Personal Experience Narratives Research Articles

“I Was Born!”: Personal Experience Narratives and Tree-Ring Marker Years

This essay, co-written by a dendrochronologist (Nick) and a narrative theorist (Erin), considers how these two disciplines can meet to illuminate alternative narratives in tree rings. At the basis of our conversation is a desire to tease apart tree experience and the signification entangled within human practices of storytelling. First, Nick explains recent developments in dendrochronology and critical physical geography (CPG) that call attention to the ways in which tree-ring sciences often naturalize imperial narratives and demand alternative methodologies. Second, Erin dives into the imperial narratives of two case study tree bodies, throwing light upon the human and vegetal stories that these dominant narratives obscure and silence. Third, Nick turns to an experiment in critical participatory action research (CPAR) to suggest an approach to tree-ring dating—material dating—that takes its cues not from imperial histories but from a simultaneous interest in community engagement, anticolonial scholarship, and tree agency and signification. Fourth, Erin explains how material dating, via foregrounding personal experience, stands to produce a narrative more sensitive to a particular tree’s situated experience and better able to foment understanding among tree body viewers for the tree as a living and communicating organism. Finally, Nick and Erin use material dating to produce an alternative narrative for one of our case studies and provide directions for other scholars to replicate our process.

Personal experience narratives in three West African sign languages

Personal experience narratives in three West African sign languages

The Epistemic Import of Narratives

ABSTRACT In situations of disagreement in a polarized social world, rational argument is not always successful in persuading those who do not share our beliefs. Narratives of personal experiences have empirically shown to help bridge divides between disagreeing interlocutors, though this raises the question of how particular, personal narratives relate to the universal appeal of argumentation. It also leads us to reflect upon the dangers of these narratives functioning as a type of propaganda that bypasses reason. In this paper, I discuss how understanding narratives as ways to build common ground using standpoint-informed knowledge (hereafter: standpoint knowledge) can explain the empirical belief-changing potential of narratives. Additionally, viewing deliberation in the public sphere as a communal constitution of common ground may alleviate worries of narratives functioning as propaganda and explain how narratives foster perceived rationality, respect and humanity. On this account, our shared history is constantly shaped by narratives that we build together, which also allows for criticism of these narratives in a pluralist public sphere.

A Near-Death Experience Narrated by a Vepsian Woman

Abstract This article* focuses on the immediate near-death experience of an elderly woman living in traditional Vepsian culture. We analyse which universal, and which more culturally motivated features are present in her story narrated to us in 2018. We conclude that, despite the strong association with animistic beliefs in the informant’s everyday life, the experience is dominated by elements specific to vernacular Orthodox Christianity. The article presents a translation from Vepsian of a fragmentary personal experience narrative.

Romani Bildungsroman – On the Cultural Trauma of Coming-of-Age as Presented in the Novels - City of Pain and City of Sin by Meti Kamberi

The aim of this paper is to analyze the articulation of cultural trauma of coming-of-age as depicted in the novels City of Pain and City of Sin by the young Romani author Meti Kamberi. The common feature of these two novels is that they both explore the traumatic childhood and coming –of-age experiences through the main protagonist’s point of view, suggesting that they either belong to the genres of autobiography and bildungsroman. Both novels are examined from the ethnic/minority bildungsroman perspective, with a particular focus on the personal experience narrative of coming-of-age of a Romani minority member in post-socialist Serbia as described in either of the two. Through illustrative examples, this paper demonstrates that the literary and artistic creations of minority populations can be a valuable ethnographic source for investigating their self-representations. The pages of these novels represent a space for articulating ethnic as well as racialized traumas, caused by both personal and transgenerational experiences of discrimination, stigmatization, and marginalization of the Romani population in this region. The thematization of life between two worlds, the dichotomy between the community of origin and the mainstream society, is a key characteristic of the Romani bildungsroman.

