Autoethnography In Van Mann's Tales Of The Field

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Within the generic label of autoethnography there are a number of different sub genres which various theorists have conceived upon analysis of the patterns emerging in autoethnographical writing. Scholars chart out the presence of two main approaches of autoethnography in literature - ‘analytic’ and ‘evocative’. Evocative autoethnography engages the reader in the understanding of the narrative and analytic autoethnography not only calls for a personal understanding of the text but also makes visible how the researcher’s memories combine with social science theories to construct interpretations of certain events. Van Mannen in his Tales of the Field (2011) has distinguished three forms of autoethnographic studies-realist; impressionist and confessionist.While Carolyn Ellis and Richardson have talked about both the impressionist and the realist story, the terms of reference varied. Ellis’s attributes of a realist …show more content…

A ‘Co-created account’ is one wherein a writer builds his narrative around an epiphany or a decisive moment and successively responds to an author in reply. ‘Dialogue’ is yet another effective medium in which dialogues or conversations form the narrative. There has also been the form of vignette which describes an event in daily life as a means of augmentation of intensity of the arguments. Coffey and Atkinson in their work of 1996 mention another form - ‘extreme case’ zeroing in on the contrasts and paradoxes, than definitive

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