ABSTRACT
In telling their life stories, people express and explain themselves. Indeed, within the boundaries indicated by an interview situation, the interviewee uses cultural resources to create a theory or picture of himor herself (Antikainen and Houtsonen, 1994). According to our working definition, a person's identity is composed of the meaningful parts of his or her life-story (Antikainen, 1991, p. 6). Identity is the individual's socially constructed definition, formulated by using available cultural meanings. The person's identity can exist only through the system of linguistic and cultural codes which people use in defining their identities as objects (Weinert et al., 1986, pp. 30-6).
