Narrative Analysis by Martin Cortazzi

Cortazzi, Martin. Narrative Analysis. London: The Falmer Press, 1993. Pp. 162

Part of a series on “Social Research and Educational Studies,” this book explores ways in which a variety of models for narrative analysis—sociologi- cal, sociolinguistic, cognitive, anthropological, narratological—can be used to illuminate teachers’ oral accounts of their experiences in the classroom. Having conducted interviews with 123 British primary school teachers (see pp. 119-121 for a description of the author’s story-elicitation techniques), Cortazzi compiled a corpus of nearly 1000 teachers’ narratives. He then used William Labov’s well-known model for narrative analysis–a sociolinguistically and syntactically grounded model that breaks stories down into six parts (Abstract, Orientation, Complication, Evaluation, Resolution, Coda) (43-53)–to develop an account of recurring structures, topics and effects in the narrative corpus (122-139). To be sure, educators, discourse analysts and narrative theorists (among others) will be interested in the author’s argument that narratives are central to education (15-24).