Narrative Practices Versus Capital‐D Discourses: Ways of Investigating Family

Abstract

I would like to start my commentary on Galvin and Braithwaite and Harrison by stressing the radical difference of the type of contribution we have in front of us. Galvin and Braithwaite have chosen the genre of a summary or overview. They outline current research traditions in family communication and summarize theories and methodologies that make discourse, talk, and narratives in and about families an interesting starting point for the exploration of family relations. As promised in the title for their article, they review both research that starts from the assumption that discourse reflects concepts, beliefs, and ideologies about family, and research that works with the assumption that discourse and/or talk constitutes our current assumptions. Overall, however, it appears as if the latter orientation, according to which ‘‘families are talked into (and out of) being,’’ takes dominance over the position that views discourse and narratives as representative or reflective of family realities. In contrast to Galvin and Braithwaite’s review article of discursive or narrative approaches to family research, Harrison enters the discussion of family relations as a scholar of literature, as a literary critic and historian. She documents convincingly how over the past 250 years, literary form and literary content have created an alliance to result in a powerful complot that