hour, when Elizabeth describes an event which took place more than three
decades ago. Just before this point in the interview, Elizabeth has told me that, as a
mother of four, she spent two weeks in a maximum security prison, as a result of her
political protest.
MA: How about your decision to actually break the law, was that a difficult
decision for you, or did you feel very convinced that what you were doing was
right? How did you think about that decision at the time?
EW: Yes, I took a lot of thinking about it. Because I had been on [a similar
protest] the year before, but I hadn’t [broken the law] because of family
affairs and so on. The next year I was going again, and there was nobody else
from [her town], and I thought well, I wouldn’t go. I mean, nobody’s going
this year. I went and sat in the garden and then I felt such a heel. The fact that
nobody was going, it was all the more important for me to go, wasn’t it? And
if there’s only a few of you going, it’s all the more important that if you do go,
you make a stand. But I mean it was such a silly idea to think that just because
nobody else was going, well I wouldn’t go. And of course it is more difficult,
because things are laid on from your own town to get there… it’s a lot easier.
I did talk it over with my husband first, and so on, needless to say. Then I
wondered if I ought to go. You know how it is – and you’re aware, and it’s,
you know, ‘am I being just an exhibitionist, and showing off?’ …
And I think I dreamed – whatever was the dream? Very often when I’d got a problem
like that, and I’m turning it over in my mind, a dream makes it clear. Oh, I know, I
dreamed there was a tray and my hands were underneath holding the tray and I was
doing a lot, what with the family and the famine relief and one thing and another. I w
as doing a lot, and more and more things were piled on this tray, and I s aid ‘Oh Lord,
don’t put on any more. I can’t hold it.’ And then when I looked under the tray, it
wasn’t may hands that were holding it, it was sort of symbolic hands, large, thick hands
that you get on Henry Moore sculptures. And I knew that it wasn’t really me – that if
what I was doing was right, one was upheld in another dimension somehow. In here it
was right, and it was go ahead. And somehow that made it clear to me, anyway.
Somebody else might have interpreted it another way, but from my interpretation, it
was that I should go ahead, which I did. And it was trying and difficult, but a very
rewarding experience, really.
The fall of the Berlin Wall,
November 9, 1989
Were all East Germans celebrating?
The Trabbant,
Symbol of East Germany
On the way home [at about 10:30 pm] I noticed many people
all running into the same direction... they were all running to
the end of the world... the street was full of cars and one could
hardly walk at all... I then walked with the stream and got to
the border crossing, Bornholmerstrasse… which was the first
crossing to be opened. Two hundred meters from here.
Bornholmerstrasee November 9 1989
It was so crammed full with people you couldn’t move. And
everybody was pushing through the crossing. The policemen
were just standing around, they didn’t know what to do and
were completely puzzled. I asked a few people… what was
happening. Of course, I know, I could see, but I didn’t
actually, I didn’t understand.
And I stood there for about a half hour in this crowd and then
went home and switched the television on. Then I watched
everything on television, transmissions from everywhere, Kudamm and all other border crossings. And I could see that
people were coming over, that is as seen from the west.
Berlin Wall at Potsdamer Platz, August 1962
.... I was totally paralysed...
all this continued for the
next few days and it took
me a whole week before I
went across, Potsdamerstr.
It is difficult to describe…
this was such a very
elementary transformation
of one’s existence, of ... the
whole world in a way...
November 10, 1989
I’ll try to explain. I have lived.. I have been in Berlin since ‘73 and I have
always lived two hundred meters from the wall. And this wall, to me, has
become a symbol of captivity in every respect, also in a metaphoric,
symbolic sense. And this is what I have been ramming my head against for
the last twenty years. And I had, as a way of survival, I had resolved to
ignore this wall as far as I could… And I tried to do the same throughout
the week, when the wall had gone. I did not only try to suppress the fact
that the wall had been there previously, but I also tried to suppress the fact
that it had gone. And it didn’t work.
When I went across the wall for the first time, I did so at
Potsdamer Platz, where there hadn’t been a crossing, they had
only torn a hole, simply torn a hole into the wall, yes. And
that’s where I wanted to go through, precisely there. I walked
through like a sleepwalker. I could not conceive of the idea up
to the moment when I was through, that that was possible.
Well, and then I stood for a very long time over at the other
side in no-man’s land, and could not move forward or
backwards. And then I cried, I was totally overwhelmed.
Political narratives:
Methodological and Strategic Questions
• Who is telling? Who is not?
• Why are they telling this particular story? What is the function of the
narrative for the speaker? For the listener? Who is the intended audience?
• What are they telling? What is left unsaid?
• Where is the story located in relation to where it is recounted? What kind of
cultural translation is necessary, and how is this accomplished?
• When does the story begin? End? How does this influence what story can
be told? When did the story occur in relation to when it is being recounted?
• How do the mechanisms which are used for data gathering enhance/limit
what can be said (e.g. Tape recorder? Video machine? Art supplies?)
