Narrative Analysis: An Integrative Approach to Understanding Narrative Practices, Study Guides, Projects, Research of Storytelling

Download Narrative Analysis: An Integrative Approach to Understanding Narrative Practices and more Study Guides, Projects, Research Storytelling in PDF only on Docsity! 12 NARRATIVE ANALYSIS: AN INTEGRATIVE APPROACH Small stories and narrative practices Michael Bamberg CHAPTER CONTENTS Narrative analysis as qualitative inquiry – and the problems with narrative interviewing 244 Analysing “narrative practices” 247 Narrative practices and the interactive context 248 Identity navigation – three navigation spaces for character construal 249 Positioning and positioning analysis 251 Summary and outlook 252 Narrative analysis – an illustration 254 What have you been doing with your days since it happened? 255 Analysis of Chen’s bodily performance cues 259 Analytic considerations 260 Conclusion/outlook 261 Key concepts 262 Further readings/viewings 263 References 263 12_JARVINEN_CH_12.indd 243 23/12/2019 12:31:55 PM QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS244 Opening with a brief explication of narrative analysis as part of qualitative inquiry, I will lay out how narrative analysis has evolved and changed as an analytic endeavour over the last twenty years, resulting in the emergence of an integra- tive approach that centres on narrative practices. This approach attempts to con- nect what in the next chapter will unfold as three particular analytic procedures (thematic, structural and interactional), with a fourth procedure (visual) under the header of positioning analysis. Positioning here is exemplified as taking place at three different levels: First, storytellers position characters vis-à-vis one another in the story they tell. Simultaneously, they position themselves vis-à-vis their interlocutors in the process of telling. Third – and this makes storytelling particu- larly interesting for identity researchers – storytellers position themselves vis-à-vis dominant master storylines/discourses and thereby convey a sense of who they are – to their interlocutors and to themselves. In addition to positioning analysis, the narrative practice approach analyses storytelling as a process of navigating and managing identities (constructing a sense of who we are). More specifically, I will lay out three identity dilemmatic spaces as central to the way identities are navigated in storytelling (sameness/difference, agency/passivity and continuity/ change). In the last section, I will give a detailed demonstration of how to apply the three levels of positioning and take the reader through the navigation of the three dilemmatic spaces. The visual data are available on the web, including three more clips plus transcripts for class exercises. Narrative analysis as qualitative inquiry – and the problems with narrative interviewing Having been tasked by the American Psychological Association to establish guide- lines and reporting standards for qualitative research (Levitt et al., 2018), the six of us tried to develop and take five general principles into consideration as gen- eral guideposts for qualitative inquiry: (i) allowing for inductive (non-hypothesis- testing) methodologies; (ii) allowing subjectivity and experience into research; (iii) interrogating the outsider perspective and allowing a blurred (though reflec- tive) stance on the researcher–researchee divide; (iv) aiming for insights/findings that have “real-life implications”; and (v) taking language seriously as culturally embodied and intentional practices. While not necessarily every methodological approach or qualitative research project would have to make use of and apply equally to each of these guideposts, I will approach narrative analysis in this chap- ter as a methodology that does more than pay lip-service, and use these guideposts as points to return to when documenting narrative research in the concluding section. 12_JARVINEN_CH_12.indd 244 23/12/2019 12:31:56 PM NARRATIVE ANALYSIS: AN INTEGRATIVE APPROACH 247 that the unit of analysis for all four approaches (content, form, interaction, visual) differed considerably – ranging from the form of actual story-texts, to whole inter- views, to what is arguably taken to be “behind” the interview and the interviewee/ author. These four different approaches have been considerably refined over the last decade (as shown in Chapter 13), though in parallel with a voice of concern that language was viewed as a more or less transparent window into people’s ways of constructing a sense of who they are. Furthermore, if these four analytic pro- posals were imagined to be sitting side by side, to be employed for the analysis of Sunday performances in often highly stylised interview situations, the latter two proposals (interactional and visual analysis) were more add-ons, and considered to be secondary to what is primary – namely the “textualization of experience” into form and content. Last, but not least, one may wonder how one could still hang on to – or what is left of – the exceptionality thesis that originally seemed to have catapulted narrative and narrative analysis into the centre of qualitative inquiry and the analysis of (narrative) identity. Analysing “narrative practices” As our point of departure, Alexandra Georgakopoulou and I proposed working with storytelling