10-jaehrige Jungen zum Thema: ‘Warum Maedchen “eklig” sind’ clark university department of psychology worcester, ma, usa michael bamberg

disgust + yuckification “Ekel + Yuckifizierung” Maedchen haben “ Cooties ” –Als Eigenschaft der Maedchen –Als ‘Empfindung’ der Zuschreiber (Jungen) Entwicklungsstadium/-stufe auf dem Weg zum Erwachsen- Sein Diskursaktivitaet von Jungen

Britney Spears: ‘ pretty’ or ‘disgusting’? Vic: Brendan Smith loves Britney Spears B: no not that that’s fine Mod: I don’t really want to talk about her exclusively but she’s kind of pretty M: yeah Vic: uagh W: I have her poster in my bedroom B: so do I

…die Frage erhebt sich: Was veranlasst Victor zu ‘disgust’ vis-à-vis Britney Spears? Was veranlasst andere zu dem Ausspruch: “I have a poster of her in my bedroom”? …und meine Antwort lautet das es nichts mit BS zu tun hat, sondern eher damit wie die Teilnehmer sich mittels ihrer Maennlichkeit ‘positionieren’

The Project 5-year-long pilot project of year-old males Cross-sectional + longitudinal data DATA: Observational Writing Interview Group discussions After-school non-adult guided interactions TOPICS: -friends, -girls, -emotions/body, -future

Method of analysis Small Stories –Episodes that are low in tellability, co- narrated + situationally embedded Identity Confrontations –Interactants confront each other in terms of their ‘identity claims’ Positioning Analysis –How speakers position characters in the ‘text’ –How interactants position themselves + each other –How speakers position themselves vis-à-vis ‘master narratives’

Three Kinds of Narrative Approaches to the Study of Self and Identity Life-Story Approaches Life-Event Approaches “Small” Stories –Short narrative accounts –Embedded in every-day interactions –Unnoticed as ‘stories’ by the participants –Unnoticed as ‘narratives’ by researchers –But highly relevant for identity formation processes

Life-Stories + Life-Events Life-Stories –Dan McAdams (1993) + Gabi Rosenthal (1998) –Elicitation Technique –Analysis of lives –Focus on coherence + health Life-Events –Most narrative research –Elicitation is focused on particular events or experiences –Analysis of focused area –Meaning of event in one’s life

Merits of narrative ‘life research’ life-history + life-event approaches Accentuates and brings to light lived experience Forces participants to focus on the meaning of THAT event in their lives Accentuates the continuity of experience And sheds light on aspects that appear discontinuous Assumes a unified sense of personal identity -- against which ‘experience’ is constantly sorted out

potential shortcomings or open questions How does this ‘unified sense of self’ come to existence? –How does the person ‘learn’ to “sort out” events against what is called ‘life’? Overemphasis of stories about the ‘self’ –Cutting out all those stories about others Overemphasis of ‘long’ stories –Cutting out everyday, “small” stories

why? Influences of ‘traditional’ psychological inquiry –Interests in selves + self-coherence Influences of traditional narratology –Work with texts (written texts) –Assuming authors as behind the texts –Assuming criteria of goodness for narratives Interviews as windows into selves

Narrative Dimensions (Ochs & Capps, 2001) Tellership one active teller vs. many Tellability high vs. low Embeddedness detached from surrounding talk vs. situational embeddedness Moral stance one moral message vs. different + conflicting messages Linearity & Temporality closed temporal + causal order vs. open + spatial

Characteristics of “SMALL” stories Short Conversationally Embedded + Negotiated before during after Fine tuned positioning strategies –fine-tuned vis-à-vis the audience –fine-tuned vis-à-vis dominant + counter narratives –multiple moral stances (testing out and experimenting with identity projections ) Low in tellability, linearity, temporality + causality

Stories about others: the Davie Hogan story Positioning with Davie Hogan. Stories, Tellings & Identities. Chapter in: C. Daiute & C. Lightfoot (Eds.), Narrative analysis: Studying the development of individuals in society. London: Sage. (2003)

Short Video Clip: “You always hung around that fruit-punch girl” The Rhetorics of ‘Yakkification’ Interactional encounter between four 10-year-olds (+ adult male moderator) Theme: ‘liking a girl’ - ‘attraction’ Topics: Katherine, Valerie, Melanie + Briana Identity Positions: –Victor: masculinity project of ‘disinterest’ –Bart: masculinity project of navigating between ‘interest’ and ‘disinterest’ the fine-tuning of displaying BOTH interest AND disinterest Dilemmas of normative heterosexuality + what counts as “mature”

Vic: Bart used to like KS Bart: there are two more that I liked Vic: KS as unlikable - except by Bart Bart: I kind of liked her Vic: Bart: there are two more “people” I like, Stephanie and Shannon

Characterizations of Kimberly + Shannon (and to a lesser degree of Britney + Stephanie): Kimberly: VIC: fruit punch lipps BART: no chapped lipps VIC: all over her mouth BART: no - just here Britney + Stephanie Shannon: VIC eeuw + ugly, I hate her BART: annoying VIC: she’s a tettletale

as a way of concluding… Descriptions and evaluations of girls as situated and grounded in local practices of SEEKING and AVOIDING trouble in ‘attraction talk’ Two different ‘maturity Projects’: –displaying ‘disinterest’ –by describing potential partners as unattractive –by positioning others as ‘interested’ –displaying ‘interest’

as a way of concluding… Displaying interest –admitting to interest –rules out the ‘offensive’ positioning of others as ‘interested’ –rules out display of overt disgust –walking a fine line between interest and non-interest display features –making yourself ‘vulnerable’ and learning to negotiate ‘vulnerability’ Getting caught up in dilemmas of normative heterosexuality and what counts as ‘mature’

“Bart never had a girlfriend” Participants: M – Moderator; V – Vic; W – Wally; B – Bart; P – Paul 01M:is it important what girls look like (1.0) 02B:yeah 03M: yeah (.) like //what °like what° 04:W://I don’t know 05B:cute 06M:cute 07W:it depends 08M:yeah 09V:Like Bart used to say he had a girlfriend but he never did 10B:yeah I did 11V:which one which one 12B:Karen 13V: ((shaking his head)) I remember that one Leah and uhm// 14B: //Rachelle 15V:no Leah and Ashley saw you at the movies 16B:oh yeah (1 sec) and then I saw Leah at the last lot where we met 17B:okay (1 sec) now is she following my back or something 18M:I think so coz that was funny (1 sec) that’s just hilarious

Kurz-Geschichten Practice in doing identity work Continuous editing of experience –Retelling of experience –Re-tuning these tellings according to different audiences Different master-narratives different (developing) senses of ‘who-I-am’ Resulting in some sense of coherence though one that is constantly reworked So, rather than assuming the existence of identity + sense of self – and viewing narratives as reflections thereof, I am suggesting to study the emergence of a sense of self by way of exploring the SMALL stories people tell in their EVERYDAY interactions