ABSTRACT
In this chapter I will look at the little stories that appear within life stories. A story is an account of a sequence of events that has significance for the narrator and his or her audience. ‘It has a plot, a beginning, a middle and an end. It has internal logic that makes sense to the narrator’ (Denzin, 1989: 37). Stories serve a variety of functions, for example, they can pass on a cultural heritage, maintain a collective sense of the culture of an organization, give warnings of what not to do (Coffey and Atkinson, 1996: 56). Stories are also ‘a common genre from which to retell or come to terms with particularly sensitive or traumatic times and events’ (ibid.). They signify the presence of potentially sensitive themes for the narrators that require additional rhetorical support, clarification and argumentation.
