Narrative and figurative self-construction in meaningful stories

Abstract

The present study tests the validity of two claims foregrounded in current qualitative studies of troubled talk. First, single story-internal organizing figurative forms constitute succinct versions of troubled narrators' selves. Second, figurative clusters contribute to the construction of narrators' selves when some external or internal obstacle undermines communication. To explore this link between narrative and figurative self-construction, the study espouses a discourse-oriented approach which acknowledges the importance of Conceptual Metaphor Theory as well as a multimethods research design comprising qualitative and quantitative analyses. The analysis of a corpus of 101 meaningful stories produced by young Israeli adults supports the intriguing link between narrative and figurative self-construction.