In this chapter I shift emphasis to narrative ways of knowing, a methodological emphasis. I explain why narrative life history research methodology is suited to addressing the critical questions raised in this study and then proceed to discuss and problematise relevant issues. I retain a theoretical discussion on methodology in this chapter and present the practical aspects of the methodology in Chapter Four.
3.1 Introducing life history methodology
I restate here that my interest is in theorising life world experiences of stuttering over time. I admit experience as data. In the words of Clandinin &Connelly (1994) stories are the closest we come to understanding experience. We are story-telling beings and therefore narrative is a fruitful effort to "approach the understanding of lives in context rather than through a prefigured and narrowing lens" (Josselson, 1995: 32).
Hence my choice of a life history narrative methodology. Although the relationships between life history and narrative methodologies are debatable, I situate life history methodology as a specific instance of narrative methodology, within the ambit of qualitative research (Hatch &Wisniewski, 1995).
Life history research as an exploratory research approach also gained momentum in the 1980s in fields of psychology, anthropology, sociology and education (Plummer, 2001). The initial impetus for life history research began in the 1920s at the Chicago School of Sociology. Plagued by a myriad of problems around practical and methodological difficulties, the method fell into disuse. It regained popularity in feminist . studies that challenged the traditional authoritarian methodologies characterised in a patriarchal and capitalist society (Cole &Knowles, 2001). The voices of previously marginalised individuals gained entry through life history research. It has since become popular in many disciplines where there has been recognition of marginalised voices, where the need to understand the human perspective is considered important and valid (Denzin &Lincoln, 1994), and where there has been acknowledgement that human beings do not belong to disciplines, thereby forcing an interdisciplinary emphasis. Coles &Knowles (2001) and Plummer
(2001) provide an extensive review of life history across disciplines, which I do not repeat here.
Narrative methodology (including life history) and medical professions may seem strange bedfellows given Medicines' strong alliance with positivism. However, they share close historical connections and a resonance with respect to their goals, beliefs and methods (Gharon, 2000), Firstly, literature and medicine rely on "text", (most often language-based) in order to unearth complex understandings. Importantly, the meaning is derived from more than the sum of individual words. Secondly, literature and medicine share a concern for an individual's origins and destiny. At a philosophical level they engage with questions of " Where am I from?" and "Where am I going to" (Gharon, 2000: 24) with those who suffer. Thirdly, medicine borrows from literature the method of interpretive practice which requires an active reading of and writing of the life of a patient. Fourthly, they have an acknowledged reciprocity and confluence. Literature draws on medicine's plots whilst medicine respects the diagnosis and therapeutic power of words. The sensibility of narrative research is therefore clear.
Life history research must also be differentiated from other types of biographical inquiry. Life history is interested in gaining a first-hand, retrospective, historical account of the individual's personal experience elicited via the interview (Reddy, 2000, Smith, 1994) and supplemented with written and other expressive forms the participant chooses to admit. It is clearly distinguished from autobiographical writings which are self-initiated and drawn from the participant's privileged perspective (Gole
&Knowles, 2001). Life history is biographical. It involves another person writing
one's life via interviews with relevant people and through documents. A distinction between case history and life history is of relevance here. A case history is typically a clinical tool used primarily in the social and health services as a means of tracing the history of a disorder. A life history in contrast is a research tool which traces the life experience of a person who has a disorder or impairment (Sacks, 1985).
Although a life history may be complete, topical (emphasis on a specific aspect e.g.
stuttering) or edited, it contains the central features of the individual's telling of his life, its social and cultural dimensions, and the sequences of events over time. A topical, complete (full life course) approach is used here. Sparkes (1995) differentiates between the life story and life history. While the life story provides interpretive accounts of lived experiences, it tends to exclude the social structures
and processes which have shaped that account and has the danger of romanticising the subjective reality. Life history expands the life story, and through a collaborative process between the participants, seeks to contextualise the story in a broader sociopolitical, historical and economic landscape. In drawing on the biographical, historical and contextual/ situational strands, people are not divorced from their history and context, thus laying the groundwork for agency. The data produced relies heavily on the relationship between the storyteller and the researcher throughout the research process.