as a form of interactive practice under the header of small story theory (Bamberg, 2006, 2011; Bamberg & Georgakopoulou, 2008, Georgakopoulou, 2007) – later renamed the narrative practice approach. Taking off from Riessman’s interactional/performance approach and making this lens central to narrative analysis came as a critical response to the predominance of analytic frameworks that continued to work with interviews as privileged attempts to unearth authen- tic identity from people’s (and organisations’) deep-seated interiority. Our critique of the assumptions that had crept into qualitative interviewing under the hegem- ony of the therapeutic ethos (Illouz, 2008) worked off from the tenet that meaning emerges as agentive sense-making with and between human bodies interacting with each other in situated activities. Taking this premise seriously and applying it to storytelling practices, the question arises what is particular to storytelling – or better, what is it that is actually being practised when engaging in storytelling practices. Sure, narrators engage in attributing intentions (or non-intentions) and emotions to characters in story-worlds; that is, they model sequences of actions in accordance with particular folk psychologies of interiorities and exteriorities. (see Hutto, 2007, for further details; see also the discussion of agency/passivity navigation below). It is accepted knowledge that these models are typically prac- tised in early book-reading and storytelling routines. However, in addition, and perhaps more relevant, with each telling of a story, narrators practise how to say 12_JARVINEN_CH_12.indd 247 23/12/2019 12:31:56 PM QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS248 what to say, that is, to place their own emotionality and subjectivity as speakers into the performance of their stories. In an investigation of children’s develop- ment of affect expression in their narratives, Judy Reilly and I (Bamberg & Reilly, 1996) took issue with investigations that qualified storytelling abilities in the form of signifying story characters’ emotional stances and their relevance for plot devel- opments as aspects of narrative competence, and the bodily expression of affect in storytelling as mere performance. In contrast, we argued that the role of affective practices (cf. Wetherell, 2013), that is the ability to express one’s own bodily felt subjectivity when relating a world of story characters, is equally – if not more – important for the emergent processes of narrative practices and narrative analysis. Narrative practices and the interactive context To start with, and returning to the issue of form and content, small story theory originates from the tenet that narrative activities are embedded in previous and subsequent turns in (everyday) interactions; that is, interactive befores and afters. The implication of contextualising narratives this way is that there is a conver- sational thematic and topical contiguity that is taken into account when stories surface. Interlocutors monitor each other (and themselves) by asking: “why this story here-and-now?” They try to figure out how and why a shift into storytelling mode – making something from a there-and-then of a (past or imagined) story- time relevant for the here-and-now of the telling time – is pertinent to the local interactive moment in a conversation. It is here that it becomes evident that shifts into storytelling mode are not random or accidental. Rather, interlocutors assume that storytelling is an intentional act – related to and making relevant what com- municative and relational business at hand is supposed to be accomplished. Along these lines, narrating a story requires a great deal of interactive coordina- tion. Shifting into narrating is typically accompanied by a discursive bid to hold the floor for an extended turn, and, towards the end of telling the story, cuing interlocutors to respond. A great deal of breaking into an ongoing conversation with a story is signalled by bodily cues such as facial expression, gaze, shifting body positions, and by way of using intonation units to mark off segments – segments that signal whether the narrator intends to keep the floor or is coming to an ending (cf. Bamberg, 2012); and bodily cues that signal the ending of a tell- ing typically transpire well before. Approaching narrative/story from this kind of narrative practice angle prioritises the interactive relational, affective and bod- ily business that storytelling accomplishes. It is relevant here that participants in communities of practice share cultural practices of storytelling, not necessarily in the form of technical or theoretical concepts, but due to continuous bodily and 12_JARVINEN_CH_12.indd 248 23/12/2019 12:31:56 PM NARRATIVE ANALYSIS: AN INTEGRATIVE APPROACH 249 verbal practices in their social interactions. Thus, while the discursive functions of storytelling may be manifold (e.g. to entertain, show regret or to embellish an argument), narrators are fundamentally doing relational affective identity work. It is my proposal that this kind of identity work may best be understood in terms of the following three kinds of navigation practices. Identity navigation – three navigation spaces for character construal To start with, in our daily practices, we – as personas or organisations – mark ourselves off as