KIERNAN Patrick James    Department   Undergraduate School  , School of Business Administration    Position   Professor
Date	2010/09/10
Presentation Theme	Exploring time and space in identity narratives: from local to global.
Conference	43rd Annual Meeting for BAAL: Applied Lingusitics: Global and Local.
Promoters	British Association of Applied Linguistics
Presentation Type	Speech (General)
Contribution Type	Individual
Details	"Identity narratives may describe localised incidents or more global accounts of a life story. This presentation proposes that narratives occurring in life story interviews can be generically classified according to their spatio-temporal focus on a scale from local to global. Traditionally treated as background elements of narrative occurring in the ‘orientation’ phase (Labov and Waletzky, 1967) the presenter draws on Bakhtin’s (1981) literary notion of a ‘chronotope’ to explore how time and space are both interrelated in narrative and potentially central to the narrative message. The data used for illustration come from a project in which 42 English teachers in Japan were interviewed regarding their life-history as teachers. The interviews were transcribed in full and narrative extracts selected as the focus for analysis. These extracts ranged in scope from ‘local’ narratives concerned with specific incidents to ones where participants reflected on their life experience in a more ‘global’ way. The presentation will begin with brief remarks on approaches to describing time and space in narrative, indicating the relevance of a ‘local to global’ model. The research project will then be outlined, followed by an overview of the model. Sample extracts will be introduced and discussed to illustrate the model in more detail. The overall data will be presented with a discussion of the potential implications and applications. Finally, further directions for research will be suggested."