Cover not available
Part of
Less Frequently Used Research Methodologies in Applied Linguistics
Edited by A. Mehdi Riazi
[Research Methods in Applied Linguistics 6] 2024
► pp. 191–205

Chapter 12
Narrative inquiry

| Binghamton University

This chapter examines the key role that narratives have in human communication and engagement across cultures and as fertile analytical and methodological tools. Storytelling practices allow researchers to study speech participants’ visible and veiled interactional dynamics. Besides analyzing narratives for their content (“denotational text”), scholars have studied narratives also for their pragmatic effects in the here-and-now of speech participants’ interactions, or their “interactional text,” and across various spatiotemporal configurations. During their tellings, narrators can assume and reverse roles, for example. Moreover, narratives simultaneously shape and are shaped by their surrounding context. In this light, storytelling practices are actual speech events that are (co)created, and developed, and thus need to be studied as such because of their interactional nature.

Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Theoretical foundations
  • 3.Methodological orientations
    • 3.1Principles and affordances
    • 3.2Types of RQs addressed by narrative inquiry
    • 3.3Procedures of data collection and analysis
    • 3.4Ethical issues
  • 4.Critiques and responses
  • 5.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
Published online: 5 January 2024
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/rmal.6.12per
References
Bakhtin, M. M.
(1981) The dialogic imagination: Four essays. Texas University Press.Google Scholar
Bauman, R.
(1977) Verbal art as performance. Prospect Heights.Google Scholar
(1986) Story, performance, and event: Contextual studies of oral narrative. Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Black, S. P.
(2017) Anthropological ethics and the communicative affordances of audio-video recorders in ethnographic fieldwork: Transduction as theory. American Anthropologist, 119(1), 46–57. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Black, S. P., & Conley, R.
(2022) Care as a methodological stance: Research ethics in linguistic anthropology. In S. M. Perrino & S. E. Pritzker (Eds.), Research methods in linguistic anthropology (pp. 97–124). Bloomsbury Academic. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Briggs, C. L.
(1986) Learning how to ask: A sociolinguistic appraisal of the role of the interview in social science research (1). Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
De Fina, A.
(2013) Narratives as practices: Negotiating identities through storytelling. In G. Barkhuizen (Ed.), Narrative research in applied linguistics (pp. 154–175). Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
(2020) Doing narrative analysis from a narratives-as-practices perspective. Narrative Inquiry, 31(1), 49–71. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
De Fina, A., & Georgakopoulou, A.
(2012) Analyzing narrative: Discourse and sociolinguistic perspectives. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
De Fina, A., & Perrino, S.
(2011) Interviews vs. ‘natural’ contexts: A false dilemma [Special Issue]. Language in Society, 40(1), 1–11. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Du Bois, J. W.
(2007) The stance triangle. In R. Englebretson (Ed.), Stancetaking in discourse: Subjectivity, evaluation, interaction (pp. 140–182). John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Duranti, A., & Goodwin, C.
(1992) Rethinking context: Language as an interactive phenomenon. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Fontana, A., & Frei, J. H.
(2004) Interviewing: The art of science. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of qualitative research (pp. 361–376). Sage.Google Scholar
Goffman, E.
(1981) Forms of talk. University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Goodwin, C.
(1986) Audience diversity, participation and interpretation. Text and Talk, 6(3), 283–316. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2015) Narrative as talk-in-interaction. In A. Georgakopoulou & A. De Fina (Eds.), The handbook of narrative analysis (pp. 197–218). Wiley-Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gumperz, J. J.
(1982) Discourse strategies. Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ingold, T.
(2011) Being alive: Essays on movement, knowledge and description. Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jaffe, A.
(2009a) Introduction. In A. Jaffe (Ed.), Stance: Sociolinguistic perspectives (pp. 3–28). Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2009b) Stance in a Corsican school: Institutional and ideological orders and the production of bilingual subjects. In A. Jaffe (Ed.), Stance: Sociolinguistic perspectives (pp. 119–145). Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jaffe, A. M.
(2009c) Stance: Sociolinguistic perspectives. Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jaffe, A.
(2015) Staging language on Corsica: Stance, improvisation, play, and heteroglossia. Language in Society, 44(02), 161–186. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jakobson, R.
(1957) Shifters and verbal categories. In L. R. Waugh & M. Monville-Burston (Eds.), On language (pp. 386–392). Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Kohler, G., & Murphy, K. M.
(2022) Audio-video technology for and in the field: A primer. In S. M. Perrino & S. E. Pritzker (Eds.), Research methods in linguistic anthropology (pp. 197–222). Bloomsbury Academic. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Labov, W.
