Citation

Journet, Debra. “Narrative Turns in Writing Studies Research.” Writing Studies Research in Practice: Methods and Methodologies. Eds. Lee Nickoson and Mary P. Sheridan. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2012. Pp. 13-24.

Summary

Debra Journet opens her article with a general definition of “narrative” as it is commonly accepted by current academic attitudes: a mode in which stories are constructed through events or actions that are specific to the individual narrating, and as a research genre (such as a case study or ethnography) in which the researcher lays out findings in a similar story mode. Attention to local and specific characteristics of experience and their placement in social/cultural contexts is ostensibly the key to the narrative genre. As well, Debra writes, the conflation of the “narrative” and the “personal” is a product of how certain narrative research genres have been formed and used in the rhetorical disciplines. Narratives in the research genre are utilized in order to build negotiated and persuasive stories of how to understand what is otherwise not readily testable, examples of which can be commonly found in the way that, say, scientists describe phenomena that inevitably establishes an “index of reality,” in which a narrative must be accepted as base truth in order for subsequent and “conventional” research to be accepted.

This becomes almost a point of irony, as in early composition research “narrative” often had a bad name for not being rigorous or “objectively scientific.” Eventually composition research began to emphasize social contexts and personal histories, which led to a natural tie-in with research genres. Composition studies, more recently, served to extrapolate the complexities of individual and social experience, and therefore paid attention to how certain stories were and continue to form within genres; the “constructed nature of narrative” became a new kind of awareness (termed “the Narrative Turn”), and it lent itself to human sciences’s ongoing understanding of how narrative works in cultural and social contexts.

Journet delves into the trajectory that this development of narrative has taken even further, and does so to ultimately understand both narrative and research as distinct genres, as well as virtually all other fields that intersect within them. She uses the example of On the Origin of Species in which Darwin employs an aforementioned index of reality, which consists of textual features that “enforce the sense that the writer has accurately described and explained some aspect of the real world” (18) and is, essentially, a form of narrative that was otherwise understood as objectively, scientific research. Journet ends her piece on several questions regarding the next “Narrative Turn.” The work of rhetoric and composition, she writes, is inescapably narrative; this comes with a certain kind of responsibility within scholarship to deeply consider how “generic possibilities of storytelling” are used, and what we want them to be used towards. We should develop criteria to assess and examine critically how narratives work in teaching and scholarships, and must ask questions like: “How do the positions from which we write—particularly those  of researcher or teacher— affect the kinds of stories we tell?” In the new age of globalization and digital media, questions like these become evermore complex and difficult to answer; previously concrete concepts such as “text,” “author,” and “reader,” become muddied but also an avenue in which new forms of production and reception of narrative genres can emerge.

Quotes

“Indeed, one might say that the history of composition research is, in part, the history of coming to terms with narrative” (13)

“My argument is that composition’s research narratives of personal experience, rather than being inherently authentic, are also the product of genres: conventional stories we have learned to value as a discipline. We applaud these stories because they seem to provide a way to escape the restrictions of other academic genres. But I suggest this is not because personal narratives are inherently transgressive or revolutionary, but rather because, right now at least, they are still being written against the grain of academic discourse.” (14)

“However, despite this growing awareness of narrative as a genre—as a way of constructing experience or discourse—composition still frequently defines narrative in contradiction to the more “objective” or “rational” methods characteristic of those disciplines that produce “scientific” (often quantitative) knowledge. Arguments for narrative in composition have thus, from the start, often been proffered from a defensive position and articulated in terms of the experiential, contextual, and even ideological truths narratives makes possible.” (15)

“Personal experience, that is, is the product of powerful cultural scripts, such as those created by race, class, and gender. Though we can conform to or rebel against those scripts, we nevertheless construct our stories in some relation—conforming or transgressive— to the other stories we have heard or read.” (17)

“Personal narratives in composition research are not inherently more authentic than other research modes. That is, an account is not necessarily genuine or adequate to the experience just because it is conveyed as a narrative.” (17)

“…no single piece of information or test definitively establishes the veracity of any particular narrative account. Instead, scientists rely on what is sometimes called ‘consilience,’ a process of assembling converging data that is akin to triangulation…. How a scientist persuades readers that his is a ‘correct’ narrative is a complex issue.” (18)

“But when scientific narratives are persuasive (and they are always persuasive to some and not to others), it is because readers and writers share a set of assumptions that are textually manifested and that create ‘confidence regarding observations and theories” (Simpson 123). ((18))

“These complex epistemological issues raise a number of methodological questions: Are personal narratives knowledge just because they’re personal? Or are there differences in the kinds of personal narratives we value as disciplinary knowledge? And if there are differences, by what criteria do we evaluate personal narratives in order to determine how ‘truthful’ or ‘correct’ they are?” (19)

“Genres, even those that seem the most radical, are only operative within the shared agreements of groups.” (21)

Reflection

Journet’s thoughts are importantly grounded in the essential understanding of genres as distinct categories or schools in which knowledge is funneled through and taken in. Because our 101 curriculum also relies on this sort of foundation, I find much of what she argues to be extremely valuable. In many ways our first classroom assignment, the literacy narrative, helps to ground the effects of transferring information via a specified and highly personal account; even though she tries throughout her piece to differentiate between “personal narrative” and “narrative” as separate genres, and therefore in service of different ends and utilizations, I nevertheless would love to further implement this idea of a research narrative mode as something that should be deconstructed and understood rather than taken as is. Her example of what would otherwise be considered traditional narratives (but under the guise of scientific objectivity) serving as reality indexes seems to me to be a very worthwhile lesson to apply directly after assigning the literacy narrative.

This lesson and subsequent discussion would be in service, I think, of the importance of genre distinction; though Journet’s efforts and research delve into often difficult and complex analyzations, introducing base differences between research narratives and personal narratives could be valuable. Going further, applying a potential assignment or project that calls for a more strictly research narrative mode alongside the research project could help more closely circle back to what the class begins on. The webtext and author statement do a great job of this in terms of general genre distinctions, but a coauthored research narrative is a beneficial possibility as well. It would work especially well after the field notes project, and really help strengthen an overall understanding of how something like a research narrative is fundamentally different from personal narratives; how that genre convention of distance is both helpful and perhaps detrimental to a narrative that works to explain research progression and its conclusions.