NARRATING THE

SELF
Natcha Lee 110926011
 Authors

- Elinor Ochs - Lisa Capps

- Department of TESL and Applied Linguistics,
University of California
- 2000 Honorary Doctorate, Linkoping University,
Sweden
- Research interests: the role of language and culture
in life span human development and learning across
social groups.
- Psychologist
- Aassistant professor of psychology at
Berkeley in 1996
- Died in 2000, at the age of 35.
- Bachelor’s degree at Stanford, received
a PhD in clinical psychology at UCLA 
What is narrative?

- Personal narratives are not means of remembering or professing a singular, fixed point of view. Rather,
personal narratives are highly selective accounts that are self-reflective in that they are a means of
sharing past experiences while also structuring their purposes (Ochs, 2004)

- A fundamental means of making sense of experience.

- Combinations of various communicative works

- Question between remembering and forgetting

Narrating Self

- Narrative and self are inseparable in that narrative is simultaneously born out of experience and gives
shape to experience.

- Self as unfolding reflective awareness of being-in-the world, including a sense of self in the past and
future.

- Outcome of involvement of the world

Narratives of personal experience

- Defined here as verbalized, visualized, and/or embodied framings of a sequence of actual or possible
life events.

- Defines how we feel and attend the world (p.21)

- Representations and evocation of the world as we know.

- Focused on past events

- A combination of stories from various forms.

Two Dimensions of Personal Narrative
- Temporary
- Transiting from one stage to another
- Chronological ordering of events
Mother: Beth won't hit a little baby back. I told her that. But she did-Edith must've hurt her on her hair or something. And she bit
her.

1. Beth hit Edith, then goes back in time to identify a possible event that precipitated this action
2. ("Edith must've hurt her on her hair or something"), and then shifts forward in time again to recount that
Beth subsequently bit Edith.
- For rhetorical purpose : vivid and captivating
1. Personal narratives about the past are always told from the temporal perspective of the present (p.25).
- Happened in the past but invade current mind and conscious.
- Anxiety-Provoking experience
Meg: I felt real helpless. I thought here I a::m. (.2) I‘m so damn mad I could just storm outa here in the car but? (.2) (.hhh) I
can’t le:ave.

- Emotionally expression of now and then.

Two Dimensions of Personal Narrative
- Point of View
- Emphasise of a specific story. Constructing from different fragmented points.
- Aristotle described as a coherent event that has beginning, middle and an end.
- Problematising an event by detailing or distressing respond to that event
- Linguistic and cultural traits are factors of how narratives are constructed.
- Grammatical repertoire of languages such as tense, words order, verb voice construct the point off view.
- Phonological outputs such as loudness, pitch height, voice quality, pacing, stress and sounds stretches
shape point of view.
 Boundaries of the Self
- the unfolding narrative defines selves in terms of others in present, past and imagine universe (p.28).

- selves are not necessarily the same across time and place or cohere.

- We use narratives to as a tool to probing and forging connection with our unstable and situated selves.

- To bridge the self from the past and the self of the present.

- We tend to display a multiple selves through narrative.

- Past and present indicate self identity.

- Co-telling- coauthored the self. Mouth to mouth

Narratives Asymmetries

- Silence as product of internal and interactional forces from suppression and repression towards an event
but these process are from external circumstances. Social and others expectations, and evaluations.

- Silecing in order to “sanction ignorance and preserve privileges.

- Foucolt legal and religious organisations use narratives to moralise crimes and maintain social orders

- Pictures and factualising grammstical forms can imbue a narrative with authority.

- Entitlement to narrate: Who can tell the story? And what is the outcomes?

- Rights to narrate,

- Children always introduced by their mothers, forced confession

 Social hierarchy in Narratives
- Primary recipients play important role as they provide feedback – to tease, question, refuse or ignore.

- Ignorance will cause the narrator to revise the narratives.

- Insufficient feedback can lead to amplifying to volume, pitch and the scope of claims.

American dinner table Japanese dinner table

Mother Children Mother Children Father

Father

Subjects of
Primary Narrator Narrator No involve
Narrator being
recipient
discussed

Primary Primary
Receive Provide recipient recipient
feedback feedback
 Narrative Resistance
- Minimal feedbacks, ridicule, denial and counter version.

- Teenager tend to provide one-word response or ignore their parents.

- Ridicule in the form of teasing, insult, and mockery is also woven into narrative interactions.,
Jon: ('f) Janie had come out and said to me-"Dad will you tell M:ommy where the films- are from the pic?tures," I
would have said "Yes? Janie"
Marie: Well when she's about eight or nine I bet she'll be able to do that...
Jon: YOU: are over eight or nine are you not?
Conclusion
- Narratives and self are inseparable.

- Personal experiences shape and construct narratives.

- With various forms of conveying narratives, the narratives can be seen as a consistence accumulation of
experiences.

- Narratives Resistance is one of many factors that causes the narrators to evaluate the context.

- As audience, the source of receiving narratives need to be put under considerations as well as the rights
to narrate and the agenda to narrate.
Personal Reflection
- Narrating others’ story – what is the agendas?

- To what extend do we consciously realise what position are we presenting when giving out narratives?

- External factors being the dominant factors rather just the psychological aspects.

- Overlook the fact of how narrators can convey an event different according to who/audience they direct
the event to.

- Media becomes the new narrators.

Reference:
- Ochs, E., & Capps, L. (1996). Narrating the self. Annual review of anthropology, 19-43.