How a self is told : a methodology for analyzing formal features of narrative discourse

This study presents a methodology for analyzing formal features of narrative discourse. Review of the literature indicated conceptual confusion in research on narrative and the need for a systematic scoring system to assess "how was this story told?" Using written autobiographical narratives by undergraduate students of both sexes, I developed an instrument, based on techniques of structuralist literary criticism, to describe and classify four formal dimensions of narrative: narratorial function, narratorial mediation, narrative voice, and agency. Coding along these four dimensions produced eight derived scores: the Story Index, the Complexity Index, the Distance Index, the Self-consciousness Index, the Self-reference Index, the Narrating Agency Index, the Narrated Agency Index, and the Comparative Agency Index.

High inter-rater reliability coefficients (using Cohen's kappa) suggested that this methodology could be reliably scored. Examination of correlational procedures indicated that these categories appeared to represent discrete entities; however, due to the small sample size (N=29), these conclusions were only tentative. Only one significant non-artifactual correlation was found, an inverse association between the Complexity Index and Narrated Agency, suggesting that there are two voices (narrator's and protagonist's) in the autobiographical text which may be engaged in a dynamic of compensation and qualification. Finally, patterns of similarity and difference among scores were considered as reflections of narrative style, which was defined in the context of personality style.

Successful application of this methodology to autobiographical written narratives indicates that narrative analysis may be carried out in a systematic, reliable fashion and may be utilized productively in future research on narrative and personality assessment.