Georgetown University LogoGeorgetown University Library LogoDigitalGeorgetown Home
    • Login
    View Item 
    •   DigitalGeorgetown Home
    • Georgetown University Institutional Repository
    • Georgetown College
    • Department of Linguistics
    • Graduate Theses and Dissertations - Linguistics
    • View Item
    •   DigitalGeorgetown Home
    • Georgetown University Institutional Repository
    • Georgetown College
    • Department of Linguistics
    • Graduate Theses and Dissertations - Linguistics
    • View Item
    JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.

    Telling Disability: Identity Construction in Personal and Vicarious Narratives

    Cover for Telling Disability: Identity Construction in Personal and Vicarious Narratives
    View/Open
    View/Open: Cochrane_georgetown_0076D_12532.pdf (1.2MB) Bookview

    Creator
    Cochrane, Leslie
    Advisor
    Hamilton, Heidi E
    Abstract
    This study examines the construction of disability identities in personal and vicarious narratives. Sociolinguistic research on narrative focuses largely on personal narrative (Schiffrin 1996); some studies claim that vicarious narratives lack coherence and evaluation (Labov and Waletzky 1967; Chafe 1994) and have no natural relation to the teller's identity (Norrick 2013). Research on health communication contributes to linguistic understandings of disability (Hamilton 1994; Ramanathan 2009); however, few studies explore disability discourse as its own area (cf. Al Zidjaly 2005). Taking an approach to disability discourse that emphasizes disability as practice, I analyze identity construction in narratives told by people with and without disabilities. I argue that vicarious narratives - which I define as narratives about someone else's lived experience - are productive sites for constructing personal identities.
     
    The analysis investigates narratives from a 16-hour corpus of video-recorded conversations among three participants with lifelong, mobility-related, physical disabilities; their able-bodied family, friends, and caregivers; and the able-bodied researcher. The analysis shows tellers displaying their individual disability identities through positions (Davies and Harre 1990; Bamberg 1997) taken up in response to able-bodied characters in storyworlds. I propose that telling vicarious narratives allows tellers to expand their repertoires of storyworlds beyond their own lived experiences. I demonstrate how one particular teller with a disability uses vicarious narratives about third-person characters to construct her personal disability identity.
     
    I adapt the term "the wise" (Goffman 1963) to apply to people without disabilities who, through social network ties to a person with a disability, are "wise to" disability practices and have a measure of acceptance in the disability community. I argue that these close ties allow able-bodied people to display their wiseness through a borrowing of epistemic rights with regard to disability discourse. I show that people with disabilities and the wise within their communities can co-construct shared disability identities. By defining certain able-bodied people as wise, this study reconsiders the role of people without disabilities in the disability community. It suggests that wise identities and shared disability identities provide avenues for exploring how identity is created within close communities.
     
    Description
    Ph.D.
    Permanent Link
    http://hdl.handle.net/10822/709833
    Date Published
    2014
    Subject
    disability; identity; narrative; physical disability; vicarious narrative; wise; Linguistics; Sociolinguistics; Linguistics; Sociolinguistics;
    Type
    thesis
    Publisher
    Georgetown University
    Extent
    307 leaves
    Collections
    • Graduate Theses and Dissertations - Linguistics
    Metadata
    Show full item record

    Related items

    Showing items related by title, author, creator and subject.

    • Cover for Identity Construction through Positioning in Mealtime Narratives of Kazakh-speaking Village Residents.

      Identity Construction through Positioning in Mealtime Narratives of Kazakh-speaking Village Residents. 

      Raspayeva, Aisulu (Georgetown University, 2018)
      Mealtime narratives are a site for constructing a community’s social worlds (e.g., Ochs and Taylor 1995). Extending this research direction, I examine mealtime narratives among Kazakh-speaking Kazakhs, an under-researched ...
    Related Items in Google Scholar

    Georgetown University Seal
    ©2009 - 2022 Georgetown University Library
    37th & O Streets NW
    Washington DC 20057-1174
    202.687.7385
    digitalscholarship@georgetown.edu
    Accessibility
     

     

    Browse

    All of DigitalGeorgetownCommunities & CollectionsCreatorsTitlesBy Creation DateThis CollectionCreatorsTitlesBy Creation Date

    My Account

    Login

    Statistics

    View Usage Statistics

    Georgetown University Seal
    ©2009 - 2022 Georgetown University Library
    37th & O Streets NW
    Washington DC 20057-1174
    202.687.7385
    digitalscholarship@georgetown.edu
    Accessibility