ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how place and mobility are important constituents of family narratives in which moving can feature variously as motivation, problem or solution in the crafting of a collective biography. Narratives are powerful tools for both social actors and social science to make sense of experience. Using a large sociolinguistic corpus of English vernacular narratives collected in a variety of US communities, Labov and Waletzky's detailed analysis at clause level identified predictable stages evident across the collected narratives and the implicit rules governing their characteristic logic and sequencing. The narrative tells of the family putting this child's needs first and refusing a posting, without too much eventual impact on the career opportunities for the Defence member. The chapter highlights how narratives can account for emotions as both cause and effect in how family mobility unfolds, which may explain the added value and vicarious learning in peer's narratives of their own emotional trajectories.
