Analysis Of Personal Narratives Research Articles

Exploring “Elsewhereland” — Places Desired, Remembered and Dwelled: Place experience of vacationers on Saaremaa Island, Estonia

This paper examines summer vacationers’ experiences and connections with an island place on Saaremaa in Estonia. Discourse from sixteen in-depth interviews are coupled with a theoretical discussion exploring place, emotions, memory, and self through an analysis of personal narratives on individual emotional perspectives of meaningful places, memory of places elsewhere, and the materiality of the cultural landscape itself. Emotional aspects associated with verbal expressions are examined with a discussion of emergent themes of place experience via a literary narrative writing approach. The emotional dynamics of rhetorical conversation between interviewees, researcher, and place echoed through the shared materiality of people and their environment. Personal narratives of place meanings examine island environments through emotional individual experiences resulting in five themes: places desired, places remembered, lost and found, elsewhereness and home, and returns. Home, everyday, and elsewhere are intertwined impressions of island places memorised, balanced via expressions of belonging as experiences of everyday and nostalgic renderings of times lost.

Representation of the Rules for Living in Personal Narratives of Adolescents with Hearing Impairments

The article is focused on the study of personal narratives of adolescents with hearing impairments. The aim of the study was to determine narrative indicators of respondents’ rules for living. To achieve this goal, there were analysed personal narratives of adolescents with hearing impairments. Besides, there were identified specific categories that reflect their rules for living. In addition, there was studied the level of subjective well-being of respondents and the relationship between the presentation of certain rules for living in personal narratives and the level of subjective satisfaction with life. The research methods were content analysis of personal narratives and subjective scaling. Statistical data processing was performed with the help of recursive division trees method. The results of the study show that rules for living typical for adolescents with hearing impairments are reflected in their narratives and can be divided into three groups. The first group includes self-focusing rules, the second – focusing on others, and the third – focusing on the out-world. Each of these groups is divided into two subgroups, and each subgroup includes the behaviour of supercompensation or avoidance. The most common among adolescents with hearing impairments are rules for living related to the focusing on others and self-focusing both by the type of avoidance. At the same time, the highest level of subjective satisfaction with life is connected with self-focusing rules for living by type of supercompensation. The obtained data allow us to conclude that the analysis of personal narratives of adolescents with hearing impairments allows to determine their rules for living. On the other hand, typical rules for living determine the level of person’s subjective well-being. Prospects for further researches in this area are to study the representation in adolescents’ narratives not only separate rules for living, but also core beliefs, the existence of which is ensured by these rules.

Using social media to support teaching and learning in higher education: an analysis of personal narratives

The increasing trend of using new media technologies and particularly social media (SM) among students provides an advantage for lecturers. Apparently their importance accelerated with the application of social distancing during a pandemic crisis such as the one World has been experiencing since the end of 2019. In this article, the stories of two academics are used expressing experiences, motives and perceptions on benefits and challenges of using SM to support teaching and learning in the classroom. The stories which form the data of the research describe how and why the participants started to use SM, their intended purpose and the ways of use. Besides, reasons, difficulties and positive as well as the negative sides are explored. The findings show that the virtual learning environments provided by SM facilitated the development of students’ enthusiasm and interaction with peers assertively, thus increasing the students’ participation. Because of emerging technologies, SM platforms surge and plummet quickly; therefore, it is important for institutions to either develop their platform or to subscribe to existing ones for effective knowledge sharing at an institutional level with clear ethical rules.

Giving a Voice to Gambling Addiction: Analysis of Personal Narratives.

