Men, sport, spinal cord injury and the construction of coherence: narrative practice in action

Abstract

Based on life history data, this article explores the manner in which coherence is constructed in the narratives told by two men who have acquired a spinal cord injury through playing sport. Drawing on the principles advocated by Gubrium and Holstein, and Holstein and Gubrium, along with a number of analytic concepts provided by others (e.g. Frank, Gerschick and Miller, Leder, van Manen and Yoshida), we illustrate how various narrative practices inform this process and how they are framed by both the local and cultural conventions of telling. It is suggested that coherence is not an inherent feature of narratives but is both artfully crafted in the telling and drawn from the available meanings, structures and linkages that comprise stories.