The homily as a way to the synodal Church.The possibility of building a responsible laity

The first Church was formed during the Pentecostal speech of the apostles. The first forms of evangelization were narratives of personal experiences with Jesus. With the formation of structures in the Church, the role of authority in official proclamation in worship also developed. We will try to show how a communal sharing of God's word is necessary for a communal participation in Christ's sacrifice on the way to synodality. Pope Francis encourages everyone to bear witness to Christ. We would follow the words that Pope Francis wrote in The Joy of the Gospel: “We are not asked to be flawless, but to keep growing and wanting to grow as we advance along the path of the Gospel; our arms must never grow slack.” The fear of losing touch with the sources of Revelation and from the diversity of faith experiences must not stop us from seeking a word that would, as at the first Pentecost, inspire people to live the gospel. The primary responsibility for more believers to participate in the sacrifice of the Word in our liturgy lies with those who can speak today. We will point out guidelines on how to educate for greater participation and open the possibility for institutional change through the homily as we know it today. We will also point out some good practices that reflect the possibility of education for the testimony of all believers needed for a synodal Church.

Urban identity and perception of the city in management discourse

The discourse on the city, its forms, planning and management under uncertainty is undoubtedly the most widespread and relevant in the last ten years. The prospects for the development of the city and its urban community depend rather on the articulation and representation of the content of social demand from society, the population of specific cities, than on external factors. Citizens have a clear vision for the future and present of their city. The city perception of its inhabitants is correlated with the citizens’ ideas about the modern city and appears as a discourse in their judgments, opinions and assessments. Urban discourse is defined as positioning, representation of urban identity of citizens and reflection of the perception of the city identity. The presence of this discourse is found in the citizens’ narratives about the city. The study is based on the personal experience narratives, specifically the informants’ reflections upon their evaluation and perception of their city were analyzed. Narrative analysis, supplemented by sentiment analysis (positive or negative presentation of the material) was chosen as a research tactic, the research method is content analysis. The major purpose of this work is to study the perception of the identity of the city by citizens. The novelty of the work is determined by the design of the study, combining qualitative and quantitative approaches, the method of triangulation according to N. Denzin., as well as the choice of a subjective parameter (perception by citizens of their city) as a guideline for managerial actions in shaping the identity of the city in order to achieve connectivity “city – citizen”. An additional contribution of this paper is the construction of a paired logic of connectivity: “city – citizen” through the correlation between the citizens urban identity indicators and the identity of the city on the basis of empirical data of six cities in the Tyumen region. The study showed that citizens with a high level of urban identity perceive the city through personal participation in its life, through the manifestation of subjectivity.

Maģiskās glābšanas stāsti par svētās Agatas brīnumiem Stirnienes draudzē

In a small north-western Latgale community, Stirniene parish of St. Lawrence, personal experience narratives that highlight folk Christianity have been documented during the late 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century. In these narratives, supernatural aid and miraculous salvation in crucial situations are frequently occurring motifs. The cult of saints has a significant role in Latgalian folk Christianity, and these narratives reveal the deep roots of one of the most popular cults of saints – the worship of Saint Agatha in Stirniene parish. Saint Agatha is the patron saint for fire and other disasters. On Saint Agatha’s Day – the 5th of February – bread, water, and salt are consecrated in Catholic churches in Latvia; these items are believed to prevent fire, cure humans and livestock animals, and protect against supernatural evil powers. The coexistence and interlapping of Christian and folk worldviews are presented in the paper, showing the appreciation of the sacramentalia consecrated on this day (bread, water, salt) and exposing the testimonies of miraculous aid through the use of such sacramentalia. Despite the profound political, economic, and cultural changes of the 20th century, and especially of the prohibition of religious practices during the Soviet occupation, it can be concluded that Saint Agatha’s Day traditions persevere both in older and younger generations. The corpus of personal experience narratives collected in Stirniene presents the miraculous salvation stories connected to Saint Agatha’s sacramentalia, thus displaying the continuity of the traditional worldview and values of the informants. The variety of different individual approaches to using Saint Agatha’s bread and water is characterised. The biographical method has been used in the research.

