Biographies in talk: A narrative-discursive research approach

This paper demonstrates the contribution a synthetic narrativediscursive approach can make to understanding biographical work within a research interview. Our focus is on biographical work as part of the ongoing, interactive process through which identities are taken up. This is of particular interest for people who, for example, are entering a new career and can be seen as “novices” in the sense that they are constructing and claiming a new identity. Following a discussion of the theoretical and methodological background in narrative, discourse analytic and discursive work in social psychology (e.g. Bruner, 1990; Edley, 2001; Potter and Wetherell, 1987; Wetherell, 1998), the paper presents an analysis of biographical talk from an interview study with postgraduate Art and Design students. Our interest is in their identity work, including biographical work, as novices in their fields. The analysis illustrates the approach and the key analytic concepts of, first, shared discursive resources, such as interpretative repertoires (e.g. Edley, 2001) and canonical narratives (e.g. Bruner, 1991), and, secondly, troubled identities (e.g. Wetherell and Edley, 1998; Taylor, 2005a) . It shows how speakers’ biographical accounts are shaped and constrained by the meanings which prevail within the larger society. For our participants, these include established understandings of the nature and origins of an artistic or creative identity, and the biographical trajectory associated with it. The particular focus of our approach is on how, in a speaker’s reflexive work to construct a biographical narrative, the versions produced in previous tellings become a constraint and a source of continuity.

Narrative-Based Nature of Heritage: Between Myth and Discourses: Case of Šiluva Place-Making in Progress

The article focuses on the phenomenon of myth, which cannot be seen and may not even exist based on empirical evidence, although it can function as a long-lasting wave inceptor, as demonstrated in numerous cases in history. The singular presence of myth has no linear time, and the way to approach the concealed mythic meaning that is beyond tales, oral traditions or ritual practices is based on language and narrative. Narrative is how myth manifests itself in the temporal layers of discourse through collective decision-making processes within cultures and in places. The urban cultural heritage seems to be a promising source of understanding of what sort of narrative history has been telling. We emphasize that the closest possible approach to the permanence of myth lies in this subtle between-epoch or between-generational moment wherein the discourse alters. The hermeneutics of repetition within alteration processes is what could be called the narrative of cultural heritage in towns and cities. Development of the physical heritage properties has been touched by a variety of agents, and therefore it must have gathered a nearly unlimited amount of explicit and implicit knowledge. The research further demonstrates how the myth–narrative–discourse interaction affects our understanding of the authenticity of heritage objects, shifting towards a permanent pervading authenticity which could be intensive or extensive in the tangible realm. The case of Šiluva is discussed in order to explain how myth can be used practically in placemaking.

MAGICAL REALITY IN A. NURI NOVEL “PASSENGER OF HIS DESTINY”

The subject of analysis in the article is a different, magical reality in the novel by the modern Tatar Russian-speaking writer A. Nuri “Passenger of his destiny”, the ways of its creation and functioning at different levels of the artistic organization of the text. The complexity of external and internal boundaries is shown both in the space of the physical objective world, depicted in the novel, and in the consciousness of the protagonist, who is trying to understand the world and the nature of magical reality. If the world of physical reality is meaningful and logically cognizable, then dreams, hallucinations, secret signs become the methods of cognizing another reality. The author examines the influence of the works of Gabriel García Márquez, Miguel Angel Asturias, Salman Rushdie both at the level of macropoetics (the space-belt component of the novel) and at the level of micropoetics (images, episodes, motifs) on the artistic world of the novel. The article shows connections with oriental narrative discourse and fairy-tale imagery. Conclusions are drawn about the connection between the aesthetics of the novel and the aesthetics of magical realism.

Discussion on Issues Related to the Use of Dynamic Assessment of Learners of a Spoken or Signed Language

This chapter is a joint discussion of key items related to the use of dynamic assessment (DA) in spoken and signed language assessment contexts that were discussed in Chapters 3.1 and 3.2. One aspect of spoken language assessment with great potential to inform new research in signed language is the number and detail of available approaches that test different parts of the language system. Whereas DA with signing children has been used exclusively for assessing vocabulary, approaches in spoken languages have also targeted morphology, phonology, sentence structure, and narrative discourse. In comparison, an area where the available research from signed language could help inform the use of DA for spoken language is the involvement of children and families in co-producing goals to guide assessment and intervention. The authors also raise a couple of aspects that are of equal relevance for both fields and which provide opportunities for increased interdisciplinary collaboration.

