Memory in Narrative

CHARLOTTE LINDE
NASA Ames Research Center, USA

“Memory” and “narrative” are technical terms in the academic fields of psychology,
linguistics, communication, history, and literary studies, with a variety of definitions
in each field, in addition to their nontechnical uses. Additionally, they are also com-
mon terms used nontechnically in everyday language. This situation leads to a range of
overlapping and sometimes opposing definitions. What remains stable throughout this
range of usages is that both “memory” and “narrative” describe ways that an individ-
ual or a group represents a version of the past in the present, often for the purpose of
shaping a desired future. Most research on narrative within linguistics and psychology
consists of studies of personal oral narratives of events that are to be understood as true,
rather than on the complex artistic constructions of imaginary events in novels, movies,
and video games.
The term “memory” is most commonly used, but “remembering” is a better descrip-
tion of the act of using language to represent the past. Remembering is an act; memory
is a term that describes either an ability or a storehouse. Whatever the neurological
basis of memory may be, as soon as a story or other account of the past is produced,
for an audience, or for the rememberer alone, an act of remembering is happening.
Indeed, the specific meanings of “memory” and “remember” are particular to English.
While all languages have terms for the act of representing the past in the present,
the range of what they describe and their connotations differ widely (Wierzbicka,
2007).
Discussions of memory may focus on the past of an individual or a group, but in
fact memory in narrative is necessarily social. Stories are typically told to someone: The
act of narration assumes an audience. There are some genres, like diaries, that are, or
pretend to be, for the writer alone, but even in diaries there is a split between the person
writing the account of the immediate past or present, and the imagined later self who
will read it.
Both narrative and memory are constructed. Memories of what is understood to
be the same event change over time, as the person changes, and in response to the
responses of audiences for the story. Both children and adults learn what is memorable
as they learn what can be, or should be told as a story, and how it may and may not
be told to particular audiences. This kind of learning is part of the process of identity
construction.

The International Encyclopedia of Language and Social Interaction, First Edition.

Karen Tracy (General Editor), Cornelia Ilie and Todd Sandel (Associate Editors).
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2015 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
DOI: 10.1002/9781118611463/wbielsi121
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2 ME M O R Y IN NA R R AT I V E

Individual narrative and memory

This section discusses the memory and narrative of the individual. However, it must be
understood that an individual narrating a memory almost always does so as part of a
social act: talking to one or more other people, for some social purpose.

Relation of narrative and memory

A narrative most typically is understood as a representation, or a construction, based
on a sequence of events in the past, that communicates something from the memory of
the narrator.
Within psychology, memory has been divided into three basic types: episodic
memory—the memory of a specific personal event or a sequence of events; semantic
memory—the memory of general facts or occurrences; and procedural memory—the
continuing knowledge of how to do something like ride a bicycle, cook a meal, or use
a keyboard.
Narrative usually presents an episodic memory, that is, a story about a specific
sequence of personal events in the past, for example, how I got my first bicycle. Personal
narratives can also be about certain kinds of episodic memory: repeated sequences of
personal events, for example, what our family birthday celebrations were like. These
narratives of repeated sequences are termed “habitual narratives.” Narrative is not well
suited to represent procedural memory, the knowledge of how to do things: how to tie
shoelaces, write a computer program, or make pastry.

Learning to narrate: Children

Narrative and memory are both social processes. Both children and adults have to learn
what kinds of events and experiences are narratable, and such learning also represents
training in what counts as memorable, worth being remembered, within a particular
social group.
A body of research within psycholinguistics on language socialization focuses on how
young children are taught how to produce acceptable narratives. This is done by adults
scaffolding the children’s discourse about past and present events during daily con-
versation. Caregivers prompt children to recount what happened during the day, with
questions to remind them of experiences that the adults consider to be typically mem-
orable. These prompts suggest evaluations: the adults’ proposal of the moral meaning
of these events (Fivush & Haden, 2003; Ochs & Capps, 2001).
While both narrative and memory appear to be human universals, occurring in all
cultures, there are considerable cross-cultural differences in what counts as memorable,
what is appropriate to narrate, and what constraints exist on who properly may narrate
what. Similarly, different cultures have different norms for how and whether children
are encouraged to narrate their experiences, and what kinds of support their caregivers
offer for children to produce these narrations.
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ME M O R Y IN NA R R AT I V E 3

