Michael Bamberg

• Doctor of Psychology
• Professor (Full) at Clark University

In this chapter, we first define counter-narratives as a theoretical construct. We argue that counter-narratives are uniquely distinguished by an illocutionary force intended to challenge background assumptions supporting an intertextually related alternative narrative. However, whether narratives are ‘mastering’ or ‘countering’ is not to be determ...

The American Psychological Association Publications and Communications Board Working Group on Journal Article Reporting Standards for Qualitative Research (JARS–Qual Working Group) was charged with examining the state of journal article reporting standards as they applied to qualitative research and with generating recommendations for standards tha...

Narrative inquiry (NI) is the examination of what stories are, what they mean, and what they can do—with the stipulation that the processes of how we construe such meanings and functions (the act of interpretation) is reflectively laid open. Against this background, NI serves two basic strategic aims: first, to work toward the defining characterist...

This entry reviews the recent turn to narrative in the social and life sciences as having evolved from a widely shared interest and hope to find new answers to longstanding questions of lived experience, subjectivity, identity, and sense of self. The review enters narrative and storytelling from two ends: The first places narrative in the context o...

Carolin Demuth: Michael, your work over the past decades has contributed significantly to our understanding of identity, particularly, narrative identity. Can you talk a little bit about the story of how you first got interested in the topic?

This article addresses recent contestations of the role of narrative inquiry in the field of identity analysis and in qualitative inquiry more generally. In contrast to essentializing tendencies in the field of narrative inquiry (which have been contested under the headers of narrative exceptionalism , narrative imperialism , and narrative necessit...

This entry brings two lenses into fusion and, by use of a few brief illustrations, documents what narrative discourse is able to contribute to the general field of applied linguistics.

Presents a theoretical framework for a notion of development that is centrally based on language, communication, and emotion. Language, understood as practice, is the basic condition for humans to become agentive and make active and productive sense of a world. To illustrate this, data are presented from a study with 80 children (preschoolers, kind...

We describe and discuss discursive approaches emerging over the last 50 years that in one way or another have contributed to identity studies. Approaching identities as constructed in and through discourse, we start by differentiating between two competing views of construction: one that moves progressively from existing “capital-D” social discours...

This article critically examines the recent turn to narratives as tools for identity construction and identity analysis. While self and sense of self will be used largely as synonyms, the attempt is made to draw up a distinction between self (sense of self) on one hand and identity on the other. Rather than starting with a definition of features an...

Mark Freeman’s and Elli Schachter’s commentaries on my target article “Who am I? Narration and its contribution to self and identity” open up opportunities to clarify. In this response I differentiate more clearly between biographic approaches to narrative and my proposal to approach identity and self as dilemmatic spaces that are navigated by way...

student strike on the campus of Colombia University in 1968. During the strike, several of the philosophy students had purportedly written on the blackboards: 'Radicals point a finger at the world! Philosophers examine the finger!' Schegloff used this anecdote to characterize the frustration he felt over the recent criticisms of his methodology. Pu...

In recent publications, Alexandra Georgakopoulou and I (Bamberg 2007; Bamberg and Georgakopoulou 2008; Georgakopoulou 2007a, 2007b) have put forth the argument that life stories-that is, stories in which tellers cover their personal past from early on, leading up to the "here and now" of the telling situation-are extremely rare. People never really...

In this article, we depart from our recent work on 'small stories', which we propose as an antidote to canonical narrative studies, and we advance our argumentation by sketching out a five-step analytical operation for tapping into small stories as sites of identity work. These steps grow out of the model of positioning (as put forward by Bamberg 1...

This chapter proposes to analyze the nature of moral responsibility. It does not explore how moral responsibility is practiced in specific cultural communities, in certain periods of time, or what kind of cognitive biases are observed according to social circumstances (Heider 1958; Weiner 1995). My concern is neither how human beings learn the attr...

