“You are not normal if you won`t be scared”: A Psychosociolinguistic

Transcription

“You are not normal if you won’t be scared”:
A Psychosociolinguistic Study of
Coping and Narrative Processing in the Discourse of
Israeli Bus Drivers who Experienced Terror Attacks
Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree of
“DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY”
by
Alison Stern Perez
Submitted to the Senate of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
August 30, 2014
Be’er Sheva
“You are not normal if you won’t be scared”:
A Psychosociolinguistic Study of
Coping and Narrative Processing in the Discourse of
Israeli Bus Drivers who Experienced Terror Attacks
Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree of
“DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY”
by
Alison Stern Perez
Submitted to the Senate of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
Approved by the advisors:
Date:
Date:
Approved by the Dean of the
Kreitman School of Advanced Graduate Studies:
August 30, 2014
Be’er Sheva
This work was carried out under the supervision of:
Professor Shifra Sagy (Emeritus, Department of Education)
and
Professor Yishai Tobin (Department of Foreign Literatures and Linguistics)
and
Professor Dan Bar-On (z”l) (Department of Psychology)
in the Department of Psychology, in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences,
at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.
ii
Research Student’s Affidavit when Submitting the Doctoral Thesis for Judgment
I,
Alison Stern Perez
, whose signature appears below, hereby declare that
(please mark the appropriate statements):
X
I have written this Thesis by myself, except for the help and guidance offered by my Thesis
Advisors.
X
The scientific materials included in this Thesis are products of my own research, culled from
the period during which I was a research student.
This Thesis incorporates research materials produced in cooperation with others, excluding
the technical help commonly received during experimental work. Therefore, I am attaching
another affidavit stating the contributions made by myself and the other participants in this
research, which has been approved by them and submitted with their approval.
Date:
Student’s name:
Signature:
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
First and foremost, I would like to express my deep gratitude to the participants in this
study, the bus drivers I interviewed in Jerusalem and Be’er Sheva, who volunteered so much of
their precious time and effort to sit with me and share some of the most intimate and difficult
experiences of their lives. My thanks to Egged Bus Company for granting me access to their
organization and allowing me to interview their employees and personnel. I am grateful, in
particular, to Dr. Yael Dover, (at that time) the managing psychologist and organizational
consultant for the Jerusalem region, and Yael Ayalon, the social worker for the Jerusalem region,
for their professional support and cooperation in the participant recruitment process, and for
offering me their own insights into the life and world of the Israeli bus driver.
I am indebted to my advisors, Professor Yishai Tobin and Professor Shifra Sagy, for their
dedicated, thoughtful, and tireless efforts to guide me through the doctoral research process. It was
a long road—perhaps the longest of any of their students—and I am so grateful that they were
willing to travel it with me (even when they probably weren’t!). Shifra took me on although the
project was a bit outside her ‘wheelhouse,’ and helped me to mold it into something of which I am
truly proud. She supported and encouraged me in my (often seemingly utterly misguided) dream of
creating a truly interdisciplinary piece of research. This task sometimes seemed impossibly large
and unconquerable, but Shifra was always there to ‘talk me down’ and show me the ‘big picture.’
And I will be forever grateful to Yishai, who spent untold hours teaching me an approach
and methodology that was entirely new to me, and kindly guiding and correcting me through my
fledgling attempts to be a linguist. From the first moment I timidly knocked on his office door,
seeking an explanation to interview data of which I could not make sense on my own, I knew I was
in the right place. Yishai’s utter dedication to the cause, and to me, continually bowled me over. In
sickness and in health, he returned drafts to me within mere hours of my (sometimes late-night)
emailed submissions to him, always thoroughly read and commented upon. Although we began
this journey together from totally different worlds, we slowly but surely found a middle ground—
which was ground-breaking in its own way, and just “simply WERKED!” Plenty of people pretty
much gave up on me over the course of this ‘extended’ process—and I don’t blame them a bit
because I, too, was tempted to give up on myself many, many times—but Yishai never did, and
never even considered it. He had 100% (often seemingly blind, and possibly unfounded) faith in
me, and I cannot imagine having gotten through this without him. Above all else, Yishai supported
me through countless crises of all sorts, and has become, for me, a true mentor for life.
I would also like to acknowledge the tremendous contribution of Professor Dan Bar-On
(z”l), who was one of the driving forces of the project from its inception, and one of my original
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advisors before his untimely passing. It is likely that I would not even have been accepted into
Ben-Gurion University—and perhaps not have made aliyah at all—if it wasn’t for Dan, so I owe
him quite a lot indeed. Professor Golan Shahar, too, had an important hand in the early part of the
process, helping me shape the topic of the project and the initial analytic perspective, in addition to
encouraging me to widen the scope and continue on to a doctorate.
Many of the important conclusions arrived at in this research study would not have revealed
themselves without the academic and emotional support of a number of other mentors, teachers,
and colleagues, and for that I am forever grateful. Professor Ruthellen Josselson was gracious
enough to meet with me many times over the years just to let me ‘talk things out,’ providing
valuable insight and calm reassurance. Professor Amia Lieblich provided an ‘extra eye’ in the
analysis phase, and often, just with a simple word or smile, gave me validation and motivation at
critical points in the process. And Dr. Gabriela Spector-Mersel served as a valued teacher, advisor,
supporter, and friend. Much of our conversations over the years cemented key concepts in the
study, and had an indelible impact on the final product. I see Ruthellen, Amia, and Gabriela as true
role models for brilliance, rigor, and thoughtfulness in academic qualitative work, and I thus often
shaped my analyses and writings around what I perceived as “what would [the trifecta] do” (but of
course, any errors of fact, style, or judgment herein are purely my own). And this project would
never have gotten ‘off the ground’ without the approval of my doctoral proposal committee,
Professor Amia Lieblich and Professor Hanoch Flum.
Through their academic courses, their frequent encouragement and support, and their simple
presence at BGU as representative of the sometimes seemingly-impossible combination of womanmother-professor-successful qualitative researcher, Professor Michal Krumer-Nevo, Professor Lea
Kacen, and Dr. Maya Lavie-Ajayi served as great inspirations for me throughout my studies. And
the Reflexivity Group at BGU—in particular, Dr. Nitsan Almog, Irit Porat, and Dr. Eitan Shahar—
supported me in many ways when and how I needed it the most. Dr. Emanuel Schattner, Dr. Dafna
Israel Weinberg, and Dr. Dana Tzur-Bitan were by my side from the beginning, helping me through
the intricacies of the early proposal and committee, and providing emotional and moral support
throughout. Dr. Liat Amar-Arran, Hagit Rodrigues Garcia, and Dr. Pnina Dolberg held my hand up
to the very end, empathic in ways that only fellow anguished doctoral students could ever know.
This project would have been impossible to complete (or at least stalled indefinitely)
without the tireless efforts of Keren Siegler-Lotan, whose absolute dedication to perfection and
academic integrity is matched only, perhaps, by my own. Her hours of work, transcribing and retranscribing and then double- and triple-checking the interviews, in addition to countless hours
processing and mining the data, were simply invaluable. Her deep suffering throughout the process
was, again, matched only by my own. My thanks also to Ela Stoliar, Hamutal Raber, Michal
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Yermish Levi, and Liav Malka, my other students in my two Guided Research courses, whose hard
work and valuable insights contributed significantly to this project.
Along the way, I have participated and presented in a number of extracurricular courses and
groups, all of which infused into this research a tremendous amount of knowledge and important
input from colleagues. My years at Machon Mofet introduced me to Professor Bracha Alpert,
Professor Irit Kupferberg, and Dr. Liron Dushenik, all of whom helped me think through
preliminary findings and interpretations. My participation in the “Trauma and Resilience: Theory
and Practice from the Israeli Experience” course by The Israel Center for the Treatment of
Psychotrauma and Hebrew University taught me a great deal, and Professor Danny Brom and Dr.
Ruthy Pat-Horenczyk became mentors for me in more ways than they probably know. Methods
workshops led by Professor Gabriele Rosenthal, Professor Miriam Raider-Roth, and Dr. Tom
Wengraf all helped me to expand and develop my qualitative analytical skills to a level that has
made this study rigorous in a manner of which I am truly proud. And the various conferences at
which I presented constituted an essential influence on the study and the research journey. I thank,
in particular, Professor Catherine Riessman, Professor Matti Hyvärinen, Professor Molly Andrews,
and Professor Brian Schiff for giving me invaluable comments and encouragement along the way.
Early concepts and versions of the research study were also presented to and/or discussed
with Professor Niza Yanay, Professor Orit Tykocinski, Professor Rivka Tuval-Mashiach, Professor
Orit Nuttman-Schwartz, and Professor Michal Komem, and all offered me important insights and
guidance. Thanks also to Dr. Igor Dreer, for ‘assisting’ me with the statistical analyses, and for the
laughs throughout. Many people also helped me in my never-ending quest to understand Israeli
society in spite of my ‘outsider-ness,’ and I would like to thank, especially, Professor Gadi
BenEzer, Dr. Galia Glasner-Heled, Dr. Alon Lazar, Professor Julie Cwikel, Dr. Ariel Ayalon, Dr.
Limor Danon-Meoded, Dr. Lisa Rochman, Bosmat Shalom-Tuchin, Noga Einy, Sonia FabrikantLivne, and Tamar Walfisch. And I could not have gotten through the final month of writing
without the invaluable help of Michal Shemesh.
I have been blessed with significant academic organizational and financial support
throughout my doctoral studies, all of which provided a firm base from which I was able to advance
on this project. First of all, I would like to thank the Kreitman Fellowship Foundation at BenGurion University of the Negev for accepting me as a fellow. My four years in the program gave
me the confidence and courage to even begin thinking of myself as a doctoral student. In addition,
I am grateful to the Center for Training and Research on Resilience and Coping with Trauma at
Sapir Academic College, the Israel Trauma Coalition for Response and Preparedness, and the
Association of Qualitative Researchers in Israel, as the generous scholarships I received further
enabled this doctorate to come to fruition. The Israeli Center for Qualitative Research of People
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and Societies (ICQM) has been my academic home, supporting me intellectually, emotionally, and
spiritually, throughout the years of this doctoral journey. Particularly after the passing of Professor
Bar-On, I had a great need for guidance in the qualitative realm of the project, and the ICQM and
its Doctoral Forum provided a strong resource for me at every turn.
Although being a doctoral student is often assumed to be merely an academic post, this
project was, for me, quite often emotionally draining in more ways than twenty. I simply could not
have gotten through it without the support system of my Israeli family and friends—they all know
who they are, and how important they are to me. Tziki and Aya Aud are the best grandparents on
this continent, and their love for my kids kept my guilt at bay during my working weekends. Limor
Niego advised and supported me at every twist in the road, assuring me that it would all be worth it
in the end. Tali Ben Shitrit-Machlev also helped push, pull, kick, and rally me to the finish line, as
only a great coach can. And none of this would have been possible without the presence in my life
of Gideon Goldstein, who never stopped challenging, encouraging, and believing in me. He is
perhaps the biggest part of the reason I made aliyah in the first place, and one of my best models of
‘Israeli resilience’ in action. I still can’t believe he managed to convince me even to apply to
advanced degree programs a mere ten months after I immigrated, and I still can’t believe I have
come this far since. I simply never would have managed as long as I have here without him.
Finally, my deep appreciation and gratitude go to my husband, Michael, for being
unflinchingly by my side and behind the scenes throughout this seemingly endless process. It was
never easy; in fact, it was pretty much always gut-wrenchingly painful. And truthfully, I’m not
sure if I would still be standing with me if I had a choice in the matter. But he took the brunt of it
with as much patience and support as humanly possible, in addition to endless hours of bleary-eyed
parenting and back-breaking amounts of work to keep our household running while I was
attempting to focus on my work. I am grateful and honored that he is still standing with me to see
the finish line, and I hope to be able to pay him back for his sacrifices. Coming through this
journey successfully (albeit slightly later than planned), while simultaneously upholding my
standards and values as a self-actualized woman, wife, and mother, is perhaps my greatest
accomplishment. And so, my concurrent thanks and apologies go to my first three babies, Amit,
Assaf, and Matan, for graciously accepting less time (and at least a bit less patience) from me as I
worked on the birth of this ‘little’ baby. This dissertation was written almost exclusively in 20- to
90-minute installments between nursing sessions, play sessions, cuddle sessions, blowout-diapering
sessions, bathing sessions, booboo-kissing sessions, marathon book-reading sessions, and tantrum/
screaming/sibling-rivalry sessions. It was one of the most challenging multi-tasking endeavors I’ve
ever had to do, and I wouldn’t have had it any other way.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Statement of supervision .................................................................................................................................... ii
Research student’s affidavit ..............................................................................................................................iii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .............................................................................................................................. iv
LIST OF TABLES ......................................................................................................................................... xv
LIST OF FIGURES ..................................................................................................................................... xvii
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS.....................................................................................................................xviii
GUIDE TO TRANSCRIPTIONS ................................................................................................................ xix
ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................................................... xxi
Introduction............................................................................................................................................. xxi
Purpose .................................................................................................................................................xxiii
Data collection ...................................................................................................................................... xxiv
Conceptual and methodological frameworks......................................................................................... xxv
Basic linguistic background ................................................................................................................xxviii
Central patterns and guiding hypotheses.............................................................................................. xxix
Results and discussion ........................................................................................................................ xxxiv
Contribution ......................................................................................................................................... xxxv
PART 1: Introduction, Background, Methods, and Preliminary Findings
1
2
INTRODUCTION TO THE RESEARCH STUDY AND THE DISSERTATION
1.1
INTRODUCTION TO THE RESEARCH STUDY ....................................................................................... 1
1.1.1 Background and overview................................................................................................... 1
1.1.2 The research question and central assertion ........................................................................ 2
1.1.3 The central findings............................................................................................................. 3
1.1.4 The importance and contributions of the study ................................................................... 4
1.2
INTRODUCTION TO THE DISSERTATION ............................................................................................ 5
1.2.1 The organization of the dissertation .................................................................................... 5
1.2.2 Several important caveats ................................................................................................... 7
LITERATURE REVIEW: THE CONCEPTUAL, THEORETICAL,
AND CONTEXTUAL FRAMEWORKS OF THE RESEARCH STUDY
2.1
INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................................... 10
2.2
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK OF THE RESEARCH STUDY .............................. 10
2.2.1 Salutogenesis and the ‘ease/dis-ease’ continuum: A paradigmatic shift ........................... 10
2.2.2 Stress, coping, resilience, and working through................................................................ 13
2.3
THE PSYCHOLINGUISTIC CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK OF THE RESEARCH STUDY ........................... 18
2.3.1 Narrating trauma and traumatic memory .......................................................................... 18
viii
2.3.2
2.3.3
3
2.3.1.1 Memory, identity, and trauma ........................................................................... 18
2.3.1.2 Translating traumatic memory into narrative memory..................................... 20
2.3.1.3 Characteristics and signals of ‘trauma narratives’ .......................................... 22
2.3.1.4 The relationship between narrating trauma and health ................................... 25
Retelling and narrative processing over time .................................................................... 27
The relationship between the use of pronouns and the health of the speaker ................... 35
2.4
THE MACRO-LEVEL PSYCHOSOCIAL CONTEXT OF THE RESEARCH STUDY ..................................... 37
2.4.1 Terror, war, and chronic stress in Israel ............................................................................ 38
2.4.1.1 Overview and statistics ..................................................................................... 38
2.4.1.2 The phenomenological daily experience and its effects:
Communal acute and chronic stress and trauma.............................................. 41
2.4.1.3 Israeli resilience ............................................................................................... 44
2.4.1.4 Military vs. civilian trauma: Universal
belonging vs. isolation and marginalization ..................................................... 46
2.4.2 Israeli societal pressure: The hegemonic cultural discourse of ‘The Israeli Warrior’ ...... 49
2.5
THE MICRO-LEVEL PSYCHOSOCIAL CONTEXT OF THE RESEARCH STUDY....................................... 54
2.5.1 Egged Bus Company: History, demographics, and the psychosocial context .................. 54
2.5.1.1 History of the company and its culture ............................................................. 55
2.5.1.2 Demographics and terror-related statistics ...................................................... 57
2.5.1.3 The psychosocial context surrounding and within Egged ................................ 59
2.5.2 Being an Egged bus driver in Israel: The personal context ............................................... 62
2.5.2.1 The phenomenological context and experience of Egged drivers ..................... 62
2.5.2.2 The fundamental dilemma of the Egged driver ................................................. 66
2.6
CONCLUSION .................................................................................................................................. 69
THE METHODOLOGICAL FRAMEWORK OF THE RESEARCH STUDY
3.1
INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................................... 70
3.2
THE PARTICIPANT POPULATION AND RESEARCH CONTEXT ............................................................ 70
3.3
THE DATA COLLECTION METHOD ................................................................................................... 72
3.4
THE REFLEXIVE RESEARCHER: WHERE I AM COMING FROM .......................................................... 73
3.5
THE METHODOLOGICAL FRAMEWORK OF THE STUDY:
INTEGRATION OF THREE DISTINCT CONTENT WORLDS ................................................................... 76
3.5.1 Social and discursive psychology: A focus on the individual and
the surrounding societal context ........................................................................................ 77
3.5.2 Sign-oriented semiotic linguistics: A focus on the linguistic meanings
and extra-linguistic messages of the individual’s words ................................................... 79
3.5.2.1 The pronoun system and the importance of gender
in Modern Israeli Hebrew................................................................................. 80
3.5.2.2 The interlocked tense system in Modern Israeli Hebrew .................................. 84
3.5.2.3 The systems of focus and deixis and prepositions
in Modern Israeli Hebrew................................................................................. 85
3.5.3 Qualitative inquiry and the interpretive narrative paradigm: A focus
on the individual’s stories and the story-telling context.................................................... 88
3.5.3.1 An organizing model for narrative analysis ..................................................... 92
ix
3.5.3.2
3.5.4
4
Primary qualitative analytical influences
on the methodological framework .................................................................... 93
The need for and importance of an integration of these disciplines .................................. 95
3.6
THE ANALYTICAL TOOLS: A SPIRALING MIXED-METHOD TECHNIQUE ........................................... 97
3.6.1 Quantitative data analysis methodology ........................................................................... 99
3.6.2 Qualitative data analysis methodology ........................................................................... 101
3.6.2.1 Central macro- and micro-level analytical questions..................................... 101
3.6.2.2 Holistic and categorical content processing................................................... 102
3.6.2.3 Pronoun ‘poetry’............................................................................................. 104
3.6.2.4 Longitudinal comparative analysis of mechanisms of narrative selection ..... 106
3.6.2.4.1 Preparation of parallel narrative tables ........................................ 106
3.6.2.4.2 Spector-Mersel’s model of narrative selection ............................ 108
3.6.2.4.3 Parallel narrative comparison: A new analytical model .............. 110
3.7
METHODOLOGICAL, LOGISTICAL, AND ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS ............................................. 111
3.7.1 Translation and transcription in a non-fluent and micro-analytical context.................... 111
3.7.2 Confidentiality and anonymity in a media-infused context ............................................ 113
3.7.3 The follow-up interview protocol ................................................................................... 113
3.7.4 The effects of the interviews and potential conflicts ....................................................... 114
3.8
‘VALIDITY’ AND TRUSTWORTHINESS: THE QUALITY OF THE RESEARCH STUDY ......................... 115
3.8.1 Worthy topic.................................................................................................................... 115
3.8.2 Rich rigor ........................................................................................................................ 116
3.8.3 Sincerity .......................................................................................................................... 118
3.8.4 Credibility ....................................................................................................................... 119
3.8.5 Resonance ....................................................................................................................... 122
3.8.6 Significant contribution ................................................................................................... 124
3.8.7 Ethics ............................................................................................................................... 124
3.8.8 Meaningful coherence ..................................................................................................... 126
PRELIMINARY RESULTS AND FUNDAMENTAL HYPOTHESES
4.1
INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................................. 127
4.2
FUNDAMENTAL PSYCHOLINGUISTIC FINDINGS: THE RELATIONSHIP
BETWEEN THE INDIVIDUAL AND HIS INNER PSYCHOLOGICAL WORLD ......................................... 128
4.2.1
4.2.2
4.2.3
4.2.4
Personalization and possession:
Use of first-person possessive pronouns and phrases ..................................................... 129
Depersonalization and universalization: Use of the second-person
masculine singular pronoun and/or third-person ‘others’ ............................................... 130
Bringing in the audience: Use of the second-person feminine singular pronoun............ 131
Claiming ownership: Use of the first-person singular pronoun ...................................... 133
4.3
PSYCHOSOCIOLINGUISTIC INTERPRETIVE HYPOTHESES: THE RELATIONSHIP
BETWEEN THE INDIVIDUAL, HIS INNER PSYCHOLOGICAL WORLD, AND HIS
PERCEPTIONS OF THE SURROUNDING SOCIAL DISCOURSE ............................................................ 134
4.4
SOCIOPSYCHOLOGICAL LONGITUDINAL COMPARATIVE GUIDELINES:
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE INDIVIDUAL AND HIS NARRATIVE OVER TIME ....................... 137
x
PART 2: Baseline Analyses
5
6
YOSSI: “YOU (FS) SWALLOW ALL OF THE ATROCITY” –
BRINGING THE AUDIENCE IN TO TRAUMATIC EXPERIENCE
AND ‘UNACCEPTABLE’ WEAKNESS
5.1
INTRODUCTION TO YOSSI: BACKGROUND, CONTEXT, AND IMPRESSIONS.................................... 144
5.2
YOSSI’S BASELINE INTERVIEW: WHAT HE SAID AND HOW HE SAID IT ......................................... 147
5.2.1 Personalization, possession, and separation:
Use of first-person possessive pronouns and solitary phrases ........................................ 147
5.2.2 Depersonalization, generalization, and universalization:
Use of third-person ‘others’ and the second-person masculine singular pronoun .......... 148
5.2.3 Bringing in the audience: Use of the second-person feminine singular pronoun............ 151
5.2.4 Claiming ownership: Use of the first-person singular pronoun ...................................... 156
5.3
QUANTITATIVE DISTRIBUTION OF PRONOUNS AND TENSES WITHIN
YOSSI’S BASELINE TAN: HOW MUCH AND WHEN HE SAID IT ...................................................... 158
5.4
PRONOUN ‘POETRY’ OF YOSSI’S BASELINE TAN:
THE ESSENCE OF WHAT HE SAID AND HOW HE SAID IT ................................................................. 159
5.5
CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................................ 165
DANI: “YOU (MS) ARE NOT NORMAL IF YOU (MS) WON’T BE SCARED” –
AMBIVALENCE ABOUT AND UNIVERSALIZATION OF
THE LESS ‘ACCEPTABLE’ EXPERIENCE
6.1
INTRODUCTION TO DANI: BACKGROUND, CONTEXT, AND IMPRESSIONS ..................................... 167
6.1.1 Dani’s ‘non-narrative’ narratives .................................................................................... 169
6.2
DANI’S BASELINE INTERVIEW: WHAT HE SAID AND HOW HE SAID IT .......................................... 171
Use of first-person possessive pronouns and solitary phrases ........................................ 172
6.2.2 Depersonalization, universalization, and normalization:
Use of the second-person masculine singular pronoun ................................................... 172
6.3
DANI’S BASELINE TRAN: HOW MUCH AND WHEN HE SAID IT ..................................................... 184
6.4
PRONOUN ‘POETRY’ OF DANI’S BASELINE TRAN:
6.5
THE CONNECTION BETWEEN THE MS ‘YOU’ AND THE LIVED EXPERIENCE:
AMBIVALENCE ABOUT PERSONAL VS. SOCIETAL APPRAISALS ..................................................... 192
6.5.1 The form and content of Dani’s entire main TAN: The ‘less acceptable’ way ............... 192
6.5.2 ‘Validation’: Dani’s own words about the ‘acceptable’ way .......................................... 197
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6.6
7
8
CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................................ 199
MOTTI: “THE HERO DRIVER” vs. “I FEEL ABOUT MYSELF THAT
I AM VERY WEAK” – CLAIMING OWNERSHIP OF ‘ACCEPTABLE’
ACTIONS AND A WIDER RANGE OF EMOTIONAL EXPERIENCES
7.1
INTRODUCTION TO MOTTI: BACKGROUND, CONTEXT, AND IMPRESSIONS................................... 202
7.2
MOTTI’S BASELINE INTERVIEW: WHAT HE SAID AND HOW HE SAID IT ........................................ 203
7.2.1 Personalization vs. collectivization:
Use of first-person possessive pronouns vs. third-person pronouns ............................... 204
7.2.2 Depersonalization and universalization: Use of the second-person
masculine singular pronoun and distancing discourse .................................................... 205
7.3
MOTTI’S BASELINE TAN: HOW MUCH AND WHEN HE SAID IT ..................................................... 215
7.4
PRONOUN ‘POETRY’ OF MOTTI’S BASELINE TAN:
7.5
THE CONNECTION BETWEEN THE ‘I’ AND THE LIVED EXPERIENCE:
WILLINGNESS TO OWN A WIDER AND DIFFICULT RANGE OF EXPERIENCE ................................... 222
7.6
CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................................ 227
YOSSI, DANI, AND MOTTI IN CONTEXT: HOW INDIVIDUAL DISCOURSE
REFLECTS AND IS SHAPED BY PERCEPTIONS OF SOCIOCULTURAL
DISCOURSE SURROUNDING ‘ACCEPTABLE’ BEHAVIOR
8.1
INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................................. 229
8.2
PRONOUN USE, MEANINGS, AND MESSAGES:
QUANTITATIVE AND QUALITATIVE FINDINGS AGGREGATED AND JUXTAPOSED .......................... 229
8.3
CONNECTIONS BETWEEN THE PARTICIPANTS’ PRONOUN USE AND PERSONAL EXPERIENCES ...... 237
8.3.1 Yossi: “You (FS) are spineless” ..................................................................................... 237
8.3.2 Dani: “The society pities him in my opinion” ................................................................. 238
8.3.3 Motti: “I don’t think of myself as a hero” ...................................................................... 240
8.3.4 Connections and conclusions across the cases of Yossi, Dani, and Motti ...................... 242
8.4
‘VALIDATION’: CONNECTIONS BETWEEN THE HYPOTHESES, THE FINDINGS,
AND THE INTERVIEWEES’ OWN WORDS ........................................................................................ 243
8.4.1 Individual coping ............................................................................................................ 243
8.4.2 Societal pressure, collective coping, and perceived weakness ........................................ 247
8.4.3 The myth and reality of ‘The Israeli Warrior’................................................................. 249
PART 3: Longitudinal Comparative Analyses
xii
9
10
YOSSI: FROM “YOU (FS) SWALLOW ALL OF THE ATROCITY” TO
“I EXPERIENCED ALL OF THAT TERROR ATTACK” –
AN EXEMPLAR OF ‘IMPROVED’ NARRATIVE PROCESSING
9.1
RE-INTRODUCTION TO YOSSI: BACKGROUND AND IMPRESSIONS ................................................ 253
9.2
YOSSI’S FOLLOW-UP INTERVIEW: WHAT HE SAID AND HOW HE SAID IT ...................................... 253
9.3
QUANTITATIVE COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS: HOW MUCH AND WHEN YOSSI SAID IT ..................... 254
9.3.1 Life narratives and spontaneous terror attack narratives within them ............................. 254
9.3.2 Pronoun and tense use distribution within the terror attack narratives ........................... 259
9.4
YOSSI’S FOLLOW-UP PRONOUN ‘POETRY’:
9.5
COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF MECHANISMS OF NARRATIVE SELECTION:
HOW YOSSI CHOSE WHAT TO SAY AND HOW TO SAY IT ............................................................... 266
9.5.1 Inclusion .......................................................................................................................... 267
9.5.2 Sharpening ...................................................................................................................... 271
9.5.3 Omission ......................................................................................................................... 274
9.5.4 Silencing.......................................................................................................................... 277
9.5.5 Flattening ........................................................................................................................ 279
9.5.6 ‘Appropriate’ meaning attribution .................................................................................. 282
9.5.7 Transferring ..................................................................................................................... 285
9.6
A NOTABLE EXCEPTION: YOSSI’S FOLLOW-UP SPONTANEOUS MINI-TAN ................................... 288
9.7
‘VALIDATION’: YOSSI’S OWN WORDS ABOUT WHERE HE ‘STANDS’ ............................................ 291
9.8
CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................................ 296
ELI: “SO THAT’S IT, WHAT WE WENT THROUGH THAT DAY, IT WAS NICE…”
AND SHIMI: “AND THAT’S IT…IT PASSED WITHOUT A PROBLEM” –
TWO EXEMPLARS OF ‘STATIC’ NARRATIVE PROCESSING
10.1 INTRODUCTIONS TO ELI AND SHIMI ............................................................................................. 302
10.1.1 Introduction to Eli: Background, context, and impressions ............................................ 302
10.1.2 Introduction to Shimi: Background, context, and impressions ....................................... 304
10.2 COMPARATIVE DISCUSSION OF THE LIFE NARRATIVES OF ELI AND SHIMI ................................... 306
10.2.1 Eli’s baseline and follow-up life narratives..................................................................... 306
10.2.2 Shimi’s baseline and follow-up life narratives ................................................................ 308
10.3 QUANTITATIVE AND QUALITATIVE COMPARATIVE ANALYSES OF ELI’S TANS ........................... 310
10.3.1 Quantitative distribution of pronouns and tenses within Eli’s TANs:
How much and when he said it ....................................................................................... 311
10.3.2 Pronoun ‘poetry’ of Eli’s TANs: The essence of what he said and how he said it ......... 315
10.3.2.1 Eli’s baseline TAN .......................................................................................... 315
10.3.2.2 Eli’s follow-up TAN ........................................................................................ 325
xiii
10.4 QUANTITATIVE AND QUALITATIVE COMPARATIVE ANALYSES OF SHIMI’S TANS....................... 333
10.4.1 Quantitative distribution of pronouns and tenses within Shimi’s TANs:
How much and when he said it ....................................................................................... 333
10.4.2 Pronoun ‘poetry’ of Shimi’s TANs: The essence of what he said and how he said it .... 336
10.4.2.1 Shimi’s baseline TAN ...................................................................................... 336
10.4.2.2 Shimi’s follow-up TAN .................................................................................... 339
10.5 COMPARATIVE ANALYSES OF MECHANISMS OF NARRATIVE SELECTION:
HOW ELI AND SHIMI CHOSE WHAT TO SAY AND HOW TO SAY IT ................................................. 342
10.5.1 Mechanisms of narrative selection in Eli’s TANs .......................................................... 344
10.5.2 Mechanisms of narrative selection in Shimi’s TANs ...................................................... 349
10.6 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................................ 351
PART 4: Discussion and Conclusion
11
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION: A GLOBAL PSYCHOSOCIAL AND
COMPARATIVE VIEW ON THE RESEARCH STUDY AND ITS CONTRIBUTIONS
11.1 INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................................. 357
11.2 FINAL COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION ...................................................................... 358
11.3 THE ‘BIG PICTURE’: THE INTERPLAY BETWEEN THE INDIVIDUAL,
HIS NARRATIVE, AND THE SURROUNDING CONTEXT .................................................................... 365
11.3.1 The ‘narrative identity card’............................................................................................ 365
11.3.2 The dynamic relationship between language, narrative, culture, and media................... 369
11.4 THE CONTRIBUTIONS AND IMPLICATIONS OF THE STUDY ............................................................ 373
11.4.1 The NMAPP model and tool ........................................................................................... 373
11.4.2 Theoretical basis and support for the NMAPP................................................................ 376
11.5 THE LIMITATIONS OF THE RESEARCH STUDY AND AREAS FOR FURTHER INVESTIGATION ........... 379
11.6 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................................ 383
REFERENCES ............................................................................................................................................. 384
APPENDIX 1: Interview Questions Guide ................................................................................................... 401
APPENDIX 2: Informed Consent Form ....................................................................................................... 403
APPENDIX 3: Biographical Questionnaire .................................................................................................. 405
APPENDIX 4: Endnotes (All Original Hebrew Quotations) ........................................................................ 407
‫תקציר‬....................................................................................................................................................................‫ג‬
‫ הצהרה על מנחים‬..................................................................................................................................................... ‫ב‬
xiv
LIST OF TABLES
3-1
3-2
3-3
3-4
3-5
3-6
The pronoun system in Modern Israeli Hebrew .................................................................................. 81
The sign-oriented interlocked tense system in Modern Israeli Hebrew .............................................. 84
Common MIH prepositions according to their relative deictic level .................................................. 87
Demonstrative example of pronoun ‘poetry’ .................................................................................... 105
Raw excerpt pair from parallel narrative table .................................................................................. 107
Excerpt pair from parallel narrative table, broken into component cells .......................................... 108
4-1
Guidelines for characteristics of narrative processing in a follow-up interview,
relative to the respective baseline interview ..................................................................................... 142
5-1
5-2
5-3
5-4
5-5
Actual (generalized) quotes and possible (more personalized) alternatives ..................................... 150
Pronoun and tense distribution in Yossi’s baseline TAN ................................................................. 159
The pronoun ‘poetry’ of Yossi’s baseline TAN ................................................................................ 160
Summary of pronoun use findings and interpretations in Yossi’s baseline interview ...................... 165
Suggested ‘main messages’ of Yossi’s baseline interview ............................................................... 166
6-1
6-2
6-3
6-4
Pronoun and tense distribution in Dani’s baseline TrAN ................................................................. 185
The pronoun ‘poetry’ of Dani’s baseline TrAN ................................................................................ 186
Summary of pronoun use findings and interpretations in Dani’s baseline interview........................ 200
Suggested ‘main messages’ of Dani’s baseline interview................................................................. 201
7-1
7-2
7-3
7-4
7-5
7-6
7-7
Discursive pattern comparison between Motti’s and Dani’s parallel texts ....................................... 214
Primary pronoun and tense distribution in Motti’s baseline TAN .................................................... 216
Expanded pronoun and tense distribution in Motti’s baseline TAN ................................................. 217
The pronoun ‘poetry’ of Motti’s baseline TAN ................................................................................ 218
Content regarding difficulty and indescribability in Motti’s baseline interview .............................. 225
Summary of pronoun use findings and interpretations in Motti’s baseline interview ...................... 227
Suggested ‘main messages’ of Motti’s baseline interview ............................................................... 228
8-1
8-2
8-4
8-5
8-6
8-7
8-8
8-9
Relative comparison of pronoun use in the main narratives of Yossi, Dani, and Motti.................... 231
Findings and suggested ‘main messages’ of uses of
first-person possessive pronouns and solitary phrases ...................................................................... 231
Findings and suggested ‘main messages’ of uses of
third-person ‘others’ and distancing discourse.................................................................................. 232
Findings and suggested ‘main messages’ of uses of the MS ‘you’ ................................................... 233
Findings and suggested ‘main messages’ of uses of the FS ‘you’ .................................................... 234
Findings and suggested ‘main messages’ of uses of ‘I’ .................................................................... 235
Findings and suggested ‘main messages’ of uses of ‘we’ ................................................................. 236
Comprehensive pronominal extra-linguistic ‘main messages’ ......................................................... 236
Comparison of Yossi’s, Dani’s, and Motti’s definitions of “an Israeli man” ................................... 250
9-1
9-2
9-3
9-4
9-5
9-6
9-7
9-8
9-9
Comparative summary of LNs and spontaneous TANs in Yossi’s interviews ................................. 255
Summary of topics and their lengths (by number of lines) in Yossi’s LNs ...................................... 256
Spontaneous openings of the within-LN TANs in Yossi’s interviews ............................................. 258
Codes and characteristics of all of Yossi’s TANs ............................................................................. 259
Pronoun and tense distribution in all of Yossi’s TANs ..................................................................... 259
Pronoun and tense distribution percentages in Yossi’s ‘complete’ TANs ........................................ 260
The pronoun ‘poetry’ of Yossi’s follow-up ‘complete’ TAN (FUR) ............................................... 263
Inclusion within Yossi’s ‘complete’ TANs....................................................................................... 268
Inclusion within Yossi’s follow-up TANs ........................................................................................ 269
8-3
xv
9-10
9-11
9-12
9-13
9-14
9-15
9-16
9-17
9-18
9-19
9-20
9-21
9-22
9-23
9-24
9-25
9-26
Sharpening in content and form across three of Yossi’s TANs ........................................................ 272
Sharpening in form across three of Yossi’s TANs ............................................................................ 273
Omission in content within Yossi’s follow-up ‘complete’ TAN ...................................................... 275
Omission or silencing in content within Yossi’s life narratives ........................................................ 277
Silencing in content within Yossi’s baseline life narrative ............................................................... 278
Flattening in content within Yossi’s follow-up TANs ...................................................................... 280
Flattening in form within Yossi’s follow-up ‘complete’ TAN ......................................................... 281
‘Appropriate’ meaning attribution across three of Yossi’s TANs .................................................... 283
Transferring of the FS ‘you’ within Yossi’s ‘complete’ TANs ........................................................ 285
Transferring of ‘I’ from ‘past’ to ‘present’ tense within Yossi’s ‘complete’ TANs ......................... 287
Summation statements from Yossi’s ‘complete’ TANs .................................................................... 292
Statements from Yossi’s interviews about getting back on a bus ..................................................... 293
Statements from Yossi’s interviews about psychological and overall functioning ........................... 294
Comparative summary of pronoun use findings and interpretations in Yossi’s interviews .............. 297
Comparative summary of discursive findings and interpretations of Yossi’s LNs and TANs ......... 298
Comparative summary of findings and interpretations regarding
uses of mechanisms of narrative selection in Yossi’s interviews ..................................................... 299
Suggested ‘main messages’ of Yossi’s interviews ............................................................................ 301
Primary pronoun and tense distribution in Eli’s TANs ..................................................................... 311
Primary pronoun and tense distribution percentages in Eli’s TANs ................................................. 311
Expanded pronoun and tense distribution in Eli’s TANs .................................................................. 313
Expanded pronoun and tense distribution percentages in Eli’s TANs .............................................. 313
The first-person pronoun ‘poetry’ of Eli’s baseline TAN ................................................................. 315
The third-person pronoun ‘poetry’ of Eli’s baseline TAN ................................................................ 317
The first-person pronoun ‘poetry’ of Eli’s follow-up TAN .............................................................. 325
The third-person pronoun ‘poetry’ of Eli’s follow-up TAN ............................................................. 327
Pronoun and tense distribution in Shimi’s TANs.............................................................................. 334
Pronoun and tense distribution percentages in Shimi’s TANs .......................................................... 334
The pronoun ‘poetry’ of Shimi’s baseline TAN ............................................................................... 336
The pronoun ‘poetry’ of Shimi’s follow-up TAN............................................................................. 339
Inclusion, omission, and flattening across Eli’s TANs ..................................................................... 344
Inclusion, sharpening, flattening, and meaning attribution in Eli’s follow-up TAN ........................ 346
Inclusion and meaning attribution across Eli’s TANs ...................................................................... 348
Inclusion across Shimi’s TANs ......................................................................................................... 349
Omission in Shimi’s follow-up TAN ................................................................................................ 350
Summary statements in Shimi’s TANs ............................................................................................. 351
Comparative summary of pronoun use findings and interpretations in
Eli’s and Shimi’s interviews ............................................................................................................. 352
10-20 Comparative summary of discursive findings and interpretations of
Eli’s and Shimi’s LNs and TANs...................................................................................................... 353
10-21 Comparative summary of findings and interpretations regarding
uses of mechanisms of narrative selection in Eli’s and Shimi’s interviews ...................................... 354
10-22 Suggested ‘main messages’ of Eli’s and Shimi’s interviews ............................................................ 356
10-1
10-2
10-3
10-4
10-5
10-6
10-7
10-8
10-9
10-10
10-11
10-12
10-13
10-14
10-15
10-16
10-17
10-18
10-19
11-1
11-2
Relative comparison of biographical, discursive, and psychosocial data
among all five participants, as of their baseline interviews .............................................................. 359
Relative comparison of biographical, discursive, and psychosocial data
among the three relevant participants, as of their follow-up interviews ........................................... 363
xvi
LIST OF FIGURES
2-1
2-2
Occurrence of suicide bombing attacks within the Green Line, 1994-2011 ....................................... 40
Timeline of suicide bombing attacks within the Green Line, 1994-2007 ........................................... 40
5-1
Pronoun-tense collocations in Yossi’s baseline TAN ....................................................................... 159
6-1
Pronoun-tense collocations in Dani’s baseline TrAN ....................................................................... 185
7-1
7-2
Primary pronoun-tense collocations in Motti’s baseline TAN.......................................................... 216
Expanded pronoun-tense collocations in Motti’s baseline TAN....................................................... 217
8-1
Comparison of pronoun use in the main narratives of Yossi, Dani, and Motti ................................. 230
9-1
9-2
Distribution of volume dedicated to life periods in Yossi’s LNs ...................................................... 255
Pronoun-tense collocations in Yossi’s ‘complete’ TANs ................................................................. 261
10-1
10-2
10-3
Primary pronoun-tense collocations in Eli’s TANs .......................................................................... 312
Expanded pronoun-tense collocations in Eli’s TANs ....................................................................... 314
Pronoun-tense collocations in Shimi’s TANs ................................................................................... 335
11-1
Schematic diagram showing comparative hypotheses and interrelationships
among all five participants, as of their baseline interviews .............................................................. 362
Schematic diagram showing comparative hypotheses and interrelationships
among the three relevant participants, as of their follow-up interviews ........................................... 364
11-2
xvii
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
BL
Baseline
BLI
Baseline interview
BLL
(Yossi’s) Baseline within-LN TAN
C.
Cell / cells (followed by number, denoting cell(s) of comparative table being referenced)
E.
Entry / entries (followed by number, denoting entry(ies) of pronoun poem being referenced)
EP
End point
FS
Feminine singular (pronoun or verb form)
FU
Follow-up
FUI
Follow-up interview
FUL
(Yossi’s) Follow-up within-LN TAN
FUR
(Yossi’s) Follow-up requested (‘complete’) TAN
FUS
(Yossi’s) Follow-up spontaneous (mini-)TAN
IDF
Israel Defense Forces
L.
Line / lines (followed by number, denoting line(s) of text excerpt being referenced)
LN
Life narrative
MIH
Modern Israeli Hebrew
MNS
Mechanism of narrative selection
MP
Masculine plural (pronoun or verb form)
MS
Masculine singular (pronoun or verb form)
NMAPP
Narrative Method for Assessment of Psychosocial Processing of Stressful Life Events
NII
Israel’s National Insurance Institute, or Bituach Leumi
PPr
Proximate-present (tense form)
PTSD
Post-traumatic stress disorder
RF
Remote-future (tense form)
RPa
Remote-past (tense form)
TA
Terror attack
TAN
Terror attack narrative
TrA
Traffic accident
TrAN
Traffic accident narrative
xviii
GUIDE TO TRANSCRIPTIONS
The following is a guide to the (relatively conventional) rules utilized in the transcriptions of the interview
material gathered as part of this study. All original Hebrew quotations are included as endnotes, organized
by chapter, at the conclusion of this dissertation. All italics in quotations are mine, added to the texts to
emphasize the particular linguistic phenomena under discussion.
TEXT SIGN (example(s))
SIGNIFIES
underlined text
speech that is relatively louder (than the rest of the speech in the
given interview)
boldface text
speech that is relatively more emphatic
{words within curly brackets}
speech that is relatively softer or quieter
^words within upward arrows^
speech that is relatively more rapid
<words within outside arrows>
speech that is relatively slower
words with repeated letters
(“I thiiink”)
speech in which the indicated syllables or parts of these words
were elongated in some manner
a part of a word with a hyphen
(“thi-”)
a word that was cut off, spoken only partially, or interrupted in
some manner (in most cases it was possible to understand or
hypothesize with reasonable certainty as to the intended word)
a part of a word with an
apostrophe, usually conjoined with
the following word
(“th’people”)
a word or multiple words that were spoken quickly or connected
together (a frequent phenomenon in MIH of speakers connecting
words as a ‘shortcut’ to save linguistic time, and often, skipping
a few vowels in the process)
ITALIC CAPITAL LETTERS
word(s) that were originally spoken in English
(numbers within parentheses)
the amount of seconds that a particular pause in speech lasted
((notes within double parentheses))
(“((sharp intake of breath))”,
“((chuckling))”, “((weeping))”,
((car horn honking))”)
extra-linguistic or contextual clues, such as tone, breathing,
emotional expressions, or external noises
\((notes within slashes))\
a type of speech, tone, or emotional expression that continued
for the entire stretch of talk within the slashes
[notes within square brackets]
additions of words or explanations for the reader with regard to
potentially unclear phrases in the discourse, or an indication of a
personal detail camouflaged or removed to protect the
interviewee’s confidentiality
(“I was driving on [bus] line
[19]”)
(“[you/they/we (MP)] walked”)
NOTE: this includes cases when the specific pronominal form is
not indicated with its collocated verb, whereby the pronoun
equivalent (or possible equivalents, where certainty is not
possible) is noted in [square brackets] preceding the verb
“…”
the omission of a small section of the original interview text that
is inconsequential to the discursive phenomenon under
discussion, such as an affirmative utterance by the interviewer or
extra-linguistic contextual information
xix
In addition, it may be necessary to note several even more basic transcription rules:
SIGNIFIES
period
(“I walked on the street.”)
falling tone at end of statement, suggesting completion of the
given message
question mark
(“Did I walk on that street?”)
rising tone at end of statement, suggesting question or
uncertainty in the given message
comma
(“I walked, then stopped, then
walked some more.”)
pause lasting less than one second, with similar tone before and
afterwards, suggesting a continuation of the given message after
the pause
And finally, it is important to note that the issue of dialogue and quotation marks was not a minor one in the
context of this study, and involved a number of subjective, interpretive decisions on the part of the
transcribers and myself. The final conclusion reached is reflected in the following rules:
SIGNIFIES
double quotation marks
three options, according to the interviewee’s discourse and to the
best of my interpretation:
(“I said, “Look where you’re
going!” ”)
1) dialogue that was likely actually spoken, or that the
interviewee seems to believe was actually spoken, at the time of
the experience
(“You (MS) say, “Look where
you’re going!” ”)
2) dialogue that could have been spoken out loud at the time of
the experience (e.g., generalized ‘you (MS)’-based external
dialogue)
(“I said to myself, “What are you
doing?” ”)
3) self-dialogue that was or could have been spoken out loud
single quotation marks
three options, according to the interviewee’s discourse and to the
best of my interpretation:
(“You say, ‘What am I doing?’ ”)
1) dialogue that was likely not actually spoken, or that the
interviewee seems to believes was not actually spoken, at the
time of the experience
(“I thought to myself, ‘Don’t drive
so fast’ ”; “You (MS) think to
yourself, ‘Don’t drive so fast’ ”)
2) self-dialogue that was not spoken out loud at the time of the
experience (e.g., generalized ‘you (MS)’-based internal
dialogue)
(“God says to you, ‘I’ll take care
of you’ ”)
3) imagined dialogue that was not spoken out loud (e.g., any
God-related dialogue)
xx
ABSTRACT
Introduction
For much of the last three decades, the Israeli population has been exposed to significant
and continuing stress, primarily from the ever-present threat of terror attacks. The First and Second
Intifadas (1987-1993 and 2000-2004/2005, respectively) took place predominantly within the
confines of the Green Line border of Israel (as of the eve of the Six Day War in 1967); with the
hardest-hit targets highly populated civilian entities such as restaurants, cafés, malls, and buses.
