Construction Of Individual Identity Through Narrative

In recent years, identity has been one of the most important research subjects in various fields, such as philosophy, anthropology, politics, education, linguistics, literature, and history, etc. Researchers about the discourse and identity employ a variety of theoretical approaches including conversational analysis, critical discourse analysis, narrative analysis. The present thesis aims to study the narrative construction of Amy’s individual identity as a Tiger Mother.The data materials include a50-mins interview which selected from Yang Lan One to one and Amy’s autobiography novel Battle Hynm of the Tiger Mother, which mainly talk about Amy’s educational method and the process which is full of challenges and difficulties when using to educate her daughters. Based on these data, the author tries to find the answer to the following question:how Amy constructs her individual identity as a Tiger Mother through the material of the interview interaction and her biographical novel Battle Hyyn of the Tiger Mother by positioning theory. Due to the fact that positioning is a useful construct to locate tellers, listeners, and other characters in the discourse and to shape who they are in the stories which they are telling about, we choose the positioning theory as the theoretical frame to analyze the narrative construction process of individual identity.In our analysis, there are two aims we would get. First, we would set a model using a more systematic approach to study narrative self-construction. Through analyzing, we would illustrate how the four layers of the positioning theory can be applied to analyze the process of narrative self-construction. And second, through Tiger Mother’s narrative, we describe some of the challenges and opportunities facing Tiger Mother in the road of helping her daughters to become a more talent person. Therefore, parents can get some methods about how to make their kids successful.