Constructing experience in individual interviews, autobiographies and on‐line accounts: a poststructuralist approach

Abstract

0 3 ) Journal of Advanced Nursing 41 (6), [536][537][538][539][540][541][542][543][544] Constructing experience in individual interviews, autobiographies and on-line accounts: a poststructuralist approach Aims. A poststructuralist orientation to language contends that individuals inherit the language they present to others -and in the context of research, stories and accounts are understood because researchers and research participants share such inheritances. Nurse theorists have foregrounded the constructive aspects of language yet few scholars have focused on how context and different narrative structures affect story construction. Story presentations are always sculpted by the context in which they are told. Thus, the construction of individual experience is neither a-historical nor a-contextual. Methods. This work emanates from a larger study that focused on the social construction of anorexia nervosa and in which data were collected from 12 individual interviews, autobiographical accounts and postings from a public Internet group. A poststructuralist orientation to how data are theorized and analysed was used for the study. This article focuses on the differences of account presentation between the three different types of data. Conclusions. Individuals inherit not only shared language, but the customs in which language is exchanged, for example, how interviews are performed, memoirs are written, and on-line conversations are constructed. Focusing on context foregrounds the notion that stories have different functions and outcomes, depending on the purpose of the telling. Hence, the social and cultural frameworks in which stories are communicated are not incidental, but instrumental to what can be articulated in the production of individual experience.

Out of the wave: The meaning of suffering and relief from suffering as described in autobiographies by survivors of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami

“…The bridling of one's pre-understanding was instead transferred to the encounter with the text and to the text analysis. Secondly, autobiographies are constructed in a manner that temporally connects the past with the present, meaning that events from the past are linked with the purpose of the autobiography (Hardin, 2003). This temporal construction was a benefit to this study, because the link between the past and present implied a reflection on the event, i.e., the research phenomenon.…”

“…The autobiographies comprise reflections on what it was like to be exposed to a major and unexpected natural catastrophe, to be in the midst of the unthinkable. As Hardin (2003) has suggested, these autobiographies can convey the survivors' reflections on how their suffering was experienced. These accounts can deepen our understanding of how to encounter and care for people who have been exposed to minor or major catastrophes.…”

Conceptual, Holistic, and Pragmatic Considerations for Interviewing Research Participants

“…15 During interviews, research subjects/participants construct and communicate their descriptions, perceptions, or experiences relative to varying contexts, including prior and current experiences, social and cultural structures, the interview process and the interviewer, and the questions asked. 9,16,17 Data should, then, be analyzed and understood in context.…”

The language of ‘experience’ in nursing research

“…This opens a question about the relationship between language and experience: is experience linguistic? (deLauretis 1984; Allen and Hardin 2001; Bishop 2002; Hardin 2003).…”