Interpreting human stories, whether those told by individuals, groups, organizations, nations, or even civilizations, opens a wide scope of research options for understanding how people construct, shape, and reshape their perceptions, identities, and beliefs. Such narrative research is a rapidly growing field in the social sciences, as well as in the societally oriented humanities, such as cultural studies. This methodologically framed book offers conceptual directions for the study of social narrative, guiding readers through the means of narrative research and raising important ethical and value-related dilemmas. Shenhav details three classic elements of narrative—text, story, and narration—familiar concepts to those in literary studies. To the classic trilolgy of terms, this book also adds multiplicity, a crucial element for applying narrative analysis to the social sciences as it rests on the understanding that social narratives seek reproduction and self-multiplicity in order to become "social" and influential. The aim of this book is to create an easy, clear, and welcoming introduction to narratology as a mode of analysis, especially designed for students of the social sciences to provide the basics of a narratological approach, and to help make research and writing in this tradition more systematic. .

This book uses literature as a wrench to pry open social networks and to ask different questions than have been asked about social networks previously. The book emphasizes the story-telling aspect of social networks, as well as the connection between narrative and social networks by incorporating narrative, dynamic networks, and time. Thus, it constructs a bridge between literature, digital humanities, and social networks. This book is a pioneering work that attempts to express social and philosophic constructs in mathematical terms. The material used to test the algorithms is texts intended for performance, such as plays, film scripts, and radio plays; mathematical representations of the texts, or “literature networks”, are then used to analyze the social networks found in the respective texts. By using literature networks and their accompanying narratives, along with their supporting analyses, this book allows for a novel approach to social network analysis.

Carol Gray combines stick-figures with "conversation symbols" to illustrate what people say and think during conversations. Showing what people are thinking reinforces that others have independent thoughts--a concept that spectrum children don't intuitively understand. Children can also recognize that, although people say one thing, they may think something quite different--another concept foreign to "concrete-thinking" children. Children can draw their own "comic strips" to show what they are thinking and feeling about events or people. Different colors can represent different states of mind. These deceptively simple comic strips can reveal as well as convey quite a lot of substantive information. The author delves into topics such as: What is a Comic Strip Conversation? The Comic Strip Symbols Dictionary Drawing "small talk" Drawing about a given situation Drawing about an upcoming situation Feelings and COLOR

Featuring contributions from leading scholars in the field, The Handbook of Narrative Analysis is the first comprehensive collection of sociolinguistic scholarship on narrative analysis to be published. Organized thematically to provide an accessible guide for how to engage with narrative without prescribing a rigid analytic framework Represents established modes of narrative analysis juxtaposed with innovative new methods for conducting narrative research Includes coverage of the latest advances in narrative analysis, from work on social media to small stories research Introduces and exemplifies a practice-based approach to narrative analysis that separates narrative from text so as to broaden the field beyond the printed page

Talk is one of the main resources available to qualitative researchers. It offers rich, meaningful data that can provide real insights and new perspectives. But once you have the data how do you select an appropriate means of analysis? How do you ensure that the approach you adopt is the best for your project and your data? The book will help you choose strategies for qualitative analysis that best suit your research. It walks you through key decisions, provides actionable game plans and highlights the advantages and challenges of the main approaches. It is packed full of real examples designed to showcase the different tools you might use to meet your own objectives. Each section of the book focuses on one popular strategy for analyzing talk-based data: Narrative Analysis Conversation Analysis Discourse Analysis Taken together these sections will help you to fine-tune the link between your primary research question and your methods; to ensure that your theoretical stance fits with your methods; and to reason through your analysis in a way that will be recognizable to the intellectual communities of narrative, conversation, or discourse analysts. This book is both starting point and map for any social scientist looking to strategically and purposefully analyse talk data.

A concise volume aimed at researchers and academics in sociology, anthropology, psychology and interpersonal communication.

Students, academics and professionals in qualitative research methods, interpersonal communication, sociolinguistics, sociology and anthropology