In this contribution we start with a critical reading of assumptions that have led to the postulation of a dialogical and polyphonic self. We critically review the empirical basis for these assumptions as resulting from therapeutically informed techniques according to which clients/participants are led to engage in particular modes of self-reflecti...

Narrative – State of the Art which was originally published as a Special Issue of Narrative Inquiry 16:1 (2006) is edited by Michael Bamberg and contains 24 chapters (with a brief introduction by the editor) that look back and take stock of developments in narrative theorizing and empirical work with narratives. The attempt has been made to bring t...

The different traditions that have inspired the contributors to this volume can be divided along three different orientations, one that is rooted predominantly in sociolinguistics, a second that is ethnomethodologically informed, and a third that came in the wake of narrative interview research. All three share a commitment to view self and identit...

The different traditions that have inspired the contributors to this volume can be divided along three different orientations, one that is rooted predominantly in sociolinguistics, a second that is ethnomethodologically informed, and a third that came in the wake of narrative interview research. All three share a commitment to view self and identit...

This article is a pledge that we actually should care about the differences between what has recently been coined `small' versus `big' stories because they represent very different approaches to narrative inquiry. In the attempt to pull other contributions of this special issue into the debate between small and big, I argue that the small story app...

Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850–1909) was a German psychologist whose books, research, and ideas had a great effect on early psychological theory. He is often credited with founding the experimental psychology of the ‘higher mental processes’.

The relationship between language, discourse and identity has always been a major area of sociolinguistic investigation. In more recent times, the field has been revolutionized as previous models - which assumed our identities to be based on stable relationships between linguistic and social variables - have been challenged by pioneering new approa...

In this article I discuss an excerpt from a group discussion between five 15‐year‐old boys who, in the presence of an adult moderator, engaged in the act of ‘slut bashing’ while telling a minimal story about an incident of female promiscuity. The analysis proceeds microanalytically in a three‐step procedure that details the pos...

This article presents a discursive psychological approach in examining the ways that adolescent boys (ages 12–15 years) accomplish a sense of ‘maturity’ by bringing off and managing certain features of ‘heterosexuality’ in group interaction. We focus on and analyse moments when the boys negotiate implicit challenges, make evaluations and offer asse...

Counter-narratives only make sense in relation to something else, that which they are countering. The very name identifies it as a positional category, in tension with another category. But what is dominant and what is resistant are not, of course, static questions, but rather are forever shifting placements. The discussion of counter-narratives is...

Counter-narratives only make sense in relation to something else, that which they are countering. The very name identifies it as a positional category, in tension with another category. But what is dominant and what is resistant are not, of course, static questions, but rather are forever shifting placements. The discussion of counter-narratives is...

Commenting on R&T's ‘Developing Linguistic Literacy’ is not an easy task. Their attempt addresses precisely the right questions, in all their complexities and breadth, centring and bundling these questions in strategic and potentially novel ways, and thereby exploring new territories and encouraging investigators to enter these territories. However...

Taking off from William Stern's theorizing about the role of language in person development, the article attempts to open new possibil- ities for the developmental analysis of subjectivity and individuality. Stern's notion of 'Stellungnahme' (the taking of a position) is made relevant for current discussions of positioning in discursive approaches...

In the following I will elaborate on two aspects of Elena Levy’s article that I consider central in her approach to language analysis and development. First, I will take on the issue of how it is possible to argue that the content of what talk is about is actually the product of cohesive text formation. This argument is not unproblematic, because i...

The task of commenting on Ingrid Josephs’ most interesting and compelling article connecting play as a discourse in metaphorical transformations (and a jointly co-ordinated sense-making system) with narrative and identity development imposes a real challenge because I have not dared to think about this connection for a long time [Bamberg, 1983]. I...