Narratives of stressful and traumatic personal experience disclosed by students with mental health conditions in medical consultations

Abstract This paper advances the field of narratives by focusing on the narratives of personal experience disclosed by students with mental health conditions, in particular depression, anxiety and borderline personality disorder, in medical consultations. I draw on sociolinguistic and discourse-analytic approaches to the analysis of narratives in interaction, viewing language as a tool for constructing social reality, and examine the content, structural properties and functions of the stories (Labov & Waletzky, 1967; De Fina & Georgakopoulou, 2011). Engaging in self-disclosure and sharing stories of stressful and traumatic experience in medical consultations allows the students (1) to explain symptoms and interpret causes of their current health problems, (2) manage accountability, and (3) confront and cope with their painful experience and stigma.

Modeling the narrative viewpoint: narrative spaces and the labovian narrative structure

The article addresses the methodological challenge of studying narratives of various genres in their natural discursive environment. The proposed model combines the narrative spaces approach to narrative construction developed by Dancygier and the classic Labov & Waletzky narrative segmentation model. I undertake a modeling experiment targeting four narratives of personal experience, two oral and two written, from news, political, humorous, and oneiric reflective contexts. I accommodate the classic narrative structure model of Abstract, Orientation, Complication, Resolution, Evaluation, and Coda to tag narrative spaces rather than narrative clauses. This revised vision of the narrative structural elements combined with the cognitive narratology concept of narrative spaces aims to address the viewpoint configurations. Namely, I focus on the discussion of the elements of Abstract, Evaluation, and Coda, which position the narrative in its discursive context and essentially constitute the extra-narrative system. These elements allow embedding the narrative in the pragmatic context and account for its tellability. In turn, this discursive positioning depends on the viewpoint configuration of the narrative of personal experience. I regard viewpoint configurations as elements governed by the narrative genre. I argue that the viewpoint compression and decompression processes and narrative embedding strategies are genre-specific. Narratives of different genres demonstrate stronger or weaker extra-narrative system and varied tendencies towards multiple viewpoints and their compression.

'I Had a Dream, Which Was not All a Dream'

The article makes a case for a particular kind of conceptual metaphor, the viewpoint metaphor. The viewpoint metaphor is argued to be a tool employed by narrators in personal experience narratives in order to render their irregular perception mode. The viewpoint metaphor allows mapping on the narrated real experience the perception characteristics of other experiences such as watching a movie or having a dream. The research material consisted of a sample of 50 personal experience narratives (25 in English and 25 in Ukrainian) produced by the participants or witnesses, military and civilian, of hostilities mainly in Ukraine in 2014-2023 and in some other conflicts. It was found that two basic and most prominent viewpoint metaphors in this kind of discourse is EXPERIENCING THE EVENT is DREAMING OF THE EVENT or WATCHING A MOVIE OF THE EVENT. These metaphors are often reinforced by other viewpoint metaphors and they tend to repeatedly occur in the narrative. The function of the viewpoint metaphor is expressing the subjective experientiality, emotional condition and embodied perception mode at the time of the experience narrated. Viewpoint is therefore argued to be a part of the mental space’s construal. Studying the viewpoint metaphor allows to shed light onto the conceptual structure of viewpoint. It was found that the elements mapped from the source experience of watching a movie or having a dream include passive witnessing, reduced agency, hushed perception, unreality of events, timelapse, and slow motion.