different, similar or the same with respect to others. Integrating and differentiating a sense of who we are vis-à-vis others takes place in moment- by-moment navigations; and stories about self and others are good candidates to practise the construction of story characters as navigating this space, from childhood on. However, to position ourselves as narrators vis-à-vis our interlocu- tors is different from how we position the characters vis-à-vis one another inside the story-world. For instance, taking off from a well-known fairy tale, construing Hansel and Gretel in a girl–boy sibling relationship as the same (i.e. loyal to each other), but the girl as more resourceful and smarter than the boy, marks them off as different from the other story characters. In this fairy tale, they are starkly posi- tioned vis-à-vis witches (outsider, weird and evil) and stepmothers (dominant, self- ish and evil), and less strongly positioned vis-à-vis fathers (generous but weak), so that themes (what the story is about) can emerge – either as about a broken fam- ily in which children are abandoned, or about children having to claim agency to overcome obstacles in growing up, or simply as one of the first feminist fairy tales. To be clear, in narrative analysis, we analyse these third-person characters as constructed and positioned this way so that a particular story text (plot) and the- matic aboutness can emerge. We are not analysing them as born Hansels, Gretels, witches, and so on; that is, as having these identities and living them. And it should go without saying that storytelling situations in which narrators construct them- selves as first-person characters require the same analytic procedures: story char- acters (including the self of the narrator) are positioned for interactive purposes. To interpret them transparently as having and living identities would do injustice to narrative interactions within the parameters of the narrative practice approach and treat language as a transparent window into reality. A second identity space for the practice of identity navigation is often termed “agency/passivity”. Here again, we are confronted with a traditional psychological folk theory assuming that people and organisations have agency – and maybe even that they live their agency – in the sense that agency is part of people’s interiority, 12_JARVINEN_CH_12.indd 249 23/12/2019 12:31:56 PM QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS252 in transcriptions) and entering the layer of multimodal performance features of storytelling (with all its slopes and bumps that on the surface invite a multitude of interpretations). However, what we gain is that a narrative practice approach takes this level of the interactive co-construction of narratives serious as founda- tional and constitutive for what is textualised at level I, and also what becomes the constitution of a sense of self at level III (below). To clarify, the local and situ- ated relational business at hand between co-conversationalists is the foundation from where themes and content are making it to the surface for level I analysis. And, in the same vein, this also holds for the construction of a sense of self posi- tioned at level III – to which we will turn next. Having opened for empirical investigation the questions how narrators posi- tion story characters vis-à-vis one another (level I) and how narrators position themselves vis-à-vis their audience (level II), the final step attempts to address an arguably trickier problem, namely whether and how narrators actually may posi- tion a sense of who they are to themselves. More succinctly, this question attempts to explore whether there is anything in narrative practices that we as analysts can interrogate in the form of claims or stances of narrators that goes above and beyond the local conversational situation. In other words, at level III, positioning analysis interrogates whether and how the linguistic devices and bodily manoeu- vres employed in narrative practices actually point to more than the content of what the narrative is “about” (level I), and directives vis-à-vis the interlocutor in their interactional business (level II). For the business of level III positioning, it is posited that in constructing content and audience, narrators observably appeal to dominant discourses (master narratives), and construct local answers to the question: “Who am I?” (Bamberg, 2011; De Fina, 2013). To be clear, however, attempted answers to this question do not necessarily hold across contexts; rather, they are projects of limited range. Nevertheless, we as analysts assume that these repeated and continuously refined navigation practices rub off and produce and transmit a sense of how to engage effectively and productively in sense-making procedures that endure and may turn into habits – and this also to the extent of a sense of self that is perpetual (and analysable) at positioning level III. Summary and outlook So far, I have attempted to clarify the role of narratives – specified as narrative practices – for requesting a special (or privileged) space in the business of organ- ising and sense-making in the world of interpersonal affective relationship con- struction, including how individuals or organisations arguably relate to themselves. Positioning as an analytic framework combines traditional textual analysis (see 12_JARVINEN_CH_12.indd 252 23/12/2019 12:31:56 PM NARRATIVE ANALYSIS: AN INTEGRATIVE APPROACH 253 Chapter 13) focusing purely on what seemingly was captured in transcripts (posi- tioning level I), and the analytic attempts to capture and describe what is happening in the local and relational context of the interaction (positioning level II) – while both in concert are taken to orient towards analytic endeavours at position- ing level III, the constitution of a sense of self. It should be noted and underscored again that this kind of analysis does not rely on any recourse to meaning-making processes as springing off from a psychological interiority (a soul or mind or brain). While we, as positioning analysts, in alignment with certain ethnomethodologi- cal approaches, strongly oppose traditional psychological theorising that starts from internal constructs and considers them to be engines for action and behav- iour, we nevertheless posit that the (narrative/affective) practices in which people engage each other find effect in repetitive and routinised communal and cultural practices that have repercussions. Overall, I hope to have contributed to a clarification of what constitutes units for the analysis of stories told as narrative practices, and laid out a strategic position for the analytic procedures for dealing with them. Insisting on the con- text in which narrative form and content emerge (i.e. where and how narrators break into narrative), I departed from starting with internal constructs, which are construed as causes for surfacing stories (in interaction). Thus, a narrative practice approach shifts the unit of analysis from textualised products as (argu- able) reflections of experiences of actual events or memories thereof. Instead of claiming to investigate reality, or the experience or memory thereof, such as with approaches that restrict themselves to biographies or biographical memories elic- ited in therapy-like biographic interviews, the narrative practice approach analy- ses storytelling situations. And although there is nothing wrong with confining one’s investigations to narrative textualisations in which narrators reflectively thematise themselves, especially for institutionalized interview purposes, these kinds of Sunday performances, however, are less telling than narrative practices in vivo and in situ of everyday interactions. Claims that equate interviewees’ nar- ratives with their memories or experiences – assumptions by which narrative researchers claim language to be transparent to gain privileged access to people’s interiority – become especially problematic. A word of caution, though: this does not imply a denial that we (as people – and relational beings in the world) have a sense (a modern folk psychology) of an interiority, or even that there probably may be an interiority. The argument here simply is that starting from an assumed interiority as pressing itself onto an outside world is a (typically Western and late Modern) supposition that gets in between a fruitful analytic approach to sense- making processes (with and without narratives) that should have their genesis in interaction, where self and other mutually constitute each other as continuous processes. 12_JARVINEN_CH_12.indd 253 23/12/2019 12:31:56 PM QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS254 Narrative analysis – an illustration In this section I will work micro-analytically through a short segment of an inter- action that is publicly available on YouTube.3 Edison Chen, a high-profile actor and entrepreneur in the Asian entertainment industry, was interviewed by Anjali Rao in June 2009 for Talk Asia on CNN. The interview followed up on a sex scan- dal that had broken in February 2008, when photographs Chen had taken of him- self engaging in sex acts had surfaced on the internet. These pictures compromised others and destroyed their careers. According to Rao, this scandal had “forced him out of Asia and the entertainment industry”, and when he returned, more than a year later, he requested this interview with Rao to be aired on Talk Asia. The brief segment chosen here is the fifth in the sequence of adjacency pairs (question– answer units) between Rao and Chen, and it is in this segment that Chen launches what we originally had termed a “small story”. The reason for selecting this par- ticular interactional unit is to document the navigation between the three identity dilemmas, and how positioning analysis can contribute to a deeper and more detailed analysis of narrative identity practices. After identifying the core story and how it is embedded in other discursive segments, I will first work through positioning level I, identifying the characters and how they are positioned vis-à-vis one another. Then I will work through the three identity spaces, add a brief analy- sis of visual cues and conclude by showing how this analysis contributes produc- tively to the analysis of identity; that is, becomes part of a more general approach to analytically investigating “who-am-I questions” at positioning level III. At the very end, I will present three links to subsequent segments of the same interview that can be used as further exercises into “small story” analysis. Edison Chen, Transcript 1 1 IQ: you were a highly visible presence in this part of world 2 until the scandal really blew up 3 what have you been doing with your days 4 since it happened? 