Linking critical discourse analysis and narrative inquiry

Original title: Linking critical discourse analysis and narrative inquiry: Boundaries, resistance, contradictions and tensions

Speaker: Debbie Laliberte Rudman, PhD., Associate Professor & Faculty Scholar, School of Occupational Therapy & Graduate Program in Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, Faculty of Health Sciences, Western University

Date: March 27, 2013

Abstract: Drawing data from a governmentality-informed study that employed both critical discourse analysis and narrative inquiry to examine the contemporary discursive reconstruction of retirement and retirees, this presentation considers various ways social and individual ‘stories’ addressing subjectivity and conduct can be interpretively linked. For example, such linking can be drawn upon to explore how discourses set boundaries in which individuals shape narratives regarding who they are and how they act in the world, as well as how narratives point to possibilities for resistance to larger socio-political discourses outlining ideal, possible, and healthy ways to be and do. In addition, attention to points of contradictions and tensions within narratives can inform critiques of the ways in which contemporary socio-political discourses informed by neo-liberal rationality neglect inequities shaped by social conditions and fail to include diverse possibilities for ways of being and doing.