Gambling addiction (GA) is now considered a worldwide health issue. Although the topic of disorder awareness is a central issue in clinical practice, there are few studies examining this dimension in relation to GA. To bridge this gap, we conducted a qualitative study, administering interviews focused on awareness of GA and eliciting narratives of both the disorder and the whole life of participants. We adopted both qualitative and quantitative methods of research, using computer-aided content analysis. We administered to a sample of 15 treatment-seeking gamblers the Psychiatric Interview for Gambling Addiction and performed a qualitative analysis of the text using the T-Lab software. Five main thematic domains and four factors emerged, shedding light on specific aspects underlying the development of and recovery from GA. Specifically, the results suggested that dissociation processes, materialistic thinking and difficulties in social achievement underlie the subjective experience of GA. Moreover, closeness in interpersonal relationships and awareness of the disorder emerged as core features in the process of change. As a whole, the results highlight the specificities of disorder awareness in addicted gamblers. We discuss these results within the context of previous research and suggest clinical implications for the treatment of GA.

“Why Don’t They Change?” Law Reform, Tradition and Widows’ Rights in Ghana

Widows form a sub-set of an already beleaguered gendered minority in societies where law is but one of a competing number of social orders. This can render widows vulnerable and often outside the protection of State law and at the behest of (discriminatory) customary laws. Ghana enacted the Intestate Succession Law 1985 (P.N.D.C.L.111) to grant widows the right to inherit from the estate of the deceased. However, the law has had little impact. Personal narrative analysis was used to ascertain the reasons for this through interviews conducted with widows. Proposals are then made as to how law reform can promote and effect gender equality.

Somos Mexicanos y Hablamos Mexicano Aquí: Rural Farmworker Families Struggle to Maintain Cultural and Linguistic Identity in Michigan

This article presents the narratives centered on intergenerational linguistic and cultural transmission for three farmworker families. It does so through the analysis of personal narratives provided by three families in rural Michigan, which were collected over a five-year span. The participants discuss the sociocultural significance of maintaining their heritage language (HL) despite the dominant society's attempts to supplant their community's language with English. From their descriptions it is clear that Spanish is both a linguistic and cultural marker of group membership and cultural identity and a way to communicate home pedagogies. It is through this HL that intergenerational knowledge is transmitted to assist younger generations in maintaining strong relationships with their ethnic community while developing relationships with the surrounding Anglo-American community. Families utilize home pedagogies to empower youth and sustain networks with other regional HL communities.

Capturing Otherness: Self-Identity and Feelings of Non-Belonging Among Educated Burmese in Thailand

This paper explores the subjective experiences of migrants engaged in producing alternative modes of self-identification and in creating a new basis for their collective identity. Through the analysis of personal narratives, this article examines the dialectic movement between complex political and social constructions of Otherness and processes of self-identification among English-educated lowland Burmese living in Thailand. It investigates the meanings and perceptions attached to the different terms used as identity frameworks in popular discourse among Thai and among Burmese themselves and looks into how these terms and
 attached meanings are appropriated and acted upon in different contexts. The migrants involved in this research come from vastly different backgrounds and ideologies, but they share in common being from the Burman ethnic majority, or having lived and studied among Burman, and identifying themselves in terms of civic identity, which is reflected by the term 'Burmese'. Once in Thailand, their situation is complicated because in their everyday life they have to face the Thai construction of being Burmese, known as 'Pama', a term associated with the historical enemy in Thai nationalist discourse. The contact that educated Burmese have with Thai classmates or co-workers is relatively limited due to the general mistrust Thai people tend to have towards them. The educated Burmese migrants also have to confront their national Other, the members of minorities from the secessionist states who compose the majority of migrants in Thailand. In this context, their own Burmeseness, which they rarely had to question before they left Yangon or Mandalay, appears suddenly as it is: an identity deeply fragmented that needs to be captured and reappropriated.

‘To understand lessons, think through your own languages.’ An analysis of narratives in support of the introduction of indigenous languages in the education system in Senegal

Senegal has a complex multilingual set-up where there is interaction between 25 distinct indigenous languages and French, the language of the former colonial power. Throughout colonial rule the French language was imposed and the indigenous languages were marginalised and stigmatised. When Senegal gained independence from France, the postcolonial authorities who took over power were not able to redress the situation and promote their own languages. As a result, more than half a century after independence, the national languages of Senegal are conspicuously absent from the education system. French continues to rule the entire education system: it is the only medium of instruction and is a compulsory school subject. However, pressures from within and outside the country have had favourable echoes and efforts have been undertaken by successive governments to raise the profile of the national languages, but these remain insignificant. This article reports on an analysis of personal narratives in support of mother-tongue education.