Besides conscripted soldiers, therefore, the ‘front lines’ of these conflicts involved three primary
populations: security guards, restaurant service staff, and bus drivers. Each post is defined by its
own job responsibilities, and must negotiate its own crises when confronted with a security threat.
However, in Israel, neither security guards nor restaurant staff operate on a daily basis in a context
as complicated and problematic as that of bus drivers. Indeed, as a result of a convoluted interplay
of factors, including their personal senses of identity, cultural background, military experience and
mentality, worldview and value systems, and the occupational and societal expectations of them,
Israeli bus drivers appear to exist in the crux of a fundamental dilemma. The present research study
focuses on this population and on these critical issues.
In Israel, (most often armed) security personnel stand guard outside stores, malls,
restaurants, movie theaters, bus stations, universities, and nearly all other public establishments—
charged with the singular task of protecting those who enter. They are required to inspect the
personal belongings of everyone, either by physically opening backpacks and bags or by
supervising their placement into an x-ray machine. They are allowed and encouraged to request
identification if they deem it warranted, and to take any other measures necessary to inspect
suspicious individuals. These men and women, often fresh out of the army, are presented with a
clear job description and are fully aware that part of it requires them to sacrifice their lives in order
to protect the public, if the need arises. Indeed, if they were to see a man walking toward them with
a bomb, their duty would obligate them to jump on him or subdue him using any means necessary.
These ‘means’ might likely entail losing their own lives.
On the other hand, restaurant service people exist on the opposite side of the spectrum.
Their singular task is to serve their clientele, with no particular regard to their safety or any possible
threat posed. Waiters and waitresses rarely feel any significant degree of responsibility for their
customers, and have no obligation to protect their patrons. Their job responsibilities do not involve
anything related to (national or individual) security concerns; thus, if a suspicious individual were
to somehow manage to enter a restaurant or café, the staff would likely run in the opposite direction
and feel no guilt for doing so. There is no set societal expectation (spoken or otherwise) for their
behavior, and rarely has a media report mentioned a “hero waiter.”
Bus drivers in this context, however, exist in a near-impossible dilemma—caught between
xxi
responsibilities and expectations to both serve and protect. When faced with a daily reality that
involves the possibility of a potential suicide bomber boarding their bus at any moment, they must
constantly heed both of these duties and be vigilant at every moment. Indeed, the bus drivers
interviewed herein expressed that they often find themselves functioning in multiple roles at the
same time: as a driver, security guard, policeman, and even army commander. Although this
confluence of roles often is not necessarily disadvantageous, the separate functions can contradict
each other, creating a serious conflict of interests and a consequent sense of guilt and inadequacy in
the drivers. That most drivers served in the army during (multiple) wars and military campaigns,
and have internalized sociocultural expectations of ‘The Israeli Warrior’—particularly given the
“centrality of military matters” in Israel (Lomsky-Feder & Ben-Ari, 1999)—also contributes
significantly to their belief systems, behaviors, and subsequent attributions about their actions.
Indeed, the Zionist ethos of the new Israeli ‘superman’ is such an ingrained part of the
Israeli belief system and collective identity that it has continued to permeate successive generations
(Ben-Ya’acov, Amir, Arzy, & Kotler, 2005; Solomon, 1993). Modern Israeli soldiers tend to
idealize themselves and their peers as “immune, invulnerable and free from weaknesses” (BenYaacov et al., 2005, p. 7), and there is an essentially ‘unwritten rule’ that anything less would be
considered unacceptable and even threatening to the national identity. Israeli male bus drivers grew
up and continue to exist in this sociocultural reality, whereby a premium is placed on selfless
heroism and courage and strength ‘no matter what.’ Idalovichi (2004), following Golani (2003)
and Nimni (2003), referred to a likening in modern Israeli society of the war ethos as “almost the
only Zionist ethos,” and a perception of heroism in combat as “the ultimate heroism” (p. 623).
Israel and its society indeed exist within a complex and emotionally charged set of
psychosocial contexts and discourses. With its nationhood having been built upon the Holocaust
and its victims and survivors, Israel’s very reason for being and national purpose is intricately
related to a collective and historical trauma of unprecedented, and personal, proportions. The
protracted sense of wartime and conflict, as well as the constant sense of existential threat since its
establishment, has created a national identity as both a victim and a fighter, and has engendered a
society of soldiers, warriors, and brave heroes (and those who aspire to be so). It is within this
context that terror in Israel has come to be “part of a collective consciousness,” essentially
“institutionalized” on a national level (Coetzee & Rau, 2009, p. 3), and for this reason that the
psychosocial discourse surrounding it feels imposed on all, by all. Israel’s and Israeli Jews’
existential struggle for survival as a nation and as individuals, against the backdrop of the ‘old
Jew’’s essential failure to survive in Europe, has thus led to tremendous pressure and a
fundamentally unattainable set of expectations placed upon modern Israeli Jewish men. They
believe that they must fight (on the front lines), win against all odds, be level-headed and proactive
under pressure, be brave and heroic, compensate for past losses, vanquish future enemies, and do
all this without becoming traumatized or showing weakness, passivity, or emotional vulnerability.
xxii
The myth of The Israeli Warrior is as deeply believed in as it is impossible to attain, and thus, has a
powerful hold on those who live their lives in its shadow and attempting to fulfill its prescription.
However, Israeli bus drivers are not policemen and are neither (active) soldiers nor
warriors; they do not carry weapons, and there are no clear and set rules regarding their official
responsibilities under conditions and in emergency situations such as those that frequently emerge
during an Intifada. While their job description specifies that they are responsible for “transporting
their passengers safely and efficiently from their point of origin to their point of destination,” this
duty becomes infinitely complicated (and ultimately, can be entirely compromised) during periods
of high security threat. Drivers tend to feel a much greater degree of responsibility towards their
jobs and their clientele than that which is ‘officially’ (or unofficially) sanctioned under normal
circumstances; this sense of duty is only further heightened when the national threat of terror
attacks increases. Officially, they are instructed to “use their judgment,” and are afforded a certain
degree of autonomy and ex post facto legitimacy for their decisions vis-à-vis security, safety, and
professional authority.
Unofficially, however, many of their job responsibilities, duties, and
capabilities are simply not defined, with the consequence that already permeable boundaries appear
even more complex and ‘fuzzy’ during periods of violence escalation. This dynamic places the
drivers into a situation that ultimately is fraught with ambivalence and uncertainty, engendering
doubt about their behavior (and what the ‘correct behavior’ may even be) and guilt about any range
of possible outcomes that may result.
It is this confluence of factors that creates an exceedingly difficult situation for bus drivers
in this context. The importance and fundamentality of their identities as drivers is coupled with
their heightened sense of responsibility for their buses and passengers, and interacts with a lessthan-clearly defined job description but attendant perceptions of impossibly high sociocultural
expectations of their behavior. All of this, in turn, creates a powerful potential dynamic of guilt, an
exaggerated sense of culpability, coping dilemmas, and a desire to achieve the elusive (but likely
unattainable) ‘hero status.’ Israeli bus drivers thus represent a complex and highly illuminating
case for the study of the interplay between individual and societal discourse, and between the
narrative and communicative ‘product,’ on the one hand, and the narrator’s inner psychological
world and coping processes, on the other.
Purpose
This phenomenological, qualitative, narrative research study endeavors to investigate the
nature and manifestation of individual narrative processing and of the complex and dynamic
relationship between personal and societal discourse, on both a short-term and longitudinal basis.
The study seeks to do this through an examination of the discourse and communicative strategies of
male Jewish Israeli bus drivers who experienced terror attacks while on duty. In-depth, semistructured, open-ended qualitative interviews were conducted with eight drivers in Jerusalem and
Be’er Sheva. Five of the participants were then re-interviewed three years later, following the same
xxiii
interview technique and structure. In addition to garnering life stories and narratives on the terror
attack(s) experienced, the overarching topics of the interviews surrounded issues of identity,
worldview, systems of coping and meaning-making, sociocultural norms, and overall belief and
attribution structures.
The principal research question of this study is essentially: “How are the narratives of male
Jewish Israeli bus drivers who experienced terror attacks both reflective of and shaped by their
perceptions of their own coping, resilience, and heroism, and by their perceptions of the
surrounding sociocultural discourse on these topics?” In its exploration of this question, the study
involves four central domains. The first is an integrative quantitative and qualitative discourse and
narrative analysis of each participant’s baseline interview data, from which emerged a focus on
each individual’s differential uses of pronouns, tenses, other communicative strategies, and
discursive meanings and messages.
The second is an integrative quantitative and qualitative
discourse and narrative analysis of each participant’s follow-up interview data, which allowed for a
focus on each individual’s longitudinal trends in the use of pronouns, tenses, other communicative
strategies, and discursive meanings and messages. The third involves comparative analyses among
participants, from which emerged a focus on the similarities and disparities across the drivers with
regard to their uses of pronouns, tenses, other communicative strategies, and discursive meanings
and messages, as well as their experiences, attitudes and beliefs, and the influence of the societal
discourse on their personal discourse. Finally, the fourth focus involves comparative analyses
within participants, from which emerged an understanding of the longitudinal processes involved,
and a capacity to recognize and assess ‘improvement’ vs. ‘deterioration’ vs. ‘static-ness’ in
narrative processing over time.
Analysis of the transcribed interview texts involves an exploration of the personal, familial,
communal, societal, and cultural forces that are at a constant interplay in the physical and
psychological lives of these individuals. The goal of this study is to offer a multidimensional
perspective on narrative processing in the specific context of Israeli bus drivers. Furthermore, the
underlying presumption is that the findings can contribute to broader postulations about the
manners in which members of Israeli society at large may negotiate, cope with, and process their
varied experiences within a context of ongoing and widespread life stress. It is proposed here that
the communicative strategies shown in the form and content of these individuals’ discourse can
reveal their feelings, attitudes, and attributions with regard to their perceptions of the prevailing
sociocultural discourse surrounding them. In the case of male Israeli bus drivers, this discourse
seems to facilitate and encourage a collective perception of an obligation to act and cope resiliently
and ‘heroically’ in the face of threat, and to discourage ‘less acceptable’ reactions.
Data collection
Interviews were conducted with bus drivers who experienced at least one terror attack—
including bombings, shootings, stone-throwings, and Molotov cocktails, perpetrated or attempted in
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a suicidal and/or homicidal manner—either directly or as a first-hand witness.
All of the
participants were male and Jewish, and between the ages of 29 and 64 and of various marital
statuses at the time of initial contact. Participation in the study was entirely voluntary and without
compensation, and interviews were conducted at the participants’ homes, at their convenience. The
interviews were conducted, transcribed, and analyzed in Hebrew. Because of the micro-analytical
nature of the research, the transcription process was meticulous, including changes in tone, volume,
and speed of speech; lengths of pauses; any signs of emotion (e.g., laughing, crying, audible
inhaling or exhaling of breath); non-verbal, extra-linguistic, or contextual information (e.g., a siren
outside, or sound of the participant pounding on the table, or a comment made by the participant’s
wife); and all utterances that held information about the interviewee-interviewer dynamic as well.
Excerpts have been translated to English only when necessary for publication and for this
dissertation.
Most of the interviews took place during a relatively calm period in Israel vis-à-vis busrelated terror attacks, although many other types of attacks took place both within Israel and on
several of its borders—including bulldozer attacks, bombings at roadblocks and shopping malls, a
particularly horrific shooting spree at a yeshiva in Jerusalem, and a number of Qassam and Grad
rocket attacks on private houses and populated civilian areas (Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs).
This period also encompassed the Second Lebanon War, in the summer of 2006, and Operation
Cast Lead in Gaza, in the winter of 2008-9. This national context set the scene for many of the
topics discussed in the interviews, and often played an integral part in the participants’ discourse.
Conceptual and methodological frameworks
This research study is interdisciplinary at its foundation, as the conceptual, theoretical, and
methodological frameworks and contexts are drawn from a wide variety of fields. The overarching
conceptual framework rests on the salutogenic paradigmatic orientation, and adopts the ‘ease/disease’ continuum as the lens through which to view ‘progress’ (in either direction) in the
interviewees’ narrative processing development over time (rather than utilizing more dichotomous
terms, such as ‘improvement’ or ‘deterioration’) (Antonovsky, 1979, 1987).
In addition, the
literature on stress and coping and the dominant salutogenic concepts therein, such as resilience,
hardiness, and ‘working through,’ provide the psychological perspective most heavily relied upon.
The primary message is that, although this research deals with individuals who experienced an
undoubtedly stressful and potentially traumatic life event, there is no presumption that they were
traumatized by it, nor that their recounting of the experience should fall under the category of a
‘trauma narrative.’ Instead, the salutogenic perspective emphasizes the manners in which these
drivers are coping well, behaving resiliently, and drawing upon their existing psychic and
emotional resources to work through these difficult experiences in the most adaptive manner of
which they are capable.
Alongside of this, the psycholinguistic conceptual framework draws on the literature on
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narrating trauma and the properties and dynamics of traumatic memory, the processes and nature of
retelling and narrative processing over time, and the relationship between such narrations (and
various discursive strategies therein, such as pronominal patterns) and the health of the narrator.
The macro-level psychosocial context surrounding the bus drivers is also taken into account, from
both a theoretical and phenomenological perspective. This involves a discussion of the political
and security realities of living in Israel, under the near-constant threat of war, terror, and violent
tensions, and the effects this can have on its populace. Recent literature on the psychological
effects of both acute and chronic stress and trauma—in general, and in its shared and communal
nature in the Israeli case, in particular—is reviewed herein. Here, too, the salutogenic perspective
is essential, allowing for an exploration of both the potential negative effects as well as the
possibility for resilient responses to these challenges, and the unique strain of ‘Israeli resilience.’
The context of the study also involves a focus on experiences and perceptions surrounding the
disparity between military and civilian trauma in the Israeli context, with particular emphasis on the
isolation and marginalization expressed by many of the individuals interviewed herein.
A
discussion of the primary characteristics of and hegemonic myths in Israeli culture is also provided,
viewed through the emphasis on masculinity, strength, and heroism; the ‘culture of power’ and
centrality of the military; and peer pressure to cope and act ‘acceptably.’
The linguistic methodological framework of the study revolves around sign-oriented
semiotic theory and discursive analytical techniques associated with the Columbia School
approach. These are utilized to understand the linguistic meanings and extra-linguistic messages
encoded in the discourse, reflecting the personal and societal factors that may impact these
individuals’ processes of meaning-making and narrative processing. In particular, a theoretical
background in sign-oriented linguistics and a semiotic approach to Modern Israeli Hebrew are
relied upon to investigate the non-random distribution of pronouns and tenses in these narratives, in
relation to the reflected degree of personalization vs. generalization and proximity vs. distance with
regard to the speaker/narrator. At the heart of this study lies the central assertion that there is a
relationship between the manner in which one tells and processes his personal narrative, on the one
hand, and the nature and influence of the sociocultural discourse surrounding him, on the other.
The study methodology is naturalistic and phenomenological, with a focus on the
participants’ particular, constructed realities and meanings. It is situated within the interpretive or
constructivist family of paradigms, which is based on a relativistic ontological view with a nonstatic, specific, and localized focus. A number of techniques and approaches are employed—
separately as well as in concert—throughout, to facilitate an in-depth analysis of the content, form,
and attendant meanings of the interviewees’ discourse.
Together, they permit an intricate
exploration of both the participants’ lived experiences and their processes of narrating them, as well
as a located view of the experience of the investigator and the dynamic and mutual interplay
between analyst, analysis, and the analyzed text. The analytical approaches used here are largely
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abductive; that is, the hypotheses emerge from the data and the ‘field,’ in relation and response to
the material itself, rather than from a pre-determined theory.
The method of this study is also interdisciplinary and mixed, with the particular
operationalization of mixed methods employed herein involving the use of both qualitative and
quantitative techniques to analyze solely qualitative data.
Different analytical contexts and
questions often called for different methodologies and tools; thus, throughout the analyses, the
analytical magnifying glass was widened and narrowed, constantly redefining the analytical unit in
focus. Analysis was conducted primarily on the narratives of the terror attacks experienced by the
participants. However, there were also cases when the focus was placed on another narrative
within a participant’s interview; or his life narrative; or multiple narratives on a related topic within
a single interview; or ‘parallel’ narratives across both of a participant’s interviews; or multiple
narratives on a similar topic across several participants’ interviews.
One of the central organizing principles of the psychosocial theoretical and methodological
framework of this research is the analytical dichotomy of content vs. form; that is, what the
interviewees said vs. how they said it. Many of the analytical methods utilized herein spiral
between these foci, while also shifting between holistic and categorical viewpoints on the
qualitative data. The basic questions with regard to content were: 1) How was the terror attack
perceived, comprehended, and narrated by the interviewees?; 2) How did the interviewees describe
their strategies of coping with fear and stress, and processes of meaning-making therein?; 3) How
did the interviewees view their life as a whole and the place of the TA they experienced within it,
and what meaning did they attach therein?; and 4) When, how, and why did certain societal
perceptions and cultural discourses (e.g., behavioral expectations such as masculinity and heroism)
emerge manifestly in the interviewees’ discourse, and what was the attendant meaning of these
issues to the interviewees?
These questions were asked on both the individual and
collective/comparative levels; that is, both within each participant’s pair of interviews and among
all of the interview texts. This level of questioning remained very much on the surface of the
interviewees’ discourse, focusing almost solely on what they specifically said about these topics
and performing very little, if any, interpretive analyses or inquiring as to what they may have meant
to express ‘between the lines.’
The basic questions with regard to form were: 1) How was the narrative of the TA
constructed (e.g., what was included vs. omitted or silenced; chronological vs. thematic organization)?; 2) Which discursive signs and patterns were repeated throughout a narrative or interview as
a whole, and what meaning may be ascribed to these patterns?; and 3) How did central themes or
issues express themselves latently rather than manifestly in the discourse? This level of analysis
existed almost entirely below the surface of the spoken discourse, searching for semiotic patterns
that likely were not or could not be apparent to the interviewee himself, and require multifaceted
interpretation and the proposing of hypotheses with regard to motivation and significance.
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On the micro-level and within the operational implementation of the analyses, the following
five questions were considered at all points and stages throughout: 1) Why is this word or phrase
used here, and not in other places?; 2) What is the meaning, both in this sentence/context and in the
larger picture, of the usage of this word or phrase here?; 3) How else could this be phrased, and
how might the meaning change as a result?; 4) Are there any discernible patterns of usage of certain
words or phrases?; and 5) What does this discursive distribution and/or communicative strategy
express or reflect about this individual, and about the society and culture in which he lives?
Basic linguistic background
Tobin (1990, 1995) claimed that “successful linguistic communication can only be achieved
through the combined effort of an encoder and a decoder cooperating together” (p. 48, p. 11). As
such, this research relies on a sign-oriented understanding of the Modern Israeli Hebrew pronoun
system in terms of its invariant meanings: encoder (first-person), decoder (second-person), and
other than the encoder/decoder or outsider (third-person). This pronoun system has distinct forms
distinguishing singular and plural for all three persons, and gender-specific forms for second- and
third-person pronouns. In Modern Israeli Hebrew, the first-person pronominal forms (‘I’ and ‘we’)
are gender-neutral, as the speaker(s) are readily identifiable by means of the collocated verbs.
Contrarily, the second- and third-person pronominal forms are marked for both gender
(masculine/feminine) and number (singular/plural). The masculine pronouns are the unmarked
forms, as they can be used to refer to either male or female objects, and verbs are generally
characterized by the base form. Feminine forms, on the other hand, require additional obligatory
suffixes, and are used to denote feminine objects only. The masculine singular form can be applied
to a specific male and/or as an inclusive gender form for either or both genders together.
Essentially, the unmarked masculine forms can be used in all contexts (all-male, mixed, and even
all-female groups), while the marked feminine forms are customarily used only in all-female
groups or in relation to a specific female decoder(s) (and even then, the feminine forms can and
frequently are replaced by the unmarked masculine forms for use in expressing generic and/or
general messages).
The first-person singular pronoun (‘ani’ in Hebrew; ‘I’ in English) signifies speaker/writer
(‘encoder’), referring to ‘the one who speaks here and now.’ Because it is ego-centered, it is
considered the most proximate and personal pronoun. It is unmarked for (that is, neutral to) gender,
and is the most specific or ‘known’ pronoun—as its use leaves little ambiguity as to the identity or
nature of the speaker. This form is used to relate to personalized events, actions, or states, and
cannot represent a relation to anything or anyone but the encoder. As Pennebaker (2002) noted,
“The use of 1st person singular (I, me, my)…provides insight into people’s social identity and
‘ownership’ of their speaking or writing topic” (p. 8).
The second-person masculine singular (MS) pronoun (‘atah’ in Hebrew; ‘you’ in English)
signifies audience/listener/reader (‘decoder’), and, as it is unmarked, is considered one of the most
xxviii
general and neutral pronouns (Tobin, 2001). It has two functions: 1) its traditional usage, to
address a specific male decoder; and 2) a more generic, general, and impersonal usage
corresponding roughly to the non-gendered and non-numbered ‘you’ in English. In the latter case,
it functions as the unmarked form, customarily used in non-gendered discourse or in relation to a
non-specific subject (similar to, in English, “When one does this type of work…” or the
generalized, “When you wake up in the morning…”). However, the MS ‘you’ is also used in
discourse that does not—or does not necessarily—call for the unmarked form. Indeed, feminists
have reported cases, both in private conversations and the media, of two women using the MS
‘you’ in discourse with each other, even in such obviously gendered cases as, “When you (MS) are
pregnant…” or, “When you (MS) are nursing your (MS) baby…” (Tobin, personal
communication). Thus, it has been hypothesized that the use of the unmarked MS ‘you’ serves to
create a depersonalized or universalized sense of meaning, allowing relation to ‘one’ or
‘every/anyperson.’
The second-person feminine singular (FS) pronoun (‘at’ in Hebrew; ‘you’ in English) also
signifies decoder, and also has two functions: 1) to address a specific female decoder; and 2) a
generic and/or general manner of usage between two females or in all-female groups, and specific
or generic (female) gendered situations and contexts (i.e., one might hear, “When you (FS) are
pregnant…” in this context). This second function has moved more into popular (and, some say,
even provocative) use in the past few years—primarily by feminists and the younger generation—
but is not viewed as conventional or widely accepted across generations or population sectors. As
the FS ‘you’ is marked for gender and number (Tobin, 2001), it is customarily utilized only in
person- or gender-specific discursive situations. Thus, the choice to use it (rather than the standard
neutral, unmarked MS form) may create a sense of greater proximity and less neutrality toward the
female individual being addressed. In the context of this study, it is suggested that a male bus
driver who uses the FS ‘you’ while speaking to a female interviewer about his own experiences
may be demonstrating an entirely different communicative strategy—one that has particular
implications regarding his attitude toward what he is describing and/or toward the specific decoder.
Central patterns and guiding hypotheses
Essentially, the foundation for this study is the linguistic assumption that the non-random
distribution of language within the drivers’ discourse may hold a specific set of meanings and
messages—which may, in turn, offer insight into their inner psychological worlds. In particular,
the guiding hypothesis is that their patterned use of pronouns and tenses may reflect their feelings,
attributions, and perceptions surrounding the terror attack they experienced, and its place within
their life narrative and life history. Specifically, this research asserts the following: 1) there exists a
number of specific, non-random patterns in these drivers’ discourse; 2) there exists a relationship
between each individual driver’s discursive patterns and his relevant perceptions and attributions;
3) there exists a meta-connection between this relationship and each driver’s perceptions of his
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surrounding societal discourse, particularly with regard to coping and resilience, masculinity and
heroism, and ‘acceptable’ behavior; and 4) this multifaceted dynamic relationship between the
individual’s discourse, his inner psychological world, and his perceptions of the surrounding
societal discourse can be utilized as a window to assess his longitudinal process of narrative
processing of the event he experienced.
Four central discursive patterns were found across the interviews conducted for this study.
First, first-person singular possessive pronouns (such as, ‘me,’ and, ‘my’) and phrases were found
to frequently be the subject of the sentence when the encoder was either: 1) describing an
experience that he saw as personalized for himself; or 2) attempting to personalize the experience
for himself. Second, the second-person MS decoder was found to frequently be the subject of the
sentence when the encoder was: 1) describing an experience that he saw as depersonalized from
himself; or 2) attempting to distance the experience from himself; and/or 3) describing an
experience in which he behaved passively and/or was being acted upon (particularly by the
perpetrator of the terror attack). Third, the second-person FS decoder was found to frequently be
the subject of the sentence when the encoder was: 1) describing difficult, stressful, and/or upsetting
sensory experiences (particularly relating to the terror attack and its aftereffects); and/or 2)
describing something that he perceived as particularly important for the interviewer to know,
understand, and/or vicariously experience. And fourth, the first-person singular encoder (‘I’) was
found to frequently be the subject of the sentence when the encoder was: 1) describing an
experience in which he was performing in an active, powerful, and/or ‘heroic’ manner; and/or 2)
describing an experience or behavior of which he approved, or saw as ‘acceptable.’
Furthermore, from a basic quantitative assessment of the pronoun and tense collocations in
the interviewees’ central narratives, three clear patterns emerged.
First, the MS ‘you’ was
collocated most frequently with the ‘present’ (proximate + experience-able) tense. Second, the FS
‘you’ was collocated almost exclusively with the ‘present’ (proximate + experience-able) tense.
And third, the ‘I’ could be collocated with all tenses, with the following interpretive sub-patterns
therein: 1) collocation of the ‘I’ with the ‘past’ (remote + experience-able) tense seemed to indicate
a higher level of narrative processing and (appropriate) psychological distance; and 2) collocation
of the ‘I’ with the ‘present’ (proximate + experience-able) tense seemed to indicate a lower level of
narrative processing and a greater sense of proximity and salience (‘alive-ness’ of the narration).
These linguistic patterns were further explored, leading to a forging of a connection between them
and the stated personal feelings and attitudes of the interviewees about their experiences and their
perceptions of their surrounding societal discourse. Consequently, this research ultimately asserts
four central psychosociolinguistic interpretive hypotheses regarding the communicative strategies
of the drivers interviewed herein.
First, it is hypothesized that first-person singular possessive pronouns and phrases are used
in contexts in which the encoder feels particularly connected to or responsible for the experience he
xxx
is describing. This can be viewed as a discursive technique that can pinpoint the speaker’s sense of
responsibility and/or guilt (or lack thereof) regarding the narrated experience, and identification
with facets therein (e.g., the victims—both animate and inanimate, such as the bus itself). A
heightened focus on the speaker’s personalized sense of the experience appears to substitute for an
acknowledgment of the collective nature of it in actuality.
Second, it is hypothesized that the unmarked MS ‘you’ pronoun is used predominantly in
contexts in which the encoder is making an attempt to generalize, universalize, collectivize, and/or
normalize what he is describing, out of a need to fit in with his surrounding society (and its norms).
This can be viewed as a technique aimed at encouraging, assisting, or requesting of the decoder/
audience to relate in a generalized manner to the speaker himself and/or to particular aspects of the
described experience. This may be utilized in neutral contexts, but may also come into play in
connection to ‘less acceptable’ aspects of the experience, which are often steeped in ambivalence
and uncertainty for the driver. This may particularly involve moments during which, he apparently
believes, he could or should have acted, thought, or felt differently—and thus, sees himself as
having not lived up to certain internalized personal, cultural, and/or societal expectations. The MS
‘you’ thus helps the encoder to send the message that the given issue or experience should be
universal, or that he wishes it were universal. In this sense, if the behavior or feeling is presented as
universal and ‘normal,’ then it can at least be a candidate for reinterpretation by the audience as
‘acceptable,’ in spite of the speaker’s ambivalence about it.
Third, it is hypothesized that the marked FS ‘you’ pronoun is used predominantly in the
most difficult experiential contexts, in which the encoder is making an attempt to connect
specifically and personally with me (the young, female, ‘new immigrant,’ advanced psychology
student and interviewer), and bring me in to what he is describing. This can be viewed as a
technique aimed at dealing with the most difficult and emotionally charged aspects (the
‘unacceptable’ parts) of the described experience.
These facets often simply do not lend
themselves to universalization, generalization, or normalization, as they are frequently the most
specific and specialized details of the terror attack, such as the experience of seeing blood and
smelling burning flesh. Because discursive ownership of these descriptions (by means of the ‘I’
pronoun) may be viewed, in the drivers’ eyes, as an acknowledgment of all the psychological
‘baggage’ that would likely accompany such an experience, the FS ‘you’ is most frequently
employed to displace these difficult and charged statements, or to share them with the decoder. In
this sense, the FS ‘you’ takes on all the facets of the terror attack experience that are viewed as
‘unacceptable’ within Israeli society—the trauma, the weakness, the moments of paralysis before
the ‘correct’ measures were taken.
This is perhaps the most complicated of the interpretive hypotheses, because it carries with
it five potential sub-hypotheses with regard to motivation: a) an attempt to both distance the given
feeling, statement, or experience from himself and project it onto me—as represented in the
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(hypothetical) statement, “I bring you in to it so you can take it away from me”; b) an attempt to
cause me to personally identify with or experience vicariously the given feeling, statement, or
experience—as represented as, “I bring you in to it so you can share it with me”; c) an attempt to
cope with the given feeling, statement, or experience—as represented as, “I bring you in to it so it
won’t be so hard for me to handle/so you can take some of the burden off me”; d) an attempt to
educate me—as represented as, “I bring you in to it as much as I can so you can try to understand
it, because no one can understand it without going through it”; and e) an attempt to connect, for the
simple sake of connection—as represented as, “I bring you in to it as much as I can, because I feel
so alone with it.”
All of these motivational hypotheses are equally valid and plausible, and it may not be
possible to discern with certainty which may have specifically contributed to a given interviewee’s
use of the FS ‘you’ at any given discursive moment. Furthermore, this communicative strategy
prompts the fundamental question as to whether a visceral, discursive connection with one’s
audience—regardless of the motivation for doing so—can, in itself, help the narrator in some way
to cope with or process the difficult aspects of a stressful life experience, such as a terror attack. It
is possible that each of the interviewees used this discursive strategy for different reasons; each
nonetheless forged a connection with his audience in the process, and by doing so seemed to find
some relief from the troubling effects of the experience and from telling about it. It is nonetheless
important for the purposes of this study to take notice of the particular statements and contexts in
which the FS ‘you’ was utilized by each of the interviewees, in order to detect where their
particular difficulties with the experience may lie.
Fourth, it is hypothesized that the ‘I’ pronoun is used predominantly in relation to actions,
feelings, or experiences that the encoder is willing and able to claim as his own, out of a degree of
personal acceptance and/or a sense that the surrounding society would approve (particularly with
regard to his behavior). This can be viewed as a technique aimed at calling attention to the
‘acceptable’ parts of the described experience, and sending the message to the audience that, “This
is what I did right.” This is most commonly collocated with active and agentic behavior at the
immediate scene of the terror attack, which positions the driver as masculine, powerful, heroic, and
unfailingly Israeli (in his perception of the definitions of these terms). While he was in shock or
passively experiencing the event, the ‘I’ is most often silenced, and transferred to either the MS or
FS ‘you.’
But when he was acting, helping, or saving, the ‘I’ is recruited to express this
unambiguously and unabashedly.
Finally, extending these hypotheses about the interpretive relationship between the
interviewees’ discourse, their inner psychological world, and their perceptions of the surrounding
societal discourse, the following three macro-level (across-participant) hypotheses are proposed: 1)
the driver(s) who perceive(d) themselves or were perceived as having behaved most actively and
‘heroically’ before, during, and/or after the terror attack use ‘I’ at a higher rate than the other
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interviewees; 2) the driver(s) who are/were most affected (psychologically, emotionally, and/or
physically) by the terror attack use the FS ‘you’ at a higher rate than the other interviewees; and 3)
the driver(s) who are/were most ambivalent about the ‘acceptability’ of their behavior before,
during, and/or after the terror attack use the MS ‘you’ at a higher rate than the other interviewees.
Thus, the first major goal of this study is to analyze the drivers’ discourse in their baseline
interviews only, investigating the relationship between their patterned communicative strategies, on
the one hand, and their beliefs and attributions about the ‘acceptability’ of their behavior and
feelings surrounding the stressful event they experienced, on the other.
Building upon the fundamental psycholinguistic findings and the extrapolated
psychosociolinguistic micro- and macro-level hypotheses delineated here, the second principal
objective of this study is to explore the drivers’ longitudinal processes of coping with, working
through, and processing of the terror attack experienced, as evident in their narrations of it. This
stage of analysis attempts to explore and define longitudinal development in psychological
processing from a comparative perspective on ‘parallel’ narratives told at two different points in
time. It is proposed that this can be accomplished by an analysis of the participants’ uses of six
mechanisms of narrative selection (Spector-Mersel, 2011)—inclusion, omission, silencing,
sharpening, flattening, and ‘appropriate’ meaning attribution—in both the form and content of both
their baseline and follow-up interviews. This may elucidate where the individual stands at the
present moment (that is, at the time of the second interview), with regard to: 1) the terror attack
experience and its potential psychological traumatic effects; 2) the process of narrating, processing,
and working through the experience, and where and how it stands in the life narrative (and life
itself); 3) his perceptions and appraisals of his behavior before, during, and after the terror attack
and related emotional attributions, such as guilt and responsibility; 4) his perceptions of his
surrounding society’s perceptions and appraisals regarding coping, resilience, and heroism (both in
general and in relation to his particular case); and 5) his sense of emotional and functional wellbeing vs. isolation within the experience and its effects.
To this end, comparative analyses were conducted on primarily the life narratives and terror
attack narratives of each participant’s baseline and follow-up interview pair, according to six
central narrative guidelines. To summarize, the proposed operationalization of a trajectory toward
more ‘ease-ful’ narrative processing involves a follow-up terror attack narrative that is more
distanced and less proximal and personalized than the parallel narrative in the baseline interview.
The follow-up narrative is less vivid, salient, and ‘alive,’ as represented by a heightened use of the
remote ‘past’ tense and less use of the proximate ‘present’ tense. There is more talking about, as
opposed to talking within, the terror attack experience, as represented through less emphasis and
dialogue. And there is less transferring of the most difficult, upsetting, and/or ambivalence-causing
facets of the experience from the ‘I’-voice to either of the ‘you’-voices. There is a sense that there
is more to the individual’s life (history and story) than the terror attack, as represented by its taking
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up a smaller volume within the life narrative, and by a less stark division or no partition at all
between the periods of life before, during, and after the terror attack. There is more evidence of
coping and processing, as represented in an increased capacity to discuss and work through issues
that may not be so ‘black and white.’
In contrast, the operationalization of a trajectory toward more ‘dis-ease-ful’ narrative
processing involves a follow-up terror attack narrative that is more personalized and proximate,
more vivid and descriptive, and more ‘alive’ (narratively and psychologically) than the respective
narrative in the baseline interview. There is more representation of this in the discourse, as the
narrator uses more emphasis and dialogue to bring the story to ‘life’ for himself and his audience.
This will include more transferring of any troubling or traumatic aspects of the terror attack
experience away from the ‘I’-perspective and onto either the MS or FS ‘you,’ depending on the
motivation for the transfer. There is a sense that the individual’s life has become condensed and
reduced to little more than the terror attack, as demonstrated in a substantial increase in the volume
occupied by the terror attack narrative within the life narrative. The terror attack narrative may also
stand alone or (discursively) outside of the life narrative, in a reflection that it is perceived by the
individual as standing outside of his ‘normal’ life history. In this sense, the more the terror attack
conspicuously protrudes from the life narrative, the less likely it is that it has been ‘ease-fully’
processed, worked through, and coped with by the narrator. Finally, the individual who shows
evidence of greater ‘dis-ease’ in his narrative processing will show a decreased willingness and
capacity to explore the range of possible reactions to a stressful event such as this. He may instead
demonstrate a stricter adherence to more rigid attitudes about ‘correct’ and ‘acceptable’ norms, and
may find it difficult to discursively claim any of his own behavior that he perceives as not fitting
these requirements.
Results and discussion
The fundamental contention of this study is that the manners in which these bus drivers tell
their narratives (particularly those of the terror attack and/or other especially emotionally charged
life event(s)) are influenced by three predominant factors: 1) their psychological stance—that is,
where they stand with regard to the terror attack experience; their own appraisals of their behavior
before, during, and after the attack; and their location on the continuum of narrative processing
development; 2) their sociological stance—that is, how they view the expectations of them held by
their surrounding society; how they perceive their society’s appraisal of their behavior before,
during, and after the attack; and how they have internalized the societal discourse on coping,
resilience, heroism, and ‘acceptability’; and 3) the complex and dynamic relationship between these
two stances—that is, whether the individual’s psychological stance is consistent with, rejects or
disapproves of, or is ambivalent about his sociological stance, at any given time or position.
The results of the analyses validated all of the central hypotheses postulated above, and
from this emerged two central findings.
The first is that a comprehensive and integrative
xxxiv
psychosociolinguistic analysis of the participants’ discourse (in particular, their uses of pronouns
and tenses) can reveal both their personal beliefs and attributions about their behavior vis-à-vis the
terror attack they experienced, and their perceptions about the attributions their society has made
about the same behavior. Specifically, the interviewees’ choices to utilize the first-person singular
pronoun (‘I’) or either the second-person singular masculine (‘you’ (MS)) or feminine (‘you’ (FS))
pronouns can reveal whether they are willing and able to ‘own’ the described facet of their
experience, or whether they are more motivated to universalize or depersonalize it, or to bring in or
project onto another subject. Each of these discursive decisions essentially reflects their perception
of whether their society ‘approves’ or ‘disapproves’ of the behavior, emotion, or belief.
The first set of findings examines the discourse of three participants: one who utilized the
FS ‘you’ pronoun in the most prominent manner; one who utilized the MS ‘you’ pronoun in the
most prominent manner; and one who utilized the ‘I’ pronoun in the most prominent manner. As
nouns and pronouns in Modern Israeli Hebrew are marked for gender, and verbs are also
conjugated according to gender, person, and number, the gender choices in each interviewee’s
discourse constitute a crucial aspect of the analysis. This places a focus on the dynamics between
the individual, on the one hand, and his perceptions of the expectations and attributions of his
surrounding society, on the other. It is claimed that coping and narrative processing exists in—and
can be encouraged and/or hindered by—the relationship between these two elements.
The second central finding is that a deep, multifaceted analysis of the participants’ use of
discourse (particularly, but not restricted to, their uses of pronouns and tenses) over time can
provide insight into their longitudinal coping and their narrative processing of the difficult event
they experienced. This set of results draws from comparative analyses of both the baseline and
follow-up interviews of three participants: one whose psychosocial functioning and processing of
the event ‘improved’ during the period between the interviews, and two others whose functioning
and processing remained relatively static during this period. These findings led to the proposition
of this unique type of psychosociolinguistic discourse analysis as a new and innovative qualitative
method for assessment of psychosocial functioning after a stressful or traumatic life event.
Contribution
The potential contributions of this research study are threefold: theoretical, methodological,
and practical. First of all, it involves an in-depth exploration of significant topics heretofore underresearched and under-represented in the relevant literature: 1) the population of Israeli bus drivers,
who provide a unique and complex picture of a cohort on the ‘front lines’ of a well-documented
stressful time period in the nation’s (and world’s) history; 2) semiotic facets of Modern Israeli
Hebrew—in particular, the use of the second-person feminine singular pronoun—that may reflect
important sociopsychological phenomena, on both the individual and societal levels; and 3)
longitudinal comparative narrative, or ‘retelling,’ research, which is considered a key window into
understanding issues of narrative identity and narrative development over time. This research
xxxv
aspires to contribute to the literature in all of these areas.
In addition to these more specific theoretical contributions, the present study proposes a
number of more general theoretical, methodological, and practical innovations, all of which have
the potential for a significant impact in the relevant fields.
First, a new and much-needed
interdisciplinary link between the psychological, sociological, and linguistic spheres is proffered, in
an attempt to bridge the gaps and draw out the strengths in each discipline. This study focuses on
the use of language (primarily, pronouns and tenses) in narratives, in an attempt to understand the
larger relationship between individual discourse and societal discourse. This involves a threepronged exploration, of: 1) the individual narrator/encoder and his narratives; 2) his particular
psychological world and perceptions of himself; and 3) his perceptions of his surrounding society
and its expectations of him. A thorough investigation of this nature clearly requires multiple
disciplines, perspectives, and approaches.
Research on the use of pronouns and tenses in discourse is relatively sparse in the domain of
academic psychology; the work that does exist is unfortunately unidisciplinary, with little
connection to the relevant literature in other fields. This research does exist, in abundance, within
the disciplines of linguistics, semiotics, and literature, but the majority of these studies similarly
make little attempt (and apparently find little need) to connect their respective findings to the fields
of psychology or sociology. Thus, a significant gap in the literature exists due to this lack of
interdisciplinary work. This doctoral research study, with its foundation in a methodical integration
of a sociopsychological conceptual and theoretical framework, a narrative paradigmatic and
discourse analytical methodological framework, and theory and analytical tools from sign-oriented
linguistics, aims to fill this gap and make a meaningful theoretical contribution to all three
academic fields. This is a truly interdisciplinary work, with multiple research domains providing
both theory and method, as well as informing the manner in which the findings are interpreted in
the final stage of analysis.
In addition, research on and methodology related to ‘retelling’—that is, the same
interviewer requesting a ‘parallel’ narrative from the same individual in a similar context at
different points of time—is equally sparse and underdeveloped. The longitudinal facet of this study
presents the opportunity to delve into an array of issues and discursive phenomena revealed in the
participants’ retellings, and to make connections between the form and content of their narratives,
on the one hand, and their processing and meaning-making surrounding the event they experienced,
on the other. This may lead to topical contributions to the literatures on coping with terror in Israel;
narrative methods and representations of coping; processes of coping and meaning-making over
time; and the relationship between individual and societal discourse.
Second, this study offers a two-pronged methodological contribution: 1) a new type of
‘mixed methods,’ represented in the integration of sociopsychological discourse analysis and signoriented semiotic analytical tools; and 2) a new model for a longitudinal comparative analysis of
xxxvi
uses of mechanisms of narrative selection and a variety of other discursive and communicative
strategies. The central methodological contribution lies in the expansion of Spector-Mersel’s
(2011) analytical method based on mechanisms of narrative selection, for use in longitudinal
comparative analyses. A focus on these selection mechanisms allows for a deep analysis of the
similarities and differences in the retellings, and a perspective on the possible motivations and
narrative ‘end points’ involved.
Finally, and as a result of both of these theoretical and methodological innovations, perhaps
the greatest potential contribution of the current study is the proposal of a qualitative tool for
narrative assessment of psychosocial functioning after a stressful or potentially traumatic life event.
The Narrative Method for Assessment of Psychosocial Processing of Stressful Life Events
(NMAPP) involves a single, simple probe: “Tell me the story of what you experienced.” This tool
may hold the capacity to ascertain a reliable picture of where the individual stands at the moment of
telling, with regard to: 1) the experience and its potential traumatic effects; 2) the process of
processing and narrating the experience, and where and how it stands in his/her life narrative; 3) the
individual’s assessment of his/her behavior during the experience and related emotional
attributions, such as guilt and responsibility; and 4) the individual’s sense of emotional and
functional well-being vs. isolation within the experience and its effects.
The NMAPP can potentially be used as either a single-use diagnostic tool or as a
comparative assessment tool.
In the former case, it could provide an acute assessment—for
instance, upon an individual’s arrival at a hospital after an accident or terror attack—in order to
allow care providers to gauge the level of susceptibility to post-traumatic symptoms or full-blown
PTSD. In the latter case, requests for the relevant narrative before and after a given therapy,
program, study, or other intervention could provide reliable evidence that longitudinal change has
occurred in the processing of the narrated experience. In both cases, a request for the narrative may
be therapeutic in and of itself. Indeed, it may assist the individual in organization of what may be
very chaotic events and experiences, and in the process of the creation of coherence from what may
be highly incoherent facets of experience—particularly in the acute post-event context.
The NMAPP analysis phase involves a mixed quantitative and qualitative analysis of the
narratives, with a three-pronged focus on: 1) the use of pronouns; 2) the use of tenses; and 3) the
use of mechanisms of selection. The focus on pronouns explores the discursive phenomena of
personalization vs. universalization, distancing vs. bringing in the interviewer/audience/society, and
isolation vs. collectivization. The focus on tenses explores the proximity vs. distance and level of
experience-ability of the discourse. And the focus on mechanisms of narrative selection places
under examination discursive phenomena such as emphasis (and over- and under-emphasis),
repetition, absences and silences, and related narrative markers of meaning and significance.
Perhaps most importantly, this latter focus provides a wider view of the position and prominence of
the narrative of the given emotionally charged experience within the individual’s larger life
xxxvii
narrative. This can then offer a perspective on the individual’s belief system and attributions about,
and processing of, the experience.
There are a number of significant advantages to this approach, which potentially constitute
justification for choosing the NMAPP over a more quantitative and positivistic approach. First, the
basis in the salutogenic perspective encourages less of a focus on symptoms and pathology, and
more empathy for the individual and his/her unique set of circumstances and psychic resources.
