Afterword

Abstract

I would like to begin this afterword by thanking the volume editors, Alessandra Fasulo and Roberta Piazza, for giving me the opportunity to read such a fine collection of chapters. In my view, this volume reflects many of the significant changes and positive developments that have taken place in narrative analysis in the last decade. In particular, the authors exemplify the shift from texts to practices and from stories to storytelling (see De Fina and Georgakopoulou, 2008, 2012) that characterises the most fertile and interesting strands of inquiry in our field. Indeed, all chapters offer subtle and complex readings of ways in which stories emerge and are embedded within different types of contexts, illustrating how multifaceted identity constructions are created in response to a variety of constraints at different levels. Importantly, they also provide a great deal of reflection on the role of participants in the different communicative events under analysis. Furthermore, far from treating identities as sets of characteristics ‘belonging’ to individuals and groups, the authors collectively demonstrate an orientation to a view of identity as process and as a performance (see Hall, 2000).