Historically, life history research has featured within a realist tradition (Plummer, 2001). The shifts in the research terrain in an era of paradigmatic proliferations (Lather, 1991, 2000), require that life history research be problematised. The postmodern and post-structural positions which have made a significant challenge to the claims of grand truths and master narratives (Lather, 1991) have threatened the very humanist foundation on which life history research is based. The very existence of the human subject is contested in the work of Foucault (Plum mer, 2001) and the rise of postmodernism/poststructural theory has promoted an understanding of the world as provisional, local, multiple, and in a state of flux (Denzin, 1997; Lather, 1991 ).
How can the life history project be understood in the midst of these tensions? There is no one resolution and the researcher must take a stance (Denzin, 1997), a side, and make choices. I feel that the postmodern/poststructural tradition offers a valuable space for researchers to work in and that life history research can benefit from postmodern/poststructural influences as some researchers have reported (Blumenthal, 1999; Cary, 1999; Dhunpath, 2002; Pillay, 2001; Samuel, 1998).
However, I am equally cautious of falling into the trap of restricting this knowledge- making effort into a particular paradigm, and yet another box. Paradigms are linear structures to represent the complex nature of research (Denzin &Lincoln, 1998). The unstable oppositions and fluidity between and within the categories and paradigms are not adequately captured, and historic discussions may also give the impression of successor regimes, in which one paradigm succeeds another. For example, postmodernism succeeds realism/modernism.
Lather (2000) uses the notion of "colouring epistemologies" to make sense of the multiple knowledges vying for legitimacy and talks of the discursive, persistent and ongoing possibilities of knowledge construction. Therefore it becomes possible to
embrace multiple assumptions and to simultaneously challenge or problematise them. Research practice reflects an "irreducible heterogeneity" (Lather, 2000). I wish to view the current ferment in the social sciences methodology debate as an enriching process that can lead to new possibilities in constructing knowledge. These debates raise awareness that the assumptions and paradigms we create, are social creations. While hoping that neat paradigmatic descriptions would allow for research to be cleanly positioned, I have also discovered that the process is much less tidy than anticipated. The world of scientific inquiry is messy and the coming together of a combination of approaches creates a scenario that is difficult to unpick. Under these circumstances Connole's (1993: 384) recommendation is that
We arrive at the only powerful means of assessing the nature and limitations of research practice - by acquiring the capacity for knowing what we are doing, why we are doing it, how we might do it differently if we choose.
A self-reflexive stance is non-negotiable. Is there potential for reconciling a postmodern stance with traditional realist notions of life history research? What of the threat of the disappearance of the human subject within the postmodern frame?
These issues have troubled Plummer (2001), who explains that the interest in life history has roots in humanism. However, it also has roots in a research tradition influenced by symbolic interactionism, which, by virtue of its interpretive centre, shares an easy alliance with postmodernism. Plummer (2001) suggests that there can be reconciliation between a humanist orientation and posUlate modern sensibility within a framework of "critical humanism." I concur with this view because it allows ambivalence and ambiguity of the human subject to be retained, and to receive meaning within a political social structure, while also retaining an approach to knowledge construction as limited and partial. In this study I make a shift away from postivism in the direction of interpretive, poststructural and critical influences without settling in anyone place, but rather having "feet in many places" (Lather, 2000).
3.2 Narrative: A legitimate way of knowing
Is narrative research a legitimate way of knowing? I believe it is, but also feel obliged to explain why it is, especially for those who, like myself, may be of disciplines which view "other" methodologies with some degree of scepticism. The discussion serves to reinforce the point that narrative methodologies have strong, justifiable theoretical bases. Bruner (1986) presents narrative knowing as a legitimate form of reasoned
knowing, given his assertion of narrative as a mode of thought. He suggests that we could know the world in two ways: through the logico-scientific mode (paradigmatic cognition) and storied knowing (narrative cognition). These distinctive ways of knowing, argument and story, are irreducible to one another and have their own sets of operating criteria. While both cognitions generate valuable knowledge, paradigmatic knowledge has traditionally been regarded as trustworthy and valid.
Bruner's (1986) contribution lies in extending our understanding of cognition beyond that of the singular mode, modelled on formal mathematical principles and governed by a heartless logic. By contrast, narrative cognition deals with human action and intention, provides good stories and gripping dramas and is premised upon concern for human condition (Sarbin, 1986). The narrative or story constructs two distinct yet simultaneous landscapes. The first is the landscape of action in which the constituents (agent, intention, goal, situation, instrument) are the arguments of action along the lines of a "story grammar". The second is the landscape of consciousness which illuminates what those involved with the action think, feel, know, and do not know, influencing the choices they make.