Consequently, this provides a greater sense of proximity to his/her lived experience. Second, the
qualitative approach proffers a welcome alternative to the lengthy batteries of impersonal and
potentially distressing questionnaires that are often the fundamental basis of any positivistic study
of, or intervention in, a traumatic context. An added benefit of the non-reliance on standardized
quantitative assessment measures is that, because the analysis involved is often of subconscious or
unconscious selection mechanisms and choice patterns, it would be nearly impossible for the
narrator to ‘hide’ symptoms or facets of his experience or process that he might actively choose not
to report on a questionnaire.
Third, the narrative approach offers an empathic, connecting experience for the individual,
which can be therapeutic in itself and can provide a ‘jump-start’ for a therapeutic relationship.
Indeed, asking an individual who has just experienced a difficult life event to simply tell his/her
story is an empathic request.
Contrarily, administering a pile of quantitative questionnaires,
especially immediately after a potentially traumatic event, can easily be experienced as quite the
opposite. Finally, the interdisciplinary dimension of the NMAPP-based approach can reveal a
highly comprehensive picture of psychological processing, coping, and resilience, on both the
individual and societal levels. The combination of perspectives culled from the content worlds of
clinical and social psychology and linguistics offers this wider view of such phenomena.
Ultimately, it may be possible to gain a clear picture of an individual’s resilience and processes of
meaning-making and coping simply by asking him/her—before and after a given therapy or
intervention, or at two given points in time—to tell his/her story of what he/she experienced. This
could contribute significantly to the field of psychological assessment, to research on coping and
resilience, and to the basic goal of understanding the human lived experience.
KEY WORDS:
psychosociolinguistic, social psychology, discursive psychology, sign-oriented semiotic
linguistics, qualitative inquiry, narrative research, discourse analysis, phenomenology,
content vs. form, retelling, salutogenesis, ‘ease/dis-ease’ continuum, resilience, coping,
working through, life stress, trauma, terror, heroism, Israeli bus drivers, Modern Israeli
Hebrew, pronouns, tenses, communicative strategies, pronoun poetry, mechanisms of
narrative selection, personal discourse, psychosocial discourse, sociocultural discourse,
behavioral attributions, meaning-making, psychosocial functioning, narrative processing,
narrative assessment
xxxviii
PART 1
Introduction, Background, Methods, and Preliminary Findings
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
TO THE RESEARCH STUDY AND THE DISSERTATION
1.1 INTRODUCTION TO THE RESEARCH STUDY
This chapter offers an overview of the research study and of the dissertation itself. It begins
with a brief summary of the study and its diverse surrounding contexts, and then details the
research question and four central domains through which the question is explored, as well as the
fundamental assertion of the study. The main findings of the research are then presented, as an
organizing summary to guide the reading of the dissertation. The importance, worthiness, and
contribution of the study are then discussed. The organization of the dissertation is then detailed,
by means of a brief description of each chapter and its principle contents. This is followed by a
discussion of several critical caveats to be kept in mind throughout the reading of the dissertation,
as the audience may be varied and certain key assumptions may not be taken for granted.
1.1.1 Background and overview
For much of the last three decades, the Israeli population has been exposed to significant
and continuing stress, primarily from the ever-present threat of terror attacks (TAs). The First and
Second Intifadas (1987-1993 and 2000-2004/2005, respectively) took place predominantly within
the confines of the Green Line border of Israel (as of the eve of the Six Day War in 1967); with the
hardest-hit targets highly populated civilian entities such as restaurants, cafés, malls, and buses.
Because of this, Israeli bus drivers constitute one of the central populations that have existed on the
‘front lines’ of these conflicts. This interdisciplinary, phenomenological, qualitative, narrative
research study endeavors to investigate the nature and manifestation of narrative processing and of
the complex and dynamic relationship between personal and societal discourse, on both a shortterm and longitudinal basis. The study seeks to do this through an examination of the discourse and
communicative strategies of male Jewish Israeli bus drivers who experienced TAs while on duty.
In-depth, semi-structured, qualitative interviews were conducted with eight drivers in Jerusalem
and Be’er Sheva. Five of the participants were then re-interviewed three years later, following the
same interview technique and structure. In addition to garnering life stories and narratives on the
TA(s) experienced, the overarching topics of the interviews surrounded issues of identity,
worldview, systems of coping and meaning-making, sociocultural norms, and overall belief and
attribution structures.
A salutogenic orientation provides the conceptual framework, and a psychosocial theoretical
and methodological perspective drives the exploration of both the form and content of the
narratives told by the drivers. Sign-oriented semiotic linguistic theory and discursive analytical
techniques associated with the Columbia School approach are utilized to understand the linguistic
meanings and extra-linguistic messages encoded in the discourse, reflecting the personal and
societal factors that may impact these individuals’ processes of meaning-making and narrative
1
processing. In particular, a theoretical background in sign-oriented linguistics and a semiotic
approach to Modern Israeli Hebrew (MIH) are relied upon to investigate the non-random
distribution of pronouns and tenses in these narratives, in relation to the reflected degree of
personalization vs. generalization and proximity vs. distance with regard to the speaker/encoder.
At the heart of this study lies the central assertion that there is a relationship between the manner in
which one tells and processes his personal narrative, on the one hand, and the nature and influence
of the sociocultural discourse surrounding him, on the other.
Analysis of the transcribed interview texts involves an exploration of the personal, familial,
communal, societal, and cultural forces that are at a constant interplay in the physical and
psychological lives of these individuals. The goal of this study is to offer a multidimensional
perspective on narrative processing in the specific context of Israeli bus drivers. Furthermore, the
underlying presumption is that the findings of this study can contribute to broader postulations
about the manners in which members of Israeli society at large may negotiate, cope with, and
process their varied experiences within a context of ongoing, widespread life stress. It is proposed
here that the communicative strategies shown in the form and content of these individuals’
discourse can reveal their feelings, attitudes, and attributions with regard to their perceptions of the
prevailing sociocultural discourse surrounding them. In the case of male Israeli bus drivers, this
discourse seems to facilitate and encourage a collective perception of an obligation to act and cope
resiliently and ‘heroically’ in the face of threat, and to discourage ‘less acceptable’ reactions.
1.1.2 The research question and central assertion
The principal research question of this study is essentially: “How are the narratives of male
Jewish Israeli bus drivers who experienced terror attacks both reflective of and shaped by their
perceptions of their own coping, resilience, and heroism, and by their perceptions of the
surrounding sociocultural discourse on these topics?” In its exploration of this question, the study
involves four central domains. The first is an integrative quantitative and qualitative discourse and
narrative analysis of each participant’s baseline interview (BLI) data, from which emerged a focus
on each individual’s differential uses of pronouns, tenses, other communicative strategies, and
discursive meanings and messages.
The second is an integrative quantitative and qualitative
discourse and narrative analysis of each participant’s follow-up interview (FUI) data, which
allowed for a focus on each individual’s longitudinal trends in the use of pronouns, tenses, other
communicative strategies, and discursive meanings and messages. The third involves comparative
analyses among participants, from which emerged a focus on the similarities and disparities across
the drivers with regard to their uses of pronouns, tenses, other communicative strategies, and
discursive meanings and messages, as well as their experiences, attitudes and beliefs, and the
2
influence of the prevailing societal discourse on their personal discourse. Finally, the fourth focus
involves comparative analyses within participants, from which emerged an understanding of the
longitudinal processes involved, and a capacity to recognize ‘improvement’ vs. ‘deterioration’ vs.
‘static-ness’ in narrative processing.
The central assertion of this study is that the manners in which these bus drivers tell their
narratives (particularly those of the TA and/or other especially emotionally charged life event(s))
are influenced by three predominant factors: 1) their psychological stance—that is, where they
stand with regard to the TA experience; their own appraisals of their behavior before, during, and
after the attack; and their location on the continuum of narrative processing development; 2) their
sociological stance—that is, how they view the expectations of them held by their surrounding
society; how they perceive their society’s appraisal of their behavior before, during, and after the
attack; and how they have internalized the societal discourse on issues related to coping, resilience,
heroism, and ‘acceptability’; and 3) the complex, dynamic relationship between these two
stances—that is, whether the individual’s psychological stance is consistent with, rejects or
disapproves of, or is ambivalent about his sociological stance, at any given time or position.
1.1.3 The central findings
From this research study emerged two central findings. The first is that a comprehensive
and integrative psychosociolinguistic analysis of the participants’ discourse (in particular, their uses
of pronouns and tenses) can reveal both their personal beliefs and attributions about their behavior
vis-à-vis the TA they experienced, and their perceptions about the attributions their society has
made about the same behavior. Specifically, the interviewees’ choices to utilize the first-person
singular pronoun (‘I’) or either the second-person singular masculine (‘you’ (MS)) or feminine
(‘you’ (FS)) pronouns can reveal whether they are willing and able to ‘own’ the described facet of
their experience, or whether they are more motivated to universalize or depersonalize it, or to bring
in or project onto another subject. Each of these discursive decisions essentially reflects their
perception of whether their society ‘approves’ or ‘disapproves’ of the behavior, emotion, or belief.
The first set of findings in this dissertation examines the discourse of three participants: one
who utilized the FS ‘you’ pronoun in the most prominent manner; one who utilized the MS ‘you’
pronoun in the most prominent manner; and one who utilized the ‘I’ pronoun in the most prominent
manner. As nouns and pronouns in MIH are marked for gender, and verbs are also conjugated
according to gender, person, and number, the gender choices in each interviewee’s discourse
constitute a crucial aspect of the analysis. This places a focus on the dynamics between the
individual, on the one hand, and his perceptions of the expectations and attributions of his
surrounding society, on the other. It is suggested that coping and narrative processing exists in—
3
and can be encouraged and/or hindered by—the relationship between these two elements.
The second central finding is that a deep, multifaceted analysis of the participants’ use of
discourse (particularly, but not restricted to, their uses of pronouns and tenses) over time can
provide insight into their longitudinal coping and their narrative processing of the event they
experienced. This section of results draws from comparative analyses of both the BLIs and FUIs of
three participants: one whose psychosocial functioning and processing of the event ‘improved’
during the period between the interviews, and two others whose functioning and processing
remained relatively static during this period. These findings lead to the proposition of this unique
type of psychosociolinguistic discourse analysis as a new and innovative qualitative method for
assessment of psychosocial functioning after a stressful or potentially traumatic life event.
1.1.4 The importance and contributions of the study
This research study is valuable, necessary, and important for several reasons. First of all, it
involves an in-depth exploration of significant topics heretofore under-researched and underrepresented in the relevant literature: 1) the population of Israeli bus drivers, who provide a unique
picture of a cohort on the ‘front lines’ of a well-documented stressful time period in the nation’s
(and world’s) history; 2) semiotic facets of MIH—in particular, the use of the second-person
feminine singular pronoun—that may reflect important sociopsychological phenomena, on both the
individual and societal levels; and 3) longitudinal comparative narrative, or ‘retelling,’ research,
which is considered a key window into understanding issues of narrative identity and narrative
development over time. This doctoral study aspires to contribute to the literature in all these areas.
In addition to these more specific theoretical contributions, the present study proposes a
number of more general theoretical, methodological, and practical innovations, all of which have
the potential for a significant impact in the relevant fields. First, this dissertation suggests a new
and much-needed interdisciplinary link between the psychological, sociological, and linguistic
spheres, in an attempt to bridge the gaps and draw out the strengths in each discipline. This may
lead to topical contributions to the literatures on coping with terror (in Israel and throughout the
world); narrative methods and representations of coping; processes of coping and meaning-making
over time; and the relationship between individual and societal discourse. Second, this study offers
a two-pronged methodological contribution: 1) a new form of ‘mixed methods,’ represented in the
integration of sociopsychological discourse analysis and sign-oriented semiotic analytical tools; and
2) a new model for a longitudinal comparative analysis of uses of mechanisms of narrative
selection (MNSs) and other discursive and communicative strategies. Finally, this research has
produced a potential practical contribution, in the form of a qualitative assessment tool: the
Narrative Method for Assessment of Psychosocial Processing of Stressful Life Events (NMAPP).
4
Because the number of participants in this study is small, because the TAs experienced were
of disparate types and magnitudes, and because the analyses were primarily micro-focused—
essentially a collection of case studies—the results and conclusions should be taken cautiously.
That said, great effort was made to relate the specific findings to the more general context, and it is
hoped that this research will shed light on the larger phenomena involved—from linguistic,
psychological, and sociological perspectives. Ultimately, perhaps the greatest contribution of the
study lies in its attempt to integrate all of these perspectives, facilitating a comprehensive
understanding of both the specific interviewees and the larger context around them.
1.2 INTRODUCTION TO THE DISSERTATION
1.2.1 The organization of the dissertation
This dissertation is divided into four parts.
Part 1 (Chapters 1-4) encompasses the
introduction and background, literature review, methods, and preliminary results and fundamental
hypotheses of the research study. Part 2 (Chapters 5-8) consists of analyses of the baseline data of
three participants and an across-participant comparative conclusion.
Part 3 (Chapters 9-10)
presents within-participant longitudinal comparative analyses of three participants. Finally, Part 4
(Chapter 11) encompasses the discussion and conclusion.
This first chapter provides an introduction to the research study and to this dissertation, and
delineates several important caveats and logistical information to be kept in mind throughout the
reading of this work. Chapter 2 offers a comprehensive review of the relevant theoretical literature
and conceptual frameworks upon which the study relies, and presents a discussion of the microand macro-level contexts—psychological, sociological, cultural, and linguistic—within which the
participants are located and findings interpreted.
Chapter 3 presents the data collection and
analytical methods of the study, including a description of the participant population and microcontext and a brief introduction to my reflexive position as the researcher. The interdisciplinary
methodological framework of the study is described in detail, and theoretical overviews of the three
primary content worlds—social and discursive psychology, sign-oriented semiotic linguistics, and
qualitative inquiry and the interpretive narrative paradigm—are proffered.
Methodological,
logistical, and ethical considerations specific to this study are then discussed, and the research is
justified with regard to its quality, validity, and trustworthiness. Chapter 4 concludes Part 1, with a
delineation of the fundamental psycholinguistic preliminary findings and the predominant
psychosociolinguistic interpretive hypotheses driving the research.
Part 2 presents three separate baseline case studies. Each chapter begins by introducing the
specific participant and giving a summary of his demographic background and of the TA he
experienced, as well as a discussion of my initial impressions, the interview contexts, and our
5
interactions. Then, there is a detailed presentation of the pronominal discourse of the interviewee’s
BLI, with particular focus on the pronoun used more predominantly. This is followed by a
quantitative analysis of the distribution of pronouns and tenses in the central analyzed narrative(s)
of the BLI, and then by a qualitative ‘poetic’ analysis of the same narrative(s). Each chapter
concludes with a discussion of the central findings and main messages illustrated in the analysis.
Part 2 focuses on each of these three participants as an exemplar of predominant usage of a
different pronoun. Chapter 5 presents Yossi, who used the second-person FS pronoun the most.
Chapter 6 presents Dani, who used the second-person MS pronoun the most. Chapter 7 presents
Motti, who used the first-person singular pronoun the most.
Finally, Chapter 8 offers a
comparative across-participant analysis of all three, from a psychosociolinguistic macro-level
perspective. Comparative focus is placed on their pronoun and tense use, meanings, and messages,
as well as their relevant personal experiences that may place these discursive findings into greater
context. Finally, connections are demonstrated between the study hypotheses, findings, and the
interviewees’ own words, particularly related to the larger topics of individual and collective
coping and societal pressure and expectations.
Part 3 presents three separate longitudinal comparative psychosociolinguistic case studies,
but is arranged slightly differently than Part 2. Chapter 9 returns to the case of Yossi, this time
analyzing his material from a longitudinal perspective, while Chapter 10 presents two similar cases
together. Here, Yossi is presented as a demonstration of ‘improvement’ in narrative processing,
while Eli and Shimi provide an illustration of unchanged, or static, narrative processing.
As in Part 2, both of these chapters begin with a holistic introduction and short summary of
the given participant’s demographic background and of the TA he experienced, as well as a brief
discussion of my impressions and the interview and interactional contexts. Chapter 9 builds on
Chapter 5, providing a quantitative analysis of the distribution of pronouns, tenses, and topics in the
central analyzed narratives of Yossi’s FUI. This is followed by a qualitative ‘poetic’ analysis of the
central TAN, and then a deep comparative analysis of Yossi’s uses of MNSs throughout both of his
interviews. Chapter 10 provides a condensed version of this analysis in the cases of Eli and Shimi,
presenting a comparative discussion of their life narratives (LNs) and central TA-related narratives.
Both quantitative and qualitative comparative analyses are shown for the baseline and follow-up
data of both participants, in addition to brief analyses of their predominant uses of MNSs across
both interviews. Conclusions are presented for each participant with regard to the discourse,
meanings, and main messages presented in their interviews.
Part 4 encompasses the final chapter of the dissertation. Chapter 11 endeavors to draw the
study findings into a dialogue with the relevant theoretical and conceptual foundations, with an
interpretive focus on the relationship between language, identity, narrative, culture, and media. The
6
contributions and implications of the study—most importantly, the proposal of the NMAPP model
and tool—are also presented, and the limitations and directions for future research are delineated.
1.2.2 Several important caveats
As may already be apparent, this research study is interdisciplinary in nature, attempting to
integrate three substantial content worlds that do not generally enter into extended dialogue with
each other. Even within each discipline, there are certain topics, ideologies, and methodologies that
are considered mainstream, while others have been relegated to the periphery. The possibility for
conflict or contradiction between some or all parts of this equation, therefore, is likely and must be
acknowledged. To that end, it is critical to locate myself and this dissertation within this complex
interdisciplinary forum, stating clearly which specific theoretical, methodological, and
academically ideological decisions have been made and why.
The first point of divergence regards the ‘voice’ of this dissertation. As evident herein, the
‘I’—my voice, as the primary researcher, interviewer, analyst, interpreter, writer, and experiencer
of this study—is fully present, not silenced, and even dominant at times.
The discourse of
reflexivity is a primary language of, and permeates, this work. Its essential consideration of my
role, perspectives and biases, and influence within and upon the methods, analysis, and writing of
the study drives frequent discussions of the context surrounding the co-construction of the
interviews conducted, references to my own background and what this may have contributed to the
study, and reflections on the potential problematic nature of my non-native status.
The positivistic-minded schools of psychology, sociology, and linguistics might likely find
this type of discourse and writing, with its highly personal and subjective tone, unconventional, to
say the least, and perhaps even ‘unscientific’ or ‘un-academic.’ They tend to favor, instead, a more
‘objective,’ distanced language that aims to underplay the role and influence of the researcher on
the research. The ideology of narrative research is founded upon the centrality of reflexivity and
the use and consideration of the ‘I’-voice as the co-constructor of the research context, however,
and most qualitative researchers would find anything less entirely unacceptable and untrustworthy.
It is this latter academic ‘home’ in which this study is most firmly situated, and which, therefore,
mediated the conflict between these two fundamentally opposed discourses. It should be stated
here, then, that my stance as a narrative researcher, and the stance of this work as a narrative
inquiry, is based upon the contention that there is no objective ‘truth.’ Indeed, every part of this
work is subjective, interpretive, and bound to a particular and situated context. In this sense, no
justice would be done to this fundamental assumption, and no academic gains made, by referring to
“the researcher” as an objective, generic, and generalizable being.
The second point of divergence involves the decision to situate this research within a
7
salutogenic conceptual framework. Many positivistic psychologists might argue that because the
population under study here experienced a potentially traumatic event (or, in their view, a
‘traumatic event’), their discourse should be viewed only from within a conceptual, theoretical, and
analytical perspective based on trauma, post-traumatic effects, and trauma discourse. In this view,
not invoking the ‘trauma prism’ every time I discuss the participants’ various uses of discourse and
attributions about their experiences could be seen as ‘missing’ a large piece of the analytical puzzle.
After hearing the stated opinions of the interviewees themselves, however, that the TAs they
experienced were undoubtedly difficult—but not necessarily traumatic—events for them, I felt it
necessary to widen my conceptual and analytical perspective. It was at this point in the research
process that the salutogenic approach, which actually views the pathogenic orientation as ‘missing’
an important part of the story, became central. I continue to believe that this was the right choice
for this particular study, although I do not deny that a trauma-focused view can be necessary in
many contexts. Indeed, even in this dissertation, there are certain points at which a discussion of
trauma and its related discursive phenomena was necessary and valuable. A pathogenic research
‘worldview,’ however, was not adopted for the conceptual framework of the study.
The third decision, or what could be seen as a point of convergence, involves the
overarching ideology around conducting this study as a multidisciplinary piece of research,
bringing in a variety of perspectives, approaches, and bodies of literature. In this sense, for
instance, particular aspects of the relevant literature within both the areas of sociopsychological
discourse analysis and linguistic discourse analysis are relied upon, and valuable contributions from
both perspectives are taken into account. In addition, the qualitative narrative paradigm provides
both ideology and methodology that seemed to be lacking in some of the other paradigms. It is in
this multidisciplinary manner that each approach can build on and enhance each other, with one
providing a view or tools that may be missing from the other, and vice versa. Indeed, one of the
basic goals of this study is to identify the points of convergence between various fields and attempt
to allow them to complement each other in order to arrive at a more comprehensive perspective.
A final, and related, decision that had to be made for this dissertation dealt with terminology
and accessibility issues. Because this work is interdisciplinary and may attract and be relevant to a
large and varied audience, I found myself constantly in a dilemma between making the language of
the study comprehensible to individuals outside of one or more of the fields under discussion, as
opposed to writing the dissertation in the most succinct manner possible. For instance, many
linguistic terms and notations had to be explicitly explicated, and a detailed discussion of a variety
of relevant semiotic facets of the MIH language was required as basic background for a nonlinguistic (and non-Hebrew-speaking) audience. The choice was made to refer to the various
pronouns in a more lay-friendly manner, and transcription rules were modified and simplified from
8
the linguistic conventions, all to facilitate greater understanding across the academic fields.
However, interviewee quotations were still kept predominantly faithful to the actual utterances
(rather than, for instance, taking out ‘unnecessary’ commas, elongated syllables, pauses, or extralinguistic clues, as many transcribers often do) because of their potential analytical significance.
Similarly, terms such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are commonplace and
widely understood in the psychological field, but needed to be defined for a linguistic audience.
And many fundamental concepts in the qualitative narrative domain, such as reflection, narrative
identity, and trustworthiness, required long introductory discussions in order to ground any
potential readership in the ideological building blocks of this study.
All of this has the
consequence, of course, of a significantly longer (and, at times, more arduous and potentially
repetitive) dissertation. This was a difficult decision to make, but, I believe, a necessary one, as a
primary goal of an interdisciplinary piece of work is to bring a variety of fields (and audiences)
together and into dialogue with one another. It is, in many ways, only by making this study fully
accessible to all, that it may have the potential to make an impact on any. It is my hope that the
length of this dissertation will not make it prohibitive to read by any and all.
A final note regards the fact that six articles were published over the course of the
conducting and writing up of this research study and dissertation—four (Perez & Sagy, 2011; Perez
& Tobin, 2009; Perez, Tobin, & Sagy, 2010; Tobin & Perez, 2009) directly related to the research
and findings discussed here and two (Perez & Tobin, 2010a, 2014) that utilized a form of
integrative psychosociolinguistic analysis similar to that used and proposed in this study, but on
other qualitative or narrative material. Several small parts or findings of this dissertation have thus
been published already, some in more or less the same form and some having undergone relatively
major revisions in the ensuing years. Because the writing of the articles and dissertation was both
ongoing and concurrent, I rarely cited myself in either source. In addition, much of the same
material and findings were discussed in various presentations given at conferences in both Israel
and abroad over the same time period (Golub, 2007; Perez, 2010a, 2010b, 2012; Perez & SpectorMersel, 2012a, 2012b; Perez & Tobin, 2010b, 2012), and so should be acknowledged as part of the
research process. Much of this process was, in fact, dynamic and reciprocal, as the act of thinking
about and writing up my findings for an article or conference presentation, and then receiving
feedback from external readers and peers, had a significant influence on my analyses and on the
versions of the dissertation chapters I was writing up at the time. Therefore, citing one or the other
source seems impossible, as all were constantly in dialogue with each other.
9
CHAPTER 2
LITERATURE REVIEW:
THE CONCEPTUAL, THEORETICAL, AND CONTEXTUAL
FRAMEWORKS OF THE RESEARCH STUDY
2.1 INTRODUCTION
This chapter presents the conceptual, theoretical, and psychosociolinguistic frameworks and
contexts of this study, from within a review of the relevant literature in a wide variety of fields. It
begins with a conceptual review of the salutogenic paradigm and the ‘ease/dis-ease’ continuum, as
well as a brief discussion of the field of stress and coping and of the dominant terms therein, such
as resilience, hardiness, and ‘working through.’ The next section presents the psycholinguistic
conceptual framework, through a review of the literature on narrating trauma and the properties and
dynamics of traumatic memory, the processes and nature of retelling and narrative processing over
time, and the relationship between the use of pronouns and the health of the narrator.
The subsequent section offers a discussion of the macro-level psychosocial context of the
research, focusing on Israeli society at large and its most pressing threats—terror, trauma, and
war—with a view into the daily phenomenological experience of shared, communal, chronic stress.
Particular focus is placed here, too, on the salutogenic perspective, and the unique strain of ‘Israeli
resilience’ is explored. A discussion of the primary characteristics of and hegemonic myths in
Israeli culture is also provided, viewed through the emphasis on masculinity, strength, and heroism;
the ‘culture of power’ and centrality of the military; and peer pressure to cope and act ‘acceptably.’
The chapter concludes with a glimpse into the micro-level psychosocial context within which this
research takes place. The history, company culture, and demographics of Egged Bus Company are
discussed, in addition to the psychosocial discourse and experiences surrounding the drivers.
Particular attention is paid to what is viewed through the perspective of this study as the
fundamental dilemma of being an Egged driver, and where and how these bus drivers exist in their
day-to-day reality within their jobs and within the security situation in Israel.
2.2 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK OF THE RESEARCH STUDY
This section presents a discussion of the overarching psychological conceptual and
theoretical framework of this study, organized around the salutogenic orientation. The primary
message here is that, although this research deals with individuals who experienced an undoubtedly
stressful and potentially traumatic life event, there is no presumption that they were traumatized by
it, nor that their recounting of the experience should fall under the category of a ‘trauma narrative.’
Instead, this study’s salutogenic perspective emphasizes the manners in which these drivers are
coping well, behaving resiliently, and drawing upon their existing psychic and emotional resources
to work through these difficult experiences in the most adaptive manner of which they are capable.
2.2.1 Salutogenesis and the ‘ease/dis-ease’ continuum: A paradigmatic shift
The field of psychological research on coping with stress and trauma has traditionally been
based on a pathogenic view, which focuses on what is wrong with a given individual rather than on
10
what is working well, even in the face of other problems or psychopathologies. In the 1970s,
Aaron Antonovsky proposed an innovative approach and dramatic shift in thinking about stress and
its consequences, which he labeled salutogenesis (Antonovsky, 1979, 1984, 1987; Sagy &
Antonovsky, 1996, 2000).
This perspective relies on the assumption that humans live in an
environment that is more often than not filled with stress and chaos, and are prone to experience a
great deal of challenge in the normal course of their lives.
As such, under this conceptualization, health is viewed as not a ‘natural’ or automatic state
of being, but rather, one that must constantly be renewed and reestablished in the face of threats
that come in the form of stress or disruption. Indeed, as Antonovsky (1987) asserted, a primary
source of the salutogenic orientation is “the fundamental assumption of heterostasis, disorder, and
pressure toward increasing entropy as the prototypical characteristic of the living organism” (p. 2).
Essentially, this is predicated on the assumption that disease (and trauma and stress) is not at all an
unusual occurrence; as opposed to the pathogenic orientation, which assumes that the living
organism is generally in a state of homeostasis that only occasionally becomes disregulated.
Antonovsky (1979, 1987) proposed that the factors that promote and enable healthy
functioning and coping with this stress be focused upon more intently—certainly no less so than the
causes of pathology and dysfunction.
Indeed, he suggested that clinicians and theoreticians
conceive of their patients and clients not (just) as being currently sick, but as people who could be,
and naturally strive to be, healthy. An important corollary of this perception holds that everyone is
both potentially vulnerable to, as well as possibly protected from, stress and trauma-related effects
(Sagy & Dotan, 2001). Thus, it must be asked not only what causes illness, but what contributes to
health. The salutogenic orientation, which seeks to understand the origins of health, thus asks,
“why are people located toward the positive end of the health ease/dis-ease continuum, or why do
they move toward this end, whatever their location at any given time?” (Antonovsky, 1987, p. xii).
Out of a rejection of the traditional conceptualization of a fundamental dichotomy between
‘healthy’ and ‘sick,’ Antonovsky (1979, 1987) proposed this multidimensional health ease/dis-ease
continuum instead, noting that it can be fluid and dynamic. The salutogenic orientation thus
focuses on exploring the location of a given individual, at any given time, on this continuum, rather
than a rigid classification of illness or health. Perhaps the greatest advantage of this model, as
expressed by Antonovsky (1987), is that “It keeps us from falling into the trap of focusing solely on
the etiology of a given disease rather than always searching for the total story of a human being,
including his or her sickness” (p. 12).
This leads to a greater focus on the coping resources at the individual’s disposal, and his or
her ability to deal with and work through a stressor, rather than just the stressor itself. Antonovsky
(1987) also recommended placing emphasis on an exploration of the factors or resources that could
11
lead to the individual staying in the same place on the continuum or moving in an ‘ease-ful’
direction. Indeed, as Antonovsky (1987) suggested, any life stressor inevitably leads to a state of
tension or disruption, and “whether the outcome will be pathological, neutral, or salutary depends
on the adequacy of tension management” (p. xii). It is in this domain that the present research
lies—exploring, essentially, the participants’ discursive methods of ‘tension management’; that is,
how the participants cope with the stress of the terror attack (TA) they experienced, through
narrating their stories. A corollary of this examines whether their narrations and particular uses of
communicative strategies may actually assist them in their coping and meaning-making processes.
The conceptualization of a stressful life event as potentially but not necessarily problematic
is a particularly useful building block for the present study. Antonovsky (1987) noted that “…the
pathogenic orientation invariably sees stressors as pathogenic, as risk factors, which at best can be
reduced, inoculated against, or buffered,” (p. 7), while the salutogenic orientation makes no such
assumptions; rather, taking a larger, holistic view of the individual’s circumstances and perceptions
about the stressor before crystallizing a view. Granted, as Antonovsky (1987) contended, “some
stressors—for example, the ax descending on one’s head—are very predictably destructive of
health, irrespective of one’s coping resources. But the assumption that ‘stressors are inherently
bad’ is tenuous” (p. 7).
A TA could conceivably be considered to be more analogous to this “ax”—a major stressor
that could have lasting implications for the life and health of the experiencer. However, as the
majority of the participants of this study demonstrate, a TA may not always cause indelible trauma.
And even when it does, the natural drive toward health ‘ease,’ together with the use of the array of
coping mechanisms and adaptive tools at one’s disposal, will often lead to a more resilient response
than the pathogenic orientation might predict. Indeed, Antonovsky (1987) asserted, a salutogenic
perspective is based on the assumption that there is generally, and more often than not, “good
theoretical reason to predict positive health consequences” (p. 8). Many life stressors, therefore,
may actually have salutary effects in the long run. Although Antonovsky’s (1979, 1987) original
conceptualization of the salutogenic orientation was aimed primarily at the medical field, much can
be gleaned and adapted to suit a psychosocial study such as this. For the purposes herein, the
‘ease/dis-ease’ continuum has been adopted as a model for health in narrative processing. Thus,
rather than discussing a participant as having ‘improved’ during the period between his interviews,
he will be referred to as located closer to the ‘ease-ful’ end of the narrative processing continuum.
Ultimately, Antonovsky (1987) suggested that the salutogenic perspective should not
eclipse, or cause us to abandon, the pathogenic orientation; rather, both outlooks should be viewed
as complementary to each other. In the current study, this may mean that if an individual has
clearly been suffering from post-traumatic symptoms as a result of the TA he experienced, this
12
should be acknowledged and taken into account with regard to his life, narratives, and discourse.
And yet, trauma should not be assumed a priori. As Denham (2008) asserted:
“It is important to recognize that traumatic events do not always result in psychiatric distress; individuals, as
well as societies, differ in the manner in which they experience, process and remember events. Thus, distress
resulting from a trauma experience is not due to the traumatic event per se, but the response attributed to, or
meaning derived from the trauma experience (Erikson, 1995; Garland, 1998). Accordingly, it is important to
differentiate between an event that may potentially cause a trauma response and an individual’s actual
response to trauma. It is impossible to predict and irresponsible to assume that a particular event, no matter
how (in)significant, will affect two individuals or cultural groups in the same way” (p. 395).
Indeed, a focus on the positive factors in the participants’ lives and their various potential coping
resources allows a larger picture to emerge and a deeper analysis of the factors involved. In
contrast, simply assuming that every narrative they tell about the TA they experienced is ‘a trauma
narrative’ can lead to a narrow focus and a tendency toward potentially limiting classification,
which can cause a loss of perspective on the other ‘non-traumatic’ facets or characteristics present
in the narrative.
In Antonovsky’s (1987) view, perhaps the most important implication of
salutogenically-oriented thinking is that it “not only opens the way for, but compels us to devote
our energies to, the formulation and advance of a theory of coping” (p. 13). In many ways, the
present study places a magnifying glass on the interviewees’ manners and manifestations of
discursive coping, by means of viewing their experiences and narratives through a salutogenic lens.
2.2.2 Stress, coping, resilience, and working through
The emergence of salutogenesis and other similar models created a paradigmatic shift,
representing an entirely new outlook and approach to research on stress and coping. Wholly new
and different questions came to the forefront as a result of this focus on how individuals cope with
stressors, manage well in the face of adversity, and achieve health in spite of constant challenges—
which led to the emergence of a variety of new constructs, such as hardiness, resilience, and
posttraumatic growth (Calhoun & Tedeschi, 1998; Tedeschi & Calhoun, 1996). Perhaps the most
valuable finding that emerged was the salutogenic possibility of remaining ‘unscathed,’ or even
simply ‘growing out’ of the effects of a prior stressor (Almedom, 2005).
Parallel to the salutogenic paradigm appeared the concept of psychological resilience, the
definition and operationalization of which have undergone a number of shifts since the 1970s.
Resilience was initially conceptualized as a static, individualized, and built-in characteristic that
one either does or does not have, with frequent references in early definitions to “invulnerability,”
“invincibility,” and “stress resistance” (Anthony, 1987; Bolig & Weddle, 1988; Maluccio, 2002;
Masten, 2001). Some of the more general perspectives referred to resilience as simply “the ability
to recover from trauma,” or, even more vague, “overcoming the odds,” citing positive outcomes
and successful adaptation (Masten, Best, & Garmezy, 1990; Murphy & Moriarty, 1976; Werner &
Smith, 1982, 1992). In these early inquiries, resilience was conceptualized as trait-based or related
13
to specific coping styles, and synonymous with “bouncing back” and “optimal functioning”
(Higgins, 1994). A central tenet of these definitions was that the “resilient individual” must not
have any signs of post-traumatic stress, and if there were symptoms in the past, there must have
been a full (and preferably swift) recovery. Within this focus on the individual, contextual and
ecosystemic contributing factors were wholly unexamined (Waller, 2001).
Later conceptions of resilience related to particular genetic and/or personality protective
factors that defended an individual from succumbing to the effects of stressful life events, and some
researchers discussed environmental protective factors that could enhance personal resilience.
Rutter (1987) conceptualized vulnerability factors (which exacerbate an individual’s non-adaptive
reaction to negative situations) and protective factors (which mitigate the harmful effects of a
stressor) as being on opposite ends of a continuum, proposing an interactional and transactional
view, with these mechanisms perceived as key turning points rather than attributes. In light of this,
operational definitions of resilience began to appear that emphasized specific protective factors that
seemed to allow an individual to be more likely to show resilience in the face of or after
experiencing a stressful life event. In this sense, resilience was seen as the absence of serious
negative effects of difficult life circumstances, and it was suggested that self-esteem and selfefficacy are the most important traits in resilient people (Turner, Norman, & Zunz, 1995).
One of the more enduring early conceptualizations in this field was hardiness (Kobasa,
1979; Kobasa, Maddi, & Kahn, 1982; Kobasa & Puccetti, 1983), which suggested that those with
so-called “hardy personalities” were more predisposed to cope more successfully with stress and to
emerge with less serious, if any, psychopathological aftereffects. In particular, Kobasa (1979)
discussed three core concepts within this personality type: 1) a commitment to the self and to one’s
surrounding atmosphere, including one’s overall sense of worth, purpose, and meaningfulness
within life; 2) a perception of change as a challenge rather than hardship or threat; and 3) a belief
that events can be controlled (that is, an internal locus of control). Alongside of this, and as an
outgrowth of his salutogenic approach, Antonovsky (1979) coined the term, sense of coherence,
defined as “a global orientation that expresses the extent to which one has a pervasive, enduring,
though dynamic, feeling of confidence that one’s internal and external environments are predictable
and that there is a high probability that things will work out as well as can reasonably be expected”
(p. 132).
Out of this came a well-known and widely-utilized theoretical and practical tool
conceptualized by Antonovsky (1979, 1993, 1994), which has been used and evaluated in a wide
variety of contexts, populations, and dimensions (Antonovsky & Sagy, 1986; Cohen & Kanter,
2004; Eriksson & Lindström, 2005, 2006; Flannery, Perry, Penk, & Flannery, 1994; Frenz, Carey,
& Jorgensen, 1993; Holmberg, Thelin, & Stiernström, 2004; Johnson, 2004; Lustig, Rosenthal,
Strauser, & Haynes, 2000; McSherry & Holm, 1994; Sagy & Antonovsky, 1992; Sagy,
14
Antonovsky, & Adler, 1990; Strümpfer & Mlonzi, 2001; Yeheskel, 1995).
This perspective on individual personality factors paved the way for a further shift in the
dominant definitions of resilience, from trait-centered to process-centered (Sullivan, 1993). A
focus on resilient mechanisms as opposed to resilient characteristics appeared, allowing for the
possibility of an individual to be resilient in one area of life and perhaps less resilient in another.
This threw into question the idea of a “resilient individual” at all, relativizing the concept and
permitting the view that nearly any individual can engage in resilient processes at one time or
another, to some degree and in some capacity. It was suggested that, “Protection does not reside in
the psychological chemistry of the moment but the ways in which people deal with life changes and
in what they do about their stressful or disadvantageous circumstances” (Rutter, 1987, p. 329).
Resilience thus became a property of the situation, the environment, and the coping processes that
are utilized to allow the successful negotiation of such circumstances.
At this point in the literature, resilience was no longer viewed as a specific, quantifiable
category, but rather as a continuum—allowing an exploration of how, rather than if, an individual
was resilient. This opened up the possibility for an individual to be more or less resilient within a
given domain of functioning, more or less resilient in a given stressful event, and more or less
resilient in one environmental or social context than in another. In this way, “Depending on the
different definitions, different people can appear to be resilient. Resiliency in one arena of life does
not ensure resiliency in all other domains” (Grossman, Cook, Kepkep, & Koenen, 1999, p. 14).
The focus then shifted yet again, with a claim that the environment in which the individual attempts
his coping tasks is also essential to the development of resilience. Thus, a transactional framework
was proposed for understanding the concept of resilience (Grossman et al., 1999), with the basic
assumption that it does not exist in a vacuum; rather, this interaction between an individual and his
or her social and physical environment is reciprocal in its effects on both sides. In this sense,
resilience was viewed as a mechanism that draws on a variety of processes and has the capacity to
develop through biological, psychological, and environmental avenues (Grossman et al., 1999).
Indeed, the multidimensional nature of resilience has been evidenced by its ability to utilize both
personal and environmental dynamics (Rutter, 1987).
Although the current literature is far from showing widespread agreement, and indeed, the
frequently changing definitions and conceptualizations have led to some confusion and lack of
clarity in the literature (Humphreys, 2003), there is currently a tentative consensus regarding a
number of facets of the resilience concept. For one, resilience is widely viewed as dynamic and
fluid (Bonanno, 2004). In this sense, the belief that “resilient people” respond to all stressors in the
same manner, or even that all stressful life events can produce the same type and style of resilience,
holds little justification anymore. Indeed, it is now fairly well established that, more than specific
15
personality traits or a particular lifestyle, the tendency toward resilience may lie in a set of
protective factors that individuals can possess inherently or actively adopt (Bonanno, 2004).
This research field is now at a place and time in which it is not seeking to define, or even to
prove the existence of, the resilient individual, or the resilient context, in isolation. In fact,
resilience is now generally conceptualized as the successful dyadic, interactional relationship
between the individual and his or her ecosystemic context, those developmental and dynamic
processes that both define and impact resilience and its effect on the individual under stress. This
dynamic conceptualization allows for growth and change and a constant reshaping of the concept
within its context. Indeed, as Waller (2001) notes, “There is growing recognition that resilience is
multidimensional and multidetermined, and can best be understood as the product of transactions
within and between multiple systemic levels over time (Walsh, 1998)” (p. 294). The present
research attempts to contextualize resilience in this manner, with an implicit hypothesis that this
interaction is essentially triangular, involving not only the individual and his context, but the event
as well. This tridirectional relationship is the meeting point at which this study takes place.
Within the context of references to coping with stress, this dissertation uses a number of
terms and concepts not wholly interchangeably, but in concert and in dialogue with each other.
That is, much discussion is conducted about the drivers’ coping processes and abilities, narrative
and psychological processing, and resilience. A final useful concept that is also drawn upon at
certain points in the analysis is that of working through, a term which was first coined by Freud
(1930) to describe the long and intensive therapeutic process that unfolds between a therapist and
patient, particularly within the context of repressed childhood experiences. The assertion was that
this process is the conduit to bring any repressed content into the conscious domain, in order to
release it from continuing to create a disturbance in functioning or cause interference with the
individual’s emotions, behavior, and/or attitudes (Novey, 1962; Bar-On & Kassem, 2004).
The concept of working through has also undergone a number of developmental shifts over
the years, with perhaps the most general current definition prescribing a basic form of internal
processing or “learning to live with the painful past better than one has up to now” (Bar-On &
Kassem, 2004, p. 290; Bar-On, 1995; Lehman, Wortman, & Williams, 1987). It has been applied
and appropriated in a variety of contexts and studies; most prominently, with individuals who
underwent traumatic experiences and suffer from PTSD (Danieli, 1988), with Holocaust survivors
(Bar-On & Kassem, 2004; Maoz & Bar-On, 2002) and vis-à-vis the intergenerational traumatic
effects on their children (Bar-On, 1995; Danieli, 1988) and grandchildren (Litvak-Hirsch & BarOn, 2006), and with descendants of Nazi perpetrators (Bar-On, 1989, 1990; Bar-On & Kassem,
2004). It has proved a valuable concept particularly regarding long-term coping after profoundly
traumatic events, in an attempt to understand deeply-rooted psychological wounds, loss, and
16
feelings of helplessness, and the processes involved in coming to terms with these indelible effects
(Danieli, 1988; Davidson, 1980).
With regard to the third generation’s process of working through familial Holocaust
experiences, Bar-On (1990) proposed a typology of five stages, characterized by: 1) knowledge of
what happened to their family during the Holocaust; 2) understanding of these events, by placing
the newfound knowledge of the facts “within a meaningful human, historical, social, or moral
frame of reference”; 3) emotional response to this knowledge and understanding, which can include
anger, fear, shame, and/or pride; 4) the formation of a particular attitude about these familial
experiences, based on the knowledge, understanding, and emotional response, and their
implications; and 5) the behavior enacted as a result of all of these factors in dynamic relationship
with each other, in relation to the past, present, and future.
While much of this is specific to the particular events and experiences involved in the
Holocaust and the intergenerational familial transmission of its aftereffects, some facets of these
stages may be applicable to the current research study. That is, the drivers’ processes of working
through their TA experiences often may involve, or begin with, gathering knowledge about what
factually transpired during the attack (either because they may have been unconscious at some
point, or because of added information about the terrorist uncovered only after the fact, by the
police or other intelligence sources). They also may have a need to place these ‘facts’ into a social
or political context, in order to make sense and meaning out of the experience.
There is
undoubtedly an emotional response as well as set of attitudes, beliefs, and attributions involved in
the drivers’ processes of coping with and working through these experiences. Finally, the drivers
develop a variety of behaviors in response to all of these stages and processes. Perhaps most
relevant to the present study is their set of narrative behaviors—the discursive patterns and
communicative strategies evident in their interviews, which are reflective of the influence of these
working-through factors and stages.
In many ways, therefore, the concept of working through has proven useful in this context,
and is employed alongside and sometimes interchangeably with discussions of coping and
processing. Ultimately, as Denham (2008) asserted with regard to trauma narratives, “embedded
within…were numerous strategies for resilience, or a non-pathological adaptive response and
ability to maintain or ‘spring back’ to a stable equilibrium after experiencing adversity (Bonanno,
2004; Conner, Davidson, & Lee, 2003; Dion Stout & Kipling, 2003; Luthar, Cicchetti, & Becker,
2000)” (p. 392). It is this salutogenic focus on adaptive responses rather than pathological ones, on
resilience rather than ‘falling apart,’ and on equilibrium rather than trauma, that drives the present
research study and the analyses and interpretations herein.
17
2.3 THE PSYCHOLINGUISTIC CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK OF THE RESEARCH STUDY
This section focuses on the psycholinguistic literature relevant to this research, surrounding
the topics of traumatic memory and narratives, retelling and narrative processing, and the
relationship between such narrations (and various discursive strategies therein) and the health of the
narrator. The primary message is that, although this study does not presuppose trauma or traumatic
effects in the lives of these drivers, it is necessary to review the full range of possible mechanisms
at work in their processes of narrating, processing, and making meaning out of their experiences.
Thus, these narratives may not be characterizable as ‘trauma narratives,’ but may nonetheless show
some signs or signals of trauma, and these should be identifiable to this audience. In addition,
attention is paid to the properties of ‘healthy’ narratives of traumatic experiences, and the adaptive
processes involved in creating such narratives.