Learning to narrate: Adults

Children’s learning to narrate is understood as an important part of the process
of socialization into a particular culture. But adults may also need to learn to tell
new stories, and restructure their existing stories as part of their induction into new
social groups. There are a number of situations in which this requirement may arise:
conversion to a new religion or ideology, involvement in a group such as Alcoholics
Anonymous (AA) where storytelling is a key part of being a member, learning to
be a member of a new professional community, or beginning employment in an
organization that maintains a strong corporate identity that is at least partially based
in stories of the organization’s past. This process is narrative induction: learning to
become part of a community that maintains its own body of stories of its valued past.
This involves two processes. The first is for newcomers to understand, value, and use
the stories of the organization as relevant to themselves. This means coming to view
memories and narratives of the corporate past as relevant to one’s own present. The
second is learning to reshape one’s own stories in ways that are harmonious with values
expressed in the group’s stories.
Conversion stories represent the best known case available of how people take on a
new ideology, a new identity, and a new understanding of their history and their place
in the world. Conversion to most religions requires that the convert adopt certain sto-
ries as important guides for their own behavior: scriptures, stories of the founder, or
subsequent saints or holy people, for example.
An additional part of adopting such preferred narratives is learning how to tell one’s
own stories in relation to them. Thus, in religious contexts, one must know not only
which stories to take as models but also how the model is to be used. This requires
induction into the community’s narrative and symbolic practices in order to learn the
appropriate narrative structure. For example, studies of AA have shown that the process
by which AA works is a narrative induction: coming to learn to tell one’s own story as
the story of an alcoholic. Members learn how to frame stories of their pasts as stories of
alcoholics, within the ideology of AA. Thus, a story about stealing a child’s piggy bank
to buy booze would be valued as a story of hitting bottom. In contrast, a story about
having one glass of champagne at an anniversary party could be criticized or rejected
because it shows that the speaker still clings to the unacceptable belief that it is possible
for an alcoholic to drink moderately
Differing disciplines and political views may call this process ideology, hegemonic
domination, or adult socialization. The key issue is that adults already competent at
one form of narrative production may find themselves required to learn new forms
of narrative, and reformulate existing narratives. And it means that they take on new
resources of group memory as relevant to their own past, and perhaps discard stories
from prior group memberships.

Time: Narrative through the life course

It is not only single narratives that are used to represent one event from the past in the
present. People maintain ongoing life stories, which change gradually over the course
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4 ME M O R Y IN NA R R AT I V E

of their lives. There are some rare occasions on which a person is asked to tell the
story of their life as a single narrative unit. But the main form of the life story is a col-
lection of stories that are told repeatedly throughout a person’s life: retold tales. These
repeated stories have extended reportability: They are large and personally significant
stories that can be told for a long period of one’s life, to many people. Informally, these
stories can be defined as presenting “who I am” or “what you must know about my
past to know me” (Linde, 1993). They contrast with the small, ephemeral stories about
recent events that are tellable soon after they happened, to people one sees every day or
to friends and family members. These are the stories that answer the question “how was
your day?”: the “small stories” about recent or ongoing events that form much of social
exchange (Bamberg & Georgakopoulou, 2008).
There are certain topics that are typically included among the repeated stories that
make up the life story: career choices and milestones, marriage, divorce, death of a loved
one, major illness, and religious or ideological conversions. These can be narratives of
milestone events that mark phases in the narrator’s life. Such milestones are relevant and
reportable over a major portion of a person’s lifetime. However, they are not the only
possible topics for stories that are repeated within the life story. They are available for
a speaker to use, but any speaker may frame entirely different individual events as the
stories repeated to express important parts of the past that have shaped the speaker in
the present. Psychological research has shown a typical “narrative bump” in the number
of events remembered from the ages of approximately 15 to 25 years, the period in which
people are most involved with the formation of their personal identity. However, each
person’s life and understanding differs in the timing of what come to be understood
and narrated as milestone events.
The particular narratives included in the life story change throughout the life course.
Some stories about past events are no longer retold if they become contradictory to a
person’s current understanding of who they are. Other past events come to be seen as
relevant and even predictive of the speaker’s current situation. A former lawyer who has
become a musician may tell new stories about learning to play the guitar as a child, or
enjoying singing in choir as the best part of high school.
Additionally, the age of the narrator affects how they consider their life narrative as
a whole. Adolescents and young adults are in the process of forming an identity, while
middle-aged and older adults are more likely to attempt to narrate the meaning of their
life as whole: a retrospective look both at what happened, and at the character of the
events chosen for narration. Is the person’s life understood as a good satisfying life? A
difficult, disappointing life? A sequence of one thing after another with no meaning?
A life in which the narrator used adversity to become a stronger or kinder person?
(McAdams, 2008).

