16.2185, Review: Discourse/Pragmatics: Bamberg & Andrews (2004)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-16-2185. Sun Jul 17 2005. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 16.2185, Review: Discourse/Pragmatics: Bamberg & Andrews (2004)

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1)
Date: 14-Jul-2005
From: Giampaolo Poletto < janospal at libero.it >
Subject: Considering Counter-Narratives: Narrating, resisting, making sense 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Sun, 17 Jul 2005 15:22:36
From: Giampaolo Poletto < janospal at libero.it >
Subject: Considering Counter-Narratives: Narrating, resisting, making sense 
 

EDITORS: Bamberg, Michael; Andrews, Molly
TITLE: Considering Counter-Narratives
SUBTITLE: Narrating, resisting, making sense
PUBLISHER: John Benjamins
YEAR: 2004
Announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/16/16-152.html


Giampaolo Poletto, doctoral student, Doctoral School in Linguistics, 
University of Pécs, Hungary

DESCRIPTION

Each chapter in this collection ties together a paper, a set of 
commentaries and the response by the author. Owing to the 
unpredicted development of the original publishing project, this adds 
to the editors' aim as discussed in the Introduction to the book, pp. ix-
x. Through an open and interactive research and debate, they intend 
to enrich and encourage investigations and theoretical contributions 
on counter-narratives described in Opening to the original 
contributions, pp. 1-5. The scholars the book addresses can profitably 
and sort of online confront with manifold theoretical and practical 
interwoven aspects of the contents, perspectives, problems, 
methodologies of their study. Forms of different dominant and 
resisting social and cultural narrative representations are discursively 
analysed: how they make sense; how to approach, define, identify, 
relate them. The six essays bear on personal narratives and construct 
an autonomous viewpoint, constantly bridging the individual and the 
socio-cultural dimension. The following commentaries and response 
centrifugally and centripetally discuss it. All contributions have their 
own bibliographical references at the end. The conclusive note 
emphasizes and argues that analyzing counter-positions, given their 
complicit relation with dominant narratives, requires a social 
interactional domain, a view which the studies in the volume and its 
organization contribute to prospect - see Considering counter 
narratives, pp. 351-371.

In Memories of mother (pp. 7-26) Molly Andrews focuses on the 
difference between 'the story of mothering' (see Pope, Quinn, & Wyer, 
1990; Burman, 1994; Morss, 1996) as a cultural product and 
individuals' lived experiences of mothering and being mothered. She 
analyses data based on in-depth interviews with four men and women 
in their old age, who reveal how people locate themselves politically, 
economically and historically when they speak about their 
relationships with their mother. They developed in their lifetime and 
show a level of understanding in their narrations, which thus challenge 
the mother-blaming dominant narrative representation and notion (see 
Phoenix & Woollett, 1991; Ambert, 1994), by providing and taking into 
consideration the context in which the above experiences took place. 
The four commentaries (pp. 27-50) and the response (pp. 51-60) 
draw on: how to define and approach master narratives of 
motherhood -- Kölbl; the positioning of the narrator -- Kohler 
Riessman; the political intervention into psychological knowledge -- 
Coombes and Morgan; the narrative re-construction of problematic 
pasts as a social and cultural product -- Murakami.

Karen Throsby explores the discursive resources through which those 
women who failed in vitro fertilisation (IVF) treatments -- and are the 
majority (see HFEA, 2000) -- make sense of their experience of 
ambiguity, in the context of the dominant social and cultural 
representations of the treatment as successful (see Franklin, 1990) 
and of reproduction as the natural and inevitable life course. 
Negotiating "normality" when IVF fails (pp. 61-82) argues that those 
women and couples interviewed in different ways operate an attempt 
to come to terms with their "realness" problem (see Layne, 2000) and 
reframe their liminal position (see Balsamo, 1999) and condition as 
normal. So doing, they seem to align with the normative discourses of 
technology and reproduction, whereas they proceed to rework -- 
therefore to resist -- them. The three commentaries (pp. 83-104) and 
the response (pp. 105-112) draw on: narratives of 'reproductive 
normativity' progressing from disappointment -- Tuffin; the actual 
relevance of the 'realness' problem and of the identification of 
discursive strategies -- Crossley; the ideology of intensive mothering 
and the co-production of counter-narratives -- Bell.

Bearing on the renewed interest (see Chaplin, 1994; Prosser, 1998) 
for the use of visual documents in research studies, Barbara Harrison 
outlines the workfield and discusses the narrative significance and 
scientific value as a visual research methodology of photographic 
images. Photographic visions and narrative inquiry (pp.113-136) 
unfolds around a confrontation between a camera and forms of 
narratives as auto/biography, photographic journals, video diaries and 
photo-voice on one level; everyday photography (see Bourdieu, 1990) 
and forms of story-telling on another level. The author gives an insight 
into the latter, for it provides access: to narratives and counter-
narratives; to the issue of developing skills for researchers to properly 
handle with them; to how people's processes of making sense and 
interpreting are elicited (see Berger, 1972); to memory and identity 
construction (see Hirsch, 1997); to the question on whether 
photographs narrate can independent of written or oral words. On 
finally assessing that researchers can resort to them for research and 
narrative inquiry, the author points out that an understanding of the 
significance and use of them in everyday life is needed. The three 
commentaries (pp. 137-158) and the response (pp. 159-168) draw on: 
the situated relation between narrative and counter-narrative 
photographs and social, interpersonal and intrapersonal conflicts -- 
Poddiakov; the complex relationships between pictures and 
storytelling -- Chalfen; the problems of using images as narrative and 
research data -- Rich.