2.3.1 Narrating trauma and traumatic memory
Although this study does not presume that the TAs experienced by the participants were
necessarily traumatic, or that each participant necessarily experienced post-traumatic symptoms as
a result, a TA such as those discussed here can, and should, be considered a potentially traumatic
event. As such, some of the characteristics of what are referred to as ‘trauma narratives’ may be
found in some of the narrative material presented herein, while others may not be relevant. This
research holds as an ideological tenet that a narrative told by an individual who experienced a
potentially traumatic event should not necessarily be automatically characterized as a ‘trauma
narrative,’ and that a ‘narrative of trauma’ is not the same as a ‘trauma narrative.’ Nonetheless, it is
necessary to present a brief discussion of the literature on processes and manners of narrating
trauma, beginning with a basic review of the interplay between memory, identity, and trauma.
2.3.1.1 Memory, identity, and trauma
Humans use memory to relate their present to their past, to understand the world around
them, and to create an interpretation of both themselves and others that utilizes this experience and
knowledge. As Hirsch (1995) claimed, “As an individual reconstructs his or her biography through
memory, that biography becomes the basis for identity,” adding, “The connection between memory
and identity is dialectical because memory both shapes the content of what is communicated by the
socialization process and is formed by that process. Ultimately, the self does not develop in a
vacuum” (p. 133). Indeed, as Tuval-Mashiach et al. (2004) asserted, “People infuse meaning into
their lives, into the events they have experienced, and into the choices they have made, through the
stories they tell about themselves” (p. 281). In essence, memory is the fundamental force behind
identity formation and self-understanding. Without childhood memories, one would not know how
one came to be, what one likes or dislikes, or why one thinks and feels a certain way in response to
18
a certain situation. Without memories of life events and circumstances such as marriage, the birth
of a child, or the death of a parent, there can be no cohesive understanding of one’s life course.
Personal identity is created out of personal memories, and both reciprocally influence each other as
well as the life story itself. In this sense, the life story both reflects and expresses the identity of the
narrator, as well as “shap[ing] and influenc[ing] the transformations of that identity…because it is
through their stories that individuals come to know themselves or to reveal themselves to others”
(Tuval-Mashiach et al., 2004, p. 281; Lieblich, Tuval-Mashiach, & Zilber, 1998).
The nature of human memory is such that particular and increased attention is often paid to
those events that are more significant for some reason—whether they are especially emotional,
meaningful, exciting, or traumatic. The events that have the most impact on an individual are thus
most often and likely the ones that are remembered with the most clarity and longevity. Brown and
Kulik (1977) coined the term, flashbulb memory, to refer to this type of extremely vivid and
essentially permanent memory, generally produced by an unexpected and/or emotionally important
or arousing event. These memories are often almost photographic in nature, acting to preserve the
event in the mind as a flashbulb captures a photograph. Because traumatic memories are encoded
in this different fashion and context, the retrieval of traumatic memories also occurs in an atypical
manner. The very act of remembering these events can be difficult, painful, and intrusive, because
of the strong sensory and visual content. As Herman (1992) described this process:
“Long after the danger is past, traumatized people relive the event as though it were continually recurring in
the present. They cannot resume the normal course of their lives, for the trauma repeatedly interrupts. It is as
if time stops at the moment of trauma. The traumatic moment becomes encoded in an abnormal form of
memory, which breaks spontaneously into consciousness, both as flashbacks during waking states and as
traumatic nightmares during sleep. Small, seemingly insignificant reminders can also evoke these memories,
which often return with all the vividness and emotional force of the original event” (p. 37).
In this sense, traumatic memories do not always need retrieval cues, or at least, related retrieval
cues; rather, they can intrude into daily consciousness without warning or invitation. In addition,
with regard to meaning-making and emotional management in the face of protracted stress and/or
directly after a potentially traumatic event, Shalev (2004) asserted that events such as TAs can have
a particularly unthinkable nature, which can make it difficult to cope with, manage, and make sense
of them. Furthermore, Shalev (2004) noted, “stressful events become traumatic when they include
novel and incongruous experiences, such as exposure to extreme brutality, disfigured dead bodies,
people jumping out of windows, or major loss,” and result in an experience of horror for the
survivor. In this sense, while not all stressful life events are experienced as traumatic, the existence
of any of these components may increase the likelihood that an event may become traumatic for the
experiencer. In fact, Shalev (2004) claimed that individuals who experienced a TA in Jerusalem
suffered from “extreme forms of intrusive recollections” directly after the experience, and that:
“These ‘flash bulb’ recollections typically consist of repeated visual images of the most horrific fragment of
the event. Some survivors find it difficult to close their eyes, because of disturbing mental images of horror.
19
For some, the intrusive images consist of scenes acquired in the aftermath of a blast, that is, during rescue. …
For them, the event has became [sic] traumatic because of its ‘informational load’ ” (p. 175).
Some of the interviewees in this study described exactly these types of experiences, memories, and
difficulties with ‘flashbacks’ and intrusive recollections. This “informational load” apparently
caused them much distress, often expressed in both the content and form of their discourse.
All of these characteristics of traumatic memory present problems for the development and
organization of a cohesive life narrative (LN) based upon a coherent set of memories. Because, as
Herman (1992) claimed, these types of memories “are not encoded like the ordinary memories of
adults in a verbal, linear narrative that is assimilated into an ongoing life story” (p. 37), individuals
who have experienced trauma tend to have greater difficulty integrating the traumatic memories
with their other memories, and with the rest of their lives. As Harvey (1996) asserted:
“Simply stated, traumatic events wreak havoc with the individual’s ability to recall and make use of the past.
Trauma survivors are often plagued both by the absence of salient information about their experience and by
traumatic intrusions which disable and terrify even as they elude meaningful appraisal” (p. 11).
This relative absence of informational memory, coupled with the unwelcome intrusions of the more
vivid, traumatic memory, often leaves the individual who has experienced trauma with powerful
and upsetting memory experiences that are often not cohesively retrievable and may not lend
themselves to narrative processing and expression.
Thus, in an examination of narratives—of an event and/or of the life surrounding it—of
individuals who have experienced a trauma, it is crucial to remember the differences between
normal memory and traumatic memory. Although these disparities exist in most trauma contexts
and can be manifested in different ways, the clearest illustration can be seen in the LN itself and
how it is told. Following Janet (1919), Herman (1992) discussed the explicit differences between
the mechanisms of normal memory and traumatic memory, and how they can be exhibited in the
rehearsal of the life story:
“[Normal memory,] like all psychological phenomena, is an action; essentially it is the action of telling a
story… A situation has not been satisfactorily liquidated…until we have achieved, not merely an outward
reaction through our movements, but also an inward reaction through the words we address to ourselves,
through the organization of the recital of the event to others and to ourselves, and through the putting of this
recital in its place as one of the chapters in our personal history… Strictly speaking, then, one who retains a
fixed idea of a happening cannot be said to have a ‘memory’…it is only for convenience that we speak of it as
a ‘traumatic memory’” (p. 37).
In this sense, traumatic memories may be essentially incompatible with the concept of ‘normal’
memory, and less capable of integration in an LN filled with ‘normal’ memories likely arranged in
a coherent and linear fashion. Traumatic memories, in this view, stand alone and are destined to
exist outside the scope of normalcy and of the cohesively recited narrative.
2.3.1.2 Translating traumatic memory into narrative memory
For individuals who have experienced trauma, therefore, the construction of cohesive
narratives can be a complex, difficult, and painful process. In his research on Holocaust survivors,
20
LaCapra (1998) asserted, “Especially for victims, trauma brings about a lapse or rupture in memory
that breaks continuity with the past, thereby placing identity in question to the point of shattering it”
(p. 9). The Holocaust is perhaps the most extreme example of a traumatic life event, having caused
a dramatic disruption and fragmentation, and leaving memories that were fundamentally opposed to
anything before and after them. A potentially traumatic event such as a TA can cause equally
disruptive processes in memory and narrative production. Indeed, one of the interviewees in the
current study demonstrated a similar ‘before vs. after’ pattern in the structure of his LN.
Along these lines, Tuval-Mashiach et al. (2004) asserted that, “Trauma, by its nature, breaks
the continuity and smooth flow of daily life. This break is expressed in the stories trauma survivors
tell about themselves and about their lives” (p. 281). Along these lines, trauma has been contended
to cause a primary disruption in narrative processing in two central areas: specifically, a disruption
of the narrative of the traumatic event itself, and more generally, a disruption of the entire life story
of the experiencer (Tuval-Mashiach et al., 2004; Wigren, 1994). The impact of trauma on LNs can
be reflected in the narrator’s life itself (or perhaps, the impact of the trauma on the individual’s life
can reflect itself in his or her LN). Indeed, as Tuval-Mashiach and her colleagues (2004) claimed,
“The healthy individual is capable of holding a coherent, meaningful, and dynamic narrative of
himself. According to this perspective, a person whose story is unavailable, flawed, or partial is
prone to psychological and emotional difficulties” (p. 281).
Thus, there appears to be a constant, complex, reciprocal, and dynamic interrelationship
between a traumatic experience, the individual who experienced it, and his or her identity, memory,
life story, and psychological functioning. There may also be a healing or restorative quality to
narrative in this context; as Crossley (2000) has suggested, “when disorder and incoherence prevail,
as in the case of trauma, narratives are used to rebuild the individual’s shattered sense of identity
and meaning” (p. 527). In many ways, then, narrative and the properties of memory may both
reflect and repair the individual in traumatic circumstances.
An essential part of coping with a traumatic life experience involves the process of putting it
into words, processing and digesting it into some form of narrative, whether initially coherent and
cohesive or not. Van der Merwe and Gobodo-Madikizela (2007) asserted that, in order to fully
recover from a traumatic experience and regain a sense of control, an individual must complete a
process of transforming a traumatic memory into a narrative memory. Following LaCapra (2001),
Schiffrin (2003) contended, “when the past becomes accessible to recall in memory, and when
language functions to provide some measure of conscious control, critical distance, and perspective,
one has begun the arduous process of working over and through the trauma” (p. 539). This process
of ‘translating’ a trauma into narrative can actually create order and coherence, transforming a
chaotic, visceral, and nonlinear memory into a cohesive and organized verbal expression of it.
21
The act of remembering and narrating is interactive, involving “a triangulation between the
experiences of the past, the set of circumstances within which these experiences occur and the way
in which the individual reflects on these experiences,” including the circumstances surrounding the
narrator in the given moment of the recalling/telling (Coetzee & Rau, 2009, p. 3). Tuval-Mashiach
et al. (2004) pointed to the operation of two crucial coping mechanisms—narrative and cognitive—
involved primarily in the period immediately following a trauma, which function interactively to
facilitate the individual’s creation of a narrative of the experience and of his life as including the
experience. Furthermore, they suggest that “the construction of stories is mediated by different
factors—psychological (e.g., personality), cultural (norms and values), and situational (to whom is
the story told)” (Tuval-Mashiach et al., 2004, p. 282).
Indeed, part of the process of understanding, processing, and coping with a traumatic event
involves ascribing meaning to it. This is a highly individualized and personal process, which can
be dynamic and intimately tied to the individual’s psychosocial context. It may facilitate or inhibit
recovery at any stage, and interacts with the process of narrating the experience as well. As
Fullerton (2004) asserted:
“The meaning of a traumatic experience to any one person results from the interaction of his or her past
history, present context, and physiological state. The ascribed meaning will then direct individual behaviors
of what to do, what to fix, and whom or what to blame” (p. 62).
The meaning attached to the experience by the experiencer then has an impact on the resulting
psychological consequences, including the individual’s set of beliefs, attitudes, and attributions
about himself, those surrounding him, and his society. TAs and war, in particular, can have deep
negative impacts on the survivor’s sense of safety, security, and faith that his world is
comprehensible and just (Fullerton, 2004; Holloway & Fullerton, 1994). Indeed, following North
et al. (1999), Benyakar and Knafo (2004) stated, “Disruptions caused by terrorism…constitute
abrupt assaults to the individual and collective psyche” (p. 87). These disruptions, as part of a
constant, daily state of fear, helplessness, defenselessness, and powerlessness (Krystal, 2004), can
bring great difficulty in the meaning-making process, and in turn, in the process of translating
traumatic memory into narrative memory.
2.3.1.3 Characteristics and signals of ‘trauma narratives’
When traumatic experiences are expressed in an individual’s personal narrative, they tend to
appear in a particular fashion and be distinguished by specific markers (BenEzer, 1999). Indeed, it
has been claimed that ‘trauma narratives’ hold their own unique characteristics, which often stand
out and can be identifiable linguistically. It has been found, for instance, that, relative to written
narratives about neutral topics, written narratives about traumatic events tend to contain more
emotionally charged words (Pennebaker & Beall, 1986), more words that relate to emotions and
22
cognition (Cohn, Mehl, & Pennebaker, 2004; Gortner & Pennebaker, 2003; Pennebaker & Francis,
1996), and more negative emotion words (Fernandez, Paez, & Pennebaker, 2009; Freitag, Grimm,
& Schmidt, 2011; Gortner & Pennebaker, 2003). Following Rullkoetter et al. (2009), Freitag et al.
(2011) generalized further, stating, “Narratives of negative life events with an emotional impact to
the individual were characterized by an increased number of words, a greater number of sentences
and they contained more emotional words compared to events without emotional impact” (p. 43).
Boals and Perez (2009) found a higher percentage of cognitive word use in oral narratives
of Holocaust experiences as opposed to non-Holocaust experiences, and suggested that cognitive
words “can help provide links between events and emotions that allow an individual to come to a
better understanding of the experience” (p. 1). This is particularly critical in narrations of stressful
or traumatic life experiences, which fundamentally involve unpredictability, chaos, and a violation
of expectations (Janoff-Bulman, 1992). In fact, a number of studies have found a greater degree of
cognitive words in narratives that describe a variety of stressful experiences (Boals & Klein, 2005;
Cohn et al. 2004; Klein & Boals, 2010; Lyons, Mehl, & Pennebaker, 2006; Pennebaker & Lay,
2002). In addition, a relationship has been found between this increase in cognitive words and
successful coping (Alvarez-Conrad, Zoellner, & Foa, 2001; Pennebaker, Mayne, & Francis, 1997),
as well as with increased posttraumatic growth (Ullrich & Lutgendorf, 2002). An elevated use of
cognitive words, as opposed to emotion-related words, was also found to hold a stronger
association with improvement in health (Pennebaker, Mehl, & Niederhoffer, 2003). Thus, it may
be possible that use of cognitive words when narrating stressful or traumatic life experiences may
be both adaptive and reflective of positive adaptation.
There have been a limited number of in-depth studies of trauma utilizing a life story or
narrative interviewing methodology, and all focused primarily on the content and thematic
properties of the narratives, rather than the form or linguistic properties (Agger, 1994; Bar-On,
1989, 1995; Dwork, 1991; Lieblich, 1994; Lomsky-Feder, 1995; Rosenthal, 1991). To fill this
lacuna, BenEzer (1999) proffered a focus on the “verbal and non-verbal trauma signals” within life
stories, suggesting that “traumatic experiences, even if the person has come to terms with them, are
narrated in a unique way within narratives, and…these ways could be ‘charted’ and detected within
the stories” (p. 30). These are:
To fill this lacuna, BenEzer (1999) proffered a focus on the “verbal and non-verbal trauma
signals” within life stories, suggesting that “traumatic experiences, even if the person has come to
terms with them, are narrated in a unique way within narratives, and…these ways could be
‘charted’ and detected within the stories” (p. 30). These are:
1) self-report, whereby the individual states outright that a particular event was traumatic, painful,
horrific, distressing, wounding, negative, or unsettling; or describes an “image of ultimate horror,”
which may serve as a single symbol of a series of related traumatic experiences;
23
2) the existence in the life history of a “hidden” event, which was not mentioned in the main,
uninterrupted life narrative, but which emerged during the question-and-answer portion of the
interview, and which may involve “distressing emotions such as mourning, grief, shame or guilt”;
3) the occurrence of long silence(s) directly preceding or following a narration of a particular event or
facet thereof, which appears to have “a particularly painful or tormenting quality” for the narrator;
4) a sudden loss of emotional control in connection with narrating an event, often expressed in rage or
crying or other displays of emotion that appear out of ‘character’ with the rest of the life story;
5) emotional detachment or numbness while reporting events or facets thereof that seem to have had a
horrifying quality or consequences for the narrator, often appearing as “an unvarying tone of voice
and ‘frozen’ facial expression and body gestures,” frequently described in the psychological
literature as “psychic numbness’;
6) repetitive reporting of a particular distressing experience in its entirety or with “an extraordinary
reiteration of its minute details” over and over, as if the narrator is finding it difficult to “move on”;
7) the experience of the narrator seeming to lose him or herself in the traumatic event, appearing to
“disappear from the reality of the interview” or “sink into themselves” while narrating—often
expressed as extended periods of silence with clear signs that the narrator is simply “not there” in
the current moment or situation;
8) the emergence of intrusive images of a traumatic event or facet thereof, which seem to appear as
‘flashes’ that intrude into, interrupt, and distract the narrator’s train of thought and narrative flow;
9) the narrator’s forceful argumentation regarding his or her conduct within an event, emphasizing the
reasons behind their behavior rather than describing or recounting the behavior itself, and apparently
offering a justification for their conduct in an attempt to prevent the interviewer from reaching any
conclusions on his or her own;
10) the appearance of cognitive-emotional disorientation, which may be “characterized by a
disappearance of the boundaries between the event which is being recounted and the situation of the
interview,” often expressed as a type of loss by the narrator of a sense of exactly where he or she is
(within the story and within reality)—for instance, “relating to the interviewer as a figure within the
story (without the ‘as if’ quality that is sometimes used in recounting)”;
11) an inability of the narrator to tell a story at all, often getting stuck immediately at the opening point
of a narrative (which may cause the interviewer to have to intervene, offering questions to help the
narrator tell the story in some form);
12) changes in voice, such as tone, pitch, or “colouring”; and
13) changes in body language, such as facial expressions, posture shifts, and hand or leg movements
(BenEzer, 1999, p. 34-36).
Any or all of these “linguistic behaviors” may appear in a given narrative, signaling the existence of
a traumatic life event in the life story. Many of them are apparent in the texts analyzed in the
present study, and particular attention will be paid to #10 above, which can be manifested in
BenEzer (1999) describes as “relating to the interviewer as a figure within the story (without the ‘as
if’ quality that is sometimes used in recounting)” (p. 35). This research, however, relates to this as
more of a psychosociolinguistic phenomenon that may reflect the narrator’s emotions, beliefs, and
attributions; rather than a reflection of disorientation or psychic confusion.
In addition, Lieblich et al. (1998), in their proposal of a qualitative analytical method for
assessing the extent to which a narrative may be emotionally charged, offered a list of “the formal
aspects of emotional or mental disturbance,” as a guide to “elements that may appear in an
emotionally charged narrative” (p. 156). These elements are:
24
1)
adverbials (e.g., “suddenly”) that may indicate whether an event was expected or unexpected;
2)
mental verbs (e.g., “I thought,” “I understood”) that may indicate “the extent to which an experience
is in consciousness and is undergoing mental processing”;
3)
denotations of time and place that may indicate an attempt to either distance or bring into closer
proximity a particular event or facet of an event;
4)
past, present, or future forms of verbs, and transitions between them, which may indicate the
narrator’s “sense of identification” with the described event;
5)
shifting between first-, second-, and third-person narrative subjects, which may indicate “a split
between the speaking self and the experiencing self,” as a result of difficulty surrounding the
experience and memory;
6)
passive and active forms of verbs, which may indicate the narrator’s perceptions and attributions
surrounding agency;
7)
intensifiers (e.g., “really,” “very”) or deintensifiers (e.g., “maybe”), which may indicate the
magnitude of the experience vs. expressions of helplessness and inability to cope;
8)
a break in the chronology or causal progression of narrative events, as signified in the narrative by
regressions, digressions, leaps in time, or silences, which may indicate avoidance of difficult or
sensitive subject matter;
9)
repetition (i.e., of words, syllables, sentences, and/or ideas), which may indicate an emotional charge
relating to the topic at hand; and
10) detailed descriptions of events, which may indicate an avoidance of or inability to describe difficult
emotional content (Lieblich et al., 1998, p. 156).
In general, all of these characteristics and signals should be kept in mind when analyzing a
narrative of a potentially traumatic event, as well as a life story that may include such an
experience. In the present study particular focus will also be placed on #5 above, alongside a claim
of deeper significance and a new interpretation of the meaning therein. In many ways, these signals
are important not only as a possible method of ‘detection’ of a traumatic experience, but, perhaps
more significantly, because “the language that people use to describe past traumas can reveal how
they think about and organize the experience” (Boals & Perez, 2009, p. 3). This research delves
into the interviewees’ manners of thinking about and creating meaning out of such experiences, as
signified by many of these characteristics and viewed through a psychosociolinguistic lens.
2.3.1.4 The relationship between narrating trauma and health
BenEzer (1999) writes that “trauma is a very intimate experience” (p. 29), and, following
Klein (1976) and Garbarino, Kostelny, and Dubrow (1992), contends that “traumatization…is
related to, and imbued with, the meaning of the event for the individual” (p. 32).
This
individualized meaning can emerge from a complex interplay of factors such as the individual’s
unique life history, personal beliefs and biases, and particular priorities and sensitivities. There is
an inevitable meaning-making process involved in narrating trauma and, in many cases, the
meaning held by traumatic events over the course of an individual’s life can change many times,
with these transformations often reflected and revealed in the individual’s LN. In many ways, then,
there is a dynamic, interactional relationship between the processes of meaning-making, narrating,
25
and coping, and all are tied to health. Indeed, this is a new and growing field of research; as Boals
and Perez (2009) wrote, “Researchers have recently begun to examine language use in descriptions
of traumatic experiences in hopes that analyses of language use can shed insight into successful and
unsuccessful coping strategies” (p. 1).
Tuval-Mashiach et al. (2004) have pointed to three crucial factors involved in successful
coping, all of which are intimately connected with the creation of the narrative: 1) continuity and
coherence, within both the narrative of the traumatic experience and the LN as a whole; 2) an active
process of creation of meaning related to the trauma experience; and 3) a process of self-evaluation
with regard to the trauma experience, which may include issues of control, guilt or responsibility,
and active or passive conduct. Continuity and coherence in both the narrative of the trauma and the
LN were found to be associated with better recovery (Omer & Alon, 1994; Wigren, 1994), and the
extent of control within self-evaluation vis-à-vis the traumatic event was also found to be correlated
with successful coping (Foa, Zinbarg, & Olasov Rothbaum, 1992; Steptoe, 2000). In fact, TuvalMashiach et al. (2004) found “a preliminary relationship between narrative, cognitive measures,
and symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder,” such that PTSD symptoms were significantly
lower “when the narrative was well built, with a coherent story, significance, and a positive selfimage,” while a less coherent narrative was correlated with increased symptoms (p. 290).
Along these same lines, Pennebaker (1993), when analyzing trauma-related writings, found
that the individuals who used a larger proportion of negative emotion words, as opposed to positive
emotion words, actually showed a greater improvement in health overall. Indeed, as Pennebaker
(1993) contended, “Independent of verbal emotion expression, the increasing use of insight, causal,
and associated cognitive words over several days of writing is linked to health improvement” (p.
539). In this sense, then, it is suggested that both coherence and a significant expression of
negative emotions can be an important, healthy, and therapeutic part of narrative construction for
individuals writing about traumas they experienced.
Tuval-Mashiach et al. (2004) also discussed what they refer to as “a natural process of
recovery,” the spontaneous development of a coherent story accompanied by developmental and
longitudinal shifts in the individual’s perceptions of his behavior, his self-image, and the
significance of the traumatic experience in his life. When this process occurs ‘naturally’ and
individually, the narrator experiences increased significance and logic, as well as fewer symptoms
of PTSD (Tuval-Mashiach et al., 2004). Conversely, when this process does not occur or is only
partially completed, the result is an incoherent or less coherent narrative that may hold less or
ambivalent significance for the narrator. In this case, the individuals may not be able to fully
integrate the traumatic experience into their overall LN and may have difficulties with meaningand sense-making (Tuval-Mashiach et al., 2004). This, in turn, may contribute to a far greater
26
likelihood of developing PTSD or experiencing more post-traumatic symptoms.
2.3.2 Retelling and narrative processing over time
Narrative analysis holds as its primary domain of inquiry the question of how individuals
tell their stories. Inquiry into how individuals retell their stories, however, is sorely underexplored
and underrepresented. And yet, the investigation of how narratives may (and/or may not) change
over time lies at the heart of narrative identity theory (McAdams, 1985; Singer, 2004), wherein an
individual’s stories are viewed as a primary conduit for understanding and exploring his self and
identity (Alasuutari, 1997; McAdams, 1993; Polkinghorne, 1991; Spector-Mersel, 2011). Bamberg
(2008) referred to “the long tradition of using the narrative interview as a site for tapping into the
narrator’s sense of self and identity,” labeling this as “one of the most influential contributors in the
turn to narrative…” (p. 184). Spector-Mersel (2011, 2012) also discussed the process of claiming a
sense of self and narrative identity through life stories—even going further to assert that the process
is reciprocal, stating, “If a sense of identity is attained through the stories we tell ourselves and
others, not only is identity expressed in narrative, but also importantly, it is also constructed by it”
(p. 173). Bamberg (2008) pointed to the “identity work” conducted during the process of telling
stories, which produces one or more particular “displays” of a sense of self. Similarly, LitvakHirsch and Bar-On (2006), following Bruner (1990) and Gergen (1992), asserted a view of the
individual as “creator of stories and as constructor of his identity through his life story” (p. 467).
Along these lines, Mishler (2004) contended that “research participants are the historians of
their own lives. They tell and retell their stories in variant ways and, thereby, continually revise
their identities” (p. 101). In this sense, then, exploring how an individual retells his stories over
time may allow a unique view into the degrees and modes of coherence and continuity therein,
which, in turn, provides an opportunity to understand how narrative identity may develop over the
life course. Bamberg (2008) discussed the value of retellings and this burgeoning research area, as
a conduit to more clearly understanding the manners in which an individual may put together, or
‘claim,’ and continually revise a sense of self at different moments in time. Indeed, Bamberg
(2008) followed Shweder et al. (2006) in asserting that “the perfect material for an empirical
inquiry into the topic of identity formation processes would be the twice-told tales of the same
person over a period of time” (p. 186). In addition, Norrick (1998) contended that “Retold stories
are of interest both for the study of narration and for research on repetition in discourse” (p. 76).
Bamberg (2008) also suggested that story retelling is of interest to linguists and cognitive
researchers as well, as potential findings could illuminate processes of memory encoding, storage,
and transformation. In many ways, then, this is an important area of inquiry.
Research on retelling of stories, however, is sparse, at best.
27
While many narrative
researchers have mentioned the importance of studying how individuals tell the ‘same’ stories over
time, they also admit that this type of research has thus far simply not been done on any large scale
(Bamberg, 2008; Greenspan, 2003; Norrick, 1998). Mishler (2004) stated, “Very little is known
about the factors that affect how we tell our story on each next time, about what varies or stays the
same in form or content” (p. 103). This doctoral research has as one of its primary aims an attempt
to fill this lacuna and contribute to the literature on retelling. While this study focuses less on the
participants’ identity per se, central emphasis is placed on the interplay between personal and
societal discourse, and on a deep exploration of how one’s manner of story-telling may reflect
processes of meaning-making, narrative processing, and coping over time.
Most of the few studies that have been conducted on the topic have found that retellings are
generally different from each other. Mishler (2004), for instance, asserted that it is “unarguable”
that “the content, form, and performance of the so-called same story is always different,” pointing
to general memory processes and the passage of time between tellings, in addition to assumed
differences in telling contexts and intentions as well as audiences, as likely explanations for these
variances (p. 103; Chafe, 1998; Ferrara, 1994; Norrick, 1998; Schiffrin, 2003). Along these lines,
Litvak-Hirsch and Bar-On (2006) cited as their motivation for re-interviewing the women in their
study the theoretical view that “narratives are continually reconstructed as the life course progresses
(Cohler & Grunebaum, 1981; Josselson, 1995)” (p. 465). Bamberg (2008) claimed that in “a
natural, conversationally embedded setting, and in the condition of the same audience, the way the
story is told is likely to change… However, we would expect the gist – the backbone of what
happened – to remain pretty much the same” (p. 185). Bamberg (2008) also asserted that time
having elapsed between the tellings could have a significant influence on what is told and how it is
told, perhaps as a result of reinterpretation or “reworking the ‘memory bank’” (p. 185). At the
heart of the motivation for the present study lie inquiries into the impact of the passage of time on a
given narrative; what is involved in the process of narrative processing and reinterpretation of a
given experience over time; and the manner in which the ‘packaging’ of and discursive techniques
utilized in multiple story-tellings can reflect the individual’s inner world and perceptions.
The finding that multiple tellings can be highly disparate has a direct and problematic
impact on the degree of confidence a researcher can reasonably place on a single telling of a life
event and how much can be hypothesized about the teller’s identity therein. In light of this, Mishler
(2004) referred to the problem of retellings, asserting that analytical trust is a core issue and stating,
“Here is the crux of the matter: If researchers use stories as data for making claims about identity,
then what are they to do when the stories turn out to be different?” (p. 103). In this sense, it
becomes crucial to relate to a plurality of identities, or a contextual, fluid, and co-created process of
claiming identity through narrative, rather than a fixed and monolithic concept of a single,
28
immutable identity (Spector-Mersel, 2011; Mishler, 2004). Andersson (2008), too, contended that
the idea of a “solid and united” self-identity should be viewed post-structurally only as an
interactive discursive notion, utilized as a means to presenting an ideal version of the self—that
“There is no ‘real’ self or ‘authentic’ identity independent of the discursive environment” (p. 143).
Indeed, in Mishler’s (2004) seminal study, faced with multiple (highly divergent) versions
of the ‘same’ story and myriad possible explanations for the motivations therein, rather than
questioning which Betty is “the real Betty,” he suggested that it might be more prudent to view the
two tellings as “representing two versions of her, neither one more or less true than the other” (p.
116). Multiple versions, or identities, may be seen as congruent or in tension with each other, but
nonetheless able to exist together without a need to consider them contradictory or problematic.
Bamberg (2008), in an analysis of the same material, asserted that his analysis explored “how Betty
hails two different subjectivities (or ‘identities,’ if you want to) into being,” or the means by which
Betty constructed the two versions of the story, which led to the assigning of the multiple identities
(p. 201). Josselson (2009), too, referred to a “multiple self,” stating that “Memories, in this sense,
operate as texts whose meaning changes as the dialogue within self changes. The meanings of past
memories, rather than their contents, are reshaped to hold aspects of a layered, multiple self” (p.
647). The analytical implication is that explorations of retellings must reject the assumption of a
‘true version’ of a narrative or a single identity of a teller, embracing instead this conceptualization
of a plurality of identities and the possibility of myriad narrative versions and truths therein.
Given the dearth of research studies on the topic of retelling, it is necessary to look closely
at each analysis that does exist in the literature in order to both understand its contribution and
recognize what may still be needed to advance the field. Those investigations that hold the most
parallels with the present study will be focused on in more detail, to glean more directly useful
analytical recommendations as well as to highlight the contribution and innovation of this study.
Research on retelling emerged for the first time in the 1930s, and in earnest only in the
1980s; it is only now gathering much more traction and interest. Perhaps the first study of its kind,
by British psychologist Frederic Bartlett (1932), involved participants writing down remembered
versions, at several points in time, of a folktale they had read. Norrick (1998) referred to several
initial studies in various cultural contexts (Sherzer, 1981; Hymes, 1981, 1985; Bauman, 1986), and
there also exist a small number of studies of retellings of stories by children (Scollon & Scollon,
1984; Romaine, 1984). These analyses, along with Chafe’s (1980) and Tannen’s (1980, 1984)
investigations of ‘retellings’ of a non-dialogic film, primarily investigated the differences between
oral, written, and cinematic versions of a story.
There was little focus on autobiographical
narratives, and some referred to ‘retelling’ as the process of essentially repeating a story previously
told to the participant by someone else (as in a child ‘retelling’ a fairy tale that had been read to
29
him). Ferrara’s (1994) study of three versions of a story provided by a client within the context of
therapy sessions appears to have more commonalities with the present research. However, as was
most often the case in the few other studies on record as well, analytical focus was placed more on
the structural and functional elements in the stories, rather than on a deep comparative microanalysis of both the form and content.
There is a very small number of notable longitudinal follow-up studies on women (Cohler
& Grunebaum, 1981; Josselson, 1995, 2000, 2009; Litvak-Hirsch & Bar-On, 2006), which involve
comparisons of similar narratives, content, or themes over a series of interviewing occasions. All
place emphasis on developmental processes surrounding identity, interpersonal relations, and/or
personal processes of growth and change over time. McAdams et al. (2006), in a three-year study
of the written memories of emerging adults, found that while most of the participants gave different
autobiographical memories at each data collection point, overall their memories demonstrated a
significant degree of continuity in content and themes therein. In addition, Thorne, Cutting, and
Skaw (1998) conducted a study involving memories told to an interviewer on two separate
occasions, with six months between them. Although most often the memories provided at each
interview were not the same, a good degree of thematic consistency was found across the material.
Special focus was placed on the few ‘twice-told’ narratives that appeared, but the analysis was not
particularly deep and because of the lack of relevant material, few useful conclusions were reached.
Norrick (1998) presented a study of retold conversational stories, exploring three different
retelling contexts: 1) immediate retelling by a single teller for a new listener; 2) retelling of the
same story by a single teller for different audiences on different days; and 3) group reconstruction,
or co-narration, of a story that had already been told to the audience in attendance. As explanation
for the motivation of the study, Norrick (1998) suggested that a focus on the moments in which a
narrator tells a story more than one time for separate audiences provides a clearer perspective on
what is repeated, which allows for an analysis of separate performances, as identified as multiple
versions of the same story. Following Polanyi (1981), Norrick (1998) also asserted that “it is
through separating the story qua underlying structure from the real-time performance that we can
be said to be retelling ‘the same story’” (p. 77). It is unclear whether the author intended to include
issues of motivation, context, and audience influence within the purview of the “performance” that
supposedly needs to be separated, but in any case this assertion appears problematic, at best.
Norrick (1998) did refer to “the distinctions between a distilled kernel story and those
aspects of the narration tied immediately to the local context,” suggesting that “retold tales” can
offer a “special perspective on conversational storytelling” in light of their ability to place these
distinctions into focus (p. 94). Ultimately, a similar number and manner of parallel clauses were
found in all versions of the retold stories, leading the author to conclude that “a story can remain
30
substantially intact from one telling to the next…[suggesting] that tellers redesign a basic story for
the audience present, rather than reconstructing a narrative from the ground up for each new
audience” (Norrick, 1998, p. 75). This constitutes a meaningful contribution to the literature on
conversational story-telling, and an important building block in the literature on retelling overall.
Schiffrin (2003) conducted an analysis of four separate oral history tellings , with a range of
two to eleven years between them, provided by a single Holocaust survivor, in an attempt to
explore “knowledge and action in narrative, life story and oral history” (p. 537). Analytical focus
was placed on structural and evaluative changes within the narratives, as well as on shifts in the
form and meaning of a specific phrase marking a turning point. Changes were found primarily in
the mode of evaluation utilized across the tellings, and Shiffrin (2003) concluded that the narrative
had become (more) performative over the years. Particular reference was made to “the double
arrow of time,” and the pervasive involvement of this process within the “ever-widening context of
later experiences that provides gradual understandings of ‘what happened’ and leads to
reconstruction of the meanings of past experiences” (Shiffrin, 2003, p. 540). Despite a deep
emphasis on the longitudinal meaning-making processes undergone by the teller, perhaps the most
prominent problematic issue in this study was that each of the four tellings involved different
audiences and contexts, and that this was not a topic of significant analytical focus.
Continuing in the genre of Holocaust testimony, Greenspan (2003) wrote about an exercise
conducted within the framework of a university course, in which he presented three versions of a
specific narrative told in three different interviews conducted by himself with a single Holocaust
survivor. Greenspan (2003) noted that, in general, he is “centrally concerned with how survivors
retell: not only their use of narrative form but also survivors’ specific, situated uses of repetition,
silence, and voice” (p. 101), and his research explored the ways in which the testimonies of
survivors evolve over the course of time, over retellings, and as part of an interplay with the
relationship between the teller and the audience. Highlighting a difference between his study and
Schiffrin’s (2003), Greenspan (2003) emphasized that testimony is not equivalent to oral history, in
that the former is not primarily concerned with documentation or ‘objective’ eyewitness accounts.
In this sense, Greenspan’s (2003) study constitutes a closer parallel with the present research, as it
involved narratives of an autobiographical experience told within a personalized interview context;
however, the former was ultimately primarily descriptive in nature, discussing the students’
reactions to the various tellings and general content and thematic issues. The survivor’s story was
referred to as “a kind of monument—a memory that is also a memorial” (Greenspan, 2003, p. 108),
and little narrative micro-analysis was conducted on the form and content of this “monument.”
Litvak-Hirsch and Bar-On (2006) presented a study of the life stories of three generations of
women—a Holocaust survivor and her daughter and granddaughter—conducting a “double
31
analysis” of their stories, 12 years apart, in order to explore “the transformations of relationships
over time” and the centrality of these transformations within their personal development (p. 465).
Analytical emphasis was placed on themes surrounding the women’s personal processes (both
long- and short-term) and relationships with themselves, their significant others, and each other.
The analysis was primarily thematic and focused on the content, exploring inclusions and
omissions in each life story ‘version,’ in addition to what was given more or less emphasis. Direct
micro-level comparisons of the data were not presented, however, and the lack of quotations from
the interviewees made it difficult to judge the level and credibility of the comparisons.
Josselson (2000) conducted a long-term analysis of early memories, using interview
material collected as part of a longitudinal study of identity formation in women. A question about
the participants’ earliest two memories was included in each of three interviews, which took place
with 10-12 years separating each of them, and the responses (some verbal and others in writing)
were analyzed with a view to exploring change over time and the internal stability of the structure
of personality across developmental time periods.
In the thematic analysis conducted, three
patterns were explored, in particular: consistent themes, developmental change, and unique
memories. Within this perspective, Josselson (2000) also looked at how the affective tone of the
narrated memory may reflect the individual’s resolution of an issue at the given point in time, and
how the individual’s encoded defenses or coping mechanisms may undergo transformations in
relation to the existence or degree of resolution. It was found that most of the participants’ earliest
memories showed a high degree of consistency and stability, suggesting the existence of core
themes that emerge within the process of consolidation of personality over the life course.
However, Josselson (2000) also noted, “While the criteria for ‘sameness’ required that the memory
narrate essentially the same event, the affective tone and deeper thematic material often show
changes from one time period to another” (p. 468). It is, indeed, in these changes in tone, theme,
and form—as well as content—that the present research resides, exploring the meanings, messages,
and end points of what often emerges as patterns of divergences over time.
Using the same interview material, Josselson (2009) investigated a single autobiographical
episode in one woman’s life, told on four separate occasions over a period of 35 years. Analytical
emphasis was placed on exploration of the manners in which the present (re)constructs the past, as
the author asserted that “the process by which the self adjusts memory over time is not yet well
understood” (Josselson, 2009, p. 648). Ultimately, it was found that “across the life span it is the
meanings assigned to memory rather than the contents of the memory itself that are reworked in
order to anchor, illuminate, counterpoint, disavow, or otherwise enter into dialogue with current
self-experience” (Josselson, 2009, p. 664). Josselson’s (2009) study was particularly close in goals,
analytical groundings, and findings with this doctoral research, and the insights and conclusions
32
therein have influenced much of how the present study was conducted.
Perhaps the most well-known and well-read explorations of retelling, with much similarity
to the longitudinal comparative analyses conducted in the current study, can be found in Mishler’s
(2004) analysis and Bamberg’s (2008) paper on “Twice-told tales,” both of which analyze the same
data. The material analyzed came from a woman, “Betty,” who was videotaped telling two
versions of the ‘same’ story, at the same location, to the same (anonymous) audience, under similar
circumstances, with a few hours between the tellings. The content of each telling was purportedly,
as Bamberg (2008) writes, “exactly the same,” but the manners in which each was told and
performed were dramatically different from each other.
Mishler (2004)’s analysis was highly detailed, with great attention to the words Betty used,
in an attempt to locate the significant contrasts between the two versions, mainly in lexical and
syntactic choices. There were some very minor references to pronouns, but no deep linguistic
interpretation of Betty’s use of various discursive and semantic tools. Meanwhile, Bamberg (2008)
performed “a small story, microanalytic analysis on this seemingly monologic data” (p. 189),
analyzing each version independently and then conducting a thorough comparative analysis.
Bamberg’s (2008) analysis was mostly content-focused, exploring ‘classic’ narrative ingredients
such as plot, sequence of events, complication, and resolution. Processes of meaning- and sensemaking in the narratives were also explored, although there was no evident capacity to look at the
surrounding contexts of the tellings and Betty’s embeddedness within them. With regard to the
form of the tellings, Bamberg’s (2008) analysis contained some focus on narrative clauses and
devices, but little to no attention was paid to semantic discourse, such as pronouns and tenses.
Finally, Chafe’s (1998) research constitutes the closest parallel—theoretically, conceptually,
and methodologically—to this doctoral study, providing much valuable insight into the utility of a
methodology comparing two tape-recorded tellings, fifteen months apart, of the ‘same’ experience
by the same individual. Similar content was presented juxtaposed together, and the transcriptions
included notations of pauses, pitch, voice contours, and lengthened syllables.
Narrative
mechanisms such as settings, complications, climaxes, denouements, and coda were identified and
analyzed, with attention paid to the similarities and differences between the two tellings. Chafe
(1998; see also 1973) also related to “preoccupations” of the speaker, which, he claimed, caused
some topics to be repeated narratively, as a reflection of their repetitive intrusive presence in the
speaker’s consciousness. Overall, significant focal, thematic, structural, and chronological stability
was found between the tellings, although analyses of prosodic, syntactic, and space-time
orientational patterns showed some inconsistencies. Perhaps the greatest contribution of Chafe’s
work on retelling, with regard to the present study, was his assertions about sentence inconsistency:
“the information brought together in a sentence seems not to represent any cognitively stable unit of
33
perception, storage, or remembering. Rather, sentence boundaries appear when a speaker judges, during a
particular telling, that a coherent center of interest has been verbalized at that point. There are a variety of
grounds for judging such coherence, and those grounds are subject to variation in repeated verbalizations of
the same subject matter” (Chafe, 1994, p. 145).
Indeed, as will be apparent in the analyses presented in this dissertation, although the sentence
structure often varied slightly between tellings, the content, form, and narrative meanings
frequently showed significant within-participant stability.
Thus, as Chafe (1998) determined,
juxtaposing retellings across time for the purposes of a psycholinguistic comparative analysis of
narrative and psychic development, and of manners of verbalization of underlying
phenomenological experience, can be a valuable and fruitful endeavor.
In summary, each of these seminal articles made valiant attempts to explore various facets
and contexts of retelling. Norrick (1998) investigated conversational retellings, sometimes (but not
always) by the same teller, and sometimes (but not always) to the same audience. Shiffrin (2003)
looked at oral history retellings, each to different audiences and from within different motivations
and purposes. Litvak-Hirsch and Bar-On (2006) explored life story retellings, in similar contexts
and with similar emphases but to different audiences. Josselson’s (2000) study dealt with early
memories told by the same teller to the same interviewer on three different occasions, with similar
thematic content and some of the ‘same’ narratives, and (2009) research investigated the case of a
single teller providing content on the same topic to the same audience, in four different sessions
over a span of 35 years. Mishler’s (2004) and Bamberg’s (2008) analyses dealt with two ‘identical’
stories told by the same individual to the same (anonymous) audience over the duration of just a
few hours. And Chafe (1998) conducted a largely linguistic comparative analysis of two tellings
about the ‘same’ experience told by the same individual to a similar audience, over fifteen months.
All of these studies, and those that preceded them, are invaluable contributions to the
literature, and I contend that the present study can offer an equally important and necessary
contribution. In many ways, indeed, this study combines the best of the previous literature with a
focus on some of the most important facets lacking from them. In its analyses of retellings of the
‘same’ (or rather, ‘parallel’) narratives from the same individuals, told to the same audience, in the
same interview context and for the same research purposes, across a period of three years, and with
its interdisciplinary focus on both psychosocial and linguistic elements, as well as both the form
and content, of the discourse, this study attempts to both rely and build upon this valuable literature.
From within the research goal to investigate multiple narrative truths and the longitudinal
process of meaning-making, narrative researchers have repeatedly called for more and deeper
studies of retellings, of precisely the nature that characterizes this doctoral study. Mishler (2004),
for instance, asserted that in the current state of longitudinal narrative research, there is “little
opportunity for participants to respond to the same question/situation from different perspectives”
34
(p. 119), and offered a recommendation regarding the value involved in narrative researchers
asking multiple versions of a question about the ‘same’ event or experience.
Perhaps most
compellingly, Josselson (2009) claimed:
“Single tellings of a given memory, while offering a window into current personality organization and
concern, do not illuminate the processes by which self and memory are narratively co-constructive. What has
not been investigated, in part due to the logistical difficulties of long-term longitudinal studies, is the way in
which the same memory may be reevaluated over long periods of time in light of ongoing experience and the
restructuring of the self” (p. 649).
Along these lines, it may be possible that the dearth of research on retelling is, at least in part, a
result of a lack of an appropriate or effective methodological tool that could enable a systematic
and in-depth comparison of ‘parallel’ narratives. Bamberg (2008), in particular, recommended that,
given that life (and narrating a life) is a continuous process, “we may have to rethink qualitative
methods, and narratives [sic] methods in particular, in terms of how they capture and do justice to
the constant changes that take place” (p. 203). Indeed, the present research study attempts to do
exactly this, rethinking and expanding a number of narrative methods currently in use, and
proposing new manners of viewing and analyzing the retelling of narratives over time. This type of
investigation is important not only from a theoretical perspective, but also from a methodological
and practical standpoint, as much can be gained and understood from studying the longitudinal
development of narrative processing and meaning-making.
