Elaine Hsieh
Stories in Action and the Dialogic Management of Identities:Storytelling in Transplant Support Group Meetings
This paper exams the management of identity by individuals with chronic illness in naturalistic settings. This dialogic approach to identity management allows researchers to investigate how patients strategically manage their illness identities in everyday life, which is significant to their coping with illness (e.g., obtaining important resources in illness events). This study demonstrates that both the speakers and audience strategically negotiated the meanings of stories as well as identities that emerged through the sequential ordering and contexts of the storytelling activities. Both the storytellers and the audience incorporated storytelling activities into the management of multiple goals (e.g., identity management, uncertainty management, and communicative efficacy). This work reflects my general interest in examining individuals’ dialogic management of identities in naturalistic settings. Currently, I am collecting data though participant observation to examine how medical interpreters understand, represent, and mediate conversational partners’ identities and communicative goals in cross-cultural health communication.
Elaine Hsieh is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Speech Communication at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
