Analysing men's written friendship narratives

People make sense of their lives through their narratives, which provide a set of culturally shared plots that give their lives meaning and represent belonging. A range of personal and cultural experiences is made available through analysing these narratives. Here, analysis of men's personal narratives is considered as a valuable means by which the culture of men's friendship can be explored and defined. We present a method for generating narratives, where respondents were asked in an online survey to describe a deep connection or fall-out with a friend. One of these written narratives is analysed here by adapting Labov's framework for analysing narrative in conversation and supplementing it with insights from discursive work.