Who is telling? Who is not?:
• Reinhard Weisshuhn: Member of Initiative for Peace
and Human Rights. Long-standing reputation as
leading opposition figure.
• Who he is not: most East Germans, who either
implicitly went along with the oppressive regime or
actively colluded with it. Neither is he someone who
euphorically embraces the opening of the wall.
• Other ‘who’s in this story: the police; everybody who
was pushing through the crossing
Why this particular story?
• The power of the story
of ‘the fall of the wall’.
• A ‘counter-narrative’ of
reactions to the fall of
the Berlin Wall.
What are they telling?
What is left unsaid?
• Series of responses to the opening of the Berlin
Wall. Identity narrative, revealing the
complexity of his emotional response to the
events as they unfolded.
• Left unsaid: critical moment both in terms of
his own biography and in terms of historical
change
Where is the story located in relation to
where it is recounted?
Importance of place in this narrative; Bornholmerstr. Versus
Potsdammer Platz; the symbolic importance of finding one’s
own way through the opening of the wall; a ‘torn hole’
When: questions of time
• time in the narrative (from
10:30 pm Nov 9, 1989 till
one week after opening of
wall);
• time of recounting (two
years later);
• present time – 20th
anniversary of fall of wall,
Potsdammer Platz
How do the mechanisms which are used for data
gathering enhance/limit potential findings?
• Why interviews?
• Use of tape recorder;
strengths – unobtrusive,
economic, convenient
• Weakness: no visual
input, emphasis on what
is said (i.e. audible) and
sayable
PART FOUR:
POINTERS FOR ANALYSIS OF
PERSONAL NARRATIVES
Structure
How is the structure of the narrative
organized?
How internally consistent is this story?
How does the story move? Does it wander?
Develop logically?
How persuasive is the story?
Audience
• Who is the audience, literal and figurative, for this
story?
• Are there any ‘ghost audiences’ who are present in
the room?
• How does the speaker perceive you, and how do you
think this impacts on what they say/don’t say?
• How do they think you view them?
Meaning
• What does this story mean to the person telling it?
• Does the story mean the same thing to this person
now as it did at the time that it happened, or has their
perspective on it changed over time?
• What does it mean to you? Does it resonate with any
of your own experiences? Are there any reasons it
may be difficult for you to take in what your
respondent is saying?
The Unspoken
• What is the overall ‘feel’ to this interview?
• How does the person tell their story – With
excitement? Hesitation? Sadness?
• Observe body language closely (your
respondent and your own). What does this tell
you? Did the body language change in the
interview?
Summary notes
• Identify the major themes in the interview,
what Frisch calls ‘the feel of the life’
• Read other materials which will help you
make sense of the themes which you wish to
explore
• Select certain passages which best illustrate
the points you wish to make
• Look at the questions you asked, and think
self-critically how these may have impacted
upon what was said
• What are the consistencies/inconsistencies within
passages and across the interview?
• Remember that you are trying to access the
subjective truth for the person with whom you are
speaking, i.e. what the events which they describe to
you mean to them; do not confuse your role with
that of a therapist, friend, or judge.
• Attend to both the detail of the accounts they
provide, as well as to the larger social/historical
contexts which will have helped to produce such
accounts. If ‘interviews are windows into collective
thought processes’ what can you say about the wider
implications of the individual account you have
recorded?
• What sense can you make of the silences and other
ruptures in the interview?
PART FIVE:
ETHICAL DILEMMAS IN
NARRATIVE RESEARCH
Ethics: Seven key issues
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ownership and intellectual property rights – who owns the life
being studied?
Confidentiality – can this ever be really guaranteed?
Honesty and the scandals of life stories (eg Burgos-Debray
(1984) I, Rigoberta Menchu:An Indian woman in Guatamala)
Deception – how to present our research focus to those who
we study
Exploitation – what do our participants get out of
participating in our research?
Informed consent – do people really understand what they are
agreeing to?
Hurt and harm – effects of misrepresentation for individuals
and communities
Ken Plummer (2001)
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Plus a few more…
• Inequalities of interview relationship
• Hierarchical nature of interpretation
• Control over representation
• Potential for exploitation
• Deconstructing assumptions of ‘empowerment’
• Moving from the private to public sphere (Gready)
• Broader impact/unintentional consequences of research
For discussion
• By what right can an academic enter the subjective worlds of
other human beings and report back to the wider world on
them?
• Must our understanding of someone’s life correspond with
their understanding of their life? If they differ, what is the
most responsible thing for us to do? Do our intellectual and
ethical responsibilities pull us in different directions?
• Should we share our ‘findings’ with our research participants.
In what circumstances would it not be desirable to do so?
• How universal are ethics?
Your questions
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How to keep analysis from becoming too descriptive?
Post-structuralist linguistic turn?
Which research question to focus on?
Voice for the voiceless?
How to keep bias out of analysis?
Differences between narrative research and oral
history?
• Impact of interviewer within interview?