Narratives of personal and professional experiences of psychotherapists working with cases of child and adolescent sexual abuse: A qualitative longitudinal study

AbstractBackgroundStudies delving into the personal and professional experiences of psychotherapists working with children and adolescents who have been sexually abused are scarce and mostly cross‐sectional.AimThe present qualitative longitudinal study aimed to describe the narratives that therapists construct about their personal and professional experiences of working with children and/or adolescents who have been victims of sexual aggression during different moments of the psychotherapeutic process.MethodEight psychologists were interviewed and asked about the psychotherapy of 12 cases they were developing. These cases were of children and adolescents who had been sexually abused. Each participant was interviewed at different moments of the cases' psychotherapy (6 months into the process, 12 months into the process and once more at the end of therapy for those who received therapy for longer than 12 months). A total of 34 interviews were conducted and studied through narrative analysis.ResultsThree major themes involving the personal and professional experiences of psychotherapists emerged: regarding the patient and their family; regarding the institutional context; and regarding the personal/professional experience. Also, identified and analysed convergences and divergences that appear within these themes at different points in the participants' interviews are highlighted.DiscussionThe findings suggest that therapists manage to navigate the most complex and distressing aspects of each intervention case in the earlier moments of the psychotherapeutic process and later are likely to have an emotional connection with pleasant or satisfactory elements in their work and are likely to end treatment with an appreciation for the learning experiences they have had working with challenging cases and a sense of amazement at the resources and resilience of the children and adolescents they work with.

Parents’ Narratives on the Online Content Risks among Filipino Children

It is prevalent that the internet has become a part of a child's life. However, this accessibility comes with risks that start at the age of 8. Hence, this Narratology explored the experiences of these Filipino children with online content risks as told by their parents. The deductive method was used to analyze the data using the Personal Experience Narrative (PEN) and the 4Cs: Classifying Online Risks Among Children as frameworks for the story structure. Based on the study's findings, all online content risks are observable, which usually happens at home. Aggressive content risks are common to all and interconnect with other risks. Parental supervision was also emphasized as a critical factor affecting these children's exposure. The findings of this study could be a basis for developing Information, Education, and Communication (IEC) materials and other related future research.

Gender Gap in the Writing Practice and Identity Experienced by Male University Students in South Kalimantan

The gender gap between male and female teenage authors causes considerable difficulty in literature. In this work, I employed qualitative research methods to unearth the intricate narratives of personal experiences masked by quantitative research approaches. I used a semi-structured interview format to talk with the participants about their ideas in greater detail. Five university students aged 17 to 19 took part in the study. According to the findings, the absence of gender equality in the writing development of male adolescents is a contributing factor to the gender gap that exists in male adolescents' writing growth. Male and female writing abilities differ significantly, severely impacting young males' educational and professional objectives. By learning more about the writing experiences of college-bound male teenagers, I could gain insights that could be used to improve educational policy and practice. Therefore, it is essential to understand male adolescents' writing identities and provide them with a voice. Additionally, it is essential to learn more about and comprehend the policies and practices that can assist in closing the gender success gap in writing practice.

The Pragmatics of Fiction: Literature, Stage and Screen Discourse

The Pragmatics of Fiction: Literature, Stage and Screen Discourse

Sociolinguistic prompts in the 21st century: Uniting past approaches and current directions

AbstractAs technology (particularly smartphone and computer technology) has advanced, sociolinguistic methodology has likewise adapted to include remote data collection. Remote methods range from approximating the traditional sociolinguistic interview via synchronous video conferencing to developing new methods for asynchronous self‐recording (Boyd et al., 2015; Leeman et al., 2020). In this paper, we take a close look at the question prompts sent to participants in an asynchronous, remote self‐recording project (“MI Diaries”). We discuss how some of the techniques initially developed for obtaining a range of styles in a traditional in‐person sociolinguistic interview can be fruitfully adapted to a remote context. Of this range of styles, we give particular focus to Narratives of Personal Experience (Labov & Waletzky, 1967), and provide an analysis of how the theme, style, and development of prompts can encourage narratives from participants. We end with a short discussion of prompts that have successfully elicited other speech styles, and prompts that are especially fruitful with child participants.

