‘All of Our Stories are Our Own’: Investigating the Structure of Brief Personal Experience Narratives from Pakistan

Research in English Language Pedagogy

مقاله 1، دوره 3، شماره 2، خرداد 2016، صفحه 5-12   

نوع مقاله: Original Article

نویسندگان

Fizza Farrukh^* ؛ Anmol Ahmad

Humanities Department, COMSATS Institute of Information Technology, Virtual Campus, Islamabad

چکیده

Narratives provide a structured medium to construct and collect human experiences into a sequential word order. The current qualitative study employs the method of Narrative analysis to investigate such twenty-five narratives belonging to the Pakistani context, obtained from the collection of narratives archived on ‘The Humans of New York’ (2015) blog. Labov’s Natural Narrative Model (1972) has been applied to decipher the similarities and differences in structural foundation lying within these accounts as compared to those structural patterns outlined by the model itself. The findings reveal the abstracts of the stories to mingle the components of orientation and complicating action, instead of significantly separating them one-by-one. Furthermore, the orientation and complicating action portions are detailed structures, comprising of three and more statements, and include evaluation embedded within them. Such discovered patterns highlight the importance of investigating and learning about the structure of narratives, particularly for the English language teachers and learners it enables them to construct their stories, whether spoken or written, in accordance with the emerging patterns and makes them realize how different elements of the story bring about different functions.

کلیدواژه‌ها

narrative analysis؛ Textual Structure؛ Personal Experience Narratives؛ Pakistani Narrations؛ English language learning

مراجع

arbara, J. (2001). The handbook of discourse analysis: Malden, USA: Blackwell Publishing.
Denzin, N., & Lincoln, Y. (Eds.). (2011). Handbook of qualitative research (4th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Etherington, K. (2000). Narrative approaches to working with adult male survivors of childhood sexual abuse. London: Jessica Kingsley.
Hashwani, M.S. (2013). Narratives of personal and professional identity construction of teachers of English in the multilingual context of Karachi, Pakistan (Unpublished doctoral thesis). Aga Khan University, Karachi, Pakistan

Hatch, E. (1992). Discourse and language education.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hogan, P.C. (2011). The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the Language Sciences. New York:Cambridge University Press.

Hopkins, P.D. (2010). Using Narrative Analysis and Discourse Analysis to Determine Patterns of Meaning in the Sermon Language of Women Preachers (Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation). East Carolina University, Carolina.

Labov, W. (1972). Language in the inner city: Studies in the Black English Vernacular. Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Meyer, B.J.F. (1999). Importance of Text Structure in Everyday Reading. In A. Ram & K. Moorman (Eds.), Understanding Language Understanding (pp. 227-252). Cambridge: MIT Press.  
Moen, T. (2006). Reflections on the Narrative Research Approach. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 5(4), 1-11.
Polkinghorne, D. E. (1988). Narrative knowing and human sciences. NewYork: State University of New York Press.
Riessman, C.K. (1993). Narrative Analysis: Qualitative Research Methods Series, No.
30. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
Sandelowski, M. (1991). Telling Stories: Narrative Approaches in Qualitative Research. Journal of Nursing Scholarship, 23(3), 161-166.
Siddique, O. (2010). The Hegemony of Heritage: The  ‘Narratives  of  Colonial  Displacement’ and the Absence of the Past in Pakistani Reform Narratives of the Present. Retrieved from http://lums.edu.pk/docs/dprc/DPRC-WP1-Siddique.pdf

Simpson, P. (2004). Stylistics: A Resource Book for Students. New York, NY: Routledge.

Son, T.H. (2008). Personal Experience Narratives and Implications for Language Teaching. Retrieved from http://www.hpu.edu/CHSS/ LangLing/TESOL/ProfessionalDevelopment /200820TWPspring08/6_1_04Son.pdf.
Thornborrow, J., & Coates, J. (2010). The sociolinguistics of narrative: Identity, performance and culture. In J. Thornborrow & J. Coates, The Sociolinguistics of Narratives (pp. 1-
16). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
UCD - University College Dublin. (2014, April 24). On how I approach strangers in the street | Humans of New York creator Brandon Stanton | UCD, Dublin [Video file]. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPxzlGP rM3A.