(1972) Language in the inner city (3). University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Labov, W., & Waletzky, J.
(1967) Narrative analysis: Oral versions of personal experience. Journal of Narrative & Life History, 7(1–4), 3–38. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lempert, M.
(2008) The poetics of stance: Text-metricality, epistemicity, interaction. Language in Society, 37(04), 569–592. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Perrino, S. M.
(2005) Participant transposition in Senegalese oral narrative. Narrative Inquiry, 15(2), 345–375. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Perrino, S.
(2007) Cross-chronotope alignment in Senegalese oral narrative. Language and Communication, 27(3), 227–244. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2011) Chronotopes of story and storytelling event in interviews. Language in Society, 40(1), 91–103. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2015a) Chronotopes: Time and space in oral narrative. In A. De Fina & A. Georgakopoulou (Eds.), The handbook of narrative analysis (pp. 140–159). Wiley-Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2015b) Narrating authenticity in northern Italian historical cafés. Language and Communication, 40, 82–91. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2015c) Performing extracomunitari: Mocking migrants in Veneto Barzellette. Language in Society, 44(2), 141–160. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2018) Exclusionary intimacies: Racialized language in Veneto, northern Italy. Language & Communication, 59, 28–41. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2019a) Narrating migration politics in Veneto, Northern Italy. Narrative Culture, 6(1), 44–68. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2019b) Recontextualizing racialized stories on YouTube. In A. De Fina & S. Perrino (Eds.), Storytelling in the digital world (pp. 261–285). John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2020a) Methods: Methodology in linguistic anthropology: Experiments. In J. Stanlaw (Ed.), International encyclopedia of linguistic anthropology. Wiley Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2020b) Narrating migration: Intimacies of exclusion in northern Italy. Routledge.Google Scholar
(2021) Narratives as discursive practices in interviews: A linguistic anthropological approach. Narrative Inquiry, 31(1), 72–96. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Perrino, S. M.
(2022a) Interviews in linguistic anthropology. In S. M. Perrino & S. E. Pritzker (Eds.), Research methods in linguistic anthropology (pp. 159–195). Bloomsbury Academic. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2022b) Narrating pandemics across time and space. Anthropology & Humanism, 47(1), 264–272. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Perrino, S., & Kohler, G.
(2020) Chronotopic identities: Narrating made in Italy across spatiotemporal scales. Language & Communication, 70, 94–106. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Perrino, S., & Wortham, S. E. F.
(2022) Narrating heterogeneous identities in multilingual communities. In L. Fisher & W. Ayres-Bennett (Eds.), Interdisciplinary perspectives on multilingualism and identity (pp. 239–260). Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sabaté-Dalmau, M.
(2016) Migrant narratives of dis/emplacement: The alternative spatialization and ethnicization of the local urban floor. Text & Talk, 36(3), 269–293. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schiffrin, D.
(1996) Narrative as self-portrait: Sociolinguistic constructions of identity. Language in Society, 25(2), 167–203. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schiffrin, D., De Fina, A., & Nylund, A.
(2010) Telling stories: Language narrative and social life. Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Shohet, M., & Loyd, H.
(2022) Transcription and analysis in linguistic anthropology: Creating, testing, and presenting theory on the page. In S. M. Perrino & S. E. Pritzker (Eds.), Research methods in linguistic anthropology (pp. 261–295). Bloomsbury Academic. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Silverstein, M.
(1998) Improvisational performance of culture in realtime discursive practice. In K. Sawyer (Ed.), Creativity in performance (pp. 265–312). Ablex.Google Scholar
Tannen, D.
(2007) Talking voices: Repetition, dialogue, and imagery in conversational discourse. Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Van De Mieroop, D., & Clifton, J.
(2014) The discursive management of identity in interviews with female former colonials of the Belgian Congo. Pragmatics. Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA), 24(1), 131–155. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Veronesi, D.
(2019) “But you’re gonna ask me questions, right?”: Interactional frame and “for-the-record” orientation in language biography interviews. In K. Roulston (Ed.), Interactional studies of qualitative research interviews (pp. 181–200). John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Walton, S., & Jaffe, A.
(2011) “Stuff white people like”: Stance, class, race, and internet commentary. In C. Thurlow & K. Mroczek (Eds.), Digital discourse: Language in the new media (pp. 199–211). Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wortham, S.
(2000) Interactional positioning and narrative self-construction. Narrative Inquiry, 10(1), 157–184. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2001) Narratives in action: A strategy for research analysis. Teachers College Press.Google Scholar
Wortham, S., Mortimer, K., Lee, K., Allard, E., & White, K. D.
(2011) Interviews as interactional data. Language in Society, 40(1), 39–50. DOI logoGoogle Scholar