5 EC: heh (exhaling) 6 ’ve been doing a lot of things 7 he-he (laughing) 8 ehm eh (.) it took me a little while 9 but you know with eh with eh with the constant support of everyone around me 10 and you know my family (.) especially and my girlfriend and (.) 11 I I kind of got through that shell again 3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ox945LO3z8M (or, for readers who are blocked from access to YouTube, https://wordpress.clarku.edu/mbamberg/classes/). 12_JARVINEN_CH_12.indd 254 23/12/2019 12:31:56 PM NARRATIVE ANALYSIS: AN INTEGRATIVE APPROACH 257 Chen de-emphasises his own agency: “everything was like a party” – a life to which he “got accustomed”, and “where everything was taken care of”. Note that these phrasings are subjectless and agentless – as if there was no choice for anyone not to participate. In this context, two potential master narratives are mobilised: youth as a mitigating factor and the habits coming with celebrity status. We will return to them with our discussion of positioning level III. Chen’s apparent digres- sion before elevating his agency with doing laundry and taking out the garbage, namely that he at first dreaded these activities, but ended up enjoying them (sic! – lines 22/23), should not go unnoticed: although viewers of the interview may chuckle at this point, providing specific details of behavioural changes that exem- plify some major change in character may serve as a subtle and humble way to (re-)establish trustworthiness. Agency (as coupled with responsibility) and Chen’s navigation of the two direc- tions of fit has been touched on in the previous paragraphs. To summarise and highlight, his agency, apart from starting to see what he could do (line 14) and deciding to take courses (line 19), (literally) peaked with referring to himself as doing laundry, throwing the garbage out and going to the grocery store (lines 24–26) – and having to do all these things by himself (line 44). If this had been the whole story surfacing in his account of where he had been and what he had done, this small story would have been ineffective. However, his claims to agency become relevant in contrast to the lack of agency during his years before he was caught – effectively accounting for when he took pictures of women which com- promised them and destroyed their careers. Thus, constructing his actions – and thereby himself – within the frame of a direction of fit from world to him may come across as an attempt to remove the accountability for his actions from him- self and transfer it to the kind of agencies that are “responsible” for what celebri- ties, especially when young, engage in. Whether or not one believes that Chen actually now enjoys taking out his garbage, his construction of himself as highly agentive when in Los Angeles and New York nevertheless (only) makes sense when heard and viewed in contrast to his construction in retrospect of having no say (no agency) in his actions and activities before he came to the USA. As such, the navigation of the two directions of fit from world to person and person to world in this excerpt is only understandable in the service of intending to bring off an exculpatory identity and re-establish a trustworthy self – one that seemingly had had some kind of currency previously. His final and turn-concluding statement in line 44 (“I mean everything I believe that everything happens for a reason”) seems somewhat uncalled for and surprising: hasn’t he just claimed to have acquired a new agency that is more responsible and morally superior – at least superior to his characterisation of his previous identity – and this arguably with a lot of effort? While this statement may be interpreted as handing back a good deal of his 12_JARVINEN_CH_12.indd 257 23/12/2019 12:31:56 PM QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS258 newly claimed agency to some higher moral “ground”, such as fate or a spiritual determination, his way of navigating the two directions of fit here also may be interpretable as attempting to show a kind of humility, one that his followers and the viewers of this interview would appreciate from someone who is very different from them and whom they look up to, but at the same time someone they adore and identify with – as being just like them. However, how is this possible? For celebrities (as well as for politicians; cf. Bamberg, 2010), to argue that the person you relied on and trusted – whether by buying their products or voting for them – is no longer the same may run the risk of total fallout. This, however, is where the navigation of sameness versus differ- ence may have to kick in more forcefully and do a trans-fixing job. Being a high- profile celebrity (or politician) makes them different – though in an interesting and dilemmatic way: on the one hand, a high profile is exciting and desirable; and therefore, if navigated well, may lead ordinary folk to align and affiliate them- selves; on the other hand, high-profile individuals stand out and are construed as dissimilar, and may be met by ordinary folk with envy, disaffiliation and a certain disalignment. Chen navigates this sort of double dilemma by first align- ing his new identity with family values and commitment to his girlfriend, and as such reasserting his not irrelevant heterosexual male