2.3.3
The relationship between the use of pronouns and the health of the speaker
The area of research utilizing quantitative and/or qualitative analytical methods to study
discourse on a micro-level, and particularly to explore connections between the use of various
semiotic elements and the health of the speaker, is also still relatively sparse. Within the literature
that does exist, James Pennebaker and a number of his students and colleagues have emerged as the
leaders therein. Pennebaker (2007) differentiated between content words (nouns, regular verbs, and
most adjectives and adverbs), which signify “what people are talking about,” and style words
(pronouns, prepositions, articles, etc.), which “provide clues to how they are talking and socially
connecting to their audience” (p. 4). He asserted that style words are “more intriguing” than
content words, as recent research has found them to be related to a number of psychological states
that can, in turn, influence health (Pennebaker, 2007, p. 3). Many studies have been conducted on
the associations between pronoun use and affective states (see Chung & Pennebaker, 2007, for a
review of these findings), but most have treated the discursive strategies under investigation as little
more than a predictive or associative variable, rather than a semiotic phenomenon worthy of study
in and of itself (Boals & Perez, 2009). As Pennebaker et al. (2003) wrote:
“Use of first person singular, for example, is associated with age, sex, depression, illness, and more broadly,
self-focus. First person plural can variously be a marker of group identity and, on occasion, a sign of
emotional distancing (Pennebaker & Lay, 2002). Second and third person pronouns are, by definition, markers
to suggest that the speaker is socially engaged or aware” (p. 570).
35
Indeed, the extent of most of Pennebaker’s statements on the linguistic properties of pronouns is
represented in the following:
“Particles serve as the glue that holds content words together. But particles are more than mere glue. They are
referential words that have tremendous social and psychological meaning. To use a pronoun requires the
speaker and listener to share a common knowledge of who the referent is. … Pronoun use requires a relatively
sophisticated awareness of the audience’s ability to track who is who. Prepositions are also referential. …
Particles, then, can be construed as having tremendous social implications” (Pennebaker et al. 2003, p. 570).
While these are important assertions within the world of discursive psychology, they fall short in
the linguistic domain, failing to provide meaningful interpretations of the psychosemiotic
phenomena at work.
Indeed, Chung and Pennebaker (2007), relying on fundamental assumptions that the use of
the ‘I’ pronoun simply “suggests that the speaker is briefly paying attention to the self” (p. 352),
while “most other pronouns implicitly or explicitly suggest that the person is attending to other
individuals” (p. 351), then linked with the literature on social support, which claims that greater
discursive reference to others is associated with adaptive coping and consequently better physical
health. Pennebaker (2002) stated that in this emerging area of study, psychologists have found
many “intriguing” patterns related to a variety of parts of speech, but the most revealing, and the
“category that is yielding the most remarkable links to mental and physical health is pronouns” (p.
8). Along these lines, Pennebaker (2002) suggested:
“The ways that people refer to themselves and others is highly diagnostic of their mental state. The use of 1 st
person singular (I, me, my) versus 1st person plural (we, us, our) provides insight into people’s social identity
and ‘ownership’ of their speaking or writing topic. By the same token, references to other people suggest an
awareness and, often, integration with others” (p. 8).
Several studies have found an association between the use of the first-person singular pronoun and
personal distress (Boals & Klein, 2005; Pennebaker & Lay, 2002) and negative affective states (see
Chung & Pennebaker, 2007, for a review of these findings).
In particular, it has been reported that depressed or suicide-prone individuals show a much
greater tendency to make ‘I’-statements than do individuals who do not suffer from depression
(Ramírez-Esparza & Pennebaker, 2006; Stirman & Pennebaker, 2001). As Chung and Pennebaker
(2007) noted, two such studies found that patterns of pronoun use actually functioned as a better
marker of depression in the participants than did their use of words that signified negative
emotions. The authors essentially argued that the use of the first-person singular pronoun signifies
attention to the self, too much of which has been found to be associated with depression (Boals &
Perez, 2009; Chung & Pennebaker, 2007). Furthermore, Campbell and Pennebaker (2003) found a
correlation between a change in pronoun use over time and an improvement in physical health. As
Boals and Perez (2009) claimed, “A change in use of pronouns is believed to reflect a change in
social perspective” (p. 3), and may, thus, serve as a possible predictor of psychological states.
This field is clearly emerging as an important area of interest, but the sparse focus upon
36
second-person pronouns in any of the studies conducted thus far is perplexing. This is most likely a
result of the semiotic structure of the English language, which includes only a single second-person
pronoun (‘you’), rather than four separate forms as in Modern Israeli Hebrew (masculine singular
and plural, and feminine singular and plural). However, even when involving only a single secondperson form, the qualitative difference between the narrative phrases, “I went through that trauma,”
and “You went through that trauma,” is substantial and meaningful, and deserving of research
attention. While Pennebaker and his colleagues have emphasized the import of a switch from firstperson singular to first-person plural, a dedicated focus on pronoun switching between first- and
second-person seems equally warranted. Along these lines, research on the connection between the
other underrepresented pronouns and the speaker’s inner psychological world, psychosocial
functioning, and overall health is also lacking. The present study aims to fill this lacuna as well.
2.4 THE MACRO-LEVEL PSYCHOSOCIAL CONTEXT OF THE RESEARCH STUDY
This section addresses the psychosocial context surrounding the bus drivers who
participated in this study, on a macro-level and from both a theoretical and phenomenological
perspective. The first sub-section presents the political and security realities of living in Israel,
under the constant threat of war, terror, violent tensions, and stress, and the effects this can have on
its populace. The section begins with an overview of Israel’s history of war and conflict, and
statistics on the impact of the Second Intifada. The phenomenological daily experience is then
discussed, with a focus on the shared and communal nature of the stress experienced. Recent
literature on the psychological effects of both acute and chronic stress and trauma—in general, and
in the Israeli case, in particular—is then reviewed, with an equal focus on the potential negative
effects as well as the salutogenic possibility for resilient responses to these challenges.
Finally, a brief discussion is presented of the experiences and perceptions surrounding the
disparity between military and civilian trauma in the Israeli context, with particular focus on the
isolation and marginalization expressed by many of the individuals interviewed in the present
study. The second sub-section offers an overview of the psychosociocultural context surrounding
the bus drivers, with regard to the hegemonic myths in Israeli society vis-à-vis masculinity, power,
heroism, and pressure to act courageously under all circumstances and against all odds—idealized
in the prescriptive myth of ‘The Israeli Warrior.’
The overall goal of this review is to locate the participants of this study within their societal
context, while also bringing the reader in to understand it more intimately.
It may well be
impossible to fully understand every facet of the drivers’ discourse, as so much of it may be deeply
intertwined with this psychosocial context, but an attempt must be made to explore the factors at
work. Again, while this research study does not assume that these individuals were traumatized by
37
their experiences, it is nonetheless critical to understand the potentially traumatic properties and
negative effects of terror, in addition to the possibility for resilient responses. All of the factors
discussed here may play a part in the interviewees’ discursive choices and narrative strategies,
through their influence on the meaning-making processes and attribution systems of the narrators.
2.4.1 Terror, war, and chronic stress in Israel1
2.4.1.1 Overview and statistics
Terrorism, war, conflict, and chronic exposure to potential trauma, in one form or another,
have been pervasive components of the fabric of Israeli society since the official establishment of
the State in 1948, and well beforehand. Israel has been involved in a total of fourteen wars and
military operations since its independence was declared, and because these events have been spaced
out relatively evenly, there is a general sense of seemingly constant tension and conflict—either in
actual war or in expectation of the next armed confrontation or terrorist incident, locally or abroad.
The past three decades in particular, encompassing the First and Second Intifadas (1987-1993 and
2000-2004/20052, respectively), have had a significant effect on the Israeli populace (Baum, 2004;
Bleich, Gelkopf, & Solomon, 2003; Kaplan et al., 2005).
Indeed, particularly during the Al-Aqsa Intifada (a.k.a., Second Intifada), which began in
late September of 2000 and was characterized by frequent and deadly TAs, the day-to-day reality in
Israel was filled with palpable fear, anxiety, and apprehension (Bleich et al., 2003). Many of the
attacks were carried out by suicide bombers, targeting public places such as restaurants, buses,
supermarkets, shopping malls, and various venues of entertainment and popular leisure sites. Other
types of attacks included detonations of roadside bombs; intrusions into private homes, restaurants,
hotels, and public buildings; kidnappings and hostage-takings; drive-by shootings; and various
‘random’ injuries and killings, such as those using knives, stones, or Molotov cocktails (Bleich et
al., 2003; Zeidner, 2005, 2006b). Victims included civilians as well as security forces, of all ages
and walks of life. Kaplan et al. (2005) described the atmosphere in great and accurate detail:
“In the cities in those areas of Israel that are bounded by the Green Line (i.e., conform to Israel’s borders on
1
2
It may be necessary to state from the outset that there are, of course, two sides to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and
both have suffered devastating and deadly losses throughout. Both sides have acted as aggressors as well as suffered
as victims, and it is beyond the scope of this dissertation to enter into a discussion of the deeply complex and
convoluted politics of the conflict. It should, nonetheless, be acknowledged that there is no mention here of the
‘Palestinian side’—that is, of the fatalities and injuries suffered and the daily situation in Gaza and the West Bank,
that is just as fraught with tension, fear, and violence as is the daily reality within the boundaries of the Green Line
on the Israeli side. This lack of discussion is a reflection not of a political position that the ‘other side’ of the conflict
is less important, less tragic, or less worthy of mention, but only of the fact that the focus of this study is on the
experience of terror by (Jewish) Israeli bus drivers, within the very specific psychosocial context surrounding them.
It is difficult to pinpoint the precise end of the Second Intifada, as there was no declaration as such, or signing of any
kind of treaty or agreement. The violence simply seemed to slowly decrease, perhaps as a result of the gradual
progression in building the security fence/wall, or perhaps as a result of greater intelligence and anti-terrorism efforts
on the part of the Israeli army. The lack of successful attacks did not appear to be the result of a lack of or decreased
attempts on the part of the intended terrorists.
38
the eve of the Six-Day War in 1967), the terror attacks have characteristically taken place in crowded public
venues, with shootings and suicide bomb attacks on buses and in markets, shops, and discotheques. In the
areas of maximal contact between the Palestinians and the Israelis—the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and
Jerusalem—the atmosphere is even more one of a war zone. The constant military/paramilitary presence on
both sides, the road-blocks, the sound of gunfire by day and nightly mortar shelling, all create a very different
atmosphere to that within the Green Line. Within the Green Line, the attacks are less frequent, unexpected,
and often on a larger scale, i.e., more costly in terms of casualties. The events are immediately, extensively,
and vividly (some claim luridly) reported in real time in all of the media” (p. 1147).
There were, indeed, highly differential experiences throughout different regions of Israel during the
Second Intifada; although generally, attacks were more focused on the three major metropolitan
areas of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and Haifa, as well as the three smaller cities of Hadera, Netanya, and
Afula3 (Somer et al., 2005). Statistics show that during 2002, 20% of the TAs that occurred were in
Jerusalem, while 8% took place in Tel Aviv, and only 3.2% occurred in northern Israel and 1.1% in
Haifa (Zeidner, 2006b). Across the entire span of the Intifada, Jerusalem was, by far, the hardest
hit, with a total of 22.7% of the total number of TAs having taken place there (Zeidner, 2006b).
The data varies with regard to the precise number of TAs, injuries, and casualties during
these periods. Perliger, Pedahzur, and Zalmanovitch (2005) claimed that there were nearly 200
suicide bombings in Israel between 1994 and 2005. In Jerusalem alone, there were over 30 suicide
bombings and hundreds of other violent incidents over the course of that decade, with the first
suicide bombing that caused fatalities (and second overall) in Jerusalem having taken place in
August of 1995. The four to five years of the Second Intifada comprised a particularly intense and
violent period, however, involving near-constant incidents of terror-related violence. Indeed, from
September of 2000 to October of 2003, there was not a single month in which fatalities did not
occur in Israel as a result of terrorism (Yechiam, Barron, & Erev, 2005).
Some sources indicate that there were approximately 132 suicide bombings between
October of 2000 and April of 2004, 85 of which occurred within the Green Line between 20012003 (Kaplan, Mintz, Mishal, & Samban, 2005; Shalev et al., 2006; Sharlin, Moin, & Yahav,
2006). These attacks reportedly caused the deaths of 666 and injuries to 4,447 Israeli civilians, and
the deaths of 276 and injuries to 1,843 individuals in security forces—a total of 0.11% of the Israeli
population at the time (Shalev et al., 2006). Other sources include a wider range of types of
attacks; including knife and gun attacks, home intrusions, and drive-by shootings. Citing the Israel
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, for instance, Bleich et al. (2003) reported that, as of the end of April of
2002, “472 persons (318 civilians) had been killed in terrorist attacks and 3846 persons (2708
civilians) had been injured (totaling 0.067% of the population of 6.4 million),” with a total of 560
TAs having occurred within the Green Line (p. 612; Zeidner, 2005, 2006b). Others relate more
generally to “thousands of men, women, and children” killed or wounded on both sides (Sharlin et
al., 2006, p. 97) or a “massive” casualty rate of “over 1000 Israelis” killed during the Second
3
These three cities are closest to the Green Line, the unofficial border between Israel and the Palestinian territories.
39
Intifada alone (Somer, Ruvio, Soref, & Sever, 2005, p. 166), although the source of this claim is not
clear. The graph below presents data on the occurrence of suicide bombings only within the Green
Line during 1994-2011, as gleaned from the official Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs website.
Figure 2-1: Occurrence of suicide bombing attacks within the Green Line, 1994-2011
In addition, the figure below represents a timeline illustration of the suicide bombing attacks that
occurred before, during, and after the Second Intifada. It was at the height of this period of time
that the drivers who participated in this study were working full-time on a daily basis, and toward
the end of which they were interviewed for this study.
Figure 2-2: Timeline of suicide bombing attacks within the Green Line, 1994-20074
4
The dates written in red above the timeline represent TAs that occurred on or involving buses, while those below the
timeline represent TAs that occurred in other venues. Numbers in parentheses signify multiple attacks (either double
or triple bombings that occurred together or directly in succession).
40
I created this timeline illustration early in the research process, as a means to attempt to enter into
the psychological mindset of the drivers I was interviewing. And indeed, from just a brief glimpse
at the peak period of TAs, recognizing that there were often multiple attacks in a single week, or
even in successive days (not to mention successive attacks on the same day), one can perhaps begin
to imagine the nature of stress, fear, and tension in which these drivers (and the Israeli population at
large) must have been functioning. In addition to this, the Israeli populace was bombarded with
constant media coverage of these attacks, most often filled with gory images of burning shells of
buses, bloodied and charred bodies hanging out of burnt window frames, and pools of blood
surrounding scenes of carnage and destruction. Indeed, as Somer et al. (2005) wrote, “Television,
radio, internet and printed media coverage of these events was immediate, graphic, and extensive,
contributing to a sense of a massive shared national crisis that engulfed survivors and other
civilians alike” (p. 166).
This research cannot be comprehended fully without attempting to
understand this daily reality confronting Israeli bus drivers during this period.
2.4.1.2 The phenomenological daily experience and its effects:
Communal acute and chronic stress and trauma
This period in Israel’s history was thus terribly difficult on a daily basis, with ongoing and
unpredictable TAs, particularly leveled at civilian populations, causing an all-encompassing sense
of threat to individuals and to the society as a whole (Zeidner, 2005). As Baum (2004) wrote,
“Riding a bus, sitting in a cafe, attending a celebration in a hall, driving along certain roads—all
these and many other ordinary activities have become fraught with danger and a source of a
constant underlying apprehension” (p. 396), and referred to the existence of “a perpetual sense of
threat, which permeates people’s daily lives” (p. 396). Furthermore, Ayalon (2004) noted, “When
airplanes, buses, and trains are targeted and when shops and restaurants are exploding, daily
mobility can no longer be taken for granted. The threat is contagious—there is a lurking danger
that any train or bus can become a death trap” (p. 176). In many ways, for the past few decades at
least, the Israeli population has subsisted under constant threat and both chronic and acute stress.
Indeed, for this reason, Israelis are known as avid followers of the news—watching, reading, or
listening to broadcasts several times a day to keep constantly abreast of the security situation.
Terror in Israel has thus been referred to as not only a personal challenge, but a national
political, societal, and communal trauma, as it is experienced in a shared manner by so many facets
of the population (Nuttman-Shwartz, Lauer, & Offir, 2002; Laqueur, 1999; Raviv et al., 2000;
Zeidner, 2006a, 2006b). The demographic makeup and small size of the country, as well as the
strong focus on the “cohesive traditional family structure” among the Israeli Jewish population, all
serve to create a sense of personal vulnerability with regard to TAs, even in the absence of ‘direct’
involvement (Brody & Baum, 2007, p. 10; Somer et al., 2005). These periods in Israel’s history
41
can thus be viewed as having caused a “group trauma,” defined by Kimbles (2006) as a process by
which “each member of the group recognizes that something happened at the level of the group
psyche…that has profound implications for issues of belonging and identity” (p. 104). Indeed, as
Noy (2004) asserted, trauma that occurs on a larger scale—that is, beyond the realm of a single
individual—can have far-reaching implications; being, as it is, “not confined to the individual’s
narrative,” but rather, having the capacity to actually “destroy social structure and order” (p. 212).
With regard to the overall Israeli population’s rate of primary victimization from TAs
during the Second Intifada, the statistics actually show very low numbers. As of 2006, only 0.01%
had been killed and 0.07% injured (Zeidner, 2006b). However, Bleich et al. (2003) found that in a
representative sample of over 500 Israeli men and women, “terrorism has had a substantial impact.
Almost two thirds of the sample (60%) reported that they felt that their lives were in danger and
more than two thirds (67.9%) that they felt that the lives of their friends and family were in danger”
(p. 619). This involves widespread effects, affecting Israelis of all groups and in all walks of life.
As Zeidner (2006b) contended, “Even for those not directly impacted, the [effects of the] past 5
years of ongoing terror attack…are still reverberating, and causing concern about personal safety in
their day-to-day life routines” (p. 309; Zeidner, 2006a). Indeed, even in the absence of direct
exposure to a terror event, most Israelis tend to feel and report that they ‘experienced’ the terror of
these periods (Kaplan et al., 2005). Many have a friend or acquaintance who was directly involved,
and many can recall a ‘close call’ when they ‘almost’ got onto a bus that later exploded, or ‘just
left’ a restaurant before an attack. Somer et al. (2005) found that approximately 28% of their
subjects responded that they “felt that they narrowly escaped an attack only by sheer luck” (p. 177).
The chronic and near-constant nature of terror and conflict facing Israel over past decades can thus
be characterized as “a traumatic national disaster situation,” involving thousands of fatalities and
injuries, an onset that has both sudden and unexpected but yet protracted elements, and a pattern of
severely disrupted daily functioning and coping (Zeidner, 2006b, p. 307).
One of the most prominent factors in the widespread experience of stress and the communal
sense of national crisis during these periods in Israel was the print and televised media coverage
after each TA that occurred. Kaplan et al. (2005), describing the Al-Aqsa Intifada period, wrote
that “Almost everyone follows the events closely in the media, and many report a vicarious form of
intense emotional involvement in the events” (p. 1147). National news coverage of TAs in Israel is
often aired only minutes after they have occurred, and is often graphic and disturbing in itself.
Somer et al. (2005) referred to “the extensive traumatizing sounds and images broadcast on national
radio and television” (p. 166), and pointed to emerging evidence of “a significant association
between exposure to television coverage of catastrophic events and subsequent psychological
symptoms” (p. 178; Cantor, Mares, & Oliver, 1993; Pfefferbaum et al., 2001; Schuster et al., 2001).
42
This additional type of indirect exposure to potentially traumatic images and scenes can indeed
cause stress reactions and even long-term psychological effects. Especially when exposure of this
nature can happen daily or repeatedly over a protracted period of time, as in the case of heightened
periods of terror or war in Israel, a host of negative effects can result.
It is well-known and well-documented in the psychological literature that exposure to
trauma is “a pathogenic factor known to cause and exacerbate somatic and psychiatric distress and
disorder including depression, anxiety, and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD)” (Solomon,
Gelkopf, & Bleich, 2005, p. 947; Freitag et al., 2011). Trauma can be caused by multiple stressful
life experiences over a short period of time, or a series of even milder stressors accumulated over a
longer period of time, or a single stressful event at one point in time (Denham, 2008). War and
TAs are considered among the most distressing, painful, and potentially traumatic of life stressors,
particularly due to the overwhelming sense of threat and possibility of death or lifelong
disfigurement or impairment (Zeidner, 2006a). Terror, in particular, can cause a flood of anxiety,
intense fear, and feelings of helplessness, overwhelming the victim’s sense of safety and security
and rendering his defenses powerless, leading him to perceive the world around him as hostile and
dangerous (Baum, 2004; Friedland & Merari, 1986; Herman, 1992; Zeidner, 2005, 2006a). These
effects can be long-lasting and deeply disturbing, posing a great challenge to the individual’s ability
to adapt and cope. As Zeidner (2006b) contended:
“terror poses a threat to one’s physical and psychological integrity, one’s possessions and other entities, one’s
sense of what is familiar and controllable, and a threat to cherished values, beliefs, commitments, and
assumptions. In addition, terror attack leads to the curtailment of daily pursuits and routine activities, such as
work, family, and leisure activities” (p. 297).
Citing a host of studies, Sharlin et al. (2006) asserted that war and TAs, representing “a complex
mixture of psychologically traumatic events,” can have a “wide-ranging and multi-faceted” impact
that “may affect all areas of personality” (p. 98). In addition to post-traumatic stress symptoms,
this can include depression, anxiety, and mental disorders; behavioral problems and difficulties in
the social, familial, and occupational spheres; and difficulties with concentration, learning, and
memory (Sharlin et al., 2006). These symptoms and/or disorders can appear in both individuals
who directly experienced an attack and those in the general population who were indirectly exposed
(Galea & Resnick, 2005; Sharlin et al., 2006).
As Shalev et al. (2006) noted, “Terrorism, and the efforts to contain it, can also disrupt
people’s daily living (e.g., by affecting transportation and other forms of freedom) and thereby
create a secondary stressor” (p. 667). Living under, and the constant need to invest mental and
psychic resources in coping with, such conditions of unremitting stress and political tension for
protracted periods of time can take its toll. Following Horowitz and Lissak (1989), Zeidner (2006a)
suggested that Israelis experience a “depletion of emotional resources over time and…social
43
burnout and potential increase in social tension and pathology” (p. 779; Zeidner, 2006b). In
addition, it has been found that individuals who have been through potentially traumatic events tend
to have “a less positive view regarding the world,” perceiving their world as less safe, their selfworth as lower in value, and their world as imbued with less meaning (Tuval-Mashiach et al., 2004,
p. 282; Janoff-Bulman, 1992). In this sense, TAs can represent a fundamental challenge to coping
and meaning-making, shattering a number of basic assumptions upon which humans rely to make
sense of their world, and causing dramatic breaks and shifts in their worldview.
Shalev et al. (2006) discussed an important facet of the distinction between acute and
chronic trauma, or between a single stressful event and chronic and continuous stress, asserting that
“under continuous threat, the symptoms that are currently subsumed as posttraumatic and therefore
purposeless and somewhat exaggerated (e.g., avoiding previously dangerous places and situations,
responding emotionally to threat signals, remaining vigilant and ‘on guard’) may reflect
anticipation and self-protection” (p. 667). Thus, behaviors that would ‘normally’ be characterized
as possible symptoms of PTSD may not reflect distress or dysfunction, but rather, may be seen as
adaptive and even necessary under these difficult conditions. Indeed, when one is faced with the
threat of terror on a daily basis, and unable to change the external circumstances or one’s inevitable
exposure to them, the only useful, active, and adaptive methods of coping may be essentially
protective methods—that is, “acceptance of the situation and getting on with life, cautiously
planning one’s actions, and suppressing dangerous activities one normally performs” (Zeidner,
2006b, p. 308). Essentially, therefore, Israelis today may be subsisting in a state labeled by the
field of psychology as “the new normal,” characterized by “persistent, widespread distress that,
while not diagnostically significant, is significant in terms of social functioning and adaptation”
(Steury, Spencer, & Parkinson, 2004, p. 158; North & Pfefferbaum, 2002). While the potential
effects of chronic stress and conflict on a national scale are undeniable, however, there is another
possible perspective—that of a salutogenic view of the resilience of the Israeli populace.
2.4.1.3 Israeli resilience
In light of the state of protracted conflict over the past few decades, many studies have
investigated the effects of trauma and war in various population groups in Israel (Murthy &
Lakshminarayana, 2006). Indeed, the continuous and constant nature of the threat posed by TAs
throughout the Second Intifada has provided an important and unique opportunity to study the
effects of prolonged violence and chronic stress on a civilian population (Somer et al., 2005;
Zeidner, 2006a). The present research is based, in part, on the hypothesis that the bus drivers
interviewed herein, many of whom have withstood the ever-present stress of a looming TA on a
near-daily basis for decades, have been dealing with these threats to their physical and emotional
44
lives with resilience. Indeed, the Israeli case may allow a salutogenic examination of the forces
within the society that help and/or hinder its populace in their efforts to be resilient. Although the
effects of protracted periods of TAs have been researched in many facets, individual responses and
processes of coping and adjusting to these stressors are still not fully understood (Zeidner, 2006a,
2006b). As discussed in the resilience literature, there is significant variability in the reactions of
those exposed to (even the same) traumatic events. Significant differences also exist in various
conditions and contexts, and involving many personal, communal, and societal variables. Sharlin et
al. (2006) presented a valuable review of the relevant literature, stating that the degree of stress
experienced by an individual after a difficult event can be influenced by the sociocultural and
political context surrounding the individual, the involvement of the media in the event and its
aftermath, the social support system available, personal factors such as level of social-emotional
and cognitive development, and the situational factors involved in the event itself.
Following Rubonis and Bickman (1991), Zeidner (2005) noted that in general, a large
proportion of a population exposed to a potentially traumatic event such as a TA tends to suffer
from a mild form of stress for a relatively brief period of time. While it has been found that the
Israeli population at large has indeed been affected by these long periods of conflict, the consensus
has been that “Israeli adults appear to respond adaptively to the security crisis, manifesting rather
low levels of somatic symptoms and post-traumatic stress reactions” (Zeidner, 2006a, p. 779;
2006b). For instance, Bleich et al. (2003) found that while 76.7% of a national sample of Israeli
adults who had experienced war- or terror-related trauma were suffering from at least one symptom
of traumatic stress, only 9.4% met the diagnostic criteria for PTSD. Somer et al. (2005) also found
only a “moderate level of emotional distress,” with 18% of “noteworthy sadness” and 50% of
“noteworthy tension” among a randomly-sampled population of Israelis (p. 177). Furthermore, it
was found that individuals who had been directly affected by a traumatic event showed no greater
likelihood of developing a negative mood than those who had been affected only indirectly or not at
all, and in fact, the general mood in the areas of the country that had been the hardest hit by TAs
was actually better than in the less-affected areas (Somer et al., 2005). Under the conditions of
daily tension in Israel, it was contended, the levels of distress reported among the population were
decidedly lower than what could have been expected. Indeed, Bleich et al. (2003) noted that there
were few requests for professional help, that most of the participants appeared to be employing
constructive and flexible coping strategies, and that “a majority also expressed optimism about their
personal future and the future of Israel, and a sense of self-efficacy in the event of a terrorist attack”
(p. 619). This rate is also lower than several other populations who experienced trauma, and may
be considered particularly remarkable in light of the ongoing and chronic nature of the stress facing
the Israeli population (Bleich et al., 2003).
45
Indeed, studies have found that Israelis tend to show a high degree of adaptation to
whichever crisis situation is at hand, and “are commonly thought to be experts in survival”
(Zeidner, 2006b, p. 300). It is possible, therefore, that this population, having been exposed to war,
continuous violence, and ongoing conflict and tension for such an extended period of time, “may
come to adopt a problem-focused attitude and to deal with stressful encounters in active ways even
under the most dire of conditions” (Zeidner, 2006b, p. 300). There also has been found to be an
accommodation, habituation, or inoculation effect at work in the Israeli population, as a result of
the prolonged periods of stress they routinely endure (Baum, 2004; Bleich et al., 2003; Solomon,
1995). Shalev (2004) suggested that this unusually low incidence of PTSD in Israelis may illustrate
the possibility of “some form of immunity,” perhaps conferred by having survived such long and
repeated periods of trauma (p. 174). In addition, it has been claimed that “the strong community
solidarity and support during times of war and political violence in Israeli society, may serve as
sources of social support for Israelis” (Zeidner, 2006a, p. 779).
For some time, then, Israeli civilians have been thrust into a position of having to cope with
highly stressful events and their effects and literally build (or at least accept) this into the daily
structure of their lives (Baum, 2004; Nuttman-Shwartz et al., 2002). As Baum (2004) noted,
“Despite the repeated deadly attacks on the civilian population, Israelis have gone on with their
daily lives and routines with a determined, somewhat fatalistic, business-as-usual approach and no
large scale panic” (pp. 395-396). Indeed, following Breznitz and Eshel (1983), Somer et al. (2005)
asserted that “although a higher baseline of pressures and stressors is characteristic of a large part
of the Israeli population, the repeated exposure to intense stress can foster adequate modes of
adjustment, based on learning from these experiences and subsequent habituation” (p. 178). This
type of adaptation and accommodation may be one of the most powerful tools in the individual and
collective arsenal of Israeli society, and is a prominent part of the societal discourse surrounding
coping, heroism, and resilience. In addition, the collective coping of Israeli society with the
national trauma of the Intifadas has created and hinged on a sense of communal psychological bond
and a basic group cohesion (Nuttman-Schwartz et al., 2002; Zinner, Williams, & Ellis, 1999),
reinforced by norms, symbolic meanings and identities, and ideological myths that all set forth
prescriptions for behavior, beliefs, and emotional reactions.
2.4.1.4 Military vs. civilian trauma: Universal belonging vs. isolation and marginalization
The social discourses on coping, heroism, and resilience are intimately connected to the
centrality of the military in Israel, and the differential experiences of ‘military trauma’ vs. ‘civilian
trauma.’ Several studies have focused on the experience of trauma and the emergence of posttraumatic symptoms in soldiers, and much research has been conducted on the same issues in
46
civilian populations. Israel, however, represents a particularly complex case, as its military system
is based on a strongly involved civilian army—over 80% of the eligible Israeli population has
served or is serving in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), according to the Mahal website. This,
along with the many wars, military operations, and TAs that have taken place in Israel over its very
short history as a nation, means that essentially all Israelis have experienced some degree and
amount of potentially traumatic experiences, whether as soldiers or civilians.
Indeed, Ben-
Ya’acov, Amir, Arzy, and Kotler (2005) emphasized “the uniqueness of Israeli society and the
special place that military and civilian trauma occupies therein,” asserting, “The realities of Israeli
life entail numerous traumas in both military and civilian settings” (p. 8).
Ben-Ya’acov et al. (2005) suggested that in the Israeli case, active participation in combat
can be considered to be essentially synonymous with ‘trauma exposure,’ as “a front-line soldier in a
war, the Intifada, or any operational activity will almost always have been involved in, or
witnessed, substantial military activity with injuries and/or life threatening events” (p. 3). Indeed,
wars and operations in Israel tend to be very short, limited geographically, and intense (often
lasting only a matter of weeks), and the Intifadas both involved near-daily incidences of violence
over a period of years. Because of this level of intensity, the IDF employs a policy of rotation for
all combat units—with the result that generally, soldiers do not spend more than three consecutive
months in a front line combat role. Therefore, it is highly unlikely that combat soldiers in the army
during these periods did not experience at least some trauma (Ben-Ya’acov et al., 2005).
Many studies have noted differences between traumatic events that occur in a military, as
opposed to civilian, setting. Rosenheck and Fontana (1994), for instance, claimed that stressors
that occur in a military setting are of a higher intensity and are correlated with higher levels of posttraumatic symptoms than are non-military stressors. Helzer, Robins, and McEvoy (1987) found
that individuals who experienced traumatic events as civilians generally suffer fewer symptoms,
particularly hyper-alertness and disturbances in sleep. However, it was not clear whether this
difference has to do with disparities in training and psychological ‘preparation,’ or due to what may
be inherent differences in the nature and intensity of the given trauma. It was suggested that the
disparity may be the result of situational characteristics, as traumatic events in a military setting
generally occur within a more prolonged combat situation, whereas civilian traumas tend to be
more sudden, unexpected, and surprising (Helzer et al., 1987).
While in recent years, the IDF has become more aware of the need for attention and
possible intervention after traumatic events, widely implementing a policy of ‘debriefing’ after
operations and otherwise difficult incidents, there is no such set of routine procedures to deal with
the effects of a trauma in a civilian setting in Israel. As Ben-Ya’acov et al. (2005) wrote, “trauma
victims in a civilian setting often find themselves alone, with no kind of establishmental support in
47
the short range—no authority to organize, support and structure the experience in a crisis situation”
(p. 7).
In particular, Bituach Leumi5, the government institution responsible for attending to
civilians who have been involved in a traumatic event, has been severely criticized for the
inadequate system of treatment, compensation, and/or rehabilitation presently available to Israeli
trauma survivors. Many studies have found, in a variety of cultures and traumatic contexts, that
social support can have a mitigating impact on post-traumatic symptoms, and contrarily, that lack
of social support is associated with higher degrees of PTSD (Barrett & Mizes, 1988; Hendin &
Haas, 1984; Sarason, Shearing, Pierce, & Sarason, 1987; Solomon & Mikulincer, 1990; Solomon,
Mikulincer, & Waysman, 1991).
In light of this, then, the isolation that Israeli civilian TA
survivors often feel, from both their governmental institutions and their surrounding society, can
have a deep impact on their experiences, perceptions, and coping after experiencing a TA.
Exacerbating this disconnect is Israel’s practice of worshipping and rallying around its war
heroes, exalting them to an essentially mythical status. Israeli society memorializes its fallen
soldiers with monuments, candle-lighting, a siren sounding throughout the country to mark a
moment of silence, and a national Remembrance Day ceremony; there are no such rituals or
government-sanctioned collective mourning processes for terror victims (Nuttman-Schwartz et al.,
2002). As Ben-Yaacov et al. (2005), noted, “injuries in a civilian context generally bear no heroic
aura whatsoever, but are considered fruitless and are associated with chance, bad luck, fate and the
like, and not with values, a contribution to society or personal challenge” (p. 7). Many of the bus
drivers interviewed for this study also seemed to exist in a ‘grey area’ between civilian and soldier,
referring to themselves as ‘soldiers out of uniform’ and as ‘captains’ of their bus domains, but
nonetheless aware that they were perceived by their society as nothing more than bus drivers.
Thus, they found themselves caught in a psychological dilemma, unsure of whether they were
‘worthy’ of a “heroic aura” or destined to be seen as “fruitless” and without value to their society.
Thus, in many ways, a powerful disconnect exists within Israeli society in this case—
between military trauma and civilian trauma, between war hero and trauma victim, and between the
expectations in place of the individuals existing on both sides of this chasm. Nuttman-Schwartz et
al. (2002), in their study of group therapy conducted with Israeli individuals who had been injured
in TAs and the difficulties involved in their processes of working through their experiences, found
a stark dichotomy set up by the group members between terror survivors and those wounded in
military contexts, noting that the participants “expressed a great deal of envy and anger at persons
who had been disabled during their army service, and enjoyed greater prestige than other disabled
citizens because their disability was recognized as a sacrifice for the nation” (p. 54). It is indeed
the case that Israeli army veterans are entitled to a number of highly desirable and special benefits
5
The Israeli National Insurance Institute (NII), which provides basic, compulsory universal health care to all citizens.
48
that are not offered to individuals wounded or affected by terror. Furthermore, while injured
soldiers are placed under the treatment and responsibility of the Ministry of Defense, individuals
who underwent a TA receive their compensation and care through the NII, well-known as the
institution responsible for injuries sustained in work or traffic accidents. The group members in
Nuttman-Schwartz et al.’s (2002) study expressed great dissatisfaction and fury toward their society
and government for this perceived discrimination and hypocritical distinction.
Within Israeli society, different standards exist also for coping after stressful experiences in
both spheres, as well as for societal treatment and acceptance of them. ‘Military trauma’ is viewed
as nearly universal—a rite of passage of sorts—and so there is a degree of belongingness involved
among Israeli men who have fought in wars, particularly those who were in combat units. ‘Civilian
trauma,’ on the other hand, is not at all a common experience, despite the amount of chronic stress
and tension across the Israeli population. In fact, many of the participants in the present study
expressed a sense of isolation, loneliness, and marginalization as a result of their TA experiences
and the relative lack of others who experienced similar things. Nuttman-Schwartz et al. (2002)
found comparable sentiments in their study, noting that many of the participants “emphasized their
difference from the rest of Israeli society, stating and restating the feeling that ‘nobody understands
us,’ that ‘only those injured like us can understand,’” while also expressing “strong feelings of
impotence, helplessness, and envy of the unscathed” (p. 53). In many ways, the authors suggested,
the difficulties in coping and meaning-making that emerged within this small group process may
reflect the difficulties faced by Israeli society at large in its own psychosocial process of working
through the terror, protracted conflict, and frequent wars that have plagued it over the years
(Nuttman-Schwartz et al., 2002).
2.4.2 Israeli societal pressure: The hegemonic cultural discourse of ‘The Israeli Warrior’
The State of Israel was established, in May of 1948, essentially due to and out of the
shadow of the Holocaust, and this played a significant part in shaping the identity and mentality of
the new society and its members (Bar-On, 1995; Ramon, 2004; Segev, 1991), nearly a third of
whom were Holocaust survivors themselves (Klar, Schori-Eyal, & Klar, 2013; Yablonka, 1999).
The Holocaust has thus constituted an omnipresent memory, image, force, political myth, and
guiding discourse and principle from the early days of Israeli statehood up until today (Liebman &
Don-Yihya, 1983), invoking four driving prescriptions to the Israeli populace: “1) never be a
passive victim; 2) never forsake your brothers; 3) never be [a] passive bystander; and 4) never be a
perpetrator” (Klar et al., 2013, p. 126). The emphasis on Israel as representative of the rebirth and
redemption of the Jewish people, and as compensation for the Holocaust, created a powerful
dichotomy between ‘the new Jew’ and those who purportedly went submissively to their death ‘like
49
sheep to the slaughter’ (Klar et al., 2013). This dichotomy placed a tremendous amount of pressure
on Israel’s ‘new Jews’ to behave actively rather than passively, and to be heroic rather than fearful,
weak, and emotionally affected. Much of this societal pressure and these behavioral prescriptions
remain today, and have already shaped generations of Israelis—particularly, Israeli men.
In addition to the influence of the Holocaust on the fledgling state’s societal development,
Israel’s status as a country of immigrants from all over the world, with a highly heterogeneous
population (Bleich et al., 2003; Solomon et al., 2005), had an equally fundamental impact on the
cultural discourses and myths that were created. The post-Holocaust and pre-State ‘machine’
expended great efforts to build a system of cultural myths that could serve to bind these highly
disparate sub-populations together.
As Andersson (2008), following Miller (2002), claimed,
“Myths direct how people live their lives at an unconscious level and are related to culturally
shared assumptions” (p. 145)—thus guiding their self-understandings, meaning-making processes,
and symbolic and values systems. Furthermore, following Kiesling (2005), cultural discourses are
defined as “widely shared ‘background’ assumptions or ‘truths’ about how the world works”
(Andersson, 2008, p. 140). While they may or may not actually be ‘true,’ the concept of these
discourses relates to the hegemonic dominance of the belief that they are true. That is, whether or
not all ‘normal’ Israeli men act heroically and cope resiliently is irrelevant, in light of the widelyheld assumption that they do, and, perhaps even more importantly, the societal belief and
expectation that they should. In an effort to present a picture (albeit partial, at best) of the
psychosocial context in which the participants of the present study were brought up and currently
exist, this section provides a brief discussion of the hegemonic and quasi-mythological cultural
discourses on masculinity, machismo, power, and heroism in modern Israeli society.
The dominant Israeli ethos of this time focused on pioneering spirit, collective resilience,
and great individual sacrifice for the common good (BenEzer, 2002; Paine, 1993). These central
themes of Jewish identity, suffering, and bravery and inner strength have persisted over the
generations, which, as BenEzer (1999) contended, constitute primary dimensions of self-concept, in
addition to corresponding to “the three main aspects and myths prevalent in Israeli society during
the 1980s” (p. 31; 2002). A particularly telling indication of the cultural and social pressures at
work herein lies in the following refrain, which was written in 1943 by Miriam Yallan-Shtekelis as
a poem and quickly became a popular children’s song:
Dani is a Heroi
Mommy told me: Dani / My wise and heroic son / My son who will never cry / Like a foolish child
I don’t cry. Ever. / I’m not a crybaby. / Then why, Mommy, why / Do the tears cry by themselves?
It’s only the tears…the tears…they / Cry by themselves.
This song was and still is widely beloved by Israelis across social and cultural strata, and was put
into the educational programs of kindergartens and schools even prior to the declaration of
50
statehood (Tobin, personal communication). It remains popular and ingrained in the culture to this
day. Perhaps even more significant is an alternate version for the final verse: “She went to play
with a boy – With another boy.” That is, Dani’s mother chose to go spend time with another boy,
who was presumably less foolish, less of a crybaby, and more heroic than her son. This poem
represents a widely believed and deeply rooted discourse in Israeli society: that real men don’t cry;
that men who do cry are weak and foolish; and that, although the tears may “cry by themselves,”
Israeli men must be strong, powerful, courageous, and heroic. Put even more plainly, Israeli men
are expected to suppress and/or disown their emotions, and to be heroes against all odds.
Whitehead (2005) suggested that this discourse is even more pervasive, claiming that ‘hero’ is a
symbol of manhood itself, and that masculinity can be defined, at its very essence, as heroism.
Idalovichi (2004) referred to Israel as existing in “an extended period of wartime,” a
situation that has brought with it “crises in identity and values” since before its inception, and
“constant uneasiness in Israeli society” (p. 621). Indeed, with such high societal expectations of
courageousness and heroism, the frequent wars and military operations have created a stressful and
challenging daily reality.
Idalovichi (2004) also suggested the existence of a modern Israeli
phenomenon of an “addiction to power,” which “appears on centre stage in terms of both public life
and the Israeli psyche and resulted in the rise of the concept of power in the Israeli ethos,”
presumably making “the use of military power unavoidable” (p. 619). What is often seen as a
“culture of power” exists on the national, societal, and individual levels, cutting across strata and
backgrounds (Golani, 2003; Nimni, 2003; Idalovichi, 2004).
There is also a ‘trickle-down’
phenomenon, whereby the Israeli leadership’s often-strong preference for the use of force to
‘resolve’ conflicts just as often shows itself within the beliefs and behaviors of private individuals.
Strength (both physical and emotional), power, bravery, and resilience have become the dominant
expectations and discourse in and about Israel and Israelis.
Alongside of this, as Nuttman-Schwartz et al. (2002) discussed, Israeli society has been
referred to as one that “sees itself as a victim of terror, fighting for its existence” (p. 51). Terror in
Israel has been exalted to the status of a “chosen trauma” (Volkan, 1997), used collectively and
iconically to evoke previous disasters (such as the Holocaust) or myriad existential threats, bringing
up all the emotional import and collective psychic wounds from generations of pain and trauma
(Nuttman-Schwartz et al., 2002).
This type of shared trauma, which has been described as
historical trauma by Denham (2008), is generally never fully worked through and thus, passed on
through the generations. Thus, Israeli society can be seen as caught in a dilemma between seeing
itself as a victim or a survivor; war-weary and wounded or a fighter and a hero. In this sense, many
Israeli men, such as those interviewed for this study, may view ‘fighting terror’ (and ‘winning’) as
the ultimate heroism, compensating for generations of collective and historical trauma.
51
Perhaps as a result of these cultural discourses and psychosocial processes, Idalovichi
(2004) noted, Israeli culture is a military culture, pointing to a “gradual process in which segments
of Israeli society are adopting more and more signs of militarism,” and an influence of the culture
of power on “the development of Israeli society’s system of norms and values as well as its human
infrastructure” (p. 625). In Israel, most citizens must, by law, serve a three-year term in the army
from the age of 18 years; military service is a deeply ingrained facet of society, and Israeli men
often define themselves and others by their type of service, unit, and army experiences. As Kaplan
(2003) asserted, “The IDF is more than just the major state organization.
standpoint, it is the state of Israel” (p. 113).
From a cultural
Military culture is often seen as essentially
synonymous with ‘Israeli-ness,’ and the hegemonic model of masculinity is particularly dominant
in Israeli culture because of the central role and presence of the military (Kaplan, 2003). As
Lomsky-Feder and Rapoport (2003) noted, in societies “which epitomize the commanding and rigid
nature of the masculinity regime, hegemonic masculinity is firmly established and thoroughly
institutionalized even more than in others” (p. 114).
Perhaps the most significant and influential discourse and set of expectations aimed at
Jewish men within Israeli society is the concept of The Israeli Warrior. Lomsky-Feder and
Rapoport (2003) explicated this term and its historical origins and meanings thusly:
“Soldiering and masculinity are fused in constituting the ideal of manhood (Arkin and Dobrofsky 1978;
Morgan 1994; Mosse 1996). In Israeli society, the convergence between them is particularly strong and
shapes the hegemonic model of masculinity—‘The Israeli Warrior.’ It is this model that normalizes the
meaning of masculinity for the entire society by defining its standards and proper manifestations. The ideal of
the warrior is deeply rooted in the Zionist revolution. Zionist ideology that negates the Diaspora and the
‘exilic Jew’ aims to create, instead, a ‘new Jew’ in the land of Israel, distinct from the old in both body and
spirit. While the new Jew is characterized as strong, bound to the soil, tough, devoted to his nation, and
committed to defend the land, the ‘exilic Jew’ is characterized as effeminate, weak, and rootless (Boyarin
1996; Gilman 1991). The warrior is both the symbol of the new nation and the means of fulfilling the
revolution (Almog 1997; Biale 1992). Such a man ideally possesses a disciplined body, emotional control, and
a willingness to forsake personal fulfillment and to take risks (Ben-Ari 1998; Gal 1986). The warrior model
that governs Israeli masculinity, both inside and outside the army, ranks groups of men in accordance with its
precepts and establishes male hierarchy” (p. 115).
