Narrating Language Experiences

Abstract

This chapter introduces the theoretical and methodological narrative framework followed in this book. In particularly, it reviews narrative research within sociolinguistics and anthropological traditions. The first section discusses the power of narratives as a daily sense-making social practice that people engage in. The second section addresses performance in narrative and how narrators “do being” particular identities in the story world they present. The third section argues for a model of narrative-in-interaction depending on the local context of production, including those narratives elicited in sociolinguistic interviews. The fourth section discusses the multidimensional model of narrative (Ochs & Capps, 2001) to better understand the narratives of Mexican immigrant women. The last section centers on the role of the moral dimension of narratives of language experiences in changing the social place assigned to these women as narrators and protagonists of these stories.