identity. His claims to be like everyone else who takes their garbage out (even for those of us who do not), as we discussed above, assert his new identity as settled, mature and humble – in contrast to his former “spoiled celebrity” identity, which is more likely to act irre- sponsibly and immature. The link between his old and new identity is provided by a folk developmental (and culturally shared) master narrative that constructs adolescents as immature and confused, and not yet fully accountable or respon- sible for their actions and activities. In addition, although more subtly, he orients towards the master narrative of self-development when he claims to take agency by leaving the location of his wrongdoing, distancing himself in order to engage in learning (lines 19/20) and self-reflection (line 40), which takes him to a new and more humble identity, one that treats people better (line 40). This master narrative calls up a Western model of identity development – where the alternative would have been to submit one’s personal advancement to religious fate or a therapeutic master narrative. In sum, Chen seems to navigate an identity with which ordinary folk, and here probably especially an Asian generation that spans teenagers and emerging adults, can affiliate as different but the same. This required a balancing act that built on traditional values such as family and romantic commitment, as well as being subjected to everyday and mundane shared chores, and finally, the character type of becoming a normal and responsible person – just like (pre- sumably) everyone else – while still remaining distant as a rich (and crazy) Asian celebrity. 12_JARVINEN_CH_12.indd 258 23/12/2019 12:31:56 PM NARRATIVE ANALYSIS: AN INTEGRATIVE APPROACH 259 Analysis of Chen’s bodily performance cues My analysis of visual cues, a way to document how bodily cues are woven into what originally had been placed under narrative performance features, will have to be localised and limited. Of the range of bodily cues that typically go along with the performance of storytelling in dyadic interactions, I will focus on three – and on these three only for the first five seconds of Chen’s response to Rao’s question, covering lines 5/6 of the transcript. The three are gaze, head movement and one intake of breath, plus the coordination between them. The purpose of singling out these three is twofold: first, to give a sense of the complexity of when and how to make bodily performance cues relevant to narrative analysis; and second, to prepare the reader for one of the three exercises offered below in working inde- pendently with the same kind of data. From what we as viewers of the video material online can see in terms of Chen’s facial expression, during the time Anjali Rao formulated her question, his gaze was directed towards her face. This is a standard or normal listening position in dyadic interactions – institutional or otherwise. When it comes to his response, Chen averts his gaze, and engages in two full rotations of his head, ending with a smile – and at this point locking back into a mutual gaze with his interviewer. In other words, during the four seconds of rotating his head, his gaze is directed away from his interlocutor. Again, starting a new turn by averting one’s gaze is standard/ normal, and this has been theorised as doing cognitive, expressive and interac- tive work – such as engaging in collecting one’s thoughts, lessening the tightened emotional attentiveness vis-à-vis the interlocutor, and just simply signalling that the turn-taking signals have been read correctly: it is now my turn. In addition, it should be noted that it would be hard, if not impossible, to engage in head rota- tion while keeping one’s gaze fixed on the co-conversationalist. Thus, Chen’s aver- sion of gaze in these seconds requires to be interpreted as part of a bodily move that comes across as not only shifting posture into a new turn, but also simultane- ously shifting the bodily resonance between speaker and audience/viewer. While labelling this type of move as a “squirming” gesture may spring to mind, it defi- nitely signals a certain uneasiness or discomfort, and this before an answer has been formulated. Marking off his exhaling in line 5 – before his answer in line 6 – is due to the fact that Chen makes it visibly hearable – unlike any other time when he inhales or exhales. Upon closer inspection of how and where he exhales, however, it should be noted that it occurs at the end of his first head rotation, fol- lowed by turning his gaze downwards, a communicative gesture one would not necessarily expect. Rather, a speaker, when given the floor for an extended turn, is more likely to start by inhaling – potentially with an upward gaze as a think- ing gesture. Here, however, the packaging of gaze, head movement and exhaling 12_JARVINEN_CH_12.indd 259 23/12/2019 12:31:56 PM QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS262 next chapter, namely thematic, structural and dyadic-performative approaches to narrative analysis. Adding a fourth approach, namely the analysis of visual- performative narrative analysis, and attempting to integrate all four into an overall integrative approach to narrative analysis, earmarks the essential quality and strength of the narrative practice approach. As such, the narrative practice approach aims to overcome