Narrative

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NARRATIVE

Narrative can be situated within the range of speech acts that comprise ordinary communication. At one end, there are relatively brief communications, such as token conversational responses like "umm" or "uh-huh" or short descriptive statements like "I've felt that way all my life." At the other end, where narrative is situated, are more extended and complex commentaries, such as full-blown life stories or the frames of reference that researchers themselves use to analyze narrative material (Linde; Gubrium and Holstein; McAdams; Riessman). Harvey Sacks, a pioneer of conversation analysis, characterized narrative or storytelling as an extended turn at talk or a relatively lengthy speech act (see Silverman).

A distinguishing feature of research on ordinary communication is that it centers on naturally occurring speech, as it is conveyed in subjects' own words. For example, if the subject is the aging World War II veteran, the veteran's own responses to the war experience is of central concern, not, for example, contemporary front-line journalists' accounts of the soldier's experience or a spouse's reports about her husband's thoughts and feelings in the course of battle. What others say about the subject's experience, how they describe the subject's world, and the explanations they offer for his or her sentiments and conduct are of secondary interest.

The subject is not always a single category of individual. The focus of attention may center on narratives of any and all who subsequently commented on the war experience, which would include the soldier himself, significant others, and journalists' remarks, among those whose narratives served to communicate what it was like to be in and survive the war. The subject might be extended to include the narratives of veterans of other wars, such as the Korean and Vietnam wars, perhaps aiming to document comparatively how public sentiments surrounding war affect the way soldiers communicate their identities and fighting aims (see Hynes). Whoever the subject is and however extended this is categorically, the goal of narrative analysis is to focus attention on subjects' own accounts.

The growing significance of narrative

The acceptance of narrative analysis as an approach to understanding experience has grown significantly. The social sciences, in particular, have undergone a resurgence of interest in life stories. Narrative analysis is now once again an important investigatory and research genre. One stream of early work in the area—tellingly called the "own story" approach—produced rich and detailed depictions of individuals' social lives. A leading example is sociologist Clifford Shaw's presentation of "a delinquent boy's own story" in his book The Jack-Roller, which portrayed the subject, Stanley, and his delinquent career, in Stanley's own words. To Shaw and others working in this vein, statistical profiles, professional assessments, and other "outsider" reports were no substitute for the deep understanding one gained from a narrative approach, a perspective now being extensively revisited.

The widespread contemporary interest in life stories followed a fallow period, from the 1950s through the 1970s, in which the leading research paradigms eschewed narrative. Narrative analysis was figured to be too "subjective," emphasizing that term's association with being biased. The view was that only neutral outsiders could be objective in describing personal experience, which by the same token required "objective" research procedures. This led to the proliferation of positivistic, quantitative techniques in these decades, which stressed measurement and statistical analysis, not the extended story-like accounts favored by narrative researchers.

The resurgence of interest in narrative, which began in the 1980s, stemmed in part from the disappointingly thin representations of experience produced by positivistic methods. While surveys of experience of all kinds, from quality of life to political sentiments, provided information about the distribution of attitudes and opinions, they offered little understanding of how these operated in subjects' lives. The desire for richer detail reminded researchers of the promises of early work on narrative material, once again centering attention on the subject's "own words" and "own story," as communicated by those whose experiences were under consideration. At the outset of the twenty-first century, narrative analyses of all kinds are being conducted across the social sciences and overlapping fruitfully with literary, linguistic, and historical studies (Holstein and Gubrium; Josselson and Lieblich; Rosenwald and Ochberg).

The structure of stories

The key argument that experience comes to us by way of narrative suggests that experience can be viewed as structured along the same lines that stories are. For example, when we are asked about what may have happened to us over a particular span of time, we are likely to respond with an unfolding story, not just a list of events. A listing is simply a series of happenings, which may or may not be organized chronologically. A story, in contrast, can have myriad internal linkages and thus considerable overall organizational complexity. These linkages supply both the meaningful connections between events and the horizons of meaning that comprise the varied worlds of lived experience.

Stories and their events are narratively structured in at least three ways—through characterization, by formulating events into plots, and by discerning an overall theme or point. In responding to a question about what one has experienced, one can, respectively, describe who was involved and how, detail the temporal organization of events, and make a point, for example, of what it all led to or explain why things developed as they did. For instance, as far as characterization is concerned, the dramatis personae of the story of one's caregiving experience for a demented parent may be limited to the caregiver and the care receiver, with all events described as unfolding around them. The point being made about the experience might be that, overall, it was an important learning experience and strengthened the caregiver's resolve as a person. In contrast, such a story might be told in terms of a huge cast of characters, ranging from the caregiver and care receiver themselves, to professionals, neighbors, friends, and both close and distant relatives, and whose plot links up with the point that if it had not been for the help and support of others, the caregiver would not have survived the ordeal.

While the actual experience of caregiving might be similar in any two cases, their respective characterizations, the plots, and the points subsequently conveyed, can make for distinct forms of knowledge. In practice, we respond as much, if not more, to the stories told about experience as to the experience in its own right. The argument that experience comes to us in the form of stories is important because the organization of stories, separate from what actually happened, bears significantly on how we respond to the events in question. The relevance of studying stories follows directly from this, as their organization brings the researcher face-to-face with the experience's communicative realities.