How accurate are narrative and memory?

One issue that arises in the relation of memory and narrative is the nature of retold
memories. Does the teller remember experientially the events that are retold, or is it
the previous tellings that are remembered? The adult telling a story of experiencing as
a child the death of a parent may vividly remember some of the child’s feelings. But the
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ME M O R Y IN NA R R AT I V E 5

adult also remembers previous ways of forming the story and various prior occasions
of telling it. This means that a person will tell the story differently as circumstances and
emotions change and as the meaning of the event develops in the teller’s life.
It is difficult to research exactly what is remembered in an often retold narrative,
since this is an issue of internal experience. However, Neisser’s classic study (1981) of
John Dean’s memory provides evidence from a natural experiment on remembering
and retelling. Dean, the former counsel to President Richard Nixon, testified to the
Senate about conversations with the President and his advisers that later turned out
to have been secretly recorded. Although Dean appeared to be recounting his meet-
ings with the President vividly and in great detail, and claimed to be doing so without
consulting notes or diary entries, his testimony did not match the transcripts of the
meetings made public later. While he was accurate about the gist of the events as a
whole, the stories that he told on several occasions of testimony matched one another
much more closely than they matched the transcript of the actual events. This suggests
that he remembered the previous retellings more closely than he remembered the events
themselves.

Collective narrative and memory

Narrative is intrinsically social: That is, narratives have an audience, and an audience
who cocreate the narrative through their responses, agreements, or objections. Even
something thought of as the personal narrative of an individual can be corrected or
disputed by others who shared the events, or who have opinions about the events or
their claimed meanings.
On a larger scale, there is the topic of collective memory, which has been variously
called institutional memory, collective memory, social memory, or places of memory.
The essential distinction is between history and collective memory. Collective mem-
ory is understood not as preserving the past, but as a reconstruction of the past in
the present, as a result of ongoing collective activities. History, in contrast, is often
understood as the presentation of the best reconstruction of the truth of what actually
happened. There is a political aspect to this distinction as well; even before the develop-
ment of anthropology as a field Europeans understood themselves as the “people with
history” in contrast to the “others,” “primitive” societies who they believed to exist in a
continuous present of myth and folklore (Wolf, 1982).
Research on collective memory is carried on in a variety of academic fields as well as
interdisciplinary areas of concern: anthropology, cognitive science, computer science,
folklore, oral history, linguistics, literary analysis, management studies, and sociology,
to name a few. There are also important studies of collective memory that are organized
by topic rather than by academic discipline. For example, Holocaust studies center on
events: the Nazi effort to erase the memory of what was done to the Jews, which led to
an effort to collect and make available testimonies of these events as a moral protest and
as a way of ensuring that they could “never again” happen. Similarly, a subaltern studies
investigates the efforts of ruling groups to obliterate the past of the conquered groups
that they rule (Trouillot, 1995).
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6 ME M O R Y IN NA R R AT I V E

Classically, it was assumed that history is the discipline that preserves, organizes, and
presents the memory of the past. But whose past? It is known that history is not and
cannot be perfectly impartial (although it is assumed that there are rules for what counts
as historical evidence and argument). Rather, it is an account presented by somebody,
to somebody, for some purpose. It is proverbial that history is written by the victors.
More recently interest has developed in representing the past of those groups who
have not had a voice, at least not a written voice, in the historical conversation. This
is one of the motivating factors for oral history: bringing into the written discourse of
history the voices of those who are usually treated as the “others,” those who are not
important enough to have a history.
The sources of oral history are considered to be contemporary eyewitness accounts
of events and situations. This distinguishes oral history from folklore or anthropology,
which collect traditions, tales, songs “which have passed from mouth to mouth beyond
the lifetime of the informant” (Vansina, 1985, p. 13). But these oral testimonies are still
subject to the work of the historian: analysis of evidence, cross-checking of sources, and
so on. Feminist history and subaltern studies (the study of the history of dominated
groups) are two additional lines of research that attempt to give a voice to the voiceless.
All of these movements within history raise the question: Whose voice is heard? Rather
than being the impartial statement of truth, any historical account must be understood
as being the history of someone, told for someone, for some purpose.
The question of the past and its preservation is also a concern within businesses, and
in management studies. As United States’ businesses continue an ongoing project of
downsizing, and as the cohort of the baby boomer generation begins to reach retirement
age, a concern has developed about losing knowledge central to the operation of the
business. This is frequently described as: “People are walking out the door and taking
their knowledge with them.” The attempted solution is often to “extract” knowledge
from people, often in the form of narratives, in order to store them in databases.
Within business organizations, there is also the opposite fear that their institutional
memory reproduces values and practices that were better forgotten: Too much memory
may be as much of a problem as too much forgetting. It is assumed that reproduction of
the past is easy, while change is difficult, even if the past is no longer an adequate guide
for the present.
But do groups and institutions actually remember? Certainly within institutions, rep-
resentations of the past exist in the present and are preserved for the future. But is it the
institutions that remember, or is it the people within them who do the remembering?
This question matters both theoretically, and for any group or formal institution that
wishes to make efforts to preserve representation of its past.
What it might mean for an institution itself to remember, as opposed to its members
remembering, has been a debated issue. A central way that institutions do remember
is by people telling stories of the past, and by new members, as part of their induction
into the institution, learning to tell these stories themselves. There are other, more for-
mal structures to ensure the transmission of knowledge that exists within institutions
as well. The most obvious are personnel policies: mentoring, apprenticeship, and suc-
cession planning. Such policies set up relations between people that intentionally allow
for opportunities for storytelling.
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ME M O R Y IN NA R R AT I V E 7

