Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T22:49:36.711Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The construction of multiple identities in elderly narrators' stories

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 July 2009

NEAL R. NORRICK
NEAL R. NORRICK*
Affiliation:
English Linguistics, Saarland University, Saarbrücken, Germany UK.
*
Address for correspondence: Neal Norrick, English Linguistics, Saarland University, Postfach 15 11 50, D-66041Saarbrücken, Germany. E-mail: n.norrick@mx.uni-saarland.de
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Elderly storytellers are often at pains to represent multiple past identities even within the scope of a single account. Some of these identities may be incompatible, as when the teenage hell-raiser straightens out to become the perfect home-maker, and then after her husband dies becomes a successful business woman. Retrospective reassessment follows from long and varied experience, and hence becomes a natural resource for storytellers old enough to have had the time to re-evaluate events. Further, comments about people and places from the past automatically force a shift between the telling frame and the narrative frame; they create the impression that the teller's present identity is not representative of all aspects of the narrator's projected identity. In addition, elderly narrators insert others' perspectives into their stories, as when a widow explicitly introduces the perspective of her deceased husband into a story in progress. Elderly tellers convey multiple identities beyond what they project, and their listeners form opinions of them based both on what they reveal about their pasts and how they reflect on them from their current perspectives, and this also results in the construction of multiple and on occasion conflicting identities. This article reports an analysis of such discourse practices in stories told about themselves by people aged 80 or more years living in Indiana.

Keywords

conversationidentitymemoryperspectivestorytelling
Type
Research Article
Information
Ageing & Society , Volume 29 , Issue 6: Discourse, identity and change in mid-to-late life: inter-disciplinary perspectives on language and ageing , August 2009 , pp. 903 - 927
Copyright
Copyright © 2009 Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bamberg, M. 1997. A constructivist approach to narrative development. In Bamberg, M. (ed.), Narrative Development: Six Approaches. Erlbaum, Mahwah, New Jersey.Google Scholar
Bamberg, M. 2004. ‘I know it may sound mean to say this, but we couldn't really care less about her anyway’: form and functions of ‘slut-bashing’ in 15-year olds. Human Development, 47, 6, 331–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bartlett, F. C. 1932. Remembering: A Study in Experimental and Social Psychology. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Berman, R. A. 2001. Setting the narrative scene: how children begin to tell stories. In Nelson, K. E. (ed.), Children's Language 10. Erlbaum, Mahwah, New Jersey, 1–30.Google Scholar
Bielby, D. D. and Kully, H. S. 1989. Social construction of the past: autobiography and the theory of G. H. Mead. Current Perspectives on Aging and the Life Cycle, 3, 1, 1–24.Google Scholar
Boden, D. and Bielby, D. D. 1986. The way it was: topical organisation in elderly conversation. Language and Communication, 6, 1, 73–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chafe, W. 1982. Integration and involvement in speaking, writing, and oral literature. In Tannen, D. (ed.), Spoken and Written Language: Advances in Discourse Processes. Volume 9, Ablex, Norwood, New Jersey, 35–54.Google Scholar
Chafe, W. 1994. Discourse, Consciousness and Time. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.Google Scholar
Coupland, N., Coupland, J., Giles, H. and Henwood, K. 1988. Accommodating the elderly: invoking and extending a theory. Language in Society, 17, 1, 1–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coupland, J., Coupland, N., Giles, H. and Henwood, K. 1991. Formulating age: dimensions of age-identity in intergenerational talk. Discourse Processes, 14, 1, 87–106.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coupland, N. and Coupland, J. 1995. Discourse, identity, and aging. In Nussbaum, J. F. and Coupland, J. (eds), Handbook of Communication and Aging Research. Erlbaum, Mahwah, New Jersey, 79–103.Google Scholar
Coupland, N., Coupland, J. and Giles, H. 1991. Language, Society and the Elderly: Discourse, Identity and Ageing. Blackwell, Oxford.Google Scholar
Eckert, P. and McConnell-Ginet, S. 1992. Think practically and look locally: language and gender as community-based practice. Annual Review of Anthropology, 21, 461–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Edwards, D. 1997. Discourse and Cognition. Sage, London.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Edwards, D. and Middleton, D. 1986 a. Joint remembering: constructing an account of shared experience through conversational discourse. Discourse Processes, 9, 4, 423–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ewing, K. P. 1990. The illusion of wholeness: culture, self, and the experience of inconsistency. Ethos, 18, 3, 251–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goffman, E. 1959. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Anchor, Garden City, New Jersey.Google Scholar
Goffman, E. 1974. Frame Analysis. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.Google Scholar
Gumperz, J. J. 1982. Discourse Strategies. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaufman, S. 1981. Cultural components of identity in old age: a case study. Ethos, 8, 1, 51–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Labov, W. 1972. Language in the Inner City: Studies in the Black English Vernacular. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia.Google Scholar
Lakoff, G. 1987. Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, Illinois.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Linde, C. 1993. Life Stories. Oxford University Press, New York.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mangan, B. 2001. Sensation's ghost: the non-sensory ‘fringe’ of consciousness. Psyche, 7, 18. Available online at http://psyche.cs.monash.edu.au/v7/psyche-7-18-mangan.html [Accessed 7 December 2008].Google Scholar
Middleton, D. 1997. Conversational remembering and uncertainty: interdependencies of experience as individual and collective concerns in teamwork. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 16, 4, 389–410.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Middleton, D. and Edwards, D. 1990. Conversational remembering: a social psychological approach. In Middleton, D. and Edwards, D. (eds), Collective Remembering. Sage, London, 23–45.Google Scholar
Minsky, M. 1975. A framework for representing knowledge. In Winston, P. H. (ed.), The Psychology of Computer Vision. McGraw-Hill, New York, 211–77.Google Scholar
Norrick, N. R. 2003. Remembering and forgetfulness in conversational narrative. Discourse Processes, 36, 1, 47–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Norrick, N. R. 2005. Interactional remembering in conversational narrative. Journal of Pragmatics, 37, 11, 1819–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Peterson, C. and McCabe, A. 1983. Developmental Psycholinguistics: Three Ways of Looking at a Child's Narrative. Plenum, New York.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ryan, E. B., Giles, H., Bartolucci, G. and Henwood, H. 1986. Psycholinguistic and social psychological components of communication by and with the elderly. Language and Communication, 6, 1/2, 1–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schank, R. C. and Abelson, R. P. 1977. Scripts, Plans, Goals, and Understanding. Erlbaum, Hillsdale, New Jersey.Google Scholar
Tannen, D. 1978. The effect of expectations on conversation. Discourse Processes, 1, 2, 203–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tannen, D. 1979. What's in a frame? Surface evidence for underlying expectations. In Freedle, R. O. (ed.), New Directions in Discourse Processing. Ablex, Norwood, New Jersey, 137–81.Google Scholar
Taylor, B. C. 1992. Elderly identity in conversation: producing frailty. Communication Research, 19, 4, 493–515.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Young, K. G. 1987. Taleworlds and Storyrealms: The Phenomenology of Narrative. Nijhoff, Dordrecht, The Netherlands.CrossRefGoogle Scholar