Georgakopoulou Alexandra - Analyzing narrative: discourse and sociolinguistic perspectives

The socially minded linguistic study of storytelling in everyday life has been rapidly expanding. This book provides a critical engagement with this dynamic field of narrative studies, addressing long-standing questions such as definitions of narrative and views of narrative structure but also more recent preoccupations such as narrative discourse and identities, narrative language, power and ideologies. It also offers an overview of a wide range of methodologies, analytical modes and perspectives on narrative from conversation analysis to critical discourse analysis, to linguistic anthropology and ethnography of communication. The discussion engages with studies of narrative in multiple situational and cultural settings, from informalintimate to institutional. It also demonstrates how recent trends in narrative analysis, such as small stories research, positioning analysis and sociocultural orientations, have contributed to a new paradigm that approaches narratives not simply as texts, but rather as complex communicative practices intimately linked with the production of social life.

Anna De Fina is Associate Professor of Italian Language and Linguistics at Georgetown University.

Alexandra Georgakopoulou is Professor of Discourse Analysis and Sociolinguistics at Kings College London.

Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York

Anna De Fina and Alexandra Georgakopoulou 2012

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 2012

Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge

De Fina, Anna.

Analyzing narrative : discourse and sociolinguistic perspectives /

Anna De Fina, Alexandra Georgakopoulou.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-521-88716-8 ISBN 978-0-521-71513-3 (pbk.)

1. Narration (Rhetoric) 2. Discourse analysisSocial aspects.

3. Sociolingusitics. I. Georgakopoulou, Alexandra. II. Title.

PN212.D4 2012

808.036dc23

2011040409

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

This book is the result of many years of collaboration between us, but our work has also benefited immensely from the open dialogue that we have established throughout the years with colleagues and students. We would like to extend our thanks for their participation and critical insights to colleagues and audiences in the various conference panels that we have organized in both continents over the years. We are particularly grateful to Molly Andrews, Michael Bamberg, Mike Baynham, Jan Blommaert, Arnulf Deppermann, Mark Freeman, Matti Hyvrinen, Cathy Riessman, Deborah Schifrrin, Stef Slembrouck, Corinne Squire and Stanton Wortham for many a constructive exchange. We also want to thank all our students at Georgetown and at Kings College London, particularly those on the MA course in Linguistic Approaches to Narrative Analysis (Kings College London) for their critical engagement and enthusiasm. For help with the editing of this volume, special thanks to Leslie Cohran (Georgetown University) and to Anna Charalambidou (Kings College London). Helen Barton from Cambridge University Press showed much encouraging enthusiasm at the initial stages of this book, and we are indebted to her for that. To Inder, Emiliano and Silvio Ruprah, and to Alex, Eliana and Christopher Nunes, we continue to be grateful for unfailingly enriching our lives and making it all worthwhile.

In we introduce some of the most debated questions related to the definition of narrative and some of the methodological differences between approaches. We review attempts at formalizing the study of narrative based on structural dimensions. In particular, we critically discuss the criteria that have been proposed within narratology and story grammars and the debates over the nature of narrativity. We also discuss attempts to look at narrative as a particular text-type and to distinguish it from other text-types. We then extend the overview to conceptions of storytelling that go beyond the search for punctual criteria but regard narrative as a mode, a frame for apprehending reality. We reflect on the narrative turn in the social sciences and on conflicting views of narrative as a mode of expression and knowledge, as an epistemology and as a method of inquiry. In the last section of the chapter, we review typologies that attempt to capture the different methodologies used in narrative research and we propose parameters that can be useful to distinguish between different orientations while also providing a guide for our readers in the classification and critical evaluation of the authors and trends presented in the book.