Within institutions, perhaps the most obvious resource for remembering is the
production and maintenance of written records. A few examples of the myriad types
include: documentary and numerical records, official forms, databases, libraries,
archives, contracts, authorized biographies and histories, and scriptures. These are
resources for memory. However, remembering does not happen until these written
materials are actually used in ongoing interaction. It is a mistake to call an archive
or a file cabinet “memory,” rather than describing it as a potential resource for
remembering. Files become part of active remembering when they are used. Thus, the
practices for use are as important as the actual form of storage.
An important issue about written records within an institution is that they are
not produced and preserved only as records of (a version of) the past, but rather
are representations of the past that project a probable future use for these records.
Even archives that attempt to keep as extensive a record as possible, for example
the Library of Congress, must decide what documents and artifacts are likely to be
used in the future, in order to decide what to collect in the present. Published books
and government documents are central to the collection. But should pamphlets,
comic books, or concert posters be included? Such questions multiply when it comes
to the preservation of electronic records: The United States National Archives and
Records Administration preserves not only written documents but also electronic
records.

Occasions: Resources for remembering

If representations of the past are not in themselves memory but rather opportunities
for the act of remembering, what determines whether such remembering will happen?
Whether in a group as small as two people, or as large as a nation, the events most
likely to be remembered are those that have occasions for being told. Occasions for
remembering may literally be temporal events: anniversaries, memorial holidays, reli-
gious rituals tied to specific dates, such as Christmas, Passover, or the pilgrimage to
Mecca. Or they may be physical: a family looking at a photo album as an opportunity
to tell stories about the people and events in the pictures, or a personal visit to or a cer-
emony at a memorial statue. The pictures, or the equestrian statue are not themselves
memories, but resources for remembering. Remembering happens when, for example,
a parent tells a child the story of the people in the photograph, or an official makes
reference to the general during a public ceremony.
Similarly, archives, documents, and collections of recorded oral stories are not mem-
ory. They are resources for remembering when someone consults them, or when they
are incorporated into exhibits that people visit.

Future developments: Narrative and the Internet

Considering the future of personal memory in narrative, the most obvious area for new
memory technologies consists of the developing uses of the Internet for social remem-
bering. This is a fluid area in which oral and written genres are being translated into
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8 ME M O R Y IN NA R R AT I V E