Much of this ethos is present in the discourse of the bus drivers interviewed for this study,
particularly in the manners in which they speak about their army service and behavior under
pressure. While military service is mandatory for Jewish Israelis, Ben-Ya’acov, Amir, Arzy, and
Kotler (2005) asserted, “Service in the IDF is perceived by the Israeli public as an individual
obligation and a privilege—defending the borders of one’s country. Soldiers, especially combat
troops, are believed to be imbued with a sense of deliverance” (p. 7). In general, Israelis who
served in combat positions declare this proudly, while those who did not often offer profuse
explanations and justifications as to why or how they ‘almost made it’ or ‘should have’ been in a
different unit. Wetherell and Edley (1999) related to this as part of a process of negotiating a
heroic position—that is, providing a particular narrative production of one’s self whereby those
52
parts that are most consistent with images of masculinity, machismo, bravery, strength, and heroism
are actively included and emphasized.
The Zionist ethos that the new Israeli man is a ‘superman’ is such an ingrained part of the
belief system and collective identity that it has continued to permeate subsequent generations (BenYa’acov et al., 2005; Solomon, 1993). Modern Israeli soldiers tend to idealize themselves and their
peers as “immune, invulnerable and free from weaknesses” (Ben-Yaacov et al., 2005, p. 7), and
there is an essentially ‘unwritten rule’ that anything less would be considered unacceptable and
even threatening to the national identity. The bus drivers interviewed for this study grew up and
continue to exist in this sociocultural reality, whereby a premium is placed on selfless heroism and
courage and strength ‘no matter what.’ Idalovichi (2004), following Golani (2003) and Nimni
(2003), referred to a likening in modern Israeli society of the war ethos as “almost the only Zionist
ethos,” and a perception of heroism in combat as “the ultimate heroism” (p. 623).
Indeed, as Lomsky-Feder and Rapoport (2003), following Maisels, Gal, and Pishof (1989),
noted, “being a warrior is still viewed as a sine qua non for Israeliness, and combat service is still
considered superior to any other” (p. 116). In this sense, Israeli men who served in combat
positions sense strict expectations to hold up to superior standards of courageousness and heroism,
while those who served in non-combat positions may already feel an ingrained sense of inadequacy
and need to prove their ‘worth’ to their society. Before the TA even occurred, therefore, these bus
drivers may have been ‘set up’ to behave and to perceive their behavior in a certain way. These
perceptions expose themselves clearly in their narrative discourse. Solomon (1993) also related to
a powerful culturally-influenced psychological denial process, whereby weakness and vulnerability
are denied or disowned as having no place in the Israeli cultural belief system. Thus, much of the
discourse of the participants of this study should be interpreted as having been shaped and
influenced by the cultural discourse surrounding them, pushing and pressuring them to act
heroically, react courageously, and disown any ‘less than acceptable’ emotions.
Israel and its society indeed exist within a complex and emotionally charged set of
psychosocial contexts and discourses. With its nationhood having been built upon the Holocaust
and its victims and survivors, Israel’s very reason for being and national purpose is intricately
related to a collective and historical trauma of unprecedented, and personal, proportions. The
protracted sense of wartime and conflict, as well as the constant sense of existential threat since its
establishment, has created a national identity as both a victim and a fighter, and has engendered a
society of soldiers, warriors, and brave heroes (and those who aspire to be so). The shared
experience of terror, particularly throughout the Intifadas, has become a “chosen trauma,” bringing
up even more visceral reactions, reopening wounds created generations ago and evoking traumas
experienced by the Jewish people since biblical times. In addition, Israelis have come to feel a
53
sense of community, fellowship, shared identity, and even spiritual kinship as a result of their
shared communal trauma (Erikson, 1994).
It is in this manner that terror in Israel has come to be “part of a collective consciousness,”
essentially “institutionalized” on a national level (Coetzee & Rau, 2009, p. 3), and for this reason
that the psychosocial discourse surrounding it feels imposed on all, by all. Israel’s and Israeli Jews’
existential struggle for survival as a nation and as individuals, against the backdrop of the ‘old
Jew’’s essential failure to survive in Europe, has thus led to tremendous pressure and a
fundamentally unattainable set of expectations placed upon modern Israeli Jewish men. They
believe that they must fight (on the front lines), win against all odds, be level-headed and proactive
under pressure, be brave and heroic, compensate for past losses, vanquish future enemies, and do
all this without becoming traumatized or showing weakness, passivity, or emotional vulnerability.
All are judged according to these criteria, and everyone surrounding them is a potential jury
member. The impossibility of fully living up to these standards is obvious to anyone outside of the
Israeli cultural discourse, but just as vehemently denied among those within it. The Israeli Warrior
is, therefore, as deeply believed in as it is mythical, and thus, has a powerful hold on those who live
their lives in its shadow and attempting to live up to its prescription. The bus drivers interviewed in
this study have been and continue to be profoundly affected by these psychosocial forces and
cultural discourses, and their own narrative discourse must be viewed from within this lens.
2.5 THE MICRO-LEVEL PSYCHOSOCIAL CONTEXT OF THE RESEARCH STUDY
This section deals with the immediate context surrounding these bus drivers at the time of
their terror experiences: their workplace. The historical, demographic, and phenomenological
culture of Egged Bus Company is discussed, both in general and with regard to the day-to-day
workings therein. The experience of working as a bus driver during a period of high stress and
terror threat, as well as the psychological reactions of the drivers, is described, from the perspective
of the managerial and professional staff at Egged. The fundamental dilemma of the Egged bus
driver is also delineated, as perhaps the most critical influence on the attitudes, beliefs, and
behaviors of the study participants. All of this attempts to shine light on the unique personal,
interpersonal, professional, and societal context within which these individuals existed at the time
of the TA they experienced, and at the moment in which they narrated these experiences to me.
2.5.1 Egged Bus Company: History, demographics, and the psychosocial context6
6
Because little has been written or theorized about this specific population in Israel, much of this discussion was
gleaned from statements from a number of key personnel (both managerial and social service-oriented) within the
Egged organization, with whom I conducted multiple ‘fact-finding’ interviews, as well as from the interviewed bus
drivers themselves. The primary sources were Yael Dover, the managing psychologist and organizational consultant
for the Jerusalem region; Yael Ayalon, the social worker for the Jerusalem region; Pini Rosenberg, the managing
54
2.5.1.1 History of the company and its culture
Egged Bus Company is the national bus carrier and largest transportation service in Israel,
and by far the most well-known and prolific. While there is a very small number of other intracity
and intercity carriers, Egged is the only company whose bus lines traverse the entire country. The
term, Egged, is thus essentially synonymous with bus travel in Israel.
The company was
established as a cooperative in 1933, as the product of a merger between four separate public
transportation companies, and subsequently began a process of privatization in 2005. Today,
Egged operates 55% of Israel’s public transportation service lines, and employs approximately
4,000 drivers nationally, in three central service areas: around 1,500 in Jerusalem; 1,000 in the
northern part of the country; and 1,500 in the southern region. Each geographical partition has its
own collection of units, or branches. Jerusalem, for instance, has six branches, with about 250
drivers belonging to each one. Each unit operates semi-independently, with its own scheduling
process, cultural activities, new driver education, and network of interrelationships between
management and workers. The drivers interviewed, as well as the managerial staff of Egged,
referred to a rather rich ‘cultural life’ and a sense of community and family within the branches.
According to the company’s website, Egged provides service through 2,893 regular bus
lines, 58 bulletproof bus lines (which primarily service the more dangerous areas of the country,
such as those that approach or go over the Green Line), 25 minibus lines, and 3,507 alternative bus
lines. Approximately 720,073 kilometers are travelled every day within the confines of 25,267
daily service line trips, and approximately 960,000 passengers are served per day. The official
policy has always been that Egged drivers are not allowed to work more than twelve consecutive
hours per day, and in recent years this law has been enforced more strictly by both the police and
Egged management and organizational staff.
From a popular perspective, in the 1960s and 1970s (when many of the participants in this
study were in their formative years), being a member of Egged was viewed by Israelis as a symbol
of prestige and social value. The work was considered safe and secure, and the salary was
sufficient. Many of the drivers interviewed herein referred to a sense of pride, influence, respect,
and honor associated with being an Egged driver, and a perception of a widespread sentiment in
society at that time that ‘any girl would be lucky to marry an Egged man.’ Ayalon and Dover
confirmed that Israeli mothers from the middle-class and blue-collar socioeconomic status level at
this time would often tell their daughters to marry an Egged driver, and young sons of drivers grew
up wanting to follow in their fathers’ footsteps. The social status attached to being an Egged driver
has steadily declined since the late 1970s and early 1980s, primarily as a result of growing
social worker for the southern region; and Yigal Shlomof, an Egged member, retired bus driver, and manager of the
medical department for the Jerusalem region. Multiple drafts of this entire section were submitted to and discussed
with Yael Dover to ensure full accuracy, and this version reflects all edits and clarifications requested by her.
55
dissatisfaction with blue-collar jobs and an increasing interest in more academic pursuits across the
social classes in Israel. The shift in Egged’s policy, from employing mostly cooperative members
to taking on more contract workers, has also played a central role in the ‘fall from glory’ of both the
company and the profession as a whole. Today, many of the interviewed drivers seemed fairly
dissatisfied with their jobs, citing difficult working conditions, troublesome passengers,
unsatisfactory pay rates, and high levels of daily stress stemming from what they view as
unrealistic expectations on the managerial level (particularly related to timetables and traffic).
Ayalon asserted that the population of drivers at Egged today can be categorized into three
groups. The first is comprised of men of the ages of 35-45 who did, indeed, dream of working in
the same profession as their fathers, and who entered the organization from within a type of ‘family
legacy’ mentality. Some of these drivers are the third generation in their families to be employed at
Egged, and are generally proud of this fact. They have, however, witnessed and felt a decrease in
their social standing in recent years, and voice their dissatisfaction about this. The second group
contains individuals whose socioeconomic status and education level brought them into the
profession, and who remain out of a sense that it is the “best job they can get.” The final group is
made up of drivers who simply love the work and the people they meet in the process. These are
the drivers who tend to talk most about feeling “like a family,” and Ayalon contended that a worker
from this group, who truly loves being a bus driver, is immediately identifiable in every way.
Egged is still a cooperative company, but the beginning of the process of privatization in
2001 was a major event in the company’s history, creating a rather dramatic transformation in
company culture, discourse, policy, and operative behavior. In 2001, the strategic program was
introduced, whereby it was decided that the company would shift from an operational to a business
model, within which there would be a greater focus within the entire organization on service and
profitability. The process commenced on the managerial and administrative levels, and the effects
of the program began to be felt palpably by the drivers only around 2005. The government is still
deeply involved, frequently performing checks of the quality of service and overseeing efficiency
levels, precision of service, and accessibility, while attending to any customer complaints received.
Many of the drivers in this study mentioned this as a defining moment in their own
employment timeline, although the centrality of the topic in their discourse may have been
impacted by the fact that the process was at its height during the exact period of time wherein most
of the initial interviews were conducted.
Most discussed the process as difficult and many
expressed bitterness about the effects on their own jobs. Whereas in the 1960s and 1970s, the
majority of drivers were members and thus held stock and power within the company, now only
approximately 40% of Egged drivers overall hold the status of cooperative members, while 60% are
simply contract employees. By 2001, only approximately a third of drivers in the Jerusalem branch
56
were members, and today this stands at only a fifth. Furthermore, of the approximately 350
Jerusalem members, 150 of them hold managerial or administrative positions.
Dover mentioned that in the early 2000s, many of the drivers seemed to be more concerned
and fearful about their job stability than about the possibility of a TA, and had been feeling
progressively more stress and uncertainty in the face of the large-scale organizational and “deep
cultural” changes occurring throughout the company. As a result of this process, the standards and
demands placed on the drivers became increasingly strict and rigid, particularly vis-à-vis levels of
service provided and reduction in wastefulness across the board. Thus, these drivers were often
facing high expectations from their workplace as well as their society.
2.5.1.2 Demographics and terror-related statistics
Given that the population under study here is comprised predominantly of male, Jewish,
native-born Israelis, it cannot be considered generally representative of Israeli society at large. The
population of interviewees is fairly representative of the general population of Israeli bus drivers,
however, in the categories of gender, age, marital status, cultural background, and army service.
Although exact statistics are not available, it is estimated that of the approximately 4,000 drivers
employed by Egged, over 90% are male and approximately 75% are Jewish. About 30% of the
drivers in Jerusalem are Arab, but the percentage is lower in the other two service areas. Up until
recently, there were no female drivers at all, but as a result of a new program aimed at encouraging
their recruitment, there are now twelve women working as drivers in Jerusalem, with a similar
number currently in training. However, the numbers of female drivers remain quite low nationally.
While historically, the overriding culture of Egged has been decidedly masculine, in recent years
changes have been steadily occurring, with a shift in image and an organizing motto focused more
on passenger service and less on any characteristics of the drivers themselves.
The majority of bus drivers employed by Egged are married, with children. The ages of the
drivers range from 23 to 70, with a fairly even distribution across the range. Members of Egged, if
they have accumulated 35 years of seniority, are permitted to retire at the age of 57; although many
members choose to continue working as part-time or contract drivers after their ‘retirement.’
Contract workers are not allowed to retire until the age of 67. While official statistics on the
drivers’ countries of origin were not attainable, Dover noted that the general population of Egged
drivers can be considered a microcosm of any blue-collar profession in Israel.
That is, the
population is comprised of a large number of Russians (and in particular, many new immigrants
from the former Soviet Union), some Ethiopians, and a small number of religious Jews. Essentially
all Jewish Egged drivers have served a compulsory three-year period of military service, in addition
57
to an average of 20-30 days per year in reserve duty7, and fought in multiple wars and/or served in
the territories over the course of their duty. While most of the interviewees served in combat units,
it is not known whether this is representative of the larger population of Egged drivers.
Bus drivers in Israel have existed on the ‘front lines’ of both Intifadas. According to data
from the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and as viewed in Figure 2-1, 58 (35%) of a total of 165
suicide and other bombing attacks between 1994 and 2007 were on or directly involved buses, as
opposed to 21 (13%) having occurred in restaurants and cafés. This is a significant percentage,
which seems to be reflected in the public opinion in Israel, as well as throughout the world. 8 The
bus drivers interviewed herein were acutely aware that buses seem to be associated in the public
view with bombings, and that this association may be irreparable, as reflected in the fact that even
the nearly complete decline in bus bombings since 2005 has not managed to obliterate this public
perception (which has not necessarily impacted the tendency of the Israeli public to ride buses).
It was not possible to obtain exact official statistics on the incidence of TAs in relation to
Egged and its drivers, but some estimates were ascertained. Over the course of Egged’s history,
there have been approximately 40 suicide bombings involving or very proximate to Egged buses,
with twelve having actually occurred on an Egged bus. Only one Egged bus driver has died in a
TA, although a number have been physically wounded. Dover claimed that the majority of Egged
bus drivers who experienced serious TAs, whom she treated during her tenure as a psychologist at
Egged (2001-2012), were not able to continue working as drivers. During the Second Intifada in
particular, as Dover remembered, of three Egged drivers who experienced a suicide TA on their
bus, one died, one managed to escape the attack and was able to work despite being significantly
traumatized, and one experienced the entire attack and was not able to return to work as a driver.
Ayalon also reported that most of the drivers who were physically wounded in TAs were not able to
return to work as drivers, and one whose wounds were primarily emotional and psychological also
did not return. It was estimated that, between 1986-2005, approximately 20 Egged drivers in total
stopped working as drivers as a result of experiencing serious TAs. Dover cited as the primary
reason for this traumatic psychological effects that made it too difficult for them to spend a long
(or, in some cases, any) period of time on a bus. According to Dover, however, only one of the
drivers in the Jerusalem region who did not return to work was diagnosed with full-blown PTSD.
When the ‘net’ is widened to include all types and severities of TAs, however, it appears
7
8
Israeli Jewish men are generally required to serve in IDF reserve duty yearly until the age of 50-52.
In just a brief scan of the online headlines nearly two years since the last prior bus bombing in Israel, I came across
the following from an article on a popular American news site: “Between 2001 and 2004, at the height of PalestinianIsraeli fighting, Jerusalem was a frequent target of Palestinian attacks, including suicide bombings on buses”
(Associated Press. Israel signals it’ll talk despite seminary attack [Electronic version]. Retrieved in March of 2008,
from http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23515835/). Similarly, in a lecture I attended in February of 2008, an
accomplished trauma researcher made a passing reference to “that exploding box which in Israel we call a bus.”
58
that the majority of Egged bus drivers who experienced an attack (including rocks or a Molotov
cocktail thrown at their bus) have continued to work as drivers, and have not evidenced a great
degree of trauma or psychological effects due to the event(s). Indeed, Dover reported that, over the
course of her tenure at Egged, she met with every driver who had experienced any type of terrorrelated incident—approximately 50-60 drivers in total. While five were diagnosed with full PTSD
and while several exhibited some symptoms (some that were initiated by the TA, and others that
were brought on by a related re-experiencing of previous traumas), only a small fraction of these
drivers stopped working for any period of time.
All underwent a process of treatment and
rehabilitation, the length of which varied from a single session with Dover to years of therapy.
2.5.1.3 The psychosocial context surrounding and within Egged
According to its website, Egged holds five central objectives with regard to its operations
and service: “1) focus on the customer needs and improve service; 2) stress safety and
professionalism of drivers; 3) keep company profitable on the competitive market; 4) take steps of
business development through diverse revenue sources; and 5) preserve the environment.” While
all these goals are important and necessary for the overall profitability of the company, the policies
and workings of the organization become far more complex and difficult to navigate during hightension and conflict periods such as the Intifadas. Indeed, the concepts of “stress[ing] safety…of
the drivers” and “focus[ing] on the customer needs” take on entirely new meanings under such
conditions. In order to be employed by Egged, candidates undergo a significant amount and degree
of evaluation and assessment, and then participate in an intensive driving instruction program.
Psychometric testing is also conducted to insure that a minimum requirement has been met for
psychological stability. However, the stress, fear, and anxiety involved in driving a bus during an
Intifada, when buses seem to be exploding daily all around the country, can create a challenging set
of circumstances for even the most seasoned driver.
Egged employs a psychologist and social worker, as well as an organizational physician, for
each region. The psychologist, in particular, is responsible for providing a variety of services to
drivers who have been through difficult experiences—including, but not limited to, TAs—as well
as organizational consulting and managing the various counselors that work in the field. Because
the NII cannot always be counted on to provide what the drivers view as appropriate, sufficient, or
timely care, Egged has invested much energy, particularly during the height of the Intifadas, into
helping all drivers who have been affected by terror and/or other stressful events while on the job.
Indeed, according to Shlomof, Egged prides itself on being “part of everything”—that is, helping
with all parts of their drivers’ lives if necessary, including injuries sustained while off-duty, family
illnesses, and any personal issues that may affect their work. Whereas many other organizations in
59
Israel have been criticized for their policies regarding first response to TAs and their effects on
their staff, Egged stands out in its willingness to help its workers and investment in doing so.
Typically, after a significant TA or any other potentially traumatic event (e.g., a fatal or
near-fatal traffic accident), the organizational policy is to send a medical team manager and social
worker to the hospital to visit and assess the driver, while the psychologist and organizational
consultant team seek out the other drivers in the affected unit—particularly those who drive on the
line involved in the incident. At this point, drivers exhibiting any post-traumatic symptoms are
encouraged to talk and allowed to take time off from work if they so request. Great effort has been
made by the organizational psychological services in the past decade to facilitate open discourse
and legitimize the drivers’ feelings, and significant progress has occurred in this domain, with
many of the younger drivers showing much more willingness to speak openly and freely than their
older counterparts. However, ‘peer pressure’ within the unit and society at large may still serve to
undermine these efforts and create a sense of obligation to behave as the others are behaving,
including continuing to work under what may be tremendous stress and anxiety.
If the affected driver was not hospitalized, Egged’s official policy is that he is required to
have at least one conversation with the organization’s psychologist, either by phone or face-to-face.
In this sense, it is assured that there is some basic level of follow-up for every (even theoretically
minor) stressful event. Wives of drivers are also welcome to see the psychologist, and when
necessary, therapeutic activities are conducted with the entire family unit. There are a variety of
organizational mechanisms in place to facilitate the driver’s coping process, and each case is
evaluated on its own basis, with treatment and recommendations tailored individually to each set of
circumstances. The decision to allow or encourage a driver to return to work on a bus after such an
event is dependent on a variety of factors, such as willingness and desire, physical and emotional
capability, and particular conditions such as the specific bus line, geographical area, and level of
stress involved (e.g., peak traffic hours or area that has been hit by terror repeatedly in the past).
Dover asserted that for the few days directly following a TA, there is a patterned significant
increase in talk about and concern with the attack, its aftereffects, and the larger context of the
security situation in Israel, followed by an immediate significant decrease, whereby the drivers
return to their ‘normal’ routines, conversations, and behaviors.9 Processing and social sharing takes
9
This is in line with several studies of social sharing after a traumatic event, which found that affected individuals
talked about the event and its effects on them at significantly elevated rates throughout the first two weeks following
it, after which their rates of talking dropped to nearly zero. As Gortner and Pennebaker (2003) asserted, a trauma that
affects an entire community can produce experiences of shock and grief in the entire collective. Thus, after most
communal traumas, such as natural disasters or TAs, the immediate reaction is that community members tend to
‘band together’ to share and talk about the experience (Rimé, Mesquita, Philippot, & Boca, 1991). Gortner and
Pennebaker (2003) contended that this social sharing permits a process of “construct[ing] a collective script of the
disaster, highlighting aspects that will facilitate the processing of the trauma” (p. 581). Notably, during such periods
of upheaval and communal stress, they write, “social norms that prohibit talking with strangers in public places are
60
place within the Egged branches through these mechanisms, and these populations of drivers can be
seen as communities within themselves. While the drivers in any given unit are not at all strangers
to each other, the norms seem to change and the discourse shifts, allowing a discussion of the event
and the politics surrounding it (if not a deep discussion of their attendant emotions).
In this communal spirit, the other drivers in the affected unit tend to be highly supportive of
the driver who experienced the TA, particularly if he has returned to work. (If he does not return,
he will likely be much more in contact with the treating staff of Egged and fall out of touch with his
fellow drivers.) This is a relatively recent development, however, and the result of a great deal of
work on the part of Dover, who has labored to build a support mechanism within the company to
deal with these types of events and resultant issues. As part of this, group activities aimed toward
coping and stress relief have been conducted over the years at various units, and a variety of
interventions were instituted for acute stress events. Before this, and even as late as the early
2000s, there was no company-wide structure in place to deal with the occurrence of potentially
traumatic experiences within the context of the drivers’ work, and there was, according to Dover,
an overarching culture of silence, loneliness, and powerlessness in the face of these experiences.
Dover contended that at the managerial level of Egged, there is a general perception that the
drivers are strong and have coped well with stress. Rosenberg echoed this, stating that he sees
resilience in the daily routines and reactions of the drivers in his charge, infused in “everything they
do.” While this may be true, there was also a degree of denial at this level, with many managers
initially showing significant resistance to Dover’s attempts to facilitate more open discussion of
topics of fear, stress, and trauma. Some even told her not to “put fears into the drivers’ heads,” and
suggested that encouraging them to talk may actually reinforce a range of non-adaptive behaviors,
which may, in turn, damage the productivity of the company as a whole. Fortunately, much has
changed within Egged over the past decade, and upper management now fully believes in the
process that was undertaken (and the need for it), whereby an official organizational mechanism
altered and a natural, interpersonal coping process emerges” (Gortner & Pennebaker, 2003, p. 581).
Pennebaker and Harber (1993) thus developed a social stage model of coping, comprised of three stages. In the
first stage, the emergency phase, affected individuals think and talk about the experience they went through at very
high levels, experiencing obsessive thoughts and much emotional upheaval. They may discuss what they are going
through with anyone who will listen, and do so with excessive openness. In the second stage, the inhibition phase,
which occurs approximately two weeks after the event, individuals still think about what they went through but
demonstrate a significant decrease in their outright talking about it. This phase may coincide with the emergence of
various physical and/or social problems, such as nightmares, interpersonal conflicts, or other behavioral difficulties.
The third and final stage, the adaptation phase, generally appears between six and twelve weeks following the event,
and brings a basic adjustment to the situation, with little to no increased rumination about the experience and no
increased talking about it (Gortner & Pennebaker, 2003; Pennebaker & Harber, 1993; Stone & Pennebaker, 2002).
Gortner and Pennebaker (2003) found that these dramatic decreases in social sharing were “not gradual nor
linear”—rather, people went from talking about these traumatic, affecting events multiple times per day to not
discussing them nearly at all. In many ways, this pattern is reflected in the Israeli case, although the stages seem to
follow a much more rapid trajectory. Perhaps this is a result of the frequency of occurrence of TAs—Israelis may
simply not have six to twelve weeks to ‘spare’ in order to fully process these events, before the next one occurs.
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was established and adopted for coping with TAs and other traumas and their aftermath.
2.5.2 Being an Egged bus driver in Israel: The personal context
2.5.2.1 The phenomenological context and experience of Egged drivers
Perhaps the most essential component in the immediate psychosocial context surrounding
Egged drivers, and that which seems to have the greatest impact on their perceptions, beliefs, and
behaviors, is their individual branch. Rosenberg reported that there is, in fact, a great deal of group
cohesion and sense of togetherness, partnership, and belongingness within the units. Shlomof
agreed, contending that the drivers see themselves as part of a family, and close relationships are
often created, with many attending each other’s weddings and other special occasion celebrations.
Much of these dynamics may come from a military influence, as the drivers are used to this sense
and experience of being part of a unit, relying on each other, and existing communally under
difficult and stressful conditions. This collectivity may also have a significant influence on the
drivers’ perceptions of what is expected of them in these stressful periods, increasing the sense and
impact of a type of social peer pressure to behave courageously and resiliently.
Indeed, Ayalon and Shlomof claimed that this pressure is subtle but very much present
across the branches. Many drivers express, for instance, a belief in a kind of existential ‘game of
chicken’—that is, “If I give up (i.e., stop driving entirely or don’t come in to work today because
I’m scared), I have no right to exist in this country.” The overriding sentiment among the drivers is
that they are no different from anyone else, and have no right to distinguish themselves as such.
They understand they are permitted to call in sick the day after a TA, for instance, but often
respond by asking, “What about the next time, and the next time, and the next time? And what if
we all called in sick? Who am I to allow myself to give in to my fears, when everyone else is in
‘the same boat’?” It is, in many ways, this communal belongingness, with the attendant sense of
peer pressure, that can be both a source of comfort (helping them feel less alone) and stress
(making them feel a behavioral expectation that can be difficult to cope with, much less fulfill).
Ayalon suggested that the drivers she has worked with are, in fact, under a tremendous
degree of pressure and stress. She believes that they thought about the threat of terror and their
fears very frequently during the Intifada, but that they simply could not tolerate the alternative—in
their words, “sitting at home doing nothing.” On a very practical level, Ayalon claimed, the drivers
also generally lack the self-confidence to look for other work, and often express a belief that they
are “just simple drivers,” who are not smart enough to find a different job. Some also express a
feeling that they have no choice, and that they are “stuck” in their jobs, whether they like it or not.
Above all else, Ayalon pointed to a number of essential reasons in the drivers’ ultimate
decision to keep working in the face of an often unbearable level of fear and stress: 1) the pressing,
62
daily need and obligation to support their wives and children; 2) the desire to keep their families
from worrying about them, and to not become a burden on them; 3) the concern about how those
around them might react to their decision to stop working; 4) the sense of responsibility to their
(micro- and macro-level) collective, and ingrained sense of ‘survivorship’; 5) the perception that
they need to prove themselves, prove their masculinity and ‘man-ness,’ prove that they are
adequate, ‘acceptable’, and ‘less than’ no one, and show that they are the same as everyone else;
and 6) the desire to prove (to their society, to the enemy, and perhaps to the world) that they will
not surrender to terror, or ‘let the terrorists win.’ Ayalon contended that ultimately, the drivers are
highly practical about these issues: they have mortgages, so they must work. Whether they were
hurt or traumatized or fearful, they simply must work. In some ways, this represents a tremendous
amount of pressure, but in others and for some individuals, it may actually have a ‘freeing’ effect.
Indeed, if there is no choice, why dwell on the issue at all?
According to Dover, in her experience and observation, the drivers do experience a
significantly heightened degree of fear and anxiety for a number of weeks directly following a TA
in their area. Some admit it and some don’t, and some change their behavior while others don’t.
There is generally particular pressure from the wives of the drivers, who become more anxious
about their husbands’ safety and more adamant that they work the bare minimum of hours and
refuse extra shifts or positions. Often, the drivers’ children will ask them not to go to work, and
show increased stress and anxiety about the risks involved in their fathers’ jobs.
Dover stated that she has heard a variety of sentiments with regard to the drivers’
worldviews, with some showing a more realistic perspective, others more fatalistic, and still others
seeming to exhibit an entirely helpless outlook. Many refer to the workings of “fate,” asserting that
“whatever happens, happens,” and “life goes on, no matter what.” There is a general perception
that “there just isn’t a choice”—these drivers must work, must bring income home to their families,
and because of this, simply must find a way to cope with the daily stresses and fears involved in
their jobs. In many ways, it can be suggested, and corroborated by Dover, that there is something
profoundly masculine and Israeli about the behavior of these drivers. The fundamentally military
mythological axiom of ‘carrying on no matter what’, and of ‘staying in the field’ (or ‘returning to
battle’ as quickly as possible) because that is simply ‘what one does’ is strong and ingrained in the
Israeli mindset and unspoken code of conduct. This set of beliefs and actions may lead to great
isolation and silencing of one’s innermost emotions, but is widely practiced and rarely questioned.
Dover claimed that in the immediate wake of a TA, the drivers tend to look for meaning, as
well as distraction, in a variety of other domains, and Ayalon suggested that the stress “must be
released somehow.” There are often many political arguments the day after a TA, with the
overriding theme of placing blame on the Israeli government. Political involvement tends to
63
increase temporarily, and the drivers (as well as most Israelis) often spend much more time than
usual watching televised news programs. Ayalon contended that drivers may watch sports event
broadcasts in a more ‘extreme’ manner, yelling at the screen or expressing more anger at certain
outcomes. Some may throw themselves more into their own sports or exercise routines, and others
may show more nervous behaviors or emotional responses. Reactions are concrete and seemingly
in response to concrete stimuli, with no discussion on any symbolic or emotional level. Indeed,
with regard to voicing real concern and feelings such as anxiety, according to Dover, most often
there is merely silence and silencing—with an unspoken ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy. The drivers
simply attempt to go about their days as normally as possible while avoiding the ‘elephant in the
room.’ In the days immediately following a serious TA in the vicinity, there is also a significant
drop in number of passengers, as the Israeli population at large is also affected by the events. So
buses run ‘as usual,’ but are noticeably half- or almost completely empty, and no one says a word.
Indeed, Dover discussed the role of denial within Egged as a vital part of the daily job of
being a bus driver. She recalled one incident, when she was talking with a manager the day after a
TA on a bus line that belonged to his branch. He told her that he had heard from at least twenty
drivers who were calling in sick, and when she suggested that there might be a relationship between
this and the TA, he was surprised and completely denied the possibility. While “too much denial
hurts the organization,” she contended, “one needs at least some denial—as it is an essential part of
their resilience.” Because many of the drivers seem to perceive that they do not have much choice
in the matter of whether to continue driving, they appear to have reached a precarious balance
between acceptance, fatalism, and proud resistance. Indeed, the phrases, “What can you do? Life
must go on”; “Whatever is going to happen is going to happen—I have no control over it”; and
“We won’t/can’t stop living” swirled through and permeated the discourse of the interviewees.
Dover asserted, however, that there is a sense in the organization that the younger drivers
come across as more open and willing to discuss their feelings, and seem more in touch with their
fear and stress levels. In general, Dover saw a qualitative difference between those drivers who
experienced TAs in the 1990s-early 2000s, and those who experienced TAs before that. Perhaps
this is related to the social perceptions and cultural discourse on the Intifadas and terror, and
regarding the security situation in Israel in general, or perhaps significant shifts in attitude and
perspective have taken place across the board. Indeed, Dover also claimed that soldiers today are
simply “not the same” as soldiers thirty years ago, particularly in their possession of much more
psychological awareness and development and a greater willingness to explore and discuss their
feelings. She also believes there is less machismo in the Israeli sociocultural discourse today, and
more legitimacy given to talking about fear, anxiety, and emotions in general. Thirty years ago,
Israeli men were simply not able or permitted to give voice to such topics, and furthermore, the
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surrounding society was not willing to listen to such a voice. Today, however, Dover believes,
Israel exists in a “more psychologically-minded era,” allowing its population to explore a much
wider range of feelings and experiences. The interviewees in the present study exist on the
complex and problematic boundary between these two sides of the hegemonic discourse—having
spent their formative years under the shadow of an emotional silencing discourse, while now
attempting to cope with their TA experiences in a more open and facilitative sociocultural context.
Dover also suggested that today, in many ways, the drivers’ processes of coping are similar
across the board, regardless of the particular event that caused stress. Indeed, whether a driver has
experienced a TA or traffic accident, the feelings and behaviors triggered and mechanisms involved
in dealing with it are often the same. In fact, Dover mentioned, she had seen a number of drivers
after they had been through a traffic accident, and it slowly emerged that the root of much of their
anxiety and fear was actually related to the security situation and the constant threat of terror.
With regard to political beliefs, according to Dover, the majority of bus drivers employed
by Egged are right-leaning, with some more moderate and only a very small number of left-leaning
individuals. The population of Egged drivers is thus fairly representative of the larger Israeli
society, with regard to socioeconomic status, education, and political attitudes. Dover suggested
that there may be a political component involved in the discourse surrounding what is ‘good’ and
‘acceptable’ behavior in this context. An ardent resistance to changing one’s lifestyle and routines,
lest ‘the terrorists win,’ is often invoked in rightist ideologies, and can engender a greater degree of
denial of the actual security realities. In these cases, drivers may stubbornly refuse to avoid certain
areas or routes, or to stop working even when it is financially feasible to do so. While this can have
the benefit of an ideological ‘immunization’ against fear and anxiety, it may also have the
consequence of encouraging unsafe and unwise decisions.
Indeed, for instance, Egged’s (and the Israeli police’s) official policy requires that drivers
inspect their bus thoroughly at the beginning and end of every shift for any suspicious objects.
Dover recounted an anecdote from a particular month at the height of the Second Intifada, when a
manager noted that Egged had received an increased number of fines from the police for infractions
of this rule. The manager was concerned about and unable to understand the rise in the drivers’
lack of willingness to check their buses. Dover explained that in their denial of the security
situation and fervor to ‘keep on living normally,’ the drivers actually discounted very real security
threats and ultimately could have put themselves and their passengers in greater danger, due to their
actually checking their buses less thoroughly (or not at all) than during less stressful periods.10
Thus, in times of greater stress and threat of terror, there actually emerges a paradox among
10
Of course, Egged took this phenomenon very seriously, and did not allow drivers or passengers to be endangered at
any time.
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the drivers, whereby they are both more alert and internally anxious but less cautious and outwardly
fearful. Dover, having witnessed this phenomenon, claims that drivers under these circumstances
are both afraid and in denial; hypervigilant but stubborn in their rigidity and faithfulness to their
‘normal’ routines. Indeed, even when many drivers were fined by the company for not inspecting
their buses for suspicious objects, the behavior did not decrease or cease. Dover contended that this
seeming act of defiance may, in fact, simply be an expression of the defense mechanism of denial,
which may, in many ways, be more valuable to the drivers as a coping strategy than the loss of their
wages. Thus, while there may be a high price to the drivers’ decision to defy this policy, this
behavior can be considered a sign of their coping strategies, however harmful or dysfunctional.
2.5.2.2 The fundamental dilemma of the Egged driver
The Intifadas were experienced primarily within and by the civilian population in Israel,
with the most targeted entities being highly populated restaurants, cafés, malls, and buses. Besides
conscripted soldiers, therefore, the ‘front lines’ involved three primary populations:
guards, restaurant service staff, and bus drivers.
security
Each post is defined by its own job
responsibilities, and must negotiate its own crises when confronted with a security threat.
However, neither security guards nor restaurant staff operate on a daily basis in a context as
complicated and problematic as that of bus drivers. Indeed, as a result of a convoluted interplay of
factors, including their personal senses of identity, cultural background, military experience and
mentality, worldview and value systems, and the occupational and societal expectations of them,
Israeli bus drivers appear to exist in the crux of a fundamental dilemma.
In Israel, (most often armed) security personnel stand guard outside stores, malls,
restaurants, movie theaters, bus stations, universities, and nearly all other public establishments—
charged with the singular task of protecting those who enter. They are required to inspect the
personal belongings of everyone, either by physically opening backpacks and bags or by
supervising their placement into an x-ray machine. They are allowed and encouraged to request
identification if they deem it warranted, and to take any other measures necessary to inspect
suspicious individuals. These men and women, often fresh out of the army, are presented with a
clear job description and are fully aware that part of it requires them to sacrifice their lives in order
to protect the public, if the need arises. Indeed, if they were to see a man walking toward them with
a bomb, their duty would obligate them to jump on him or subdue him using any means necessary.
These ‘means’ might likely entail losing their own lives.
On the other hand, restaurant service people exist on the opposite side of the spectrum.
Their singular task is to serve their clientele, with no particular regard to their safety or possible
threat posed. Waiters and waitresses rarely feel any significant degree of responsibility for their
66
customers, and have no obligation to protect their patrons. Their job responsibilities do not involve
anything related to (national or individual) security concerns; thus, if a suspicious individual were
to somehow manage to enter a restaurant or café, the staff would likely run in the opposite direction
and feel no guilt for doing so. There is no set societal expectation (spoken or otherwise) for their
behavior, and rarely has a media report mentioned a “hero waiter.”
Bus drivers in this context, however, exist in a near-impossible dilemma—caught between
responsibilities and expectations to both serve and protect. When faced with a daily reality that
involves the possibility of a potential suicide bomber boarding their bus at any moment, they must
constantly heed both of these duties and be vigilant at every moment. Indeed, the bus drivers
interviewed herein expressed that they often find themselves functioning in multiple roles at the
same time: as driver, security guard, policeman, and army commander. Although this confluence
of roles often is not necessarily disadvantageous, the separate functions sometimes contradict each
other, creating a serious conflict of interests and a consequent sense of guilt and inadequacy in the
drivers. That most drivers served in the army during (multiple) wars and military campaigns, and
have internalized sociocultural expectations of ‘The Israeli Warrior’—particularly given the
“centrality of military matters” in Israel (Lomsky-Feder & Ben-Ari, 1999)—also has a significant
influence on their belief systems, behaviors, and subsequent attributions about their actions.
However, Israeli bus drivers are not policemen and are neither (active) soldiers nor
warriors; they do not carry weapons, and there are no clear and set rules regarding their official
responsibilities under conditions and acute situations such as those that frequently emerge during an
Intifada. As part of Egged policy, every driver attends at least one ninety-minute seminar, covering
basic emergency systems and routines and prescribing basic manners of dealing with certain
circumstances. They receive a company manual containing the pertinent information, and there is a
yearly ‘refresher’ course covering these topics. And yet, while their job description specifies that
they are responsible for “transporting their passengers safely and efficiently from their point of
origin to their point of destination,” this duty becomes infinitely complicated (and ultimately, can
be entirely compromised) during periods of high security threat. Drivers tend to feel a much
greater degree of responsibility towards their jobs and their clientele than that which is ‘officially’
(or unofficially) sanctioned under normal circumstances; this sense of duty is only further
heightened when the national threat of terror attacks increases. Officially, they are instructed to
“use their judgment,” and are afforded a certain degree of autonomy and ex post facto legitimacy
for their decisions vis-à-vis security, safety, and professional authority. Unofficially, however,
many of their job responsibilities, duties, and capabilities are simply not defined, with the
consequence that already permeable boundaries appear even more complex and ‘fuzzy’ during
periods of violence escalation. This dynamic places the drivers into a situation that ultimately is
67
fraught with ambivalence and uncertainty, engendering doubt about their behavior (and what the
‘correct behavior’ may even be) and guilt about any range of outcomes resulting from their actions.
Indeed, the drivers are expected to drive carefully and defensively, while simultaneously
taking great care to keep to the timetable of their route, even during peak traffic periods (an almost
impossible task in itself, and the source of much frustration). Meanwhile, they are expected to be
courteous and respectful to their passengers while also keeping a constant eye out for ‘suspicious’
individuals, behavior, and objects. They have a legal right, but no obligation, to inspect any
passengers or belongings that they deem suspicious. Additionally, if a dangerous situation does
arise, these drivers believe that they are expected to prevent all possible tragedy, to save the lives of
their clientele if need be, and to subdue or kill the perpetrator at all costs. They perceive security
situations that may arise as under their purview and see themselves as responsible for initiating a
solution, but also have a keen understanding of the thin line they must straddle between protecting
their passengers overall while not offending some by requesting identity papers or an inspection.
Part of the complexity of the dilemma lies in the fundamental nature of what it means to be
a bus driver in Israel. It was clear from the interviews conducted for this study, and corroborated
by Dover and Shlomof, that the identity of these individuals as drivers is a substantial and
predominant part of who they are and how they see themselves. This is particularly the case with
the veteran members, who have viewed themselves as ‘belonging to Egged’ for significant periods
of time, sometimes even the majority of their lives. As many of these individuals began working
young and financed their weddings and homes through this work, the sense of personal investment
and connection is often deep, essential, and ingrained. Because they spend the majority of their
workdays on ‘their’ bus, and because many of them drive on the same routes for years at a time,
they come to view their bus as their ‘second home’ or as a personal possession—indeed, as an
extension of their identity and their selves (Hyvärinen, personal communication). Many drivers
also become familiar and even quite friendly with ‘their’ regular passengers, and refer proudly to
special relationships with some—even having attended birthday celebrations and weddings.
Related to their ingrained identities as drivers, many also mention a sense of personal
responsibility—as if they are the ‘captain of their ship’—which stems from their perception of their
bus as their ‘territory’ that must be protected against threat. Rosenberg echoed this statement,
expressing that “the driver is the (army) commander of his bus.” This can translate into a high level
of alertness with regard to security, as well as personal decisions to add unofficial duties that are
decidedly not part of their job description. For instance, some drivers make it a point to request
identity papers from all dark-skinned individuals attempting to board their bus, while others admit
to purposely skipping stops at which an individual whom they perceive as suspicious is waiting.
In light of all this, a primary feeling experienced by the drivers when an attack occurs is
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guilt. In particular, the branch sadran (the driver in charge of assigning the other drivers to specific
bus lines and scheduling their shifts) tends to feel the most guilt, under the perception that he was
the one who placed the ‘victim’ into the exact time and spot of the attack. In general, according to
Dover, drivers who experienced a TA tend to feel a great deal of guilt vis-à-vis their passengers,
and constantly question what they should or could have done to keep them out of harm’s way.
Many drivers seem to feel they should have acted differently; or rather, perfectly: that they should
have identified the terrorist, taken him out of commission, protected every one of their passengers,
and prevented any and all possible acts of terror.
It is this confluence of factors that creates an exceedingly difficult situation for bus drivers
in this context. The importance and fundamentality of their identities as drivers is coupled with
their heightened sense of responsibility for their buses and passengers, and this interacts with a lessthan-clearly defined job description but attendant perceptions of impossibly high sociocultural
expectations of their behavior. All of this, in turn, creates a powerful potential dynamic of guilt, an
exaggerated sense of culpability, coping dilemmas, and a desire to achieve the elusive (but likely
unattainable) ‘hero status.’ Israeli bus drivers thus present a complex and highly illuminating case
for the study of the interplay between personal and societal discourse, and between the narrative
and communicative ‘product,’ on the one hand, and the narrator’s inner psychological world and
coping processes, on the other.
2.6 CONCLUSION
This chapter has presented a comprehensive overview of the content worlds and contexts
within which this study is grounded. Context and culture are particularly critical facets of this
research; as Tuval-Mashiach et al. (2004) claimed, culture and meaning-making structures can have
a significant impact on an individual’s narrative. I suggest that this use of the term, “culture,”
should be understood on both a macro- and micro-level: the Israeli culture, the masculine culture,
the military culture, the Egged culture, and the specific cultural context of familial, communal,
interpersonal, and psychosocial forces at work in each individual’s life. Coetzee and Rau (2009)
referred to the “intersubjectively constituted nature of memory,” arguing:
“to interpret narratives of suffering one needs to take into account their socio-cultural as well as their personal
dimensions. To understand trauma narratives one needs to incorporate all individual, intersubjective and
collective facets that play a role in the process of remembering. These facets weave together to form our
reflections on the past” (p. 16).
Only in this multidimensional manner can the discourse of the bus drivers interviewed for this
study be understood, as both reflective of a process of coping and narrative processing, and as a
product of myriad psychosociocultural contexts that constitute significant and dynamic influences
on the meanings and messages expressed.
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CHAPTER 3
THE METHODOLOGICAL
FRAMEWORK OF THE RESEARCH STUDY
3.1 INTRODUCTION
This chapter addresses the methodological basis of this research study, while making a
fundamental distinction between methodology, defined by Strauss and Corbin (1998) as “a way of
thinking about and studying social reality,” and methods, defined as “a set of procedures and
techniques for gathering and analyzing data” (p. 3). Both are presented here, while describing and
honoring the multidisciplinary framework upon which the study is based. Indeed, as Guba and
Lincoln (2005) stated, “Methodology is inevitably interwoven with and emerges from the nature of
particular disciplines…and particular perspectives” (pp. 191-192). Thus, an attempt has been made
to explicate both the fundamental assumptions upon which these disciplines rest, while also
discussing the points at which they intersect with each other and with the present inquiry.
