Abstract
This Chapter examines the dimension of disnarration in the first of two case studies about experiential narratives and asks why people share stories of disnarrated experiences. The discussion centres on oral narratives of personal experience narrated by London-born Greek Cypriot children undertaken as part of an ethnographic study by the author. The study set out to understand narrative structure and lexico-grammatical variations that could be correlated to different factors, such as the narrator’s social factors, story topic and storytelling setting (groups or one-to-one with the interviewer). The collected stories included a subset of personal experiences with disnarration to describe experiences that did not happen, articulated through negation and adverbs. Counterfactual ‘what if’ scenarios were also narrated to describe what might have happened if the events had occurred. Disnarration in personal narratives is discussed for insights into why experiences where nothing happens are important for making sense of our lives and necessary for our socialisation.
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Lambrou, M. (2019). Disnarration and the Unmentioned in Fact: Oral Narratives of Personal Experience. In: Disnarration and the Unmentioned in Fact and Fiction. Palgrave Pivot, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-50778-5_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-50778-5_3
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