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Description:
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Narrative research is frequently described as a diverse enterprise, yet the
kinds of narrative data that it bases itself on present a striking
consensus: they tend to be autobiographical and elicited in interviews.
This book sets out to carve out a space alongside this narrative canon for
stories that have not made it to the mainstream of narrative and identity
analysis, yet they abound as well as being crucial sites of subjectivity in
everyday interactional contexts. By labelling those stories as 'small', the
book emphasizes their distinctiveness, both interactionally and as an
antidote to the tradition of 'grand' narratives research. Drawing primarily
on the audio-recorded small stories of a group of female adolescents that
was studied ethnographically in a town in Greece, the book follows a
language-focused and practice-based approach in order to provide fresh
answers and perspectives on some of the perennial questions of narrative
analysis: How can we (re)conceptualize the mainstay concepts of tellership,
structure and evaluation in small stories? How do the participants' telling
identities connect with their larger social identities? Finally, what does
the project of storying self (and other) mean in small stories and how can
it be best explored?
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