Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons™
Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 1 of 1
Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Telling Tales: Enacting Family Relationships In Joint Storytelling About Difficult Family Experiences, April R. Trees, Jody Koenig Kellas
Telling Tales: Enacting Family Relationships In Joint Storytelling About Difficult Family Experiences, April R. Trees, Jody Koenig Kellas
Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications
Narratives help people make sense of difficult experiences. In addition, stories provide insight into people’s conceptualizations of the world, including their understanding of their family relationships. Given these two functions of storytelling, the ways in which family members tell stories about difficult experiences together should reveal or reflect relational qualities. This project focused on how the family relational context relates to jointly enacted sense-making behaviors as families tell stories of shared difficult experiences. Findings indicate that interactional sense-making behaviors, in particular coherence and perspective-taking, predict important family relational qualities. This suggests that family qualities affect and are reflected in the …