The two modes of reasoning have different understandings of causality important to understand in this study. The purpose of the argument (paradigmatic cognition) is to offer causal explanations based on the relationship between dependent and independent relationships. In contrast, causality in narrative cognition seeks to explain how certain events lead to a particular end, drawing together issues of context, time, intention and action which are far more complex than dependent and independent variables. Polkinghorne (1995) provides a commonly quoted useful example to explain causality in a narrative cognition tradition. He discusses this in the context of narrative emplotment or story as a specific instance of narrative discourse:
The king died. The prince cried.
These two sentences, viewed in isolation, may be regarded as independent happenings. When composed into a story a new relational significance is evident.
The king died and the prince cried - to see the prince's crying as a response to his father's death creates a new understanding. The story or narrative emplotment provides a context for understanding and clarifies Bruner's (1990) contention that people do not make sense on an event-by-event; sentence-by-sentence basis. In narrative research the intention therefore is not to merely list events but to explain how a particular outcome was influenced by a series of events (Miles &Huberman,
~.
1994). Witherell and Noddings (1991: 280) are convinced of the value of life stories as powerful research tool.
They provide us with a picture of real people in real situations, struggling with real problems. They banish the indifference often generated by samples, treatments and faceless subjects. They invite us to speculate on what might be changed and with what effect. And, of course, they remind us of our persistent fallibility. Most important they invite us to remember that we are in the business of teaching, learning and researching to improve the human condition.
In this study, my intention is to use narratives as a basis for understanding experiences or "lives-as-told'(expression) in contrast to Iives-as-Iived (what actually happens) and lives-as-experienced (consisting of images, sentiments and desires known to the person whose life it is) Bruner (1986). Fay (1996) cautions us about creating false dichotomies, that is, stories lived or stories told. He argues that stories are lived because human activity is inherently storied. In acting we knit together the past and the future. Stories are also told and in hindsight we can appreciate the narrative patterns that we were not aware of at the time of acting. We can therefore consider our lives enstoried and enlived and combined in the telling/meaning-making process.
The expression of story occurs through language in which words combine creatively to make meaning, therefore allowing the literary text to serve the interests of
"performances" (Bruner, 1986: 24) of meaning rather than conveying the meaning itself. The key point relevant in this study is that the story is produced from the
"experience-as-told" via a process of active dialogic creation. It is not ethnographic or observational research. It uses personal stories in the form of language as data.
Life history and truth
The issue of truth in life history research has been of long-standing concern for life history researchers and has been raised repeatedly by critics. Some life history researchers do not think it is necessary to engage with such a discussion, while others engage with it in the context of explaining the nature of truth that life history engages. I problematise the issue because I think it is important to understand the kind of truth one engages with in any research methodology, including life history. In
the context of life stories there are questions about whether participants tell the truth or slant the truth in their favour, whether there is a good story, bad story, valid or invalid story. To begin with, one must question the kind of truth as intended in life history research.
Life history methodology privileges personal truth. Reddy (2000) discusses multiple notions of truth as a means of contextualising personal truths using the notions of truth described by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in South Africa3.
These include factual or forensic truth, personal or narrative truth, social or dialogue truth, and healing or restorative truth. Factual or forensic truth refers to the familiar legal or common notion of the "scientific" truth. This is not the truth intended in life history. In attempting to excavate personal or narrative truth the Commission listened to the stories of victims and perpetrators in an effortto gain personal and rich insights into the experiences of the participants. Personal truth is the truth told in the form of a story in which people seek to illuminate how they understood particular events in a social context. It served to introduce a human dimension to understanding multilayered realities. It is this truth with which life history research seeks to engage.
In contrast, social truth in the context of the Commission emerged by way of discussion, interaction and debate through processes of interaction in communities, that is socially shared understanding of events. Healing and restorative truth requires that the "facts" be placed in the contexts of human relationships, by acknowledging the experience as important, and affording the possibility of restoring the dignity of victims or healing because the story has been heard and acknowledged.