Telling stories: the use of personal narratives in the social sciences and history

In Telling Stories, Mary Jo Maynes, Jennifer L. Pierce, and Barbara Laslett argue that personal narratives-autobiographies, oral histories, life history interviews, and memoirs-are an important research tool for understanding the relationship between people and their societies. Gathering examples from throughout the world and from premodern as well as contemporary cultures, they draw from labor history and class analysis, feminist sociology, race relations, and anthropology to demonstrate the value of personal narratives for scholars and students alike. Telling Stories explores why and how personal narratives should be used as evidence, and the methods and pitfalls of their use. The authors stress the importance of recognizing that stories that people tell about their lives are never simply individual. Rather, they are told in historically specific times and settings and call on rules, models, and social experiences that govern how story elements link together in the process of self-narration. Stories show how individuals' motivations, emotions, and imaginations have been shaped by their cumulative life experiences. In turn, Telling Stories demonstrates how the knowledge produced by personal narrative analysis is not simply contained in the stories told; the understanding that takes place between narrator and analyst and between analyst and audience enriches the results immeasurably.

Adventures in transdisciplinary learning

Cross‐disciplinary collaboration is being promoted in academic and professional circles as an important strategy for developing new avenues of scholarly inquiry and for generating knowledge that is immediately applicable to the resolution of real‐world problems. This move toward cross‐disciplinary work has translated into calls for enhanced interdisciplinarity in doctoral education, although there are several barriers to the successful implementation of cross‐disciplinary work, especially during PhD studies. This article presents a personal narrative analysis of the authors’ experiences in a doctoral‐level transdisciplinary learning environment to illustrate the antecedents of successful cross‐disciplinary engagement and the supports required to sustain this type of work.

Performing Unfeminine Femininity: A Performance of Identity Analysis of Bulimic Women's Personal Narratives

This study explores the emergence of the bulimic identity through an analysis of the personal narrative performances of five young women recovering from bulimia nervosa. The bulimic self emerges as the storyteller, narrator, character, and audience within the context of the narrative performances. The participants take on the roles of the authoritative narrator guiding the action and of their own audience, actively engaging in the constitution of their bulimic identities. The ordered self and disordered self emerge simultaneously, both as an explanation for a stigmatized performance of unfeminine femininity and as a response to a sense of failed femininity.

Practicing Invisibility: Women’s Roles in Higher Education

In this article, two female academics confront their role in producing their own invisibility and ir-relevance in the practice of higher education. Drawing on feminist standpoint theory, the authors interrogate their participation in articulation work that helped male colleagues to assume roles of higher status. Based on an analysis of personal narratives and the text of an international e-mail exchange that resulted in a successful grant proposal, the authors argue that the hierarchical and patriarchal cultural history of the academy as well as the intrusion of gendered relations from contexts beyond the institution of higher education undermine the democratic intentions of aca-demics, both male and female, who espouse horizontal collaborative relations between academics. This case study illustrates the contradiction between egalitarian institutional rhetoric and value systems of individuals and the hierarchical and gendered power relations that play out in everyday life in the academy. The authors conclude that while both male and female academics must work to change the gendered text of higher education, women in the academy must build both critical mass and mentoring networks in consciously acting to change the institution’s cultural history.

Narrative Turn or Blind Alley?

Sociologists, anthropologists, and others are paying increasing attention to the collection and analysis of personal narratives. This is true of qualitative health research, where narratives of suffering and illness have been granted special status. The article endorses a narrative approach but offers a criticism of research in which narratives are regarded as offering the analyst privileged access to personal experience. It is suggested that an appeal to narratives too often includes inappropriate assumptions concerning human actors and social action. The argument is developed primarily through a reading of several major authors in the field.