The following two sections of this chapter deal with research design, first with regard to the
participants and the research context surrounding them and me, as the interviewer; and then, to the
data collection method, including ethical obligations to the participants. The next section discusses
more explicitly and reflexively my stance and positioning as a researcher in the context of this
study, and the attendant advantages and disadvantages of being an ‘outsider.’ The fifth section
presents the interdisciplinary methodological framework of the study, which integrates the content
worlds of social and discursive psychology, sign-oriented semiotic linguistics, and qualitative
inquiry and narrative analysis. This section concludes with a discussion of the necessity of this
integration, both in general and concerning the present research goals. The sixth section focuses on
the practical analytical tools and methods involved in the execution of this research, which include
both quantitative and qualitative approaches and a spiraling manner of analysis. The penultimate
section explicates the methodological, logistical, and ethical considerations involved, and the
chapter concludes with a discussion of the trustworthiness and quality of the research.
3.2 THE PARTICIPANT POPULATION AND RESEARCH CONTEXT
This study is based on qualitative interviews conducted with Israeli bus drivers who
experienced at least one terror attack (TA), either directly or as a first-hand witness. The types of
TAs included bombings, shootings, stone-throwings, and Molotov cocktails, perpetrated or
attempted in a suicidal and/or homicidal manner. All of the participants were male and Jewish, and
between the ages of 29 and 64 and of various marital statuses at the time of initial contact.
With regard to securing the data collection field and research population, a number of
meetings between myself and both the managing psychologist/organizational consultant and the
social worker for the Jerusalem region at Egged Bus Company took place before the study
commenced. After a substantial review process, official approval was obtained, a legal consent
form was signed in January of 2005, and an agreement was reached for collaborative work.
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Potential participants were approached first and spoken with about the study by the psychologist
and/or social worker, and then, if interest was shown and consent obtained, by myself. The aims of
the research were then explicated in more detail at the time of the interview, and official informed
consent was obtained. Participation in the study was entirely voluntary and without compensation.
All but one of the participants (who was found through a personal connection in Be’er
Sheva) were recruited through these Egged clinicians. There was neither opportunity nor necessity
for any particular sampling decisions, given that the entire pool of possible participants was
relatively minimal. Drivers in Jerusalem were targeted for participation first, as this city had been
the hardest hit by bus bombings and thus had the highest number of possible participants.
However, as it gradually became more difficult to find participants in Jerusalem, personnel at the
Egged branches in Tel Aviv, Haifa, and Be’er Sheva were also approached in a similar fashion, in
addition to contacting drivers directly whenever possible. A great deal of energy over the first five
years of the study was spent in an attempt to recruit more participants, with little success.
Qualitative researchers often discuss the concept of “saturation”—the point at which new
data does not provide any new insights, and only confirms interpretations that have already been
reached—as the ideal ending point for recruitment of participants (Charmaz, 2006; Josselson &
Lieblich, 2003), and my initial hope was to recruit at least twenty interviewees in an attempt to
reach this point. However, one of the challenges of this study was finding individuals willing to be
interviewed on such a sensitive topic and for what is, for them, such a lengthy amount of time.
This challenge only increased as the security situation inside of Israel continued to improve and the
Israeli public became further removed from the tense security realities of the Second Intifada.
Ultimately, eight complete baseline interviews (BLIs) were conducted, and five of the
participants agreed to follow-up interviews (FUIs), which took place after almost exactly three
years. The BLIs took place between August of 2005 and March of 2007, which was a relatively
calm period in Israel vis-à-vis bus-related TAs. The FUIs took place between July of 2008 and
May of 2009, during which time there was a small number of TAs involving buses and bulldozers.
It is generally agreed that the Second Intifada came to a close by 2005, perhaps because this year
involved the fewest TAs and the fewest fatalities, on both sides, since its start five years prior.
However, the period of 2005-2009 was not entirely calm, with many other types of attacks both
within Israel and on several of its borders—including bombings at roadblocks and shopping malls,
a particularly horrific shooting spree at a yeshiva in Jerusalem, and a number of Qassam and Grad
rocket attacks on private houses and populated civilian areas (Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs).
This period also encompassed the Second Lebanon War, in the summer of 2006, and Operation
Cast Lead in Gaza, in the winter of 2008-9. This national context set the scene for many of the
topics discussed in the interviews, and often played an integral part in the participants’ discourse.
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3.3 THE DATA COLLECTION METHOD
In-depth, semi-structured, open-ended qualitative interviews were conducted with each of
the participants. The initial interview questions guide was informed by a number of ‘fact-finding’
meetings with Egged personnel, after which a single pilot interview was conducted to assess the
efficacy of these questions and to allow for preliminary analyses and minor modifications in
methodology. After this first interview was transcribed and assessed, various questions were
added, removed, or modified, and the rest of the interviews were conducted according to the
revised questions guide (see Appendix 1), which consists of fourteen open-ended questions relating
to the general topics under initial investigation (i.e., identity, worldview, systems of meaningmaking, cultural norms, and overall belief structures).
The interviews generally followed Rosenthal’s (1993, 2005) two-part biographical-narrative
interview style, which distinguishes between the period of main narration, during which the
interviewee is asked a single initial narrative question and the interviewer takes care not to
interrupt, intervene, or direct, and the questioning period, which allows for both internal and
external narrative questions. Each interview began with a general request for a life story (“Please
tell me about yourself,” or, if necessary, “Please tell me about yourself and your background”1) and
included a specific request for the narrative(s) of the TA(s) experienced. Although I took great care
to ensure that all the topics in the questions guide were represented to some degree, the interviews
generally flowed in an open-ended manner according to the narratives told by the participant, with
additional probing depending on the order, amount, depth, and scope of the narratives.
The FUIs were conducted in a manner as similar as possible to each participant’s BLI. As
many as possible of the same specific questions were asked, as well as the same general topics
covered. If a particular narrative was partially covered within the context of another narrative, I
made a separate request for the entire narrative at a later point in the interview. I spent a great deal
of time reviewing each participant’s BLI directly prior to his FUI, and so was prepared to ask for
retellings of narratives that were particular to him (i.e., if he had told a narrative in the BLI about
how he met his wife, I requested the narrative again at the FUI). Essentially, the primary purpose
of the FUI was to garner as many ‘parallel narratives’2 as possible. In addition, several new
questions were included to explore whether any changes had taken place over the three years that
1
2
The more direct request, “Please tell me your life story,” was attempted in multiple interviews, but more often than
not, proved too abstract for the interviewees, seemingly causing anxiety and uncertainty as to what to include and
from where to begin, often expressed in multiple questions and demands directed to me as to what I wanted to hear.
My rephrasing of the question into these versions garnered greater success, as the interviewees seemed to feel less
pressure. Although these versions do not follow the classic wording prescription for a “life story interview,” they did
seem to be the only possible means to obtaining a life story from these participants.
This is a term I have coined to refer to retellings of the ‘same’ narrative, by the same teller, to the same interviewer,
in the same physical venue and in as similar of an interpersonal context as possible, at two or more different points in
time. Bamberg (2008) used the term, “twice-told-tales,” to refer to the ‘same’ narratives told by the same person
over a period of time, but allowing for the option of different audiences.
72
had passed between the interviews. This could involve physical, psychological, emotional, social,
or any other notable developments, such as a new job or change in work status; a change in
relationship or marital status; any new traumatic events or life stressors; a change in worldview,
spirituality, or degree of religiousness; a greater or lesser need for any therapy or psychological
intervention; and/or any new perspective on the TA or any other previous life event.
Interviews were conducted at the participants’ homes, at their convenience. Interviewees
were requested to sign an informed consent form (see Appendix 2) at the beginning of the
interview, and then asked to fill out a short biographical questionnaire (see Appendix 3). They
were asked before the interview to reserve at least three hours, so that the interview would not be
rushed or limited in any way; however, multiple meetings were scheduled when necessary.
Interviews were recorded using cassette tape and MP3 recorders. All tapes and MP3 files, as well
as any files containing the participants’ personal details, have been kept confidential and passwordprotected, with no names or identifying information connected to them. The interviews were
conducted, transcribed, and analyzed in Hebrew. Excerpts have been translated to English only
when necessary for publication and for this dissertation. All research materials that may have been
in the hands of others (i.e., outside transcribers, student research assistants) were kept confidential
and then destroyed after work with them was completed. The research design, consent form, and
all materials presented to the participants received official approval from the Institutional Review
Board for Human Subjects at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in July of 2005.
All names used here, as well as in any and all publications resulting from this research, are
pseudonyms, and as many relevant personal details as possible have been changed to protect the
identities and confidentiality of the participants. Those biographical and personal details which
have not been altered are considered essential to a full understanding of the individual (at the time
of analysis), and should be assumed to have been recorded at the time of the BLI—unless
significant details have changed since then, in which case they will be mentioned specifically—and
thus, may be outdated or even incorrect as of the current point in time.
3.4 THE REFLEXIVE RESEARCHER: WHERE I AM COMING FROM
One of the most essential components of qualitative research is the awareness of one’s own
reflexive perspective as a researcher, and the relationship between this consciousness and the
experiences and perspectives of those individuals being studied. As Charmaz (1990) asserted:
“the researcher actively shapes the research process. The researcher creates an explication, organization, and
presentation of the data rather than discovering order within the data. The discovery process consists of
discovering the ideas the researcher has about the data after interacting with it” (p. 1169).
Finlay (2002) concurred, stating, “the researcher is a central figure who influences the collection,
selection, and interpretation of data” (p. 531). Along these lines, Myerhoff (1992) wrote, “I could
73
never imagine trusting my own or anyone else’s work as fully again without some signposts as to
how the interpretations were arrived at and how the [researcher] felt while doing so” (p. 295). To
this end, I will now discuss my positioning as the interviewer and researcher in this context, as this
is the perspective through which both the process and results of this research will be viewed.
Although the unique and co-constructed interpersonal interview contexts are discussed in
more specific detail in the holistic introduction to each participant in the individual results chapters,
it is necessary to note here a number of basic biographical facts about myself, all of which were
readily apparent to the participants. First and foremost, I am female, Jewish, and youthful-looking.
At my first contact with the interviewees, I was between 28 and 30 years old and introduced myself
to them as a Master’s student in psychology. I was between 31 and 33 years old at the time of the
FUIs, and I re-introduced myself as a doctoral student in psychology.
The biographical detail about myself that is, perhaps, most relevant to this study is that I
was born and grew up in the United States, and immigrated to Israel in October of 2003. While
some of the interviewees asked about the specifics of my immigration and some did not appear
interested, my status as a ‘new immigrant’ was obvious. My Hebrew was sufficient at the time of
the BLIs and more fluent at the FUIs, but my American accent was unmistakable. In addition, I
unwittingly offered myriad nonverbal clues (e.g., not dressing ‘like an Israeli’) and missed social
cues (e.g., refusing a hot beverage or not eating ‘enough’ of the cake and cookies served to me)—
only some of which I am even aware as of this writing—which made my non-native status and our
consequent lack of a basic shared cultural context likely immediately evident to the participants.
The status and label of new immigrant is commonplace in Israel—used even to refer to
those who have been in the country for ten years or more—and carries with it significant import,
along with a wide number and variety of (possibly accurate) stereotypes (e.g., Zionist, naïve, not
knowledgeable of Israeli society). This status, along with my sex and clearly youthful appearance,
undoubtedly placed me at a clear contrast to the participants, and the possibility that their discourse
and communicative strategies may have been influenced by these dynamics cannot be ruled out or
ignored. Indeed, the interviewees may have been particularly motivated to educate, enlighten, or
connect in some way with me, simply because of my identity as an ‘outsider.’ On the other hand,
the opposite could be just as plausible—that the interviewees may have felt alienated in some way
or put off by my inability to identify with them as an Israeli.
The related fact that I did not live in Israel during the majority of either of the Intifadas also
likely had an effect on the interview dynamic, as well as on the analysis and research process
overall. Although I was studying in Israel as a tourist at the time of the outbreak of the Second
Intifada, and I arrived as an immigrant shortly after its height, I do not believe I can ever claim to
know what it was like to live under such a constant, daily siege of terror. I have now been in the
74
country through several small-scale wars and military operations over the past few years, some of
which ‘hit closer to home’ than others, and I did live in Jerusalem toward the end of the Second
Intifada. These experiences actually affected me deeply, perhaps because the circumstances were
so new to me and I was new to the country, and perhaps because I had not yet developed any useful
coping mechanisms for such stressors. Still, I simply do not have an intrinsic capacity or frame of
reference to fully identify with the experiences of these bus drivers. Of course, one must then ask,
can anyone “fully identify” with these experiences? Even those who have directly experienced a
TA have nonetheless experienced it in their own unique context and through their own perspective.
Perhaps my willingness to admit that I have no possibility of identifying with the participants
allows me to be privy to a different type of narrative or discourse from them.
In any case, I can be considered very much an outsider regarding both the participant
population and the society under study. Beyond conducting a thorough review of the literature on
various aspects of Israeli society and consulting with my advisors, colleagues, and native Israeli
friends to get their (own socially influenced) perspectives, I have no innate way of understanding
the intricacies of the social phenomena that I am attempting to study. I was nonetheless drawn to
the topics of resilience, coping, and narrating and making meaning out of trauma, and how these
phenomena express themselves in Israeli society, since well before I immigrated. In this sense, my
motivation to understand these issues is both academic and personal, and strong and intrinsic.
Throughout the study process, I have discovered both advantages and disadvantages to my
background and positioning. As all interviews are a product of the relationship between the
interviewer, interviewee, and interview context (Mishler, 1991)3, it is undeniable that the interviews
I conducted were influenced by my ‘outsider-ness.’ In general, I felt that the participants were
willing to be open with me and in response to my (often seemingly strange and intrusive) questions
because I am an outsider, and they also tended to invest time and energy to come ‘down to my
level’ to explain certain issues and phenomena that may be taken for granted by a native Israeli. I
also noticed that some of the interviewees were very concerned with making sure that I understood
what they were trying to express, and they often went so far as to attempt to translate certain words
for me (without my asking them to do so or making any indication that I didn’t understand) or
using the little English of which they had mastery to encourage or clarify my understanding.
I would claim that my relatively ‘fresh’ eyes may see most clearly phenomena that seem
commonplace and unremarkable to native Israelis.
Indeed, the first question many of the
interviewees posed to me upon our meeting was, “Why are you interviewing me?”—seeming to
imply that whatever they have done or suffered or experienced is simply normal and familiar to
3
Another conceptualization of this same idea, using Fabian’s (1971) terms, is that the producer, process, and product
are interconnected in their influence on each other (Myerhoff & Ruby, 1992).
75
Israelis. They often expressed surprise and shock at my suggestion that getting back onto a bus and
going back to work just hours or days after experiencing a TA may be unusual, or perhaps even
admirable. Whether or not this is the case, even the topic and population of this research study
might not have been chosen by a cultural ‘insider,’ and in fact, has thus far not been studied. As I
am constantly attuned to the possible benefits as well as disadvantages involved in my being an
outsider in the eyes of the interviewees, I have invested much effort into ‘filling in the blanks,’
through both reflexivity and debriefing with native Israelis and/or veteran immigrants to Israel.
These practices will be discussed in more detail later in this chapter, and all of these interactional
issues should be kept in consideration when interpreting the results presented in this dissertation.
3.5 THE METHODOLOGICAL FRAMEWORK OF THE STUDY:
INTEGRATION OF THREE DISTINCT CONTENT WORLDS
This section presents the overarching methodological framework of the study from a
general theoretical perspective, while the following section will focus on the specific analytical
tools and how they were used. The analytical approach employed herein combines both theory and
methodology from sign-oriented linguistics and sociopsychological discourse analysis with an
interpretive narrative approach. The goal of this interdisciplinary method is to understand the
phenomenological experiences of these bus drivers by analyzing both the linguistic meanings and
extra-linguistic messages of their discursive choices.
This analytical view, focused on the
individual as well as his perceptions of his own experiences and of his society and its expectations,
forges a connection between the narrator’s text, his inner psychic world, and the attributions and
meanings he attaches to his experiences. This is accomplished by identifying the non-random
distribution of linguistic signs in the discourse and hypothesizing about the connection between
these specific uses of language and their extra-linguistic messages, and between these meanings
and the larger individual and psychosocial implications.
Indeed, it is suggested in this dissertation that the communicative oppositions and choices
made within the text, distinguished by clear discourse markers, may reflect both the narrator’s
worldview and his reciprocal relations with the world and society surrounding him.
This
interdisciplinary analytical approach asks questions of the discourse, such as: “How could this have
been said differently?” and, “How might the choice of alternative linguistic forms and their
meanings affect the extra-linguistic message of the text?” The procedure of placing the narrator’s
discursive choices into comparative context with a range of possible alternative choices allows a
multidimensional and open-ended interpretative perspective.
The analytical framework and methodology stays bound to the text at every point and every
level, exploring what is being said in the text and how it is being said. Later, interpretative
techniques are employed to ask why it was said, with the proposal of possible empirically76
motivated explanations for the extra-linguistic messages that emerged from the linguistic analysis.
It is asked why this particular use of language exists here and not there, why the narrator may have
chosen to use these specific language forms, and why this particular extra-linguistic message seems
to be important to him, both from a personal and societal perspective. This method interprets both
the form and content of the text, on both the micro- and macro-levels, in a cohesive manner in order
to arrive at a comprehensive and holistic narrative analysis. Below is a detailed discussion of the
three central content worlds involved in this interdisciplinary approach: social and discursive
psychology; sign-oriented semiotic linguistics; and qualitative inquiry and narrative analysis.
3.5.1 Social and discursive psychology: A focus on the individual
and the surrounding societal context
One of the primary theoretical foundations for this study is the assumption that the
individual exists, acts, and understands and narrates his experiences within a social context.
Indeed, the phenomena under study here exist within an interactional and dynamic interplay
between personal, familial, communal, societal, and cultural forces and contexts. Both linguistics
and discursive social psychology investigate the choice of language forms by individuals within
their social contexts, but each does so in different ways and from different angles. Linguists
explore discourse in order to understand the intricacies of the choices and meanings of the
linguistic forms, while social psychologists explore the user of the discourse and how the language
reflects his/her attendant behavior and attributions. As Kroger and Wood (1998) wrote, “At the
most general level, the topic of social psychology is discourse because it is in and through discourse
that the specific topics of interest (e.g., attribution, social comparison) are constituted” (p. 269).
Thus, discourse is viewed by traditional social psychology as the means rather than the ends; the
reflection of (or conduit toward understanding) a personal, interpersonal, or societal reality, rather
than a phenomenon to be understood in and of itself.
Discourse analysis is the term most often used within the social sciences for the type of text
analysis routinely conducted within the purview of semiotic linguistics, which is, albeit, more
focused on interpersonal and societal meanings and on the social construction of these meanings.
Widdowson (2007) claimed that discourse analysis is comprised of two broad areas: “how people
make meaning and make out meaning, in texts,” on the one hand, and how meanings are “socially
constructed so that expressing them is effectively a kind of social practice,” on the other (p. xv).
Wetherell (1998) went even further, contending that discourse can be equated with the overarching
human process of making meaning itself. The use of discourse analysis generally relies upon an
explicit methodology grounded in discursive psychology, a larger academic theory of social
psychology, which holds as its central assumption that “the phenomena of interest in social and
psychological research are constituted in and through discourse” (Kroger & Wood, 1998, p. 269;
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Edwards & Potter, 1992; Potter & Wetherell, 1987). Furthermore, within the post-structural view,
there is a greater focus on the interactive and dynamic relationship between identity and discourse.
Andersson (2008) claimed that self and identity do not exist outside of the discursive context, and
narrators are positioned as selves by their talk. This is, in many ways, an important point of
convergence between psychosocial discourse analysis and linguistic theory.
Discourse analysis in the social sciences purports to study the intricacies of the language
employed, but analyses can frequently appear less comprehensive and less rooted in a specific wellgrounded linguistic approach or theory. Kroger and Wood (1998) referred, for instance, to a
reliance on “an extensive set of devices or strategies for examining discourse in a variety of ways”
(p. 270), but the focus therein is most often placed more on the speaker than on the speech, and
more on the larger social meanings and contexts than the specific use of language at a specific point
in time. Indeed, Kroger and Wood (1998) also stated that “discourse analysis attempts to elucidate
the social functions and consequences of discourse” (p. 271). While this brings in an important
perspective, it leaves the exploration of the language itself somewhat incomplete.
Kroger and Wood (1998) thus suggested that the field of discursive psychology is in current
need of a conceptual shift toward the idea that talk itself is the “event of interest,” as it is the
discourse itself that constructs the reality illustrated in the aforementioned “phenomena of interest.”
Indeed, discursive psychology theoretically views language as constituting social practice, rather
than merely a communicative or descriptive tool. Similarly, Potter (2003) pointed to “a positive
recognition of the primacy of discourse as a medium for action,” suggesting the necessity for a
combined analytical focus on language and behavior as intimately connected (p. 785).
Furthermore, Kroger and Wood (1998) called for a new method within discursive psychology, one
that involves “increased conceptual and methodological rigour,” rather than “a decline into a
mushy, relativistic, touchy-feely methodology,” and that “must be suitable to penetrate beyond the
common-sense appearances of social interaction” (p. 270). They suggested going “back to the
data, to the initial utterance, to the performative force of these initial actions,” seeking and
identifying patterns in the discourse and requiring that hypotheses be supported by evidence
(Kroger & Wood, 1998, p. 270).
This research study has attempted to do just that, placing a psychosociolinguistic lens on the
discourse of the bus drivers interviewed herein, in order to understand their beliefs, attitudes, and
perceptions about their personal experiences as well as their surrounding societal and cultural
discourses. The interactional dynamic between these factors stands at the focus of the analyses
conducted and the interpretive conclusions reached. Indeed, the individual’s discourse is never
analyzed within a vacuum; rather, it is viewed as an integral part of a context that includes his life
history, his particular TA experience, his beliefs about his behavior before, during, and after the
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attack, and his attributions about how he was perceived and what might have been expected of him
throughout. Social psychology thus provides a foundation for this research, but lacks the requisite
tools for a comprehensive understanding of the phenomena. An interdisciplinary methodological
approach is thus necessary, and the following two content worlds ‘complete’ this objective.
3.5.2 Sign-oriented semiotic linguistics: A focus on the linguistic meanings and
extra-linguistic messages of the individual’s words
As a central part of its methodological and analytical framework, and out of an attempt to
provide a deeper empirical basis for the discourse analysis employed herein, this research study
relies on the semiotic, or sign-oriented, linguistic approach originally inspired by Saussure (1983
[1916]). Tobin (1990, 1995) expanded on Saussure, espousing a definition of language as, “A
system of systems composed of various sub-systems…which are organized internally and
systematically related to each other and used by human beings to communicate” (p. 7, p. 47). In
this sense, the structure of language is seen as being shaped by its communicative function and by
the characteristics of its users. Complex semiotic systems are viewed as composed of linguistic
signs—defined by Tobin (1990, 1995) as signals associated with their own individual and invariant
(and relatively abstract) meanings—which must share a common semantic denominator in order to
fit into the same semantic and grammatical systems (Dreer, 2007, 2011). While each linguistic sign
has only one single, invariant meaning—which motivates the distribution of the sign in language—
this consistent and unitary meaning can produce myriad and variable messages in diverse linguistic
and extra-linguistic situational contexts. Tobin (1990, 1995), for example, referred to the sign, “to
drive,” whereby the invariant meaning could be defined as, “to lead/transport X,” or, “to cause X to
move,” while the various specific contextual messages (involving a car or not) can be reflected in,
“to drive her home”; “to drive her crazy”; “the drive to win”; and “to put your car in drive.”
The sign-oriented semiotic approach defines communication as the creation of oppositions
by means of linguistic signs. This can be demonstrated in the following examples:
BOY
≠
BOYS
Grammatical number opposition (singular vs. plural)
BOY
≠
MAN
Gradient age opposition
BOY
≠
GIRL
Polaric gender opposition
BOY IS
≠
BOY WAS
Tense opposition (present vs. past)
The choice of each member in these binary oppositions directly affects the extra-linguistic message
the speaker/encoder aims to convey (Kirsner, 1979). The unitary, invariant meaning of each
linguistic sign thus motivates its non-random distribution in language to create different messages,
and the analysis of the non-random distribution of signs allows an understanding of the extralinguistic message(s) of a text and the motivations behind the narrator’s choices.
The Columbia School approach to sign-oriented linguistics was first used in analyses of
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specific grammatical systems, validated by qualitative explanations of sentences in context.
Diver’s (1969) seminal article on the Homeric verb validated the meanings of the Homeric Greek
verb tenses according to a quantitative analysis of their total distribution within The Odyssey, thus
presenting the first use of holistic narrative theory within linguistics. The analysis demonstrated
that the sentences with high-relevance verb forms contained all the important events of the plot and
the fundamental details of all the major characters, and the sentences with low-relevance verb
forms contained all the elaborative descriptive and background details. Diver’s (1969) introduction
of qualitative and quantitative analyses and motivated explanations of the non-random distribution
of linguistic forms, which could be directly related to the empirically postulated extra-linguistic
messages of texts, represented an early integration of linguistics and narrative analysis. The
interdisciplinary method used in this study rests on both this holistic linguistic theory and
methodology, along with a sociopsychological narrative approach.
The analysis herein rests on the fundamental assumption that the linguistic sign can be
analyzed as an individual unit within a number of potentially interrelated semiotic systems in order
to gain insight into the larger messages of a narrator’s discourse. Human beings tend to assume
that we know the signs and signals of our own language a priori, but Tobin (1990) contended that
we—humans, in general, and linguistic analysts, in particular—must begin ‘from scratch’ each time
we confront a potential sign, creating hypotheses anew with regard to validating both the signal and
its invariant unitary meaning, and the manner in which both are employed in creating new extralinguistic messages by different speakers/encoders in diverse linguistic and situational contexts.
3.5.2.1 The pronoun system and the importance of gender in Modern Israeli Hebrew
Tobin (1990, 1995) claimed that “successful linguistic communication can only be achieved
through the combined effort of an encoder and a decoder cooperating together” (p. 48, p. 11). As
such, the pronoun system in Modern Israeli Hebrew (MIH) must be understood, first and foremost,
in terms of its invariant meanings: encoder (first-person), decoder (second-person), and other than
the encoder/decoder or outsider (third-person). Below is a table delineating the MIH pronoun
system from a sign-oriented perspective, explicating both the invariant meaning and conventional
usage characteristics and extra-linguistic messages of each pronoun.
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Table 3-1: The pronoun system in Modern Israeli Hebrew
PERSON
1st
‘I’
NUMBER
Singular
‘We’
Plural
PRONOUN
‘You (MS)’
2
nd
3rd
Singular
GENDER
Neutral
Neutral
INVARIANT
MEANING
Encoder
(Speaker /
Writer)
Masculine
‘You (FS)’
Singular
Feminine
‘You (MP)’
Plural
Masculine
‘You (FP)’
‘He’
‘She’
Plural
Singular
Singular
Feminine
Masculine
Feminine
‘They (MP)’
Plural
Masculine
‘They (FP)’
Plural
Feminine
Decoder
(Audience /
Listener /
Reader)
Other
(Outsider)
CHARACTERISTICS / MESSAGES
 Most proximate and personal –
ego-centered
 Unmarked – generic singular form
 Most general and neutral
 Customarily used in non-gendered discourse or
in relation to a non-specific subject
 Marked for feminine
 Customarily used only in person- or genderspecific discursive situations
 Creates a sense of greater proximity and less
neutrality toward female being addressed
 Unmarked – generic plural form
 Customarily used in mixed-gender groups
 Unmarked – generic singular form
 Unmarked – generic plural form
 Customarily used to refer to mixed-gender
groups
The MIH pronoun system has distinct forms distinguishing singular and plural for all three
persons, and gender-specific forms for second- and third-person pronouns.
The first-person
pronominal forms (‘I’ and ‘we’) are gender-neutral, as the speaker(s) are readily identifiable by
means of the collocated verbs. Contrarily, the second- and third-person pronominal forms are
marked for both gender (masculine/feminine) and number (singular/plural).
The masculine
pronouns are the unmarked forms, as they can be used to refer to either male or female objects, and
verbs are generally characterized by the base form. Feminine forms, on the other hand, require
additional obligatory suffixes, and are used to denote feminine objects only.
The masculine
singular form can be applied to a specific male and/or as an inclusive gender form for either or both
genders together. Essentially, the unmarked masculine forms can be used in all contexts (all-male,
mixed, and even all-female groups), while the marked feminine forms are customarily used only in
all-female groups or in relation to a specific female decoder(s) (and even then, the feminine forms
can and frequently are replaced by the unmarked masculine forms for use in expressing generic
and/or general messages).
Unlike in English, all verbs (and adjectival forms) in MIH are inflected and explicitly and
obligatorily conjugated for person (first/second/third), number (singular/plural), and gender
(masculine/feminine). This makes the collocation of ‘pronoun + conjugated verb’ optional in most
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cases, as the conjugated verb itself overtly displays the information found in the pronoun. 4 In
addition, the gender and number agreement in all verbs always allows a clear identification of the
first-person encoder. Only in the present tense is the pronoun-verb collocation frequently necessary
for full comprehension of the identity of the encoder, decoder, and other.
The first-person singular pronoun (‘ani’ in MIH; ‘I’ in English) signifies speaker/writer
(‘encoder’), referring to ‘the one who speaks here and now.’ Because it is ego-centered, it is
considered the most proximate and personal pronoun. It is unmarked for (that is, neutral to) gender,
and is the most specific or ‘known’ pronoun—as its use leaves little ambiguity as to the identity or
nature of the speaker. This form is used to relate to personalized events, actions, or states, and
cannot represent a relation to anything or anyone but the encoder. As Pennebaker (2002) noted,
“The use of 1st person singular (I, me, my)…provides insight into people’s social identity and
‘ownership’ of their speaking or writing topic” (p. 8). The first-person plural pronoun (‘anaxnu’5 in
MIH; ‘we’ in English) signifies a plural or collective speaker/writer (‘encoder’), which is also egocentered but overtly indicates more than a single individual encoder. This then requires further
interpretation of the identities of those who comprise this collective entity.
The second-person masculine singular (MS) pronoun (‘atah’ in MIH; ‘you’ in English)
signifies audience/listener/reader (‘decoder’), and, as it is unmarked, is considered one of the most
general and neutral pronouns (Tobin, 2001). It has two functions in MIH: 1) its traditional usage,
to address a specific male decoder; and 2) a more generic, general, and impersonal usage
corresponding roughly to the non-gendered and non-numbered ‘you’ in English.6 In the latter case,
it functions as the unmarked form, customarily used in non-gendered discourse or in relation to a
non-specific subject (similar to, in English, “When one does this type of work…” or the
generalized, “When you wake up in the morning…”). However, the MS ‘you’ is also used in
discourse that does not—or does not necessarily—call for the unmarked form. Indeed, feminists
have reported cases, both in private conversations and the media, of two women using the MS
‘you’ in discourse with each other, even in such obviously gendered cases as, “When you (MS) are
pregnant…” or “When you (MS) are nursing your (MS) baby…” (Tobin, personal communication).
Thus, it has been hypothesized that the use of the unmarked MS ‘you’ serves to create a
depersonalized or universalized sense of meaning, allowing relation to ‘one’ or ‘every/anyperson.’
The second-person feminine singular (FS) pronoun (‘at’ in MIH; ‘you’ in English) also
4
5
6
The phenomenon of using only the conjugated form of a verb, without its collocated pronoun, is referred to as “prodrop” in the formal-syntactic linguistic literature.
All transliterations in this dissertation follow the conventional guidelines of the International Phonetic Alphabet
(IPA), wherein the x stands for the voiceless velar fricative, sometimes written in lay circles as ch.
In English, the second-person ‘you’ is unmarked for both number and gender (i.e., there is no difference between the
masculine singular, feminine singular, masculine plural, and feminine plural forms), while as noted here, there are
four distinct forms in MIH for the second-person ‘you,’ each marked for both gender and number.
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signifies decoder, and also has two functions: 1) to address a specific female decoder; and 2) a
generic and/or general manner of usage between two females or in all-female groups, and specific
or generic (female) gendered situations and contexts (i.e., one might hear, “When you (FS) are
pregnant…” in this context). This second function has moved more into popular (and, some say,
even provocative) use in the past few years—primarily by feminists and the younger generation—
but is not viewed as conventional or widely accepted across generations or population sectors. As
the FS ‘you’ is marked for gender and number (Tobin, 2001), it is customarily utilized only in
person- or gender-specific discursive situations. Thus, the choice to use it (rather than the standard
neutral, unmarked MS form) may create a sense of greater proximity and less neutrality toward the
female individual being addressed. In the context of this study, it is suggested that a male bus
driver who uses the FS ‘you’ while speaking to a female interviewer about his own experiences
may be demonstrating an entirely different communicative strategy—one that has particular
implications regarding his attitude toward what he is describing and/or toward the specific decoder.
The second-person masculine plural (MP) pronoun (‘atem’ in MIH; ‘you’ in English)
functions as the unmarked form in all-male and mixed-gender groups. The presence of a single
male in even a large group of women is sufficient to call for the use of the MP form, while the
marked feminine plural (FP) pronoun (‘aten’ in MIH; ‘you’ in English) is conventionally used only
in all-female groups. This is particularly true in entirely female-only contexts, such as basic
training courses for female soldiers or in religious (gender-separated) schools; however, even then,
the MP form can be used and fully accepted. Only the most feminist-minded individuals in recent
generations have begun a revolution of sorts, consciously utilizing the marked FP rather than the
unmarked MP pronominal form in mixed groups with ‘only’ a majority of women (Tobin, 2001).7
In addition, the use of the MP conjugated form of verbs, with or without the inclusion of the
pronoun itself, provides an even more generalized, generic, and depersonalized form. When the
MP form of a verb is being used as the unmarked, generalized form, it generally need not be
collocated with a pronoun, and therefore, could potentially refer to ‘you’ (MS), ‘they’ (MP), or
even ‘we.’ This is essentially the most distant, impersonal, and passive verb form in the system, as
it requires the most added information to ascertain its linguistic message.
As may already be clear from this discussion of the pronoun system, one of the most central
elements of MIH is gender and the constant linguistic choices that must be made in order to
conform to the use of obligatory gender(ed) forms. As Tobin (2001) contended, “Gender is
inherent, integral, and ubiquitous” in MIH, as all nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs, and
prepositions either have an intrinsic grammatical gender or must be inflected to agree with their
7
Tobin (personal communication) noted that this extreme ‘politicized’ and ideological use has not spread to the
general Hebrew-speaking population and remains unusual and strange-sounding to native (non-feminist) speakers.
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collocated grammatical counterpart. Indeed, Tobin (2001) claimed, “structurally speaking, gender
(biological and grammatical) is almost always present at all levels of word and utterance formation
in Modern Hebrew” (p. 192). This centrality of gender carries with it an ever-present requirement
for speakers to select the appropriate form to use throughout their discourse. Analytically speaking,
therefore, it is crucial to pay attention to the structure and nature of these usages and choices in
spontaneous discourse—particularly if patterns emerge as unusual or unconventional, or
predominantly consistent or inconsistently distributed.
3.5.2.2 The interlocked tense system in Modern Israeli Hebrew
According to sign-oriented linguistic theory, the tense system in MIH should also be
understood in terms of its invariant meanings and potential interpretive messages. Unlike in
Biblical Hebrew, this system primarily revolves around signs indicating what are typically referred
to as ‘traditional simple’ past, present, and future tenses (Dekel, 2010). This conventional analysis,
however, does not accurately encompass all the varied uses of each tense, as all can cross over in
both time (e.g., the so-called ‘present’ tense can be used to refer to actions, states, and events in the
past as well as future) and function (e.g., the so-called ‘past’ tense can be used to refer to
hypothetical actions, states, and events in both the present and future, and the so-called ‘future’
tense can function as an imperative). Despite these phenomena, Dekel (2010) referred to a sparcity
of research on the tense system of spoken Hebrew, noting Borochovsky Bar-Aba’s (2008)
discussion of “inconsistencies in the verb tenses” (p. 267), with no further explication therein.
In a sign-oriented perspective on these perceived “inconsistences,” Tobin (1989b) proposed
a linguistic sign-oriented analysis centered on a Space-Time-Existence system, one “whose
semantic substance deals with the placing of events/actions/states in their spatio-temporalexistential relation to the speaker at the point (or the ‘here and now’) of speaking” (p. 63). Within
this system, the invariant meaning of the ‘present’ tense is proximate, while that of the ‘past’ and
‘future’ tenses is remote with regard to the encoder. Furthermore, Tobin (1989b) suggested that the
Space-Time-Existence system should be interlocked with the Experience system, the “semantic
domain” of which is “the speaker’s ability to perceive or experience an event/action/state” (p. 63).
Within this system, the invariant meaning of the ‘present’ and ‘past’ tenses is experienced or able
to be experienced, while that of the ‘future’ tense is not experienced or not able to be experienced.
Table 3-2: The sign-oriented interlocked tense system in Modern Israeli Hebrew
TENSE
‘Present’
‘Past’
‘Future’
PROXIMITY
Proximate
Remote
Remote
EXPERIENCE-ABILITY
Experienced / experience-able
Experienced / experience-able
Not experienced / not experience-able
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Thus, within this framework of Tobin’s (1989b) two interlocked semantic sub-systems of
the MIH tense system, the description of an event, action, or state using the ‘past’ tense signals the
meanings remote and (able to be) experienced; the use of the ‘present’ tense signals the meanings
proximate and (able to be) experienced; and the ‘future’ tense signals the meanings remote and not
(able to be) experienced.8 In this sense, as Tobin (1989b) suggested, the use of particular tenses in
an individual’s discourse may not be—and in fact, is rarely—determined by the actual time of
occurrence of the described event/action/state, but rather by the encoder’s perception of these
events/actions/states with regard to proximity and ‘experience-ability.’ Thus, a speaker may use
one tense sign rather than another as a motivated expression of his beliefs, emotions, or attributions
vis-à-vis what he is describing. Furthermore, as Tobin (1989b) contended, “the consistent and
systematic preference of one verb tense over another…may tell us something about the encoder’s
attitude toward those actions, states, or events, and/or indicate his particular world view” (p. 65).
Therefore, for instance, an interviewee’s clear tendency to use the proximate-present (PPr) tense to
describe experiences that occurred in the past, or to use a particular tense with a particular pronoun,
may suggest a non-random choice and a specific communicative strategy at work—especially if the
pattern is found to be relatively consistent across individuals, experiences, or contexts.
3.5.2.3 The systems of focus and deixis and prepositions in Modern Israeli Hebrew
Pronouns are essentially substitutions or shortcuts, used to refer to (usually) previously
mentioned persons or entities, and therefore, there is a need for additional semantic markers to
instruct the decoder as to how and where to relate to given pronouns as and after they are identified.
The semantic systems of focus and deixis exist to fulfill this need within the pronominal system,
and are closely associated with it. The focus system—defined as whether or not a particular subject
is in the center of the speaker’s interest (Kirsner, 1979)—regards the linguistic sign’s worthiness of
attention, and thus, is binary (i.e., either in or not in focus). The deictic system—defined as “the
force with which the hearer is instructed to find the referent” (Garcia, 1975, p. 65)—regards the
degree of attention the linguistic sign is worth, and thus, can be denoted on a relative scale, either
numerically or as ‘high,’ ‘medium,’ or ‘low.’ In this sense, while subject pronouns (e.g., ‘I,’ ‘you,’
‘we,’ ‘they’) are in focus and high-deixis, object pronouns (e.g., ‘me,’ ‘us,’ ‘them’) are not in focus
and low-deixis. In the sentence, “You gave the book to me,” for example, the subject (“you”) is in
focus and high-deixis, as it is performing the action of the sentence. The object pronoun, “(to) me,”
is not in focus and mid-deixis, as it is receiving the action in the sentence. The semantic meanings
8
Consequently and henceforth, this dissertation will refer to the ‘present’ tense as the proximate-present (PPr) tense,
to the ‘past’ tense as the remote-past (RPa) tense, and to the ‘future’ tense as the remote-future (RF) tense. The
traditional terms for these tenses will be used sparingly but interchangeably, and only when necessary for maximum
comprehension or readability.
85
of each pronominal form within the focus and deictic systems serve to assist both the encoder and
decoder in determining the function and importance of the represented entities within the linguistic
and situational discourse contexts in which they appear (Tobin, personal communication).
Many of the prepositions in MIH are essentially identical to those in English, although their
conventional usage may vary slightly (e.g., the English phrase, “he recommended me,” would be
strictly translated from MIH as, “he recommended on me”; the English phrase, “he helped me,”
would be, “he helped to me”). In addition, while both English and MIH contain the words, ‘me,’
and, ‘mine,’ MIH also possesses a unique semantic preposition that does not exist in English, which
is used constantly in daily conversation and indeed appeared frequently in the discourse of these
drivers. The invariant meaning of this word, ‘etzel’, according to Tobin (personal communication),
is essentially, “within the boundaries/realm of X.” An exact translation into English is impossible
(although it is comparable to ‘chez’ in French), but it will have to suffice to explain that ‘etzli’ (the
conjugated form for ‘me’) can be understood as ‘at me,’ ‘by me,’ ‘on me,’ or ‘in me,’ depending on
the context. For example, while one could say, “The book is at my house,” the addition of ‘etzli’
would change the translation to, “The book is at me at my house’—or, alternatively, ‘etzli’ could be
used to replace the phrase, “my house,” entirely, allowing the sentence to be simply, “The book is
at me,” which is a perfectly acceptable conventional usage of the term (loosely meaning, “I have
the book”). The extra-linguistic meaning of this term is highly personalized, more so than if one
were to use any of the above alternative prepositions. Because the interviewees utilized both this
preposition and a variety of semi-equivalent alternatives, it will be claimed that unique and
significant meaning lies in these choices and their non-random distribution. To this end, I have
attempted to translate these instances of discourse as literally (albeit often not as elegantly or
eloquently) as possible, in hopes of conveying these distinctions clearly.
Indeed, there are a number of other prepositions in MIH that require definition here, as their
invariant meanings impact the messages sent by the encoders: for instance, ‘l-’, the meaning of
which is orientation in some manner or form; ‘b-’, the meaning of which is circumstance; and ‘el-’,
the meaning of which is goal/destination/in the direction (of) (Tobin, 2008). The conjugated form
of ‘l-’ for ‘me’—‘li’—can be translated as ‘to me,’ ‘for me,’ ‘on me,’ or ‘mine/belonging to me,’
depending on the verb and surrounding context, and has the literal meaning of ‘orientation to self.’
The sign-oriented meaning also interlocks with the Participation/Contribution system, such that it
can be seen as higher on a personalization level than, say, ‘el-’, which is not a part of this system.
Both ‘li’ and ‘etzli’ can be interpreted as sending the generalized extra-linguistic message of ‘I
am/was involved in this event,’ and both terms are not in focus and mid-deixis. However, ‘l-’ is
understood as more personalized than ‘etzel’ and than many of the alternatives (e.g., “They got onto
me” vs. “They got onto my bus”). The choice of preposition at every point in an individual’s
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discourse is, on some level, motivated by their invariant meanings, and should not be ignored.
The text quotations presented throughout this dissertation highlight these differentiations in
the interviewees’ discourse as clearly as possible—with the unfortunate, but necessary,
consequence of slightly more clumsy phrasings in English. The table below shows the relative
levels of deixis among several of the most common prepositions in MIH, all of which appeared
frequently in the interviewees’ speech. Given that all are object-related prepositions (that is, for
instance, “on me,” rather than “I”), all are fairly low in deixis in general. However, there is a
significant variance in degree of deixis relative to each other, and so the discursive choice to use
one over the other often had a meaningful influence on the semantic message sent by the encoder.
Table 3-3: Common MIH prepositions according to their relative deictic level
PREPOSITION
(CONJUGATED FOR ‘ME’)
‘li’
‘bi’
‘alai’
‘elai’
‘etzli’
‘iti’
(None)
EXEMPLAR DISCOURSE IN TEXT
(FOR “GOT ON [THE BUS]”)
‘on me’ / ‘onto me’
‘into me’
‘on to me’
‘on toward me’
‘on at me’ / ‘on at my bus’
‘on with me’
‘got on’ or ‘got onto the bus’
RELATIVE DEIXIS
5 (Highest)
5
4
4
3
2
1 (Lowest)
Again, the gendered nature and use of all of these interrelated systems in MIH requires
constant choices regarding gender as well as number, in relation to both encoder and decoder. A
fundamental assumption of this research is that these choices are not made arbitrarily, and the
meanings of and relationships between the choices of marked and unmarked pronouns as well as
tense may function as analytical ‘flags,’ thus spurring and facilitating a deeper analysis of the
psychosocial discourse surrounding the individual or event.
Viewed from a linguistic and
discursive analytical perspective, the non-random distribution of pronouns and tenses within the
texts is employed as both the source and the empirical support for the hypotheses offered. Analyses
of both the pronoun and tense systems, along with the juxtaposed scales of focus and deixis where
relevant, can give the basis for an understanding of their use in the bus drivers’ discourse, whereby
the forms are chosen by their meanings within their respective systems, which interact and carry
with them particular implications. This study focuses on the interviewees’ discursive choices at
particular moments or in relation to particular topics and their extra-linguistic messages, alongside
the meanings of these usages in their given contexts. Specifically, the focus on the bus drivers’
divergent uses of the FS ‘you’ pronoun and its motivations, meanings, and ramifications constitutes
an innovative contribution to the linguistic literature. A view of these choices as communicative
strategies utilized by the participants provides a background for an understanding of the individuals
and the larger psychosocial implications and contexts within their lived-worlds.
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3.5.3 Qualitative inquiry and the interpretive narrative paradigm:
A focus on the individual’s stories and the story-telling context
This research study is qualitative, naturalistic, and phenomenological, with a focus on the
participants’ lived experiences and particular, constructed realities and meanings. Denzin and
Lincoln (1994) defined qualitative research as “multimethod in focus, involving an interpretive
naturalistic approach to its subject matter,” and as involving “the studied use of and collection of a
variety of empirical materials…that describe routine and problematic moments and meaning in
individuals’ lives” (p. 2). Qualitative researchers, in this domain, “study things in their natural
settings, attempting to make sense of, or interpret, phenomena in terms of the meanings people
bring to them” (Denzin & Lincoln, 1994, p. 2). While quantitative research is post-positivistic,
seeking to learn about prediction and control of variables, qualitative research is generally
interpretive and interested in achieving an understanding of those ‘variables.’ The central research
philosophy was phenomenological—focused upon exploring the events and experiences of the
interviewees in their day-to-day context from their own perspective and emphasizing the particular
meanings they themselves attach to these experiences (Baum, 2004; Becker, 1992; Spinelli, 1996).
