Abstract
This book provides current leading research in narrative analysis while also serving as a clear introduction to this field. The definition of narrative in this book is generally broader than most would accept. Rather than adhering to Labov’s criteria for a narrative, this book presents a more flexible and versatile concept of story. Written by leading scholars from various disciplines (education, folklore, linguistics, political science, psychology, sociology and sports science) who are involved in the field of narrative analysis, the 12 chapters are coherently organized into three sections, moving from analysing stories as text to analysing stories as practice and to analysing stories in society. The collection of papers presents a wide range of topics and methodologies that will interest readers from various backgrounds (e.g. discourse analysis, critical discourse analysis, sociolinguistics, political studies, sociology). This book will be of great interest, particularly to discourse analysts dealing with narrative data, due to its balanced take on text and context. To those who are new to narrative analysis, this book includes an accessible account of the development of the field.
The first four chapters of Part I, under the theme ‘Analysing Stories’, focus on the structure and content of narratives. With the novice in mind, McAdams includes an introductory review of the work that has been done on life-narrative accounts in various specialized areas within the field of psychology, and discusses how narrative analysis has contributed to psychological science. Frank proposes the minimum requirements for stories to be identifiable and discusses them from a Bakhtinian dialogical perspective. This chapter might be of high interest to those working in the area of language and identity. Sparkes and Smith explore the issue of empathy in the process of data collection and data analysis. Franzosi provides a guide to a computer-assisted quantitative approach to narrative analysis.
Part II, ‘Analysing Storytelling’, also consists of four chapters, and addresses the social aspects of storytelling. Bamberg discusses what narrators do and accomplish in storytelling and highlights the idea of identity construction. Shuman analyses storytelling in terms of power involvement, narrator-credibility and tellability in trauma narrative. Chapter 7 will be of high relevance to those who employ speech act theory in their research. Koven identifies the speech events and speaker roles in personal narratives and provides guidelines for identifying different speaker roles alongside her analysis. Cashman introduces a folklorist’s ethnographic approach to storytelling.
Part III of the book focuses on ‘Analysing Stories in Society’. It contains four chapters that present story and storytelling within a larger social context. Feldman and Almquist introduce two ways of analysing implicit features of narratives: rhetorical analysis on speech and narrative network analysis on actions. Having in mind those who are new in this enterprise, they provide clear steps with accompanying examples of their analyses. Polleta discusses storytelling and story evaluation within institutional contexts. This chapter may be particularly relevant to discourse analysts who are interested in combining qualitative and quantitative analysis of storytelling and comparing storytelling with other forms of discourse (p. 246). Polleta discusses narrative in a broader sense and provides a fresh way of identifying a narrative or story, terms which are used interchangeably here. Loseke discusses the methodological issues in using formulaic stories as data and provides a case study as an illustration. The book ends with Katriel’s discussion on storytelling in different contexts. She examines storytelling as a socially and culturally situated performance, a view similar to that of genre analysis from Systemic Functional Linguistics. She includes three studies from her ethnographic research projects to illustrate the social life of personal experience stories: a study of local heritage museums, a study of late night radio programmes, and a study of soldiers’ testimonial narratives in the context of protest.
The chapters in this collection are well selected and demonstrate the diversity of narrative analysis. They are organized thematically, moving from micro to macro perspectives on narrative. This provides readers who intend to read the book cover to cover with a coherent flow of ideas. The collection reflects a well-balanced distribution of chapters devoted to narrative as data and methodology. In terms of the theoretical and application aspects, this book has a balanced discussion of both. It reinforces the idea that a sound and well-informed textual analysis requires a careful investigation of context. The diverse discussion in this book confirms the status of narrative analysis, not just as a tool of inquiry for various disciplines, but as an area of study in itself. I recommend this book for postgraduates and researchers working within the framework of discourse analysis and qualitative research methods.