Conferenza della Prof. Dr. Anna De Fina (Georgetown University, Washington DC)

Introduzione e moderazione: Dr. Marta Lupica Spagnolo

Conferenza in inglese, discussione in inglese e italiano

In cooperazione con l'Universität Potsdam

Narrative as research methodology

Anna De Fina - Georgetown University

Narrative analysis is an increasingly popular and interdisciplinary field. Narratives are used as research tools in many disciplines in the social sciences besides linguistics, including anthropology, psychology, sociology, social work, education, migration studies, among others. This interest is due to the fact that narratives are ubiquitous in social life and are easy to access and to elicit. Moreover, stories are seen as opening windows into people’s identities and as vehicles for the expression of their own views on social issues. In this lesson I will discuss various ways in which narrative analysis has been and is being used as a research tool within discourse studies. I will illustrate how these varied approaches relate to different models and theoretical constructions about narratives looking at work in the Labovian and post Labovian tradition. I will discuss the continuous and now consolidated shift in narrative studies from text centered and decontextualized theories towards contextualized, interactionally based ones and I will devote attention to the latter. I will focus particularly on what I call the “narratives-as-practices” approach (De Fina and Georgakpopoulou 2008 and De Fina 2020) which stems from a view of storytelling as embedded in social life and puts emphasis on the local level of interaction while also paying attention to the historical and wider contextual dimensions of narrative activities. I will present some examples of practiced based analyses taken form my own research.

References

De Fina, A. (2020) Doing narrative analysis from a narratives as practices perspective. Narrative Inquiry, https://doi.org/10.1075/ni.20067.def

De Fina, A., & Georgakopoulou, A. (2008). Analysing narratives as practices. Qualitative Research, 8(3), 379-387.