LAW ART

The paper argues that Thomas Wolfe’s novella I Have a Thing to Tell You was written to enable his readers to construct the reality of discrimination against Jews in Nazi Germany in the period surrounding the Berlin Olympic Games of 1936. Wolfe’s intention was to record faithfully an episode that took place on a train in Germany in early September 1936, which brought home to him more forcibly than any other personal experience the reality of Nazi oppression. Through this story Wolfe wanted to engage his readers in a narrative discourse, to reveal the truth as he saw it, and to ask his readers to make a metaphoric transference from this one example of Nazi oppression to whatever land or ruler tried to imprison people physically or spiritually. The “thing to tell” was both a protest against abridged or denied civil rights and a testimony of his commitment to expose man’s inhumanity to man.

Sexuality and Objectification in Dastan Narratives: Women as Objects of Desire in Hoshruba, the Land and the Tilism (Book 1)

The writers of dastan narratives reflect their age-old contextual desire(s) in fictional experiences. The never-ending popularity of these ideologically romantic tales is significant in the history of Urdu language and literature. Metonymically, the dastan, Tilism-e-Hoshruba, encompasses the much celebrated theme of Dastan-e-Amir Hamza—an eternal battle between virtue and vice—in its narrative discourse, but the quickness of the fantasized actions makes this dastan phantasmagorically more thrilling. Despite being enormous source(s) of narrative pleasure in the Subcontinent, these classical discursive practices prove to be an explicit reflection of the textual and sexual politics traditionally perpetuated in the Indo-Islamic patriarchal structures. The rendition of female characters, for instance, in the narrative discourse of Hoshruba, depends on the patriarchal modes of production and re- presentation pre-existing in classical cultural contexts. Presented as alluring objects of the ideological syntax, many of the women in these fictional texts customarily remain victim to the patriarchal narrative gaze. The narrators of dastan employ an evocatively figurative language in sensationalizing the graphic description of the female characters in Hoshruba. From seductions to submissions, all of their acts are pre-eminently destined to serve the phallogocentric desires of their authors, audience and chivalrous heroes. This paper, therefore, is the critical study of the patterns of desire(s) with reference to sexuality and the culture of objectification in Dastan Hoshruba, the Land and the Tilism, Book 1.1 By intersecting romance and sexuality, it also aims at exploring the narrative units of desire that objectify the sexuality of female characters through the mechanics of fantasy and gaze.

Valores culturales e identidad nacional en Largo ha sido este día de José Manuel Crespo

Cultural Values and National Identity in Largo ha sido este día by José Manuel Crespo. The main topic of this paper is the exposition of some of the cultural values and certain characteristics of national identity shown in the autobiography Largo ha sido este día [It’s been a long day] (1987), by the Colombian writer José Manuel Crespo. The research is based on the analysis and interpretation of the various elements that compose the syntactic, semantic and pragmatic levels of the work and, especially, on the role played by individual and collective memory for the organization of the narrative discourse. The features exposed are related to Ciénaga (the author’s birthplace), in which the importance of the social group that surrounds the writer’s environment and the influence of oral testimony are discovered, as well as certain words related to fauna and flora. Within the autobiographical space, customs and traditions of the period in question (1940s and 1950s) and the acquisition of knowledge through the discourse exposed by all the characters referred to, are linked. The author manifests through this work not only personal aspects of his childhood, but also the transcendence of the culture of Ciénaga when he evokes features that allow knowing facts that affect national memory and identity

Equal Performances: An Exploration of Eliza Haywood's Depiction of Hillarian Ideals in Fantomina