Uses three approaches revolving around language issues as a basis for exploring emotions: universal semantics, emotionology, and the theory of "goal-action-outcome knowledge." Uses an approach that attempts to turn around the traditional, realistic picture of the relationship between emotions, cognition, and language. (73 references) (Author/CK)

Goddard's (1997) comparative analysis of English and Malay surprise words is critically evaluated. While his major aim to overcome ethnocentric semantic comparisons is generally laudable, the methodological tool in the form of a universal inventory of lexical items is argued to prove unable to perform this job. First, in its explication of surprise...

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In our commentary we elaborate on Barresi & Moore's use of language as a tool. In particular, we highlight the importance of cognitive linguistic research with its emphasis on the relation between morpnosyntax and intentional schemes. We also speculate about how language itself might play a role in children's integration of first and third person k...

This study investigates the origins of subversiveness and innovation with regard to existing master narratives on the topic of pregnancy. Two interviews of pregnant women who are defined "at risk" are analyzed for how these two women positioned themselves discursively vis-à-vis others, particularly other pregnant women and the group of medical expe...

WolfShelby Anne & HeathShirley Brice, The braid of literature: Children's worlds of literature. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992. Pp. x + 264. Hb $24.95. - Volume 24 Issue 4 - Michael Bamberg

The first part of this article challenges the assumption that actors, actions, spatial scenes and temporal events are primitives out of which narratives are formed. In contrast, the view is put forth here that events, scenes, actions and actors owe their existence to the role they occupy in higher order relationships which are best understood as pl...

Common folks “have” emotions and talk to others; and sometimes they make “their” emotions the topic of such talk. The emotions seem to be “theirs,” since they can be conceived of as private states (or events); and they can be topicalized, because we seem to be able to attribute or lend a conventionalized public form (such as a linguistic label or n...

Contends that A. Getzinger's (see record 1994-22254-001) proposal to clarify the informed consent process by bringing in a consultant deserves attention from the perspective of the concerned family system specialist. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)

Informed consent for medical decisions has been a topic of discussion in both the medical and legal fields. The matter was recently highlighted for the family therapy community when Family Systems Medicine (Vol. 9, 1991) published five articles, which concluded that more study on that topic was needed. This article proposes a model for a systemic c...

Research on doctor-patient communication has characterized such interactions as being asymmetrical. The present article tries to shift emphasis away from the different orientations individuals bring to the communicative setting and attempts to highlight the different orientations ("voices") within a given individual. We draw on an in-depth analysis...

This study investigated the changing functions of evaluative devices in children's narratives. The evaluative devices included (a) references to 'frames of mind', particularly to emotions, (b) character speech, (c) 'hedges', (d) negative qualifiers, and (e) causal connectors. Narratives were elicited from a 24-picture story book. The subjects were...

In order to explore the relationship between the linguistic and conceptual structuring of narratives, this article focuses on linguistic markings that identify transitions in the structure of a text. Comparing and contrasting the specific linguistic devices that are used by American and German narrators to differentiate between the initiating event...

The aim of this article is to revitalize and extend functionalist approaches to language use and language acquisition by utilizing a theory which focuses on general issues of human development. The emphasis here is to show how such developmental considerations enable one to reconstruct a growing child's own efforts to acquire and use a language in...

Explores the role of vagueness and ambiguity in doctor–patient communications about informed consent. A fine-grained analysis of 2 discourse segments between 2 physicians and an incapacitated patient in an intensive care unit reveals that vagueness and ambiguity index the conflict of 2 communicative orientations (voices): caring and curing. It is a...

This article develops the argument that narratives are organized along two orienting axes, one of horizontally sequencing the events, the other of vertically and hierarchically relating events to each other. The use of particular linguistic devices (references to emotions, references to negative states, and active/passive alternations) is explained...

This paper presents a linguistic analysis of episode boundaries in narratives produced from a 24-page picture book by German and English speakers. We investigate the development of form/function relationships involved in the discursive organization of narratives, attempting to bring together research traditions that typically consider the linguisti...