the methodological pluralism of earlier days of nar- rative analysis as an arena of methodological approaches that all share a commit- ment to qualitative inquiry. To clarify, my attempt to bring together and integrate should not be misunderstood as imperative or (even worse) complete and exclu- sive. Rather, readers may be able to isolate certain analytic procedures and apply them to their work with narrative (practices). Still, it may be easier to realise the limitations of different analytic approaches when we have ways to see them in relation to each other – in their overall attempt to assist our qualitative endeav- ours. However, I would like to add by way of a warning that narrative analysis requires a clear delineation of the unit of analysis – in the sense of what is the analytic focus, and why narrative. Whether we as qualitative researchers claim to be studying experience or memories, or whether we claim to be studying accounts or justifications, if our work centres on – or attempts to make use of – narratives, a clarification of our analytic focus on narrative, and a justification for why narra- tive, both have to accompany our interpretive undertaking. Key concepts Identity dilemma navigation Identities are constructions of characters in three dilemmatic spaces that require careful navigating: being different, similar or the same in relation to other characters; characters as in control versus being the prod- uct of forces that control their actions; and constancy (i.e. staying the same over time), as against having changed. These spaces are dilemmatic, because narrators have choices; and these choices are analysable in their storytelling interactions. Identity/identity analysis Identity is a second-order theoretical construct, imply- ing that identities (plural – as first-order concepts) are constructed and continu- ously reconstructed in everyday interactive processes. The term identities is used to enable the empirical investigation of how people and organisations are able to gain a sense of self, and give answers to the who-am-I question – engaging interactively in identity work. Narrative/story Narratives/stories are interactional discourse units; texts, inter- views, conversations, arguments, route descriptions and recipes are not. What dis- tinguishes stories/narratives from other discourse units is their temporal contour in which characters are constructed as navigating identity dilemmas. 12_JARVINEN_CH_12.indd 262 23/12/2019 12:31:56 PM NARRATIVE ANALYSIS: AN INTEGRATIVE APPROACH 263 Further readings/viewings Georgkopoulou, A. (2007) Small Stories, Interaction and Identities. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Gubrium, J.F. and Holstein J. (eds.) (2012) Varieties of Narrative Analysis. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Bamberg, M. (n.d.) Who Am I? Narration and its Contribution to Self and Identity. Sage Video. Available at: http://sk.sagepub.com/video/who-am-i-narration-and-its- contribution-to-self-and-identity Pheonix, A. (n.d.) An Introduction to Narrative Methods. Sage Video. Available at: http:// methods.sagepub.com/video/an-introduction-to-narrative-methods References Bamberg, M. (1997) Positioning between structure and performance. Journal of Narrative and Life History, 7(1–4), 335–342. Bamberg, M. (2006) Stories: Big or small. Why do we care? Narrative Inquiry, 16(1): 139–147. Bamberg, M. (2010) Blank check for biography, in D. Schiffrin, A. DeFina and A. Nylund (eds), Telling Stories: Language, Narrative, and Social Life. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, pp. 109–121. Bamberg, M. (2011) Who am I? Narration and its contribution for self and identity. Theory & Psychology, 21(1): 3–24. Bamberg, M. (2012) Narrative analysis, in H. Cooper, P.M. Camic, D.L. Long, A.T. Panter, D. Rindskopf and K. Sher (eds), APA Handbook of Research Methods in Psychology, Vol. 2. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, pp. 85–102. Bamberg, M. and Georgakopoulou A. (2008) Small stories as a new perspective in narrative and identity analysis. Text & Talk, 28(3): 377–396. Bamberg, M. and Reilly J. (1996) Emotion, narrative, and affect: How children discover the relationship between what to say and how to say it, in D.I. Slobin, J. Gerhardt, A. Kyratzis and J. Guo (eds), Social Interaction, Social Context, and Language: Essays in Honor of Susan Ervin-Tripp. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, pp. 329–341. Positioning/positioning analysis Positioning in discourse/interaction presupposes agentive speakers (narrators) who position a sense of who they are at three analytic (empirical) levels in their storytelling interactions: how they position story charac- ters vis-à-vis one another; how they position themselves vis-à-vis their audience; and how they attend to dominant discourses (master narratives) and thereby con- vey a sense of self. 12_JARVINEN_CH_12.indd 263 23/12/2019 12:31:56 PM QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS264 Bruner, J. (1991) The narrative construction of reality. Critical Inquiry, 18(1): 1–21. De Fina, A. (2013) Positioning level 3: Connecting local identity displays to macro social processes. Narrative Inquiry, 23(1): 40–61. Deppermann, A. (2013) Editorial: Positioning in narrative interaction. Narrative Inquiry, 23(1): 1–15. 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