The discursive approach of "That's very rude, I shouldn't be telling you 
that" (pp.169-189) owes to discursive psychology (see Edwards & 
Potter, 1992; Potter & Wetherell, 1987), works on questions of 
representation (see Gubrium & Holstein, 1997), the notion of 
narratives as shaping the social world (see Abell, Stokoe, & Billig, 
2000). Rebecca L. Jones sets an analytical perspective for her 
interviews with twenty-three older women where narratives about their 
sexual and intimate relationships in later life are made moment-by-
moment. She highlights: the interactional situation of their production; 
the making process, when parties resort to available cultural 
resources; the way to explain how speakers work out their accounts 
relying on or going against the popular representation of 'asexual 
older people'; some moments, when participants both explicit their 
orientation to tell counter-narratives and produce them; the need to 
reflexively consider the position of the implicated analyst. Dominant 
cultural storylines are quite complex and intertwined with counter-
narratives. The latter are not straightforwardly either identifiable by 
the analyst, especially where the context itself creates the conditions 
for telling them, or hinted at by speakers, partly because they may 
tend to protect themselves from the telling of unacceptable resisting 
representations. The three commentaries (pp. 191-212) and the 
response (pp. 213-220) draw on: the problematic 'emic' and 'etic' 
analysis, as to its synthesis, and distinction, as to its extent -- 
Korobov; the space between interviewer and interviewee and the 
former's standpoint -- McLean Taylor; the significance and 
methodological aspects of the study in a more sociolinguistic 
background, towards an ethnographically oriented analysis -- 
Spreckels.

Told stories, objects not only of social research (see Bruner, 1992; 
Riessman, 1993), are an integral part of talk shows, which display 
visual and auditory narratives and are finally argued to work to 
produce counter-narratives. In White trash pride and the exemplary 
black citizen (pp. 221-237) Corinne Squire adopts the perspective of 
the relation between popular culture and everyday culture (see 
Jacobs, 2000), instead of separating 'entertainment' from 'serious' 
shows. She focuses on the narratives of 'race', gender and citizenship 
through two small, time-sampled groups of US daytime television talk 
shows. In her socio-scientific and cultural-studies comparative 
research, such issues are viewed in context of 'trailer park' (see 
Shattuc, 1997) class otherness and emotional anarchy. As story-
telling and moments of emotional incoherence are present in 'serious' 
shows, where they can be as resistant and persuasive as more 
explicit arguments typical of 'entertainment' shows, so the social 
conflicts the former deal with are provided a forum for their affective 
staging by the latter, where their narratives are turned into counter-
narratives framing a theory. The five commentaries (pp. 239-276) and 
the response (pp. 277-288) draw on: questions on some issues in an 
ethnomethodological perspective -- Hausendorf; the functions 
of 'doing the talking' as social channeling of both talking and acting 
within society -- Valsiner; theoretical and methodological suggestions 
on how to implement the study -- Johnson; the extended discursive 
examination of validated and legitimized counter-discourses of 
oppressed individuals -- Pavlenko; a unifying perspective of the meta-
narratives of cultural experience and the story as a conversational 
object, Squire's position and recent work in media discourse analysis --
 Thornborrow.

Through the analysis of the cultural dimension of autobiographical 
narrative, in Charting the narrative unconscious (pp. 289-306) Mark 
Freeman examines: the process through which cultural texts 
and 'textures' are elaborated and stored in memory (see MacIntyre, 
1981; Freeman, 1993) and its unawareness, in relation to self-guiding 
anticipatory narratives; the features of the 'narrative unconscious', as 
the lived but unthought and untold rather than the dynamically 
repressed (see Freud 1914/1918), as an uncharted culturally-rooted 
area of one's history not yet incorporated into one's story. Narratives 
and counter-narratives are forms of negotiation when making sense of 
what happened and engaging in identification and non-identification, 
approach and avoidance, connection and dis-connection. 
Autobiography is conclusively to be reinterpreted (see Milosz, 1981; 
Conway, 1989), as it both represents life and sheds light on the 
multiple sources, close and distant, contributing to the making of the 
self. The four commentaries (pp. 307-340) and the response (pp. 341-
350) draw on: autobiography and 'nonconscious' narrative-building 
processes -- Mancuso; questions on the notion of culturally shared 
unconscious memories -- Raskin; a narrative, autobiographical and 
philosophical perspective comparing Freeman's and the author's view -
- Brockmeier; positioning theory in relation to autobiographical 
psychological narratives speaking people into a community -- Morgan.