<p>My thesis connects Eliza Haywood with the Hillarians, a London-based coterie of young writers and artists headed by Aaron Hill in the first half of the 1720s, and explores the possibility that in Fantomina, Or Love in a Maze (1725), Haywood used tropes of performance from her theatrical career to work out the implications of the Hillarian ideals of progressive conduct on female agency. Haywood’s early novels, including Fantomina, can be connected to the group, and can be shown to encompass its behavioural ideals – a self-consciously progressive model of male-female conduct. My first chapter examines aspects of what Charles Taylor terms the “social imaginary” of the early eighteenth century. John Locke’s theory of personal identity (Part I) redefined the self in terms of consciousness, which meant the self could change. Conduct literature (Part II) defined the behaviour of women as “innate” through the regulation of sexual desire. In Part III, I show women philosophers, writers, and playwrights began to see women’s conduct, like the self, as constructed, and began applying this to relations between the sexes. If conduct was constructed it could change, and women began to work out these ideas and the implications of this change on stage. I show Haywood could have taken this theatrical convention of working philosophical ideas out on stage and adapted it to her fictions, particularly to Fantomina, via the process of novelisation. It is possible that as theatrical tropes crossed over into fiction in novelisation, the use of performance to work out philosophical ideas crossed over too. My second chapter explores Haywood’s participation in manuscript literary culture. Part I positions her in the literary culture of her time, and connects her with the Hillarians, opening a new critical context in which to read her work. Part II connects the composition of her early texts with her coterie, arguing it is possible all her 1719-1725 texts, including Fantomina, were conceived and first read within the group. It explores the impact of this on the context and meaning of Fantomina, and how Haywood could have used genre, particularly the tropes of amatory fiction, to explore the ideas of the Hillarians. Chapters Three and Four draw these strands of manuscript and performance together. Haywood’s association with the Hillarians, as I argue in Chapter Three, likely influenced her authorial agency in Fantomina. In Part I, I argue Haywood possibly had control over the image of the original portrait of her 1725 Secret Histories frontispiece. I then examine her narrative agency (Part II). Shifts in narrative discourse in Fantomina show Haywood used narration techniques adapted from the theatre, and these narrative shifts gave her a public voice: in these shifts, she appears to comment on how relations between the sexes are constructed – a pivotal focus of the Hillarians. Chapter Four explores Haywood’s development of the heroine’s agency in relation to sexual desire. This focus reveals the differing conduct of the heroine and Beauplaisir within the same relationship, as well as the power structure of the relationship – again pivotal focuses of her coterie. Haywood appears to be working out the implications of Hillarian ideals in relation to female agency, particularly sexual consent. I conclude Haywood used masquerade and performance to develop a system of self-knowledge that relied on its expression through emotion, rather than the mind, and that this system can be extended beyond knowledge of the self to knowledge of others – and possibly further.</p>

Equal Performances: An Exploration of Eliza Haywood's Depiction of Hillarian Ideals in Fantomina

<p>My thesis connects Eliza Haywood with the Hillarians, a London-based coterie of young writers and artists headed by Aaron Hill in the first half of the 1720s, and explores the possibility that in Fantomina, Or Love in a Maze (1725), Haywood used tropes of performance from her theatrical career to work out the implications of the Hillarian ideals of progressive conduct on female agency. Haywood’s early novels, including Fantomina, can be connected to the group, and can be shown to encompass its behavioural ideals – a self-consciously progressive model of male-female conduct. My first chapter examines aspects of what Charles Taylor terms the “social imaginary” of the early eighteenth century. John Locke’s theory of personal identity (Part I) redefined the self in terms of consciousness, which meant the self could change. Conduct literature (Part II) defined the behaviour of women as “innate” through the regulation of sexual desire. In Part III, I show women philosophers, writers, and playwrights began to see women’s conduct, like the self, as constructed, and began applying this to relations between the sexes. If conduct was constructed it could change, and women began to work out these ideas and the implications of this change on stage. I show Haywood could have taken this theatrical convention of working philosophical ideas out on stage and adapted it to her fictions, particularly to Fantomina, via the process of novelisation. It is possible that as theatrical tropes crossed over into fiction in novelisation, the use of performance to work out philosophical ideas crossed over too. My second chapter explores Haywood’s participation in manuscript literary culture. Part I positions her in the literary culture of her time, and connects her with the Hillarians, opening a new critical context in which to read her work. Part II connects the composition of her early texts with her coterie, arguing it is possible all her 1719-1725 texts, including Fantomina, were conceived and first read within the group. It explores the impact of this on the context and meaning of Fantomina, and how Haywood could have used genre, particularly the tropes of amatory fiction, to explore the ideas of the Hillarians. Chapters Three and Four draw these strands of manuscript and performance together. Haywood’s association with the Hillarians, as I argue in Chapter Three, likely influenced her authorial agency in Fantomina. In Part I, I argue Haywood possibly had control over the image of the original portrait of her 1725 Secret Histories frontispiece. I then examine her narrative agency (Part II). Shifts in narrative discourse in Fantomina show Haywood used narration techniques adapted from the theatre, and these narrative shifts gave her a public voice: in these shifts, she appears to comment on how relations between the sexes are constructed – a pivotal focus of the Hillarians. Chapter Four explores Haywood’s development of the heroine’s agency in relation to sexual desire. This focus reveals the differing conduct of the heroine and Beauplaisir within the same relationship, as well as the power structure of the relationship – again pivotal focuses of her coterie. Haywood appears to be working out the implications of Hillarian ideals in relation to female agency, particularly sexual consent. I conclude Haywood used masquerade and performance to develop a system of self-knowledge that relied on its expression through emotion, rather than the mind, and that this system can be extended beyond knowledge of the self to knowledge of others – and possibly further.</p>