Each of the three ways of structuring a story can be further divided into subcategories, into forms of characterization, kinds of plots, and types of themes. Vladimir Propp was an important pioneer in distinguishing the underlying plot structure of the folk tale, for example, an approach that other narrative researchers have since developed extensively into additional structures and categorizations (see Polkinghorne). Moreover, the three ways of structuring a story may be narratively related in different ways. For example, emphasis might be placed on characterization, with the plot and the point given relatively minor roles, or conversely the point and plot might be highlighted with little character development. This, too, affects how we respond to the experiences being described.

Applications to aging

One of the earliest applications of a narrative approach in gerontology was clinical and focused on the life review (Butler and Lewis). Psychiatrist Robert Butler determined that in old age, individuals were likely sooner or later to take stock of their lives in relation to their impending death. The process of coming to terms with the past in relation to the present was called the life review and was seen to have a positive psychological function. Butler advised professional care-givers and service providers to encourage life reviews—narrative reconstructions of a lifetime of experience—as a way of producing overall meaning at life's end. However, the life review approach is controversial because it focuses on the individual and fails to take account of the circumstances of the reconstructions, which may prove to have negative consequences for the life reviewer (Kenyan and Randall).

Anthropologist Sharon R. Kaufman's study of personal narrative and identity in old age has made a significant contribution to the formulation of an area of research now called narrative gerontology (Kenyon, Clark, and de Vries). Kaufman's book The Ageless Self shows that older people are narratively active in conveying the contours of their lives through stories. The plots and themes are not governed by old age itself for Kaufman's respondents, nor by this generation's major historical experiences, such as having lived through the Great Depression and World War II. Significantly, Kaufman's respondents construct the stories of their lives on separate terms, many of them centered on personal values (but see Ruth and Öberg for contrasting results).

Sociologist Jaber F. Gubrium's study of the life narratives of nursing home residents takes this approach into an institutional setting. Gubrium's research focused on the quality of care and of life in the nursing home; he was interested, in particular, in how the residents themselves communicated these qualities. Rather than asking exclusively about the qualities, he raised questions about them in relation to the residents' life stories. The rationale for this was that residents don't leave a lifetime of experiences behind when they check into nursing homes. Interestingly enough, the qualities of life and of care in the nursing homes studied had strikingly distinct meanings. No particular degree of quality of life or of quality of care seemed to matter as much as what the nursing home experience meant in the context of life as a whole. The "same" quality of care, in other words, had different meanings for residents with contrasting life stories.

There are many other new applications in place in gerontology. Researchers have been studying the way that emotional experience is narratively conveyed across the life course. Others are researching the character of storytelling in therapeutic encounters in old age. Some are revisiting the life review approach in nursing practice and in adult education, as well as examining life stories against a variety of historical events (see Birren et al). Studies combining narrative approaches with more traditional, field-based research also are showing considerable promise. Researchers are examining how characterization, plots, and themes are mediated by the social settings in which they are conveyed, such as in focus groups, formal care organizations, and distinct residential environments (see Rowles and Schoenberg). A new technique known as guided autobiography is extending the study of narrative to include the researchers and interviewers as co-storytellers, as those who elicit life stories are taken to be in narrative collaboration with their subjects (Kenyon). Across the board, the research horizon for narrative studies in aging is vibrant and expanding.

Jaber F. Gubrium James A. Holstein

See also Life Review; Qualitative Research.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Birren, J. E.; Kenyon, G. M.; Ruth, J.-E.; Schroots, J. J. F.; and Svensson, T., eds. Aging and Biography. New York: Springer, 1996.

Butler, R. N., and Lewis, M. Aging and Mental Health. St. Louis, Mo.: C. V. Mosby Co., 1977.

Gubrium, J. F. Speaking of Life: Horizons of Meaning for Nursing Home Residents. Hawthorne, N.Y.: Aldine de Gruyter, 1993.

Gubrium, J. F., and Holstein, J. A. The New Language of Qualitative Method. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Holstein, J. A., and Gubrium, J. F. The Self We Live By: Narrative Identity in a Postmodern World. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Hynes, S. The Soldiers' Tale: Bearing Witness to Modern War. New York: Penguin, 1997.

Josselson, R., and Lieblich, A. The Narrative Study of Lives. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 1993.

Kaufman, S. R. The Ageless Self: Sources of Meaning in Late Life. Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press, 1986.

Kenyon, G. M. "Guided Autobiography." In Qualitative Gerontology. Edited by Graham D. Rowles and Nancy Schoenberg. New York: Springer, 2001.

Kenyon, G. M. and Randall, W. L. Restorying Our Lives: Personal Growth Through Autobiographical Reflection. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1997.

Kenyon, G. M.; Phillip, C.; and de Vries, B., eds. Narrative Gerontology: Theory, Research, and Practice. New York: Springer, 2001.

Linde, C. Life Stories: The Creation of Coherence. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.

McAdams, D. P. The Stories We Live By. New York: Guilford Press, 1993.

Polkinghorne, D. E. Narrative Knowing and the Human Sciences. Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 1988.

Propp, V. The Morphology of the Folk Tale. (1928). Reprint, Austin: University of Texas Press, 1968.

Riessman, C. K. Narrative Analysis. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 1993.

Rosenwald, G. C., and Ochberg, R. L., eds. Storied Lives. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1992.

Rowles, G. D., and Schoenberg, N., eds. Qualitative Gerontology, 2d ed. New York: Springer, 2001.

Ruth, J.-E., and Öberg, P. "Ways of Life: Old Age in a Life History Perspective." In Aging and Biography. Edited by James E. Birren, Gary M. Kenyon, Jan-Erik Ruth, Johannes J. F. Schroots, and Torbjorn Svensson. New York: Springer, 1996. Pages 167–186.