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The influence of the interviewing style and the historical context on positioning shifts in the narrative of a Second World War Resistance member 1
Author(s) -
Van De Mieroop Dorien,
Bruyninckx Kris
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
journal of sociolinguistics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1
H-Index - 51
eISSN - 1467-9841
pISSN - 1360-6441
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9841.2009.00403.x
Subject(s) - resistance (ecology) , narrative , interview , context (archaeology) , style (visual arts) , consistency (knowledge bases) , identity (music) , world war ii , period (music) , sociology , psychology , history , gender studies , media studies , social psychology , aesthetics , literature , law , political science , art , anthropology , computer science , ecology , archaeology , artificial intelligence , biology
This article involves a study of the narrative of a Second World War Resistance member by means of an interview in which the interviewer explicitly inserts the historical context by selecting the topics for discussion and asking critical questions. The interview deals with three periods: the Wartime period; the First Wave of Reprisals; and the Second Wave of Reprisals. The analyses show that the interviewee's first and second‐level positionings shift along with changes in historical period and that they mirror the general historical image of the Resistance. These different positionings are highly consistent in themselves and this consistency is also present on the third level of positioning, because of the interviewee's fairly muted style of narrating, by which blatant inconsistencies are avoided and a general, ‘good’ identity is constructed. The article also demonstrates that the interview style adds another, important dimension to the analysis of identities in life stories.