The Personal Narrative Group (1989) has also problematised the issue of personal truth in research. In the context of personal narratives, "plural" truths, experience, history and perceptions, are combined as participants select from their memories what is true for them from their positions, their personal truths. The task of the researcher then is to explain how these truths were fashioned by considering the broader contexts and relationships contributing to establishing such truths. Personal truths are subjective, constructed in stories and therefore always artificial, variable and partial. However, this does not weaken them because statements may be
3 The TRC was tasked to gain understanding of the causes, nature and extent of human rights violations in the apartheid era for the purposes of granting amnesty, recommending reparation measures, and attempting to restore human and civil dignity to victims in the interests of national unity and reconciliation (Krog, 1998). In setting out the broad framework for the Commission's functioning, the taskforce interrogated the notion of truth. They acknowledged the complexity of the construct and four notions of truth were described.
factually wrong but psychologically "true". Stories are always told from different perspectives at particular times and it is precisely because of their perspective-ridden character that they are valued. The reason we should value personal truths is that they are generated from real positions in the world and embed passions, desires, ideas, and conceptual systems which are part of a story (Josselson, 1995). In this study I value the personal truths of participants. My purpose therefore was to create the conditions in which personal experience received illumination not with the intention to contest such truths, but rather to gain an understanding of how and why they came about.
3.3 Life history research: A suitable methodology for exploring self-identity formation
In this study I am interested in exploring self-identity formations of participants who stutter (individual subjectivities), in a social context, over time, that is, the drawing together of the personal, social and temporal dimensions of experience in a single life. Life history research is suitable because it allows engagement with all of these dimensions, the personal, social and temporal.
Life history research foregrounds individual subjectivities in the process of knowledge construction. It is methodology that is biographical, person-centred, and a science of the singular (in society) which seeks to understand the particular and illuminate diversity rather than suppress variability. Life history is always concerned with the history of a single life and is designed to "explain, describe and reflect upon life"
(Linda Tillman-Rogers in Hatch &Wisniewski, 1995: 115). Since it is characterised by a focus on the individual, the data are produced with the participants themselves.
Within the context of individual lives, life history has particular appeal as Sparkes in Hatch and Wisniewski, 1995: 116, explains:
... the ability of life history to focus upon central moments, critical incidents, or fateful moments that revolve around indecision, confusion, contradictions, and ironies, gives a greater sense of process to a life and gives a more ambiguous, complex, and chaotic view of reality. It also presents more
"rounded" and believable characters than the "fiar, seemingly irrational, and linear characters from other forms of qualitative inquiry"
The individual subjective account is celebrated as a singular strength because it allows each to speak his own truth. Life history creates a space for the researcher to suspend his own views and beliefs. This is not done to agree necessarily with the participant but to empathise with the worldview and beliefs of reality that are constructed by the individual. It illuminates how s/he views the world, interprets experiences and attaches meaning to such experiences (Armstrong, 1987).
In the context of exploring identity formations, Sacks (1985: 105 -106) explains that it is through life stories that people make sense of who they are, create their identities and act accordingly.
"It might be said that each of us constructs and lives "a narrative" ...this narrative is our identities... If we wish to know about a man, we ask what is his story, his real innermost story? - for each of us is a biography, a story. Each of us is a singular narrative which is constructed, continually, unconsciously by, through and in us - through our perceptions, feelings, our thoughts, our actions; not least our discourse, our spoken narrations. Biologically and physiologically we are not different from each other; historically, as narratives, each of us is unique. ($acks, 1985: 105 -106)
In agreement with Sacks, other narrative theorists (Bruner, 1990; Lucius-Hoene and Depperman, 2000; McAdams, 1993; Shiffrin, 1996) explain that first-person stories spawn a narrative identity revealing people's claims about who they are, and how they prefer to be understood by others. The story created in the context of the narrative interview is not a total or complete one revealing the totality of the individual's narrative identity. It is an identity created in the context of the research interview that is characterised by selectivity and guided by the intentions of the story (Lucius-Hoene &Depperman, 2000). The process entails a comprehensive account of the fashioning of narrative identities, which is far more intensive than a short-range account of one's experience or a casual conversation about a particular episode.
Therefore, life history research is a suitable methodology for generating an empiricised narrative identity.
Life history methodology illuminates the changing nature of experiences and identity formations over time and is therefore suited to this study. In accessing understanding of experience over a Iifespan, it provides a critical temporal dimension to understanding lives and engages an understanding of variability of identity