Thinking about life in COVID-19: An exploratory study on the influence of temporal framing on streams-of-consciousness.

The COVID-19 global pandemic led to major upheavals in daily life. As a result, mental health has been negatively impacted for many, including college students who have faced increased stress, depression, anxiety, and social isolation. How we think about the future and adjust to such changes may be partly mediated by how we situate our experiences in relation to the pandemic. To test this idea, we investigate how temporal framing influences the way participants think about COVID life. In an exploratory study, we investigate the influence of thinking of life before versus during the pandemic on subsequent thoughts about post-pandemic life. Participants wrote about their lives in a stream-of-consciousness style paradigm, and the linguistic features of their thoughts are extracted using Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC). Initial results suggest principal components of LIWC features can distinguish the two temporal framings just from the content of their post-pandemic-oriented texts alone. We end by discussing theoretical implications for our understanding of personal experience and self-generated narrative. We also discuss other aspects of the present data that may be useful for investigating these thought processes in the future, including document-level features, typing dynamics, and individual difference measures.

Personal Experience Stories at the Crossroad of Archaeology and Folklore

"Archaeological heritage of Turkey has been suffering for ages from severe destruction through the activities of local antiquities looters. The main reasons for this escalating phenomenon among the Turkish population include poverty, enhanced global demand for looted archaeological material in the worldwide market, gaps in laws, folklore, and the addiction to adrenalin experienced by looters. To comprehend the ongoing archaeological destruction caused by looters in Turkey, we need to be willing to investigate their folklore formed in the framework of illicit looting. Even though Turkish law strictly states looting as a crime, Anatolian-Turkish folklore, including oral tradition, does not condemn looters even as deviants. Hence, folklore must be listed as one of the significant excuses why Anatolian archaeological heritage keeps being looted. In recent decades, the destruction of archaeological sites of Anatolia and the loss of cultural heritage have entered a dangerous phase due to local looters having access to technological devices, software, and international connections, as well as folkloric spiritual, ritualistic guidance. My research aims to understand how and under which circumstances looters become looters in the first place. Keywords: Turkey, cultural heritage, folklore, antiquities looters, personal experience narratives. "

Contesting ‘Integration’: Personal-Experience Narratives of Scotland’s Immigrants

This chapter unpacks ‘integration’ by problematizing the term’s nebulous usage in political contexts and by re-examining it through the personal-experience narratives of immigrants in North-East Scotland. By focusing on three emergent narrative themes, the chapter explores how immigrants recount and make sense of their own experiences and encounters with integration. It considers the concept with relation to other immigrants, Scottish society more generally, and British migration policy. Emphasizing the creative narrative expressions of those most affected by wider discussions of integration, the author calls for the use of ethnographic methods to better examine immigration and integration from a groundlevel perspective.

An Analysis Of PBSI Students' Ability and Component Levels Of Narrative Texts

This research was structured with two objectives, the first, to describe the ability to write personal narrative essays of PBSI USD students with Storybird media. Second, describe what components of narrative writing need to be improved in Creative Writing lectures. This research is included in quantitative descriptive research. The population in this study were sixty-nine PBSI USD students who took the Creative Writing course. The source of the data in this study is the result of a narrative essay made by the sixty-nine PBSI USD students who took the Creative Writing course. To determine the level of ability to write narrative descriptions, the components of narrative writing that have not been mastered by students include orientation, complications, evaluation (if any), resolution, code, linguistics of narrative essay, and spelling. This research data collection was carried out using a narrative writing test using the Storybird media. Based on the results of calculations and data analysis, two results were obtained from this study. First, the ability to write narratives of personal experiences of PBSI USD students using Storybird is in the medium category with an average of 5,33, the standard deviation of 1.94, and is in the score interval of 4.36-6.2. Second, there are two narrative components that need to be improved in creative writing training, especially in narrative writing. The two components include the structure of the narrative text and linguistic components at the phonological, morphology, syntax, and spelling levels.