stories, background knowledge and themes: problems in the analysis of life history narrative

Abstract

Life history data as discourse are examined, and recent perspectives from psychology, linguistics and anthropology are applied to the narrative. Each perspective illuminates some portion of the text, including its overall structure, the background knowledge necessary to understand it, and the narrator who produced it. Attention to complex ethnographic data promises to facilitate the integration of theory. [cognitive anthropology, discourse, life history, methodology, urban America]