Narratology and intentionality: Analysing narrative research data

In recent discussions, scholars have distinguished between "event-centred" and "experience-centred" approaches to narrative. If the choice were indeed between these two types of analysis, the second would, as they suggest, be superior. This chapter will show that there is much to be gained from relating the two together, using methods recently developed in literary studies and linguistics. In this chapter, we shall see that interviewees may constitute elements of their experience in different ways: what do they constitute as an action (wilfully made by some actor) and what as an event (impersonally "caused")? Does the speaker telling a personal story constitute an event as his/her own action, or as the expression of the will of another person? This paper will also examine the issue of co-construction of narrative, arguing that the distinctions of narratology can help to distinguish more clearly which elements come from the interviewer and which from the interviewee. Copyright © 2013 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.