Introduction: Narrative analysis in the shift

from texts to practices

ANNA DE FINA and ALEXANDRA GEORGAKOPOULOU

The point of departure for this special issue is the recent shift within dis-
course and sociolinguistic narrative analysis from a long-standing concep-
tion of (oral, cf. natural, nonliterary) narrative as a well-defined and de-
lineated genre with an identifiable structure toward the exploration of the
multiplicity, fragmentation, and irreducible situatedness of its forms and
functions in a wide range of social arenas. We can refer to this shift as a
move away from narrative as text (i.e., defined on the basis of textual cri-
teria and primarily studied for its textual make-up) to narrative as prac-
tice within social interaction. For a lot of the work here, context remains
a key concept and although there is an undeniably long-standing tradition
of contextualized studies of narrative (e.g., ethnography of communica-
tion in studies such as Bauman 1986 and Hymes 1981, among others)
there are distinct elements in this latest shift that in our view qualify it as
a ‘new’ turn to narrative:

1. An increasing acceptance of narrative as talk-in-social interaction in-

formed by conversation analysis and ethnomethodology. This has
had profound implications for the definition of narrative, its exigen-
cies, and the analytical tools deemed appropriate for its investigation
(e.g., De Fina and Georgakopoulou forthcoming; Georgakopoulou
2007; chapters in Quastho¤ and Becker 2004; Scheglo¤ 1997).
2. An emphasis, derived from recent theories of context and genre (e.g.,
Bauman 2001), not just on the contextualized but also on the contex-
tualizing aspects of narrative. In this sense, narrative is being studied
both for the ways in which its tellings are shaped by larger sociocul-
tural processes at work and for how it provides organization for the
interactive occasions on which it occurs. Furthermore, although the
notion of context remains elusive, contested, and indeterminate, there
is now consensus on the view of context not as a static surrounding
frame but as a set of multiple and intersecting processes that are
mutually feeding with talk. The move away from context as a pre-

1860–7330/08/0028–0275 Text & Talk 28–3 (2008), pp. 275–281

Online 1860–7349 DOI 10.1515/TEXT.2008.013
6 Walter de Gruyter
276 Anna De Fina and Alexandra Georgakopoulou

existing ‘setting’ toward dynamic notions of social spaces that may be

conventionally associated with certain kinds of language use and
norms, but also prone to heterogeneity and fragmentation, has been
instrumental in looking at both narrative tellings in situ and at ways
in which space is more or less subtly referred to, reworked, and con-
structed anew within narrative plots (see contributions in Baynham
and De Fina 2005).
3. An increasing commitment to social theoretical concerns (mainly
within the framework of cultural studies). This is particularly evident
in proliferating work on narrative and identities (e.g., De Fina 2003;
Georgakopoulou 2002, 2007; De Fina et al. 2006) that has variously
problematized, de-essentialized, or added nuance to the widely held
view that narrative is a privileged communication mode for making
sense of the self. Research in this area has also blurred the boundaries
between narrative analysis and narrative inquiry, thus shifting the
emphasis of the former from narrative as an end to narrative as a
means to an end.
With this special issue, we are reflecting on and assessing critically this
‘new’ turn to narrative that is part of a more general shift from texts to
social practices in language-focused inquiry. We are also addressing its
implications for the received analytic vocabulary of narrative within so-
cially minded linguistics (e.g., pragmatics, sociolinguistics, discourse anal-
ysis). To this e¤ect, the papers that follow engage with a variety of narra-
tive data and settings in order to explore the implications for narrative
analysis of a focus on the contextual embedding of narrative tellings. In
particular, the authors study data from clinical interviews, spontaneous
conversations among peers, focus group interviews, and institutional en-
counters. They also zoom in on a variety of settings: workplaces, schools,
and courts, therapeutic sessions and encounters focused on sociability. In
doing so, they address the following issues:
– The role of received narrative models such as the one proposed by
Labov (1972; Labov and Waletzky 1967) and their application to nar-
ratives that develop in settings other than the sociolinguistic interview.
– The implications of making ‘small’ stories (i.e., fragmented, with mul-
tiple tellers, heavily embedded in their surroundings, see Bamberg
2004; Georgakopoulou 2003, 2007; Ochs and Capps 2001) part of
focal concerns for narrative analysis.
– The application of concepts that allow us to tap into the contextual
embedding of narratives and into the role of storytelling as a context-
shaping discourse activity. Of particular interest here is the investiga-
tion of the impact of storytelling on personal and social rights and
 Introduction 277

