The task: Narrative enquiry – Collecting and analysing personal narratives about language, identity and culture
Word limit: 2,500 words (+/-10%)
Worth: 60% of your total grade for the subject
Purpose:
With your tutorial partner, collect and analyse spoken narrative data by interviewing another student from your LING10002 Intercultural Communication tutorial group (this person will henceforth be referred to as “the interviewee”). We will make time in your tutorials for you to find an interviewee. You can also do this in your own time, but remember that the interviewee must be from your tutorial group. If you are having trouble finding an interviewee, get in touch with your tutor immediately.
With your partner, jointly design and conduct a semi-structured interview of approximately 30-40 minutes (~15 interview questions), which elicits one or more personal narratives about one or more critical incidents in your interviewee’s life. Your questions should focus on exploring your interviewee’s descriptions of the role played by language, identity and culture in the events that they describe.
The interviewee should sign the following consent statement before being recorded:
I agree that [student interviewer names] can collect and analyse the data I provide in this interview for an Intercultural Communication class assignment at the University of Melbourne. I understand that the interview will be filmed, but that my name and the video will only be known and shared with my interviewers, and teaching staff of the Intercultural Communication class in semester 1 2025.
I, ______________________, (insert interviewee name) give consent to use my data as described above.
The consent form. can be on pen and paper or in digital format. You should submit a copy of the consent form. in the appendix to your assignment and keep a copy for your own records.
Video record your interview (with your phone or on Zoom is fine; do a test run first!) and, with your partner, jointly analyse your findings with reference to scholarly concepts and theories about personal narratives, language, identity and culture that we have covered in LING10002 during the semester. You will write this assignment together as a pair.
Include a copy of the video recording with your assignment (by uploading a video file, or providing a link to a shared file or a video platform. such as YouTube or Vimeo, where access can be via a password you share in your assignment) and refer to detailed excerpts from the recording throughout your paper, by using verbatim transcripts and providing timestamps, as you did for Assignment 1.
You MUST provide the video recording, or your assignment will not be graded.
Your video recording must be provided in its unedited form, and should not be edited or amended in any way (apart from converting/compressing the file type or changing the file size).
A marking rubric is provided below.
Structure
Your assignment should be structured around the following headings:
Introduction and background (~500 words)
Cite and summarize the use of narrative inquiry as a means of eliciting data about language, identity and culture (remember the Big Mac method as discussed in Week 8 Lecture 2 – use your own voice to present the work of others).
Cite and summarize earlier studies on identity and define your terms (e.g. your definition of narrative, critical event, identity, etc.). You should include relevant theoretical concepts, such as e.g. dialogism or gaze. The introduction and background are important for contextualizing your own study. Critically, your engagement with this existing literature should directly inform. and shape the specific aim you set for your own narrative analysis. Use these sources to start building your arguments.
State the aim of your paper, e.g. “This paper will present a video-recorded interview conducted with Student X (you can use their real name!) about language, identity and culture. The focus of the interview was to elicit narratives with a focus on critical events. The paper will explore the experiences of Student X, an international student, during their first semester at the University of Melbourne”.
Include one or more research questions, e.g. “We pose the following research questions:
How has moving to Melbourne from X country changed Student X’s perception of their avowed and ascribed identities?
How did the critical event of X act as a catalyst for Student X to re-evaluate their sense of culture?”
Note: we strongly suggest meeting with your interviewee before the actual interview to get a sense of them and their experiences before deciding on your research aim, research questions, and interview questions!
Method (~500 words)
Describe how you prepared for and collected your interview data. You should detail how you collaborated on all aspects of the project. Explain how you, as a pair, co-designed the interview questions in response to your research aim (as above). Include details such as whether you planned to stick strictly to the questions, or whether deviations were permitted.
You should provide a rationale for the kinds of questions asked (citing relevant literature on interviewing where appropriate) and also for the roles you adopted – were both of you the interviewer or just one? (we recommend you both give it a try!) Who designed which questions?
Please provide a numbered list of the interview questions in an appendix at the end of your assignment, rather than listing them all in the Method section (you can include some examples of questions in the Methods section if they are particularly relevant).
Provide basic biographical information about the interviewee (e.g. their age, their language, cultural and educational backgrounds—especially anything that is relevant to the research aim)
Briefly describe how you transcribed the data and how you chose the excerpts to be included in your assignment. Discuss how many narratives and critical events emerged and how you chose to analyse them.
Discuss your approach to data analysis, drawing on relevant concepts from the subject (e.g. Labov and Waletzky’s framework, Webster and Mertova’s critical events in narrative approach, etc.)
Analysis, findings and discussion (~1,300 words – you may wish to separate this part into two or three separate sections)
Your recorded interview will have parts that are narratives and parts that are not. We suggest you isolate the narrative(s) and make them the focus of your analysis. However, you can also refer to other parts of the interview where relevant.
In this section, you can discuss, for example, how the interviewee:
organises their narrative (e.g. what is the temporal structure or what are the stages of the narrative as it unfolds)
uses particular aspects of language as part of their narratives (this could be anything from the use of address terms or pronouns, to how they refer to particular identity groups, e.g. “international student” or “local student”, to how they use reported speech, etc.)
brings up issues relating to language, identity and culture through their narrative; in particular, how the narrative makes different kinds of identities salient (e.g. language identity, ethnic identity, religious identity, etc.)
You should also discuss:
the co-constructed nature of the narratives or the interview in general. What kind of language do the interviewers use (e.g. backchannels, collaborative completions, etc.)? Are there long pauses or silences? (hint: you can draw on Conversation Analysis transcription to make your points here)
The influence of the interviewers on the interview, e.g. do the interviewers ask questions in such a way that particular kinds of identities are assumed/ascribed? Do they laugh about funny stories or commiserate with sad ones? Reflect on how this could influence how a narrative is told.
How aspects such as the relationship between the interviewee and interviewers could influence the course of the interview and the narratives that emerge. What kinds of knowledge are already shared (if any?) What kinds of knowledge are assumed? Have the interviewers heard this story before? Etc.
When you discuss your findings, you should:
Compare them with some of the studies you reported on in your introduction and other readings covered in class. Remember to make these links explicit using citations.
Explain what you think the reasons are for the similarities and/or differences you found with previous studies.
You can use sub-headings to show specific themes that emerge from your data analysis.
• You can also comment on what you think the strengths and weaknesses are of conducting a narrative enquiry based on interview data.
Conclusion (~200 words)
Summarize your key findings concisely and relate them back to the research questions and aim.
Evaluate how effective your study was in examining this question/issue. Would you do it differently if given another opportunity? What have you learned from this experience?
Provide some suggestions for further research.
References (not counted towards word limit)
You will need to draw on scholarly literature to support and augment your arguments. Please draw on a minimum of eight scholarly references (you can have more than eight references if you like!) and cite them using the APA7 referencing style. Include a reference list at the end of your assignment.
At least three of your references cannot be from any of the set readings for the Intercultural Communication subject (they must be ones you have found yourselves through your own library/database searches). Since we have set this minimum quite low, we insist that your references be relevant to your analysis and be well-integrated throughout the paper.
Marks will be deducted for incorrect and/or inconsistent citation and referencing.
Appendix (not counted towards word limit): Attach a copy of your interview questions and the signed consent statement by your interviewee.
AI declaration
You can use AI only for the following reasons:
As a ‘personal tutor’ to check key concepts as you prepare your assignment (e.g. what is pragmatics in linguistics?)
To proofread your work for spelling and grammatical errors
You must include an AI declaration at the end of your assignment (it does not count towards the word limit), even if you are declaring that you did not use it – see example declarations here.