Page 343 - Encyclopedia of Nursing Research

310 n NARRATIve ANALySIS

structural–functional connections, as in considered as the processing of nonlinguis-
Propp’s (1968) morphology in relation to tic ideas, events, and actions into a series of
N internal patterning and narrative genre and connected and coherent representation of
in Genette’s (1988) three specific aspects of a meanings.
story’s temporal articulation (i.e., order, fre- On the other hand, narrative analysis
quency, and duration). in the sociological version within the eth-
Sociolinguists within this orientation nomethodological tradition is concerned
attend to “natural” or “situated” narratives, with the interactive process of narrative
which are constructions produced in spe- making. Conversational narratives are of
cific situations of social life. Labov (1972) prime interest. The listener is an active part
and Labov and Waletzky (2003) identified six of storytelling as an interactive participant
structural units for fully formed narratives: in the making of a story. From an anthropo-
abstract, orientation, complicating action, logical perspective, storytelling is viewed as
evaluation, resolution, and coda. These bounded by cultural conditions and cultural
structural units are related to two functions categories. Narrative analysis in this orienta-
in narrative: the referential function and the tion carries out an analysis of narrative texts
evaluative function. Gee (1991), on the other in terms of form and content, along with an
hand, identified structural properties of nar- analysis of the flow of storytelling, with the
rative as poetic structures of lines, stanzas, or assumption that the nature of narrative text
strophes, which organize meaning construc- is integrally connected to the processes of
tions in telling a story. The structural orienta- construction.
tion is primarily an examination of structural Narratives in the interpretive orientation
elements of story in relation to the narrative’s are chronological in a double sense: chro-
form, function, and meaning. nology in terms of temporal serialization of
In storytelling, narratives are viewed events and chronology in terms of tempo-
not simply as products that can be taken out rality of story itself. Ricoeur (1984) specified
of the context of narrating but as process- episodic and configurational dimensions as
oriented constructions that are enmeshed the temporal dialectics that integrate plots
with linguistic materialization of cognition in narrative. Hence, narratives are stories
and memory, interactive structuring between of individuals etched within the commu-
the teller and listener, and contextually and nal stories of the time and context. Narrative
culturally constrained shaping of experi- analysis thus involves interpretation of rep-
ences and ideas. From this standpoint, narra- resentation posed within the contexts in
tive analysis is closely aligned with discourse which the story is shaped and the storytell-
analysis, as in ethnography of communica- ing occurs, reflecting on the worldviews that
tion in anthropology and ethnomethodology provide a larger contextual understanding.
in sociology. In this sense, the interpretive orientation
Narrative analysis in this orientation is is more concerned with meaning of narra-
differentiated into two schools: linguistic/ tives than with either the structure or the
cognitive and sociocultural. The linguistic/ process.
cognitive version focuses on how narratives Riessman (1993) offered five levels of rep-
are materialized in language from ideas and resentation in the research process of narra-
experiences. This construction is viewed to tive analysis: attending, telling, transcribing,
be accomplished by applying communica- analyzing, and reading. Interpretation occurs
tive and interactive functions of language at the levels of transcribing and analyzing by
and through scripting and schematizing of the researcher, whereas the level of reading
yet unorganized information into connected implies additional interpretation that occurs
storytelling. In this version, storytelling is in the readers of research reports. Riessman