relations, on institutions and events, and the interweaving, in the tell-

ings, of collective and institutional voices (Briggs 1997).
– Finally, there is the perennial, but also as timely as ever, question of
how microanalytic interactional approaches to narrative can be recon-
ciled with other perspectives that are more interested in macro ac-
counts. A matter of debate in this respect concerns the methodological
validity and the analytical ways of abstracting a larger, across-contexts
story (often described as a master narrative) from the moment-by-
moment contingencies of narrative (re)tellings in local contexts.

In tackling the above issues, the papers argue for an analytic vocabulary
that fully takes into account issues of co-construction, embeddedness, in-
tertextuality, and recontextualization of stories, while bringing in new
insights into ‘core’ narrative analytic concepts, such as structure–
evaluation–performance (e.g., Johnson; Kjaerbeck). At the same time,
they scrutinize narratives as social practices from a variety of vantage
points: by problematizing the normative expectations associated with re-
search interviews as one of the main settings of narrative production
while arguing for the importance of certain kinds of stories, hitherto
viewed as ‘a-typical’ (e.g., Bamberg and Georgakopoulou; Fasulo and
Zucchermaglio); by teasing out ways in which situational and cultural
contexts shape and are shaped by narrative tellings (e.g., De Fina; Marra
and Holmes); by placing emphasis on the sequential features of narra-
tive as being consequential for social action (e.g., Bercelli, Rossano,
and Viaro); more generally, by opting for multilayered analyses that
do justice to the complexities of narrative events while according a piv-
otal place to linguistic analysis in the study of narrative and social
practices. In all cases, the papers aim at pushing the agenda of conven-
tional narrative studies to underexplored facets of narrative tellings and
events.
More specifically, Bercelli, Rossano, and Viaro shift attention away
from a focus on the therapist to the stories told by clients in psychother-
apy sessions, while recognizing that the tellings are both collaboratively
produced and intimately linked with the therapist’s questions. The paper
shows how the sequential placement of stories presents implications for
the telling roles involved and documents the systematicity that character-
izes the telling of stories-in-interaction. These systematic ways are dis-
tinctly di¤erent from those traditionally observed in the launching and
closing of stories in conversational environments among intimates. At
the same time, they provide further evidence for the consistent finding
that story tellings often serve the purpose of backing up claims and inter-
pretations o¤ered by other interlocutors.
278 Anna De Fina and Alexandra Georgakopoulou