EVALUATION

This informatively and methodologically fruitful volume is especially 
valuable for its multifaceted insight and dynamic perspective. The 
focus constantly shifts from the single steps of the specific 
contributions to the path they move along, from a situated action to an 
interactional situation. The unifying and salient issues are interaction 
and transformation. The unpredicted tripartite organization of the 
chapters reflects the findings of the essays, which show that 
narratives and counter-narratives are subsumed to a transformation 
process, rather than representing two fixed -- and in this case 
opposite -- categories, or just them. So is the dynamic perspective 
embedding the making of a research and the researcher's attitude, 
which is referred to when authors talk about their reading their papers 
after some time or about their involvement, or else is pointed out 
through the commentaries and the relevant responses. 

REFERENCES

Abell, J., E. Stokoe & M. Billig (2000) Narrative and the discursive (re)
construction of events. In M.Andrews, S.D.Sclater, C.Squire, & 
A.Treacher (eds.) Lines of narrative: Psychosocial perspectives. 
London and New York: Routledge. 180-192.

Ambert, A-M. (1994) An international perspective on parenting: Social 
change and social contructs. Journal of Marriage and the Family. 56, 
529-543.

Balsamo, A. (1999) Technologies of the gendered body: Reading 
cyborg women. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Berger, J. (1972) Ways of seeing. London: BBC/Penguin.

Bourdieu, P. (1990) Photography: A middle-brow art. Cambridge: 
Polity.

Bruner, J. (1992) Acts of meaning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University 
Press.

Burman, E. (1994) Deconstructing developmental psychology. 
London: Routledge.

Chaplin, E. (1994) Sociology and visual representation. London: 
Routledge.

Conway, J.K. (1989) The road from Coorain. New York: Alfred A. 
Knopf.

Edwards, D. & J. Potter (1992) Discursive psychology. Newbury Park, 
London and New Delhi: Sage.

Franklin, S. (1990) Deconstructing "desperateness": The social 
construction of infertility in popular representations of new 
reproductive technologies. In M.McNeil, I.Varcoe, & S.Yearley (eds.) 
The new reproductive technologies. Basingstoke: Macmillan. 200-229.

Freeman, M. (1993) Rewriting the self: History, memory, narrative. 
London: Routledge.

Freud, S. (1958) Remembering, repeating, and working-through. 
Standard Edition. 12. 147-156 (Original work published 1914.)

Gubrium, J.F. & J.A. Holstein (1997) The new language of qualitative 
method. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.

HFEA Press Release (2000, December) Over 50,000 babies born 
following IVF treatment in the UK since first success in 1978. 
Retrieved February 2, 2002 from  http://www.hfea.gov.uk

Hirsch, M. (1997) Family frames: Photography, narrative and 
postmemory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Jacobs, R. (2000) Narrative, civil society and public culture. In 
M.Andrews, S.D.Sclater, C.Squire, & A.Treacher (eds.) Lines of 
narrative: Psychosocial perspectives. London and New York: 
Routledge. 18-35.

Layne, L.L. (2000) Baby things as fetishes? Memorial goods, 
simulacra, and the "realness" problem of pregnancy loss. In H.Ragone 
& F.W.Twine (eds.) Ideologies and technologies of motherhood: Race, 
class, sexuality, nationalism. London: Routledge. 111-138.

MacIntyre, A. (1981) After virtue. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre 
Dame.

Milosz, C. (1981) Native realm: A search for self-definition. Berkeley, 
CA: University of California Press.

Morss, J. (1996) Growing critical: Alternatives to developmental 
psychology. London: Routledge.

Phoenix, A. & A. Woollett (1991) Motherhood: Social construction, 
politics and psychology. In A. Phoenix, A. Woollett, & E. Lloyd (eds.) 
Motherhood: Meanings, practices, and ideologies. London: Sage. 13-27.

Pope, D., N. Quinn, & M. Wyer (eds.) (1990) Editorial: The ideology of 
mothering: Disruption and reproduction of patriarchy. Signs. 15 (30). 
441-447.

Potter, J. & M. Wetherell (1987) Discourse and social psychology: 
Beyond attitudes and behaviour. London: Sage.

Prosser, J. (ed.) (1998) Image based research. London: Sage.

Riessman, C.K. (1993) Narrative analysis. Newbury Park, London and 
New Delhi: Sage.

Shattuc, J. (1997) The talking cure: TV talk shows and women. New 
York: Routledge. 

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Giampaolo Poletto is a doctoral student at the Doctoral School in 
Linguistics of the University of Pécs, in Hungary. His lingfields of 
interest are discourse analysis, pragmatics, applied linguistics. His 
research focuses on humor as a discoursive strategy for young 
learners of Italian, in a cross-sectional and cross-cultural context.





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