Review
Mats Eriksson:
Ungdomars
berättende. En studie i struktur och interaktion. (Storytelling in adolescence. A study of structure and interaction)
Institutionen för Nordiska
språk vid Uppsala Universitet, 1997.
Reviewed
by Anne Scott Sørensen
(Department of Feminist Studies, Institute for Literature, Media and
Cultural Studies, Odense University, Denmark)
This
work is a dissertation concerned with storytelling in conversations
between Swedish adolescents aged 10-15. According to the author the
aim of the study is to describe the storytelling activities in the
chosen age group of youngsters from a structural, interactional, as
well as a functional perspective. However, he emphasises the thesis
that the meaning of the story is interactionally constructed and
thereby often multi-functional.
The
material consists of 258 stories taken from about 30 hours of
recordings of conversations between adolescents. The stories are
gathered in 4 different contexts, the largest part consisting of the
authors own recordings from a summer camp for children and adolescents
from Stockholm in the summers of 1989-1993, the rest being recorded by
other researchers in the period 1974-1984. It is underlined that the
method is based on the status of the participant observer: the author
has joined in all activities during the summer camps, carrying his
recorder with him, without trying to construct or intervene in
conversations.
The
methods and theories are found in socio-linguistic discourse analysis
and ethno-methodological conversation analysis (CA). The primarily
structural and functional approaches in these traditions are combined
with the more interactional perspectives in (the scarce) research on
the narrative styles of adolescents.
The
conclusion of the dissertation is that the initial thesis concerned
with story-telling in the conversation of youngsters is confirmed in
the sense that the narratives are highly constructed as means of
establishing and maintaining both individual identity and group
relations. In accord with other similar studies, it is found to be
typical of the adolescent narrative style that it is implicit and
emotional. New findings are considered to be e.g. the dramatic means
and the internal evaluation of the stories. The author’s evaluation
of these findings suggests that they are due to the struggle to get
attention in the group of youngsters and/or to the limited access to
reliable adult listeners.
The
theme of the thesis – storytelling and narratives on the one hand
and conversational styles on the other – is very ‘hot’ in recent
academic research, and the combination of the involved aspects and the
choice of youngsters as research ‘object’ is original. The
findings also seem very valid. However, several questions can be
raised: to what extent does the research context (time and place)
influence the findings, and to what extend are the findings
significant of youngsters? Furthermore, it seems to me that the
author’s evaluation of the findings is rather defensive. Could it
not be that the dramatic traits, the implicit style, and the internal
evaluations of the narratives are exactly an expression of
self-reliant youth and of bonding and solidarity among youngsters? In
the evaluation of his own study the author shows himself more of a
linguist than a youth researcher.
However,
his study is highly interesting to youth research as it introduces new
and interdisciplinary themes and perspectives while being anchored in
a specific academic discipline.