Narrative as Evidence in Literacy Research

✍ Scribed by Mike Baynham

• Book ID: 104353872
• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2000
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 131 KB
• Volume: 11
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0898-5898
• DOI: 10.1016/s0898-5898(00)00027-9

✦ Synopsis

Within a framework for literacy research where literacy is treated as social practice, a range of different types of evidence are typically gathered: written texts; literacy artefacts; oral texts through which written texts are constructed/interpreted in literacy events; participant accounts in which participants make explicit in different ways their attitudes, ideologies, and values. In the context of the participant account, narrative as a genre is a particularly rich research site for evidence of how participants engage in ``identity work,'' constructing perspectives, ideologies, and values on their literacy practices and those of others. In this article, I show how the two speakers jointly constructing a research interview draw on narrative as a resource. I focus in particular on the identity work being done by W. the interviewee, constructing through narrative a range of literacy identities, spanning the different stages of her life and her different social roles at home and at work.