online versions, and new genres are developing. Online narrative remembering can
include personal videos (suggesting most non-X-rated personal memories are of cute
cat activities), digital archives, online museums, social networking sites, blogs, com-
puter games based on past wars, fan sites, websites for photos of events like weddings
and graduation, and so on.
One major online genre is a version of the life story, the sum of stories told and par-
ticularly retold over the course of a lifetime (Linde, 1993). The online version of the
life story is the ongoing, daily, or near daily chronicling of events: the equivalent of
the answer to the question “What happened today?” or “How was your day?” Versions
of this can be seen on Facebook and other social networking sites: posts of pictures
or accounts of something that happened during the day, ongoing reports of a trip or
vacation, announcements of current triumphs or complaints about current difficulties.
Most of these tend to be “small stories.” This makes sense: There are more of them in a
life than major events. These have the character of chronicles rather than specific narra-
tives: reports of daily events that do not have the shaping of moral meanings that usually
characterizes narratives.
Similar ongoing narratives are found in Twitter feeds (very short narratives, or, in
effect, narratives in serial episodes). Some personal blogs are either primarily daily
or occasional narratives of the writer’s life, or essays with narrative episodes, such as
cooking blogs with updates on the writer’s life, often related to where the writer first
enjoyed the recipe or how the writer came to possess the exotic vegetable that is going
to be cooked. Some sites are created to present a specific event such as a wedding, or
to give family and friends updated news about a developing event such as a serious
illness.
A particularly interesting development is the phenomenon of pages of the dead on
Facebook (or other social network sites) (Brubaker, Hayes, & Dourish, 2013) These
are either memorial sites set up to commemorate a deceased friend or relative and to
coordinate memorial activities, or a deceased individual’s Facebook page that is kept
alive by a family member or friend. Such sites provide an opportunity for those who
knew the deceased to speak directly to them, or to tell stories to fellow mourners about
the deceased.
Online genres and norms of appropriateness for their use are still developing. What
kinds of stories are narratable or not for an audience of everyone who might access
one’s writing on the Internet, or an audience of everyone that one has accepted as an
online friend on a particular social network site whose privacy policies periodically
change? How much personal detail does one publish and what expectations of privacy
might one have? Styles and norms differ widely, often by age group, and the issue is
still very much in flux.
In addition, these online narrative genres raise questions about the physical basis of
computer memory: where are these narratives stored, who has access to them, who con-
trols storage and access? It is commonly claimed that anything posted on the Internet is
available forever, but this statement ignores the question of the physical infrastructure
that supports such memory, and the economic structures that support the infrastruc-
ture. That is, is it sensible to imagine that Google or some successor will exist forever,
with the same services that exist today?
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ME M O R Y IN NA R R AT I V E 9

SEE ALSO: Blog and Wiki Discourse; Editor’s Introduction; Language Socialization;
Morality in Discourse; Narrative

References

Bamberg, M., & Georgakopoulou, A. (2008). Small stories as a new perspective in narrative and
identity analysis. Text & Talk, 28(3), 377–396. doi: 10.1515/TEXT.2008.018
Brubaker, J. R., Hayes, G. R., & Dourish, J. P. (2013). Beyond the grave: Facebook as a site
for the expansion of death and mourning. The Information Society, 29(3), 152–163. doi:
10.1080/01972243.2013.777300
Fivush, R., & Haden, C. (Eds.). (2003). Autobiographical memory and the construction of a nar-
rative self . Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Linde, C. (1993). Life stories: The creation of coherence. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
McAdams, D. (2008). Personal narratives and the life story. In O. P. John, R. W. Robins, & L A.
Pervin (Eds.), Handbook of personality: Theory and research (3rd ed., pp. 242–264). New York,
NY: Guilford Press.
Neisser, U. (1981). John Dean’s memory: A case study. Cognition, 9(1), 1–22. doi: 10.1016/0010-
0277(81)90011-1
Ochs, E., & Capps, L. (2001). Living narrative: Creating lives in everyday storytelling. Cambridge
MA: Harvard University Press.
Trouillot, M. (1995). Silencing the past: Power and the production of history. Boston, MA: Beacon
Press.
Vansina, J. (1985). Oral tradition as history. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.
Wierzbicka, A. (2007). Is “remember” a universal human concept? In Mengistu Amberber
(Ed.), The language of memory in a crosslinguistic perspective (pp. 13–39). Amsterdam: John
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Wolf, E. (1982). Europe and the people without history. Berkeley, CA: University of California
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Further reading

Fitzgerald, J. M. (1988). Vivid memories and the reminiscence phenomenon: The role of a self
narrative. Human Development, 31(5), 261–273. doi: 10.1159/000275814
Halbwachs, M. (1952/1992). On collective memory. Translated by L.A. Coser. Chicago, IL:
University of Chicago Press.
Linde, C. (2009). Working the past: Narrative and institutional memory. Oxford, UK: Oxford Uni-
versity Press.

Charlotte Linde has been a senior research scientist at NASA, studying issues of
cockpit and air-traffic control communication, learning among the science team of the
Mars Rover, and knowledge management for long-term space missions. She has taught
at the City University of New York, University of California, Berkeley, and Stanford
University. Her research interests include narrative in the development of individual
and group identity, and authority conflict and negotiation in aviation discourse.
Publications include Life Stories: The Creation of Coherence, and Working the Past:
Narrative and Institutional Memory.