This study is situated within the interpretive or constructivist family of paradigms, which is
based on a relativistic ontological view with a non-static, specific, and localized focus (Guba &
Lincoln, 1994, 2005).
In this sense, there is no assumption of clear, simple, behavioral
operationalizations for the phenomena under investigation. Rather, the epistemological research
stance is entirely subjective, constructivist, and transactional in its view of the individual’s
understanding of his reality, and of the co-constructed interpretive reality of the interview context.
Indeed, as Josselson (2006) stated:
“The practice of narrative research, rooted in postmodernism, is always interpretive, at every stage. From
framing the conceptual question through choosing the participants, deciding what to ask them, with what
phrasing, transcribing from spoken language to text, understanding the verbal locutions, making sense of the
meanings thus encoded, to deciding what to attend to and to highlight – the work is interpretive at every
point” (pp. 3-4).
A facet of the investigation looks, therefore, at the participants’ particular and personal perceptions
of the societal discourse surrounding them, rather than presuming the existence of a single,
accepted discourse or any objective or universal ‘truths’ therein. The methodology adopted in this
inquiry is hermeneutic and dialectical at its base, seeking a complex and deep understanding of the
phenomena under study. The underlying goal is to expose and deconstruct discursive phenomena
that may have been heretofore taken for granted, and to provide a new perspective and potential
application for the insights garnered herein.
At its essential core, this research study is narrative in nature. Narrative research, at its
basic level, “begins in experience as expressed in lived and told stories” (Pinnegar & Daynes, 2007,
p. 5). In the case of the present study, narratives comprise the empirical material for investigation,
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the interpersonal context for data collection, and the body of evidence for confirmation of
interpretive hypotheses.
Narrative inquiry is generally classified as a sub-type of qualitative
inquiry (Chase, 2005), but Spector-Mersel (2010) recently made a persuasive case for a reinforced
view of the narrative approach as a distinct qualitative paradigm, in all its diversity and multiplicity
and complete with its own specific ontology, epistemology, and methodology. Too often, SpectorMersel (2010) argued, narrative inquiry is referred to as merely a method, a methodology, or an
analytical approach. This dissertation views and utilizes narrative as an integral part of all its
research facets: theoretical, conceptual, methodological, reflexive, and paradigmatic.
The study relies upon and is a product of the “narrative turn” that has taken place over the
past decades, across disciplines and throughout the academic and professional world, whereby a
positivistic and realistic focus on quantitative data has shifted toward an interpretive and openended view toward qualitative texts of all kinds (Lieblich et al., 1998; Riessman, 1993, 2008;
Spector-Mersel, 2010). This view called for a shift from looking for a single, objective, positivistic
‘truth,’ toward seeking meaning, subjective and constructed processes of understanding, and
multiple interpretations and worldviews. In particular, this study’s positioning within the academic
discipline of psychology follows an important tradition, as Josselson and Lieblich (1996) asserted:
“Narrative modes of investigation, which take hermeneutics rather than logical-positivism as a philosophical
base, are gaining in currency in psychology… In privileging analysis of the particular, in recognizing the role
of the observer in all investigation, in honoring the importance of language as structuring understanding,
narrative-based psychology has become a creative horizon in psychology” (p. 651).
I contend that the integration of the disciplines of psychology, linguistics, and narrative inquiry
within the methodological framework of this study constitutes an important, innovative “horizon.”
With regard to the historical development of narrative inquiry, Pinnegar and Daynes (2007)
discussed four “turns,” or changes in thinking from the positivistic stance, that have taken place: 1)
the attention placed on the relationship forged between the researcher and the researched; 2) the
move from numbers to words as data; 3) the move from a focus on the general and universal toward
the particular and specific; and 4) the recognition of blurred genres of knowing. All four of these
turns inform the methodology of this study, and so a brief discussion of each is presented here. In
addition, Chase (2005) delineated a set of “five analytic lenses through which contemporary
researchers approach empirical material” within narrative inquiry (p. 656): 1) narrative as a distinct
discourse form; 2) narrative as verbal action; 3) narrative as impacted by social context; 4) narrative
as socially situated interactive performance; and 5) the researcher as narrator. These perspectives
also form the basis of the interpretive stance taken by this study, and can be viewed as fundamental
assumptions for the methodology herein, and so they will be presented alongside of the turns.
The first turn, which is evident in several areas throughout this chapter (most notably in the
reflexive sections), contends that the relationship created in an interview context is interactional,
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dynamic, and mutually impacting (Pinnegar & Daynes, 2007). In contrast to the positivist-realist
research perspective that a researcher conducts studies or experiments on ‘human subjects,’ the
narrative view is that research is undertaken with ‘participants,’ and “both researcher and
researched will learn” (Pinnegar & Daynes, 2007, p. 14). This relationship, therefore, and the data
garnered from it, is particular and unique to the time, space, and contexts involved in the interview
experience, as well as to the specific identities, histories, and worldviews of the experiencers. The
quality of the relationship is perhaps the most critical element; as Josselson (2009) asserted,
“Narrative inquiry begins with a respectful, ethical, nonjudgmental, responsive, and empathic
research relationship (Josselson, 2007)” (p. 650). Indeed, the level of trust and connection between
the interviewee and interviewer is a driving force and has a fundamental influence on the quality of
narrative data obtained in the research interview context (Josselson, 2009).
Along these lines, Chase’s (2005) second analytic lens presents a view of narratives as
“verbal action—as doing or accomplishing something” (p. 657). This view is centered on the basic
assumption that when individuals present their narratives to others, they do so for specialized and
specific reasons. Indeed, as Alasuutari (1997) contended, “Individuals do not have their readily
narrated life stories in their back pockets or the back of their minds, waiting for a researcher to
collect them. Any account of one’s personal past…makes a point and serves a function” (p. 6). We
tell what we tell, how we tell it (and when and why), as a result of a complex interplay of personal,
interactional, and contextual factors. Indeed, as Riessman (2008) asserted, narrative “involves
persuading an audience that may be skeptical,” and “engages an audience in the experience of the
narrator” (p. 9). Telling one’s story is also an interpretive act of sense- and meaning-making, for
the self as well as vis-à-vis the surrounding society and world (Andersson, 2008; Dawson, 1994).
Spector-Mersel (2011) referred to the function of self-narrative as a means toward claiming an
identity, writing, “a sense of identity is attained through the stories we tell ourselves and others,”
and suggesting that “not only is identity expressed in narrative, but also importantly, it is also
constructed by it” (p. 173). Ultimately, as Chase (2005) contended, when narrative is perceived
through this lens, the situated voice of the narrator is placed into a primary focus. This, in turn,
leads to a privileging of the ‘what, how, and where’ of the particular narrator and told narrative, and
allows an interpretive and constructivist approach to analysis of material of this nature.
The second turn involves “a recognition that in translating experience to numeric codes
researchers lose the nuances of experience and relationship in a particular setting that are of interest
to those examining human experience” (Pinnegar & Daynes, 2007, p. 15). In an early phase of this
study, I considered including a quantitative questionnaire to attempt to more ‘objectively’ measure
post-traumatic symptoms and overall health statuses of the participants. However, very quickly I
realized that I was much more interested in the bus drivers’ narratives about their experiences and
90
coping processes, and their own subjective perceptions of their health, rather than their supposedly
objective position on any external scale or typology. It then became obvious to me that narrative
inquiry would provide “a deeper opportunity to establish the authenticity and trustworthiness” of
my findings (Pinnegar & Daynes, 2007, p. 21), along with the means and material to interpret these
findings in a meaningful way. This turn also fits in with Chase’s (2005) first analytic lens, which
calls for narrative researchers to “treat narrative—whether oral or written—as a distinct form of
discourse” (p. 656). In this view, narrative is seen as an integral part of the human meaningmaking endeavor, allowing the narrator to place the narrated experiences into the context of his life
story (Bruner, 1986). As Riessman (2008) stated, “In a dynamic way…narrative constitutes past
experience at the same time as it provides ways for individuals to make sense of the past” (p. 8).
The third turn is represented in a shift from a focus on general phenomena or ‘universal’
experiences toward specific, particular, and situated participants, contexts, and experiences
(Pinnegar & Daynes, 2007). Chase’s (2005) fourth analytic lens is in line with this, suggesting a
treatment of narratives as “socially situated interactive performances—as produced in this
particular setting, for this particular audience, for these particular purposes” (p. 657). In this sense,
and alongside the aforementioned reflexive view of the co-construction of the interview context,
each story told by each narrator is seen as “flexible, variable, and shaped in part by interaction with
the audience” (Chase, 2005, p. 657). In addition, Chase’s (2005) third analytic lens leads narrative
researchers to conceive of narratives as “both enabled and constrained by a range of social
resources and circumstances” (p. 657). This is a particularly critical view for the present inquiry, in
its focus on the interplay between personal and societal discourse, which can be deeply influenced
by the individual’s physical, social, communal, organizational, cultural, and historical positionings.
The fourth turn involves a shift “from one way of knowing the world to an understanding
that there are multiple ways of knowing and understanding human experience” (Pinnegar &
Daynes, 2007, p. 25).
Again, this involves a move away from ‘objectivity’ and positivistic
conceptualizations of validity and reliability, and toward the more inclusive concepts of
trustworthiness, authenticity, and resonance (Denzin & Lincoln, 1994; Lincoln & Guba, 1985;
Pinnegar & Daynes, 2007; Tracy, 2010). In this sense, narrative researchers “accept and value the
way in which narrative inquiry allows wondering, tentativeness, and alternative views to exist as
part of the research account” (Pinnegar & Daynes, 2007, p. 25). Indeed, as Chase (2005) stated:
“Contemporary narrative inquiry can be characterized as an amalgam of interdisciplinary analytic lenses,
diverse disciplinary approaches, and both traditional and innovative methods—all revolving around an interest
in biographical particulars as narrated by the one who lives them” (p. 651).
The multidimensional and interpretive nature of this type of inquiry is perhaps its greatest strength,
allowing for a rich, comprehensive, and dynamic understanding of phenomena under investigation.
Alongside of this, Chase’s (2005) fifth lens acknowledges the role and stance of the researcher as
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knower and narrator of the study findings. Not only is narrative research viewed as interpretive
and as containing a multiplicity of perspectives on the issues under study, but the research report
itself is seen as essentially a narrative of the study, with the researcher/writer as narrator. This
privileges the voice of the investigator alongside the voices of the participants, and brings all of
these lenses into play for all members of the research context.
3.5.3.1 An organizing model for narrative analysis
One of the central organizing principles of the methodological framework of this research is
the analytical dichotomy of content vs. form; that is, what an encoder says vs. how he says it.
Many of the analytical methods utilized herein spiral between these foci, while also shifting
between holistic and categorical viewpoints on the qualitative data. Lieblich et al. (1998) proposed
a fundamental classification model for the myriad types of narrative analysis: a four-celled matrix
created by the intersecting dimensions of holistic vs. categorical and content vs. form. This model
is particularly useful as an organizing conceptualization for the various methods employed in this
study. However, as Lieblich et al. (1998) suggested, many analytical methodologies can occupy
middle points along these spectrums, integrating the diverse perspectives in a variety of ways.
Lieblich et al.’s (1998) model presents four modes of reading a narrative: 1) holisticcontent; 2) holistic-form; 3) categorical-content; and 4) categorical-form. The first focuses on the
individual’s entire story as the unit of analysis, looking at what is manifestly spoken and placing it
into the holistic context. The second mode also places the analytical focus on the story in its
entirety, but trains the lens on the plots and structure of the narrative; exploring, for instance,
climaxes, turning points, and high and low peaks. The third type of reading is traditionally
represented in content analyses, whereby short excerpts of text are extracted, classified, grouped,
and defined according to the focus of the research question. There is little or no relating to context
in this mode, and often the identity and specific life history context of the participant holds no
importance to the research goals. The final reading mode “focuses on discrete stylistic or linguistic
characteristics of defined units of the narrative,” and is generally utilized in discourse analytical
methods (Lieblich et al., 1998, p. 13). Particular phenomena in the form of the text, such as active
or passive phrasing, metaphors, or pronouns, are distinguished and delineated; here again, there is
purportedly little reference to the larger holistic context of the narrative material.
Indeed, conventional forms of discourse analysis, as practiced within the purview of many
academic fields, are often seen as not fitting the description of holistic narrative analysis, due to
their exploration of language through specific and categorized boundaries.
However, the
interdisciplinary, spiraling, and multidimensional methodology employed in this doctoral study is
unique in its investigation of language distribution across entire narratives and on multiple levels,
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uncovering comprehensive extra-linguistic messages from a holistic view of the linguistic meanings
within. This basis in holism positions the methodological framework of this study firmly within the
narrative paradigm (Spector-Mersel, 2010, 2011, 2012), which is holistic by definition and design.
Alongside of this, the set of methods employed herein, taken as a whole and in collaboration, can
be seen as crossing many of the boundaries of Lieblich et al.’s (1998) matrix.
In general, this research study relies on a holistic view of the interview material at hand,
focusing on each participant and each interview as a whole, in and of itself. When smaller sections
of text are isolated for deeper analysis, they are interpreted within the context of the individual’s
life history and experiences, and of the surrounding interview context. When categories are
employed (e.g., in relation to distinct discursive phenomena), they remain situated within a larger
holistic view of the interviewees’ discourse, and particularly, the narrative of the TA experience.
This study is, however, primarily focused on the form of the participants’ discourse, out of
an assumption that it often “seems to manifest deeper layers of the narrator’s identity” (Lieblich et
al., 1998, p. 13). Along these lines, Josselson (2004) referred to Ricoeur’s (1970) conceptualization
of the hermeneutics of faith vs. suspicion, distinguishing between interpretive approaches that take
the interviewee’s discourse ‘at face value’—that is, trusted or believed ‘on faith’—and those that
lead the analyst to ‘dig deeper’ to reveal what may be going on under the surface of the discourse,
which may or may not contradict the narrator’s own stated meanings and interpretations. This
distinction is relied upon in the methodological framework of this research, and frequently
represented in the data as the central dialectic between content and form. In this study, therefore,
the content of the narratives is often explored particularly as fodder for triangulation or ‘checking’
of hypotheses generated by the micro-level form-focused analyses. Indeed, multiple perspectives
and tools are utilized, with a focus on both form and content, and an analytical stance that alternates
between ‘zooming in’ and ‘zooming out’ from both categorical and holistic viewpoints.
3.5.3.2 Primary qualitative analytical influences on the methodological framework
A number of techniques and approaches are employed—separately as well as in concert—
throughout this research study, to facilitate an in-depth analysis of the content, form, and attendant
meanings of the interviewees’ discourse. Together, they permit an intricate exploration of both the
participants’ lived experiences and their processes of narrating them, as well as a located view of
the experience of the investigator and the interplay between analyst, analysis, and the analyzed text.
The analytical approaches used here are largely abductive; that is, the hypotheses emerge from the
data and the ‘field,’ in relation and response to the material itself, rather than from a pre-determined
theory. As Josselson (2009) asserted, “The work of narrative analysis is to extract, frame, and
conceptualize meanings that can be demonstrated in the text. The focus of this analysis is on
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intraindividual processes, meanings contextualized within the text, and the interrelationship of the
elements of experience” (p. 652). The specific methods utilized will be discussed in detail below,
but this section ‘sets the stage,’ presenting the more general influences from the content world of
qualitative and narrative analysis that have informed the methodological framework of this study.
Rosenthal’s (1993) thematic field analysis model, which suggests that particular attention be
paid to changes in text type, transition words and statements, breaks in the discourse (either verbal
or non-verbal), and topic and/or style changes, significantly influenced the present methodological
framework. This approach proposes constantly forming and testing hypotheses, and suggests
guiding these hypotheses through the use of, among others, the following questions: “Is the
biographer generating a narrative or is he/she being carried along by a narrative flow in his/her
story-telling?”; “Why is the autobiographer using this specific sort of text to present his/her
experience or theme?”; and, “In which details are the single experiences or themes presented and
why?” The purpose of this method is to continually question and problematize the content, form,
manner, length, sequence, and absences of the told narratives. In this way, it is possible to watch as
hypotheses materialize through and out of the discourse, and the analysis becomes more intricate
through the attempt to formulate theories and garner evidence for them within the text. The present
study continually questions the obtained narrative data in this manner.
Wood and Kroger’s (2000) discussion of discourse analysis and a number of specific
strategies therein were perhaps the most fundamentally influential upon the analyses conducted for
this study. First, they mentioned the importance of considering one’s own reaction as one reads
through and attempts to analyze a given text, and of being aware that one’s reaction can be a sign
that “something interesting is going on” (Wood & Kroger, 2000, p. 92). Next, they cautioned that
the obvious should not be ignored, as it may be important in some way—particularly from the
interviewee’s perspective. This also means that literal meanings of a given statement or narrative
may not be the most central or the most meaningful, and that analysis must go beyond the surface
to investigate motives, relations, and modes through which meanings are reached and created. The
authors also suggested that the actual content of a statement can frequently be less important than
the very fact that the statement was given at all. Inclusions of particular issues can, of course, be
just as important as exclusions. Wood and Kroger (2000) also contended that it is necessary to
“play with the text” throughout analysis, asking oneself if the omission or exchange of certain
phrases would affect the text, or how it would read if spoken by a different person or in a different
context. In addition, they asserted that one must look at what is not there (i.e., what is missing from
a text) as much as what is there, in both form and content. Silences and the absence of talk should
rarely be considered “nothing,” and in fact, can be quite informative in an analysis of meanings and
the importance of particular facets of a given narrative.
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In line with Rosenthal’s thematic field analysis, Wood and Kroger’s (2000) stated that it is
critical to explore “how the text is structured, shaped, and ordered in both individual segments and
overall, because structures are ways of achieving both content and function” (p. 93). The authors
noted that “multiple functions of discourse” should be paid attention to as well, as one statement
can have many different themes and meanings attached to it (Wood and Kroger, 2000). They also
mentioned the possibility of having to develop fresh terms or concepts for particular discourse
contents, functions, or techniques, as the opportunity or need arises. All these methodological
suggestions connect closely with the sign-oriented linguistic approach to discourse analysis,
whereby a deep investigation of the non-random distribution of language is an analytical conduit to
understanding the linguistic meanings and extra-linguistic messages of the given text and encoder.
Finally, Wood and Kroger (2000) suggested that one arrive at discourse analysis “as a
member of the culture, as a speaker-hearer and writer-reader of the language” (p. 95). This
admittedly presents particular difficulty for me, as I am still very much a novice member of the
culture within which these interviewees live. I have attempted to learn the language, and learn
about the language, as fast and as comprehensively as possible, but deficiencies—linguistic,
psychosocietal, and cultural—still remain.
In this case, as previously mentioned, there are
advantages and disadvantages to my ‘outsider-ness,’ as my lack of ‘native’ knowledge of certain
cultural experiences and psychosocial phenomena may actually have assisted me in the analyses
undertaken here. Indeed, just the fact that the language in which the interviews were conducted is
not my mother tongue most likely illuminated the central findings of this research.
3.5.4 The need for and importance of an integration of these disciplines
This study focuses on the use of language (primarily, pronouns and tenses) in the
participants’ narratives, in an attempt to understand the larger relationship between individual
discourse and societal discourse. This involves a three-pronged exploration, of: 1) the individual
narrator/encoder and his narratives; 2) his particular psychological world and perceptions of
himself; and 3) his perceptions of his surrounding society and its expectations of him. A thorough
investigation of this nature clearly requires multiple disciplines, perspectives, and approaches.
Indeed, the field of linguistics alone would supply a rich analysis of the first prong, but have very
little to contribute to the second two. The field of clinical psychology, on the other hand, would
provide an appropriate approach to the second prong, but would not have much to offer to the third
and would have difficulty fully exploring the first on its own. Social psychology would furnish a
good basis for an exploration of the third prong, but would not be able to adequately study the first
two. Finally, narrative inquiry as a paradigm is a requirement for the first prong, and, in my
opinion, strongly recommended as a methodology for the other two, but lacks a firm theoretical and
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conceptual framework with which the main research questions could be explored.
As aforementioned, research on the use of pronouns and tenses in discourse is relatively
sparse in the domain of academic psychology; the work that does exist is unfortunately
unidisciplinary, with little connection to the relevant literature in other fields. This area of research
clearly exists on the border between the two academic disciplines, but there still seems to be a
disconnect between the psychological and semiotic/linguistic literature. While this burgeoning
field of research has made important contributions to the psychological literature, the linguistic
assumptions that are made frequently appear superficial due to their lack of support from the
semiotic content world, and may not do justice to the important findings therein. This is equally
true for social psychology and sociology, wherein discourse analysis places far less emphasis on the
specifics and mechanics of linguistic forms and patterns, and much greater focus on the manners in
which people and things are constructed through talk and interaction. Furthermore, psychological
discursive analysis focuses more on the extra-linguistic message by proposing hypotheses for the
personal and social meanings, motivations, and significance within the discourse. Indeed, the
sociopsychological study of discourse is essentially a study of extra-linguistic messages, and
appears to have no direct need to be associated with a specific linguistic theory.
The relevant research on specific linguistic forms and patterns does exist, in abundance,
within the academic confines of linguistics, semiotics, and literature, but the majority of these
studies similarly make little attempt (and apparently find little need) to connect their respective
findings to the fields of psychology or sociology. Indeed, the sign-oriented approach to linguistics
focuses on the non-random distribution of language and the invariant meanings therein. The extralinguistic message—a presumably plausible hypothesis that can be accepted and shared by
encoders and decoders—not in itself considered part of the linguistic theory, is then inferred and
proposed. While this extra-linguistic inference is often an important part of an analysis, it is not
viewed as a requirement or as the ‘ultimate answer’ therein, and is generally seen as secondary to
the linguistic findings.
Thus, a significant gap in the literature exists due to this lack of interdisciplinary work.
Linguistics and social psychology, as academic fields, generally function independently of each
other and do not appear to find it necessary to even enter into a shared discussion. I propose,
however, that both are missing essential parts of the ‘larger puzzle,’ and might thus complement
each other well. The field of psychology seems to have begun to recognize the import of the type
of discourse analysis that has been conducted within linguistic circles for years, and it appears that
the time is ripe for an interdisciplinary turn within these academic domains. Most encouraging
from the perspective of the present study is the claim of Pennebaker et al. (2003), that “Future
research must begin exploring the nature of pronouns and other particles in much greater detail. …
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Some very basic psychometric work is needed on pronouns and other particles at the word level to
disentangle their mathematical and psychological meaning” (p. 571).
This research study, with its foundation in a methodical integration of a sociopsychological
conceptual and theoretical framework, a narrative paradigmatic and discourse analytical
methodological framework, and theory and analytical tools from sign-oriented linguistics, aims to
fill this gap and make a meaningful contribution to all three academic fields. Essentially, this study
asks psychosociological questions about the psychological experiences of the participants, as
reflected in the linguistic phenomena revealed in their discourse. The focus lies on both the
patterned meanings of the linguistics and the larger individual and societal implications of the
extra-linguistic messages within the discourse.
The research question reflects the interdisciplinary nature of the study, as the focus is not
only on the drivers’ discourse or communicative strategies (as might be the case in a strictly
linguistic study), nor is it only on their coping strategies or resilience (as might be the case in a
strictly psychological study), nor is it only on the societal norms and cultural discourses
surrounding them (as might be the case in a strictly sociological study). Rather, each of these
factors is a central ingredient in the attempt to understand the individual phenomenological
experiences of these bus drivers who underwent TAs, and to explore their feelings and attitudes
about these experiences and their behavior therein. The discursive patterns evidenced in their
narratives can be viewed as a possible window into their perceptions regarding their behavior and
what their society expects of them, and similarly, their comments about resilience and coping with
fear can inform a greater understanding of the meaning and messages behind the communicative
strategies they utilize. It is through this manner of spiraling attention to the multiple theories and
methodologies that a deep comprehension of the holistic picture under study can be reached.
3.6 THE ANALYTICAL TOOLS: A SPIRALING MIXED-METHOD TECHNIQUE
Keeping in mind the fundamental analytical ‘building blocks’ delineated above, this section
presents the specific analytical tools used in this study. A variety of tools were employed—some in
concert and some separately—just as a number of theoretical approaches and perspectives
influenced the methodology overall.
Although psychological studies are (at least) primarily
quantitative and this methodology is overwhelmingly preferred in the ‘hard sciences,’ Kroger and
Wood (1998) suggested that quantitative-minded researchers must ask what the numbers mean,
rather than taking them at face value, and that discourse analysis should be entered into as a means
to “warrant (‘validate’) claims made via statistical tests and to explicate the basis for those claims”
(p. 270). In this manner, the conventional sequence involving qualitative analysis as a preliminary
exploration in order to justify conducting a supposedly more rigorous quantitative analysis is
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actually reversed, leading to a challenging of “the conventional privileging of quantification in the
search for understanding” (Kroger & Wood, 1998, p. 270). The present study privileges qualitative
analysis and ways of knowing, while utilizing a mixed methodology.
The term, “mixed methods,” has come to refer to myriad analytical techniques and
combinations, but the central criterion involves a concerted effort to integrate the quantitative and
qualitative tools or methodological approaches utilized, rather than simply using them in sequence
or with no ultimate dialogue between them.
As Teddlie and Tashakkori (2009) stated, “A
requirement for truly mixed designs is the presence of two or more clearly identifiable (sets of)
inferences, each gleaned from the findings of a strand of the study, followed by a deliberate attempt
to integrate these inferences” (p. 142).
Part of the motivation for the choice of a mixed
methodology came out of the nature of this research as multidisciplinary, which automatically
opens it up to more diverse audiences.
Given the varied perspectives and opinions across
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disciplines , a greater attempt was made to allow the study to hold up to a wider range of standards
for rigor and trustworthiness.
The particular operationalization of mixed methods employed herein involves the use of
both qualitative and quantitative techniques to analyze solely qualitative data, which falls under the
category of what Denzin (1978) has termed methodological triangulation. The specific research
design follows Morse’s (2003) notational representation of QUAL+quan, indicating a “qualitatively
driven, quantitative simultaneous design” (Teddlie & Tashakkori, 2009, p. 143). The mixed design
adopted here was not only simultaneous but also spiraling, involving an “oscillat[ion] between
methods, both conceptually and practically” (Mendlinger & Cwikel, 2008, p. 280). Different
analytical contexts and questions often called for different methodologies and tools, and throughout
the analyses, I widened and narrowed the analytical magnifying glass, constantly redefining the
analytical unit in focus. Analysis was conducted primarily on the narratives of the terror attacks
experienced by the participants (TANs), and/or other significant emotionally charged narratives.
However, there were cases when the focus was placed on another narrative within a participant’s
interview; or his life narrative (LN); or multiple narratives on a related topic within a single
interview; or ‘parallel’ narratives across both of a participant’s interviews; or multiple narratives on
a similar topic across several participants’ interviews.
The same methods were utilized in all analyses conducted, and the same set of analyses was
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To wit, Kroger and Wood (1998) wrote, “Discourse analysis is primarily a qualitative methodology and is thus often
treated with the same disdain that some psychologists have for all forms of qualitative research” (p. 270).
Furthermore, Coetzee and Rau (2009) claimed, “All researchers interested in revealing human meanings and motives
accept that interpretive, qualitative methodology provides the key to understanding how people perceive and
experience their worlds. However, advocating the use of interpretive and qualitative approaches—either to
supplement or even replace objective, quantitative approaches—brings its own set of challenges” (pp. 1-2). And
Morse (2008) referred to the unfortunate but common dismissive criticism received by qualitative researchers by
academics in a variety of other fields: “It’s only a qualitative study!”
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conducted for all participants. However, I have attempted to present the final interpretive results
and conclusions in the most thorough, well-grounded, and efficient manner—which has sometimes
necessitated that different analyses were ultimately shown for different participants.
Indeed,
constant and countless methodological and interpretive decisions were made throughout this
project, all of which were painstakingly considered and reconsidered. I cannot claim that any of
these choices are not without possible problematic issues, or that another researcher might make the
same ‘judgment calls.’ But wherever possible, I have attempted to make my decision-making
process transparent and manifest, by presenting my reasoning and justifications. Below is a
detailed delineation of the specific methods employed throughout this study, in various contexts
and in a spiraling manner, in an attempt to best serve these analytical decisions.
3.6.1 Quantitative data analysis methodology
The quantitative linguistic data analysis methods utilized in this research involve counting,
tabulating, and mathematically processing the distribution of specific discursive phenomena within
both the form and content of the participants’ discourse. Within the form, the primary focus is on
the participants’ uses of pronouns and tenses; while in the content, the lens is trained on numbers of
lines dedicated to particular topics or narratives. This semiotic methodology of discourse and text
analysis has been developed over the past 35 years, and various aspects and applications of the
method have been published in an extensive number of anthologies, monographs, and articles (see,
for example, Andrews & Tobin, 1997; Aphek & Tobin, 1988, 1989/1990; Blum-Kulka, Tobin, &
Nir, 1981; Contini-Morava & Sussman Goldberg, 1995; Contini-Morava & Tobin, 2000; Davis,
Gorup, & Stern, 2006; De Jonge & Tobin, 2011; Dreer, 2007; Gorlach, 2004; Kirsner, ContiniMorava, & Rodriguez-Bachiller, 2004; Perez & Sagy, 2011; Perez & Tobin, 2009, 2010, 2014;
Perez, Tobin, & Sagy, 2010; Reid, Otheguy, & Stern, 2002; Tobin, 1988, 1989a, 1993, 2002, 2005;
Tobin & Perez, 2009; Waisman, 2010). This type of analysis has also been applied in many theses
and dissertations to discourse of diverse styles and registers, in both spoken and written form,
across many languages—from literary and poetic texts to fortune-telling sessions, from political
speeches to Six Day War stories, from kibbutz assembly meetings to children’s games, and even in
trance parties. The counting method used here is particularly similar to that used by Tobin (1989b)
in his analysis of the textual use of the ‘present’ tense in the Holocaust memoir of Zivia Lubetkin,
in which the uses of tense were tabulated and compared systematically throughout the narrative, in
relation to all the characters. Tobin (1995) also employed this method in his examination of the
non-random use of certain MIH root and conjugation systems in a wide variety of spoken and
written texts, including well-known novels such as A. B. Yehoshua’s A Late Divorce.
In the majority of the analyses conducted within this study, the primary unit of analysis was
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each participant’s main TAN, and the primary pronominal foci were the first-person pronouns (‘I’
and ‘we’) and both singular second-person pronouns (‘you (MS)’ and ‘you (FS)’), in addition to the
three primary tenses (‘past,’ ‘present,’ and ‘future’). Third-person pronouns were excluded from
the analyses, for two related reasons: 1) they were not a focus of inquiry for the study; and 2) the
rate of occurrence of these pronouns was most often nominal across all the TANs. Exceptional
cases were analyzed differently when necessary and noted accordingly.
Pronouns within each narrative under analysis were counted and re-counted at least three
times, using a categorized table constructed for this express purpose. Pronouns within dialogue
(e.g., the “you” within “And then I said, ‘You are crazy’”), as well as interpersonal talk directed
specifically at me within the interview context (e.g., “Do you want coffee?” or “Do you
understand?”) were tabulated separately, and not included in the totals. Again, exceptional cases
were analyzed differently when necessary.
When overall trends across entire interviews are
referenced, the data are based on a computerized word tabulation, executed through the Atlas.ti
qualitative analysis program. Because this function generated a simple list of every word and its
occurrence in each interview, it was able to provide a representative, albeit very general and
superficial, picture of pronominal use. Thus, these data were used only as a background for
comparison or contextualization, and never as the primary basis for an analytical interpretation.
The total number of lines of text in each narrative under analysis was also counted, which
was often an interpretive endeavor in itself. Indeed, while some of the TANs and LNs had clear
beginning points (e.g., whatever came after my request for the participant to tell the story) and
ending points (e.g., the participant volunteering a concluding statement such as, “That’s that”),
most of them were much more fluid and multifaceted. Some began spontaneously from within the
LN, while others never really ended and simply flowed into a new narrative on a related topic, such
as the phenomenon of terrorism in Israel, or coping with the emotional aftermath of the TA.
Therefore, the very act of ‘deciding’ where a narrative began and ended often felt like a
problematic subjective imposition upon the text, from my own position above and outside of it.
This was a methodological issue with which I often grappled, and so was careful to make extensive
reflexive notes as to my reasoning and justifications.
The ratio of pronouns per line was also calculated for each TAN, relative to the total
number of lines of the given narrative. Percentages of uses of each pronoun were then computed,
relative to the total number of the four pronouns of inquiry used within the TAN, and percentages
of uses of each tense were computed as relative to the total number of relevant tense-marked verbs
within the TAN. Finally, a graph was produced in order to view the distribution of collocations of
each pronoun with each tense. The graph included both the absolute values (represented by the
bars themselves) as well as the computed percentages (as notations above each bar). Raw numbers
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were included in order to provide a picture of the absolute data, and percentages were included in
order to express the relative value as a fraction of the whole—thus providing a picture of the
relationship between the quantitative data points (Dreer, 2011).
With regard to quantitative content analyses, numbers of lines of text relating to a given
topic were tabulated and percentages were computed relative to the entirety of the unit of analysis.
For instance, some analyses involved determining how much of a participant’s LN was dedicated to
the TA, and how much related to his life before or after the TA. Others focused on a comparison of
text volume dedicated to various topics or mini-narratives within the TAN, across both the BLI and
FUI of a given participant (in which case, the BLI narrative was considered 100% text volume, and
the FUI was compared to that baseline). In general, tables were used to present the data, and graphs
were generated when it appeared necessary or particularly useful to provide visual illustration.
Teddlie and Tashakkori (2009) referred to “the process of converting [qualitative] data into
numbers that can be statistically analyzed” as quantitizing data (p. 27), but I would label the
process undertaken herein as more of a quantitized processing of the data. In this sense, qualitative
data was tabulated quantitatively, but because the participant pool was so small, few psychometric
statistics were conducted in this study. The Chi-square test with Yates correction for continuity has
been shown to be useful to some degree when testing for independence in a contingency table, so
this statistical test was utilized to judge the quantitative significance of the comparative analyses—
particularly those among multiple participants, and between the BLIs and FUIs within the relevant
participants. Ultimately, however, basic mathematical logic was employed wherever possible when
interpreting the quantitative results. That is, if a participant used one pronoun across 85% of his
TAN and another only 5% of the time, or if 70% of his LN was dedicated to the topic of the TA,
these data were regarded as representative of substantial and meaningful disparities. In any case,
other than where expressly noted as part of a statistical test result, the use of the word,
“significant,” throughout this dissertation should be understood only in its lay meaning.
3.6.2 Qualitative data analysis methodology
3.6.2.1 Central macro- and micro-level analytical questions
As discussed above, the primary dichotomy within the analytical process conducted herein
is that of content vs. form, and thus the central questions guiding all levels and stages of analysis
regarded what the interviewees said vs. how they said it. The basic questions with regard to content
were: 1) How was the TA perceived, comprehended, and narrated by the interviewees?; 2) How did
the interviewees describe their strategies of coping with fear and stress, and processes of meaningmaking therein?; 3) How did the interviewees view their life as a whole and the place of the TA
they experienced within it, and what meaning did they attach therein?; and 4) When, how, and why
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did certain societal perceptions and cultural discourses (e.g., behavioral expectations such as
masculinity and heroism) emerge manifestly in the interviewees’ discourse, and what was the
attendant meaning of these issues to the interviewees? These questions were asked on both the
individual and collective/comparative levels; that is, both within each participant’s pair of
interviews and among all of the interview texts. This level of questioning remained very much on
the surface of the interviewees’ discourse, focusing almost solely on what they specifically said
about these topics and performing very little, if any, interpretive analyses or inquiring as to what
they may have meant to express ‘between the lines.’ Indeed, much of this level of analysis focused
on the question-and-answer part of the interviews, as some of these topics came up only as a result
of my direct questioning.
The basic questions with regard to form were: 1) How was the narrative of the TA
constructed (e.g., what was included vs. omitted or silenced; chronological vs. thematic
organization)?; 2) Which discursive signs and patterns were repeated throughout a narrative or
interview as a whole, and what meaning may be ascribed to these patterns?; and 3) How did central
themes or issues express themselves latently rather than manifestly in the discourse? This level of
analysis existed almost entirely below the surface of the spoken discourse, searching for semiotic
patterns that likely were not or could not be apparent to the interviewee himself, and which require
multifaceted interpretation and the proposing of hypotheses with regard to motivation and
significance.
On the micro-level and within the operational implementation of the analyses, the following
five questions were considered at all points and stages throughout: 1) Why is this word or phrase
used here, and not in other places?; 2) What is the meaning, both in this sentence/context and in the
larger picture, of the usage of this word or phrase here?; 3) How else could this be phrased, and
how might the meaning change as a result?; 4) Are there any discernible patterns of usage of certain
words or phrases?; and 5) What does this discursive distribution and/or communicative strategy
express or reflect about this individual, and about the society and culture in which he lives?
3.6.2.2 Holistic and categorical content processing
After reading through the entirety of each transcript following its completion, while making
extensive notes regarding my initial holistic impressions, the first main analytical task comprised
creating a series of tables organized by general topic. Each entire transcript was read through
again, this time extracting chunks of text and copying them into corresponding tables. Although
this type of qualitative data processing would be classified by Lieblich et al. (1998) as within the
categorical-content mode of reading a narrative, an attempt was made to follow a more holistic
narrative approach within the categorization process. In this sense, the extracted text sections were
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always lengthy and centered on the relevant narrative, and included the surrounding context (e.g.,
the prompting question)—never did they consist of a single sentence or description. In addition,
any conclusions reached through this analytical step were always brought back into a holistic
perspective on the individual and his life experiences, and ‘checked’ against the larger context.
Some of the topics appeared across all of the interviews, in part because they were an
integral part of the questions guide, while other topics were unique to each interview. Every
interview generated tables for the TAN, the LN, and narratives of the participant’s experiences in
the army. There were also generally tables on the topics of coping, fear, guilt and responsibility,
fate, and feelings about being a bus driver in Israeli society. The total number of tables for each
participant ranged from ten to twenty, and included comparisons between the BLIs and FUIs.
Rather than providing categorized data for a full content analysis, these tables primarily formed the
basis for triangulation after certain form-related hypotheses emerged. For instance, if my analyses
of a given participant’s particular pattern of pronoun use seemed to suggest a sense of ambivalence
surrounding his emotional responses to the TA he experienced, my next analytical step was to turn
to the table of his discussions of fear and/or other emotions, or of coping in general, in order to
attempt to understand his own manifest beliefs, attitudes, or perspectives on the issue. It was often
from these tables that I chose which quotations to bring into the final write-up of each analysis, in
order to best highlight the phenomenon under discussion.
The majority of the tables were created initially by B.A. students of mine, within the
framework of two successive individualized Guided Research courses in the Department of
Psychology at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. After being extensively familiarized with the
project, its research goals, and its theoretical, conceptual, and methodological backgrounds, the
students were then each assigned a single participant and charged with listening to the original
interview recordings while checking over the existing transcripts for accuracy (with the secondary
purpose of becoming familiar with ‘their’ participant). The students then worked on creating their
own qualitative analyses of their case, according to the themes in content and/or form that emerged
from the process of categorizing the interviews into these tables. All tables were submitted to me
for examination and consultation on a weekly basis, and I worked closely and individually with the
students throughout their analysis process. At the conclusion of the courses, all final versions of
tables were turned over to me for further use in the study. Some of the students’ analyses
ultimately proved a valuable resource for me throughout my own process, and often (with their
express consent, of course) provided a jumping-off point for deeper analyses that I later conducted.
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3.6.2.3 Pronoun ‘poetry’
The next method used is essentially the qualitative counterpart to the quantitative tabulation
of pronouns and tenses, and is based upon an analytical step within the Listening Guide, which was
initially proposed as a methodology by Carol Gilligan in the 1990s. It has been used in various
forms and fashions by her students and colleagues over the years (Brown & Gilligan, 1992; see also
Gilligan, Spencer, Weinberg, & Bertsch, 2003, for a review), but only recently fully explicated as a
specific method for the analysis and interpretation of qualitative data. I learned of this unique
technique in an advanced qualitative methods course, and later participated in a workshop
dedicated to teaching the method, led by a student of Gilligan’s, Dr. Miriam Raider-Roth.
The Listening Guide is a psychological analytical method that “draws on voice, resonance,
and relationship as ports of entry into the human psyche,” with the primary framing questions:
“Who is speaking and to whom, telling what stories about relationship, in what societal and cultural
frameworks…?” (Gilligan et al., 2003, p. 157, 159). The methodology is feminist and relational at
its foundation, and prescribes a series of (at least) four sequential listenings to analyze and interpret
the range of perspectives and interpersonal dynamics, or voices, within a text. The first step is
listening for the plot, which involves creating the ‘story’ of the interview, describing the relational
view therein, and listening for and becoming conscious of the interviewer’s own response.
The second step is listening for the voice of the self, or creating what have been referred to
as ‘I poems’ (Brown & Gilligan, 1992; Gilligan et al., 2003). The primary purpose therein is to
focus on both the form (cadence and rhythm) and content of the ‘I’-voice of the narrator, and to
expose an “associative stream of consciousness carried by a first-person voice, cutting across or
running through a narrative rather than being contained by the structure of full sentences” (Gilligan
et al., 2003, p. 163). The Listening Guide sets out two central rules for the construction of an ‘I
poem’ from a section of text: 1) marking (by underlining, highlighting, or otherwise selecting)
every occurrence of the ‘I’ pronoun along with the collocated verb and any other accompanying
words that appear important for the given phrase; and 2) keeping all the marked phrases in their
original sequence (Gilligan et al., 2003). All of the marked phrases are then extracted (in order)
from the original text excerpt and placed together, each on a separate line, as if in a poem. Stanzas
may be created and are often readily apparent, but are not necessary to the analytical method.
The third step of the Listening Guide is listening for contrapuntal voices, wherein the
various parts of the interview text that may be more directly related to the research question are
identified and distinguished (Brown & Gilligan, 1992; Gilligan et al., 2003). This may require
multiple additional readings, each focused specifically on a particular aspect of the content or form
of the told story. This listening is shaped most by the researcher’s questions, which are inherently
connected to the theoretical framework of the study and/or any issues that emerged from the
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previous listenings. Finally, the fourth step is composing an analysis, in which all the previous
steps are synthesized into a coherent and comprehensive interpretation of the text and the narrator
(Brown & Gilligan, 1992; Gilligan et al., 2003).
This doctoral research is closely aligned with the Listening Guide’s central assertion that
multiple listenings are methodologically necessary because the human psyche is not monotonic, but
rather, contrapuntal (Gilligan et al., 2003). Just as many voices and perspectives can co-occur in an
individual’s mind, so can be the case in one’s told stories. These voices are fluid and constantly
changing, and can be in harmony or in tension—with each other, with other relational and
interpersonal voices, and with the surrounding culture or context (Gilligan et al., 2003). Building
upon these assumptions, the analytical method used for this aspect of the study expands on the
second step and combines it with the third, and is referred to here as pronoun ‘poetry’. This
method, which might be classified by Lieblich et al. (1998) as within the categorical-form mode of
reading a narrative, involves generating a categorical breakdown of the entire given text excerpt, by
pronoun, tense, verb, and/or any other relevant systematic linguistic distinction. Each of the
pronouns along with their collocated verb, and additional contextual information where necessary,
are extracted from the full text and condensed into lists representing each pronominal ‘voice.’
For demonstrative purposes, a text excerpt is presented below, with the relevant pronoun
‘voices’ marked with respective underlines, followed by a table of the generated pronoun ‘poetry’:
“Wow I became a media star. Everyone all of a sudden what where who II said how do [you (MP)] say? (1)
It’s fun when [they (MP)] are interested in you (MS) tons of phone calls but you (MS) say to yourself (MS)
{‘Wow, God loves you (MS)}. God loves you (MS).’ Because if you (FS) had seen the bus you (FS) would
have said ‘My Lord, how did it, how is it alive?’ Because thirty bullets. You (FS) know what that is? On, on
the windshield wiper on the windows now they went over me my head too. A taller person than me, 1.75
meters, 80, his story would be over he takes it here. You (FS) understand? The bullets over the head. You
(FS) see the bus, afterwards I went to the [Egged bus] branch, because myy bag was still there everything,
[they] took my’bag. Two weeks later, I, for no particular reason, am straightening up, I see tons of glass
shards inside the bag. Tons of glass. (4) {In the end, and you (FS) see the bus, my God, it is full of holes, I
am saying “Whoah, God, III, really,” I ow-, owe God my’life}. Understand (FS)? (3) A huge miracle, let’s
(FS) say that. A big miracle happened here, in my case, that I wasn’t hurt, there are some who, you (FS)
know, were killed. PLEASE, IIII ((chuckles)).”i
Table 3-4: Demonstrative example of pronoun ‘poetry’
‘I’ POEM (8)
‘PAST’ TENSE (4)
‘PRESENT’ TENSE (4)
1
I became a media star 10I…am straightening up
2
11
I said
I see tons of glass shards
13
--I am saying “Whoah,
9
I went to the [Egged
God…”
14
bus] branch
I ow-, owe God my’life
--17
I wasn’t hurt
‘YOU (MS)’ POEM
(1)
3
You say to yourself
‘Wow, God loves
you. God loves
you.’
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‘YOU (FS)’ POEM
(2 (7))
4
(if you had seen the bus)
5
(you would have said ‘My Lord…’)
6
(You know what that is?)
7
(You understand?)
8
You see the bus
12
you see the bus
15
(Understand?)
16
(let’s say [a huge miracle])
18
(you know)
For the basic purposes of this study, the singular first-person and second-person pronouns (‘I,’ ‘you
(MS),’ and ‘you (FS)’) stand at the central focus of this analytical step, and tense is distinguished
wherever relevant. Thus, for the majority of the analyses conducted on the participants’ texts,
‘poems’ were generated for the RPa ‘I,’ the PPr ‘I,’ the MS ‘