The use of stories as argumentative devices and as resources for doing

agreement and managing disagreement is increasingly being studied
within a view of narrative as social practice, organically embedded in
talk-in-interaction. Kjaerbeck’s paper extends the conversation-analytic
concept of preference for agreement developed in the context of adja-
cency pairs (Pomerantz 1984) to the negotiation of the punchline in sto-
ries told in parent–teacher meetings in a Danish recreation center for chil-
dren with special needs. Stories by the teachers are routinely told in the
context of assessment of a child’s progress to back up claims, particularly
when there is audible disagreement or misalignment from the parents re-
garding the assessment. However, they also frame and contextualize the
assessment. In addition to stories performing social actions in local con-
texts, this paper’s findings link up with previous work that shows that cer-
tain actions such as accounting for and illustrating claims or supporting
arguments and disputes (Schi¤rin 1990; Goodwin 1990) are typically as-
sociated with the telling of stories.
Stories are inextricably bound up with the norms and participant role
relations in institutional settings and documenting the ways in which
these are negotiated is also a focal concern in Johnson’s contribution.
The paper shows how the questioning of suspects in police interviews is
instrumental in both eliciting certain kinds of stories and in ‘transform-
ing’ them into institutionally acceptable evidential tales. At the same
time, the paper provides new insights into the construction of the story
components that Labov called ‘evaluation’, through a sequential analysis
that takes into account the role of co-text in shaping this process. But the
author also reminds us that who tells which story and how prescribed sto-
ries in certain settings can be resisted are always a function of the context
in which stories occur.
Locating their study in an institutional workplace setting, too, Fasulo
and Zucchermaglio shed light on three types of storytelling which, al-
though salient in their data, depart from the prototype of personal expe-
rience, past-event stories. They inventively label these stories ‘rewindings’,
‘fictions’, and ‘templates’. In contrast to the emphasis of narrative research
on actual, past events as the backbone of stories, their analysis shows the
importance that unrealized or hypothetical events have for the construc-
tion of narrative tellings: these tellings too are systematic and perform
specific actions in their local contexts. What is more important, they
should be conceived of as ‘local versions of entirely ordinary narrative
production’ (Fasulo and Zucchermaglio this issue).
The same plea for inclusion in the narrative canon of stories that de-
part from the well-researched prototype of the Labovian narrative or the
life story elicited in research interviews is to be found in Bamberg and
 Introduction 279

Georgakopoulou’s contribution. The paper builds on the authors’ pre-

vious work on ‘small stories’ and illustrates their significance for identity
analysis—the stronghold of ‘big stories’ research—through a close anal-
ysis of a story in the focus group data of 10-year-old boys in an American
school. Following five analytical steps as part of their model of position-
ing, the authors illustrate that a wealth of identity work is done not just in
the telling of a story but also in the refusals to tell and the negotiations
around telling and telling roles. Here, the move toward under-represented
narrative activities is not just analytical but ontological and epistemolog-
ical, too, probing into issues of how we define narrative, where we draw
the line between a telling and a nontelling, and what it is about moments
of narrative orientation, even if they do not translate into full-fledged sto-
ries, that deserve the analytical attention.
How stories are situated not just at the micro, but also at the macro
level, that is, in relation to larger social and cultural processes above and
beyond the immediate telling situation is a theme that runs through all
papers. In Marra and Holmes’s contribution, it forms the focal concern.
More specifically, their focus is on the interconnection between ethnicity
and professional identities in the storytelling activities of members of a
New Zealand Māori organization. Marra and Holmes start o¤ from the
widely held view that storytelling in groups of people who interact regu-
larly forms a fundamental part of their repertoire of shared resources.
The construction of ethnic identities is investigated within the frame of
the concept of community of practice. The authors are able to show how
in this community Māori cultural values interweave with distinctive styles
of telling based on collusive construction and humorous representations
of cultural ‘outsiders’. In this case, too, relationships between tellings
and contexts are complex, dynamic, and multifaceted: not only is story-
telling shaped by specific cultural values but also conducive to the con-
struction of a cultural-professional identity in tune with the stated ethos
of the company, i.e., to an extent ‘pre-allocated’ and prescribed by the
context.
In a similar vein, De Fina investigates how stories become resources
for identity negotiations within another community of practice: a card-
playing club whose members are Italian and Italian American men. De
Fina investigates how topically linked narratives can be placed and un-
derstood within the local context of the Circolo della Briscola’s activities
and how they participate in the shaping of aspects of the club’s life. She
argues that these local meaning-making activities connect with macro so-
cial processes through the negotiation, within the constraints of local
practices, of the positioning and roles of the ethnic group in the wider so-
cial space. In this sense, narrative activity can be seen as having a central
280 Anna De Fina and Alexandra Georgakopoulou

role among the symbolic practices (Bourdieu 2002 [1977]) in which social
groups engage to carry out struggles for legitimation and recognition in
order to accumulate symbolic capital and greater social power.
Overall, the papers bring to the fore under-represented data as well as
modes of analysis with a view to problematizing and extending the con-
ceptual boundaries of the mainstay vocabulary within narrative analysis.
In this way, we attempt to contribute toward the charting of the paradig-
matic shift within narrative analysis from narrative as text to narratives
as practices.

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