“Then I Learned about Positive Thinking”: The Genre Structuring of Narratives of Self‐Transformation

Dunn, Cynthia Dickel

doi:10.1111/jola.12045

Cited by 18 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…Quizzes do not merely reflect an ontology of existing types, but play a necessary role in creating those types, defining them according to sets of criteria (what count as emblems of differentiated types), and inviting readers to claim a footing relative to those types. In this sense, quizzes can be understood as "reflexive projects" (Giddens 1991) through which the self is formulated as an object that can be understood and potentially refashioned (Dunn 2014).…”

Section: The Quizmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ontology of Fake: Discerning the Philippine Elite

Reyes

2017

Signs and Society

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A B S T R A C T Hilary Putnam (1975) proposes that a "natural kind" term relies on a division of linguistic labor in which experts discern what is or is not a member of a kind. Centering on a Philippine-elite social kind term, this essay examines how self-appointed experts develop and share "scientific" instruments, or tests, that discern whether someone is a "real" or "fake" elite. These tests report about signs of realness and fakeness by assigning "gentle"and "rough" qualities to speech and body of differentiated social types. This essay demonstrates that such qualia are central to shaping ontologies of social types; that the discerning subject, who speaks from an elevated social position as reflexive expert, is critical to this process; and that the discerner shares expertise by developing tests that rest on different ontologies of emblem. The essay argues that discerning Philippine elite types and their aspiring subtypes and countertypes presupposes an overarching ontology of fake that already renders real elites as fakes.There was once a prince who wanted to marry a princess. But she had to be a real princess.

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Section: The Quizmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ontology of Fake: Discerning the Philippine Elite

Reyes

2017

Signs and Society

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“…In transformation narratives storytellers must display a disjuncture between past selves and present selves (Caine ; Dunn ; Rymes ; Shohet 2007). In these narratives, trouble is the ‘engine of narrative’ (Garro : 7).…”

Section: Narrative Disability and Liminalitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Liminal Spaces, Titanium Braces: Narrative Tropes of Competence among Wheelchair Basketball Players

Bloom

2019

J Linguistic Anthropol

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Using a combination of auto‐ethnographic and narrative analysis, this paper sheds light on stories by wheelchair basketball players about their disabilities. Narrative is a means through which people recall experiences and place them into a meaningful series of events. In contrast to critiques of disabled athletes’ narratives emphasizing ‘overcoming’ disability and ‘passing’ as able‐bodied, I argue that wheelchair basketball players construct narratives of competence, which contrast with common stereotypes of disability. In doing so, they construct a shared sense of identity. I suggest that ‘narratives of competence’ are a more productive theoretical framework for understanding the stories of disabled athletes than ‘overcoming narratives’ because the storytellers are not attempting to pass as able‐bodied. Rather, they are presenting themselves as capable people, who are not trapped in liminal space due to their disabilities. In addition to arguing against previous accounts that describe disabled athletes as passing, this article contributes to the growing emphasis in anthropology to de‐medicalize disability.

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“…Sometimes the topic was left up to the students, but there were also assignments which required them to put into practice some of the ideas from the inspirational lectures. The goal of learning to give effective speeches is used as a method for transforming selves, ideally culminating in narratives that position the speaker as someone who has changed his or her self in positive ways, whether by mastering new speaking skills or improving interpersonal relationships (Dunn ). The classes are thus built around an ideology of personal change and an implicit model of normative personhood.…”

Section: Ethnographic Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Thus, these narratives should not be understood as spontaneous, unmediated reflections on experience. Rather, they were carefully crafted by the speakers with feedback from the instructors who helped shape the final speeches into testimonials for the effectiveness speech‐center teachings (Dunn ). Nonetheless, the speeches do provide further insight into the range of ways in which alumni of the speech center made sense of the relationship between the kokoro and embodied speech.…”

Section: Kokoro and Embodied Expressionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Creating “Bright, Positive” Selves: Discourses of Self and Emotion in a Japanese Public‐Speaking Course

Dunn

2016

Ethos

Self Cite

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This article examines emotion pedagogy and technologies of the self in two Japanese settings: public-speaking classes and business-etiquette training for new employees. Data were gathered through participant-observation and selective audio recording in both settings. The emotion pedagogy found in these classes aims at polishing the public presentation of self as akarui "bright" and sekkyokuteki "active." The training focuses less on the interpretation of inner feelings or competence in a psychologized emotion register than on inculcating habits of thought and behavior which allow clients to function affectively and effectively within their social contexts. The study demonstrates how the late-modern reflexive project of self-fashioning can be embedded in institutional contexts and carried out through metapragmatically explicit emotion pedagogy focusing on the public presentation of self. [Emotion, Japanese self, technology of the self, emotion pedagogy]

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“Then I Learned about Positive Thinking”: The Genre Structuring of Narratives of Self‐Transformation

Abstract: This article brings together research on genre and the self to investigate personal narrative as a "technology of the self" (Foucault 1988)

Cited by 18 publications

References 30 publications

Ontology of Fake: Discerning the Philippine Elite

Ontology of Fake: Discerning the Philippine Elite

Liminal Spaces, Titanium Braces: Narrative Tropes of Competence among Wheelchair Basketball Players

Creating “Bright, Positive” Selves: Discourses of Self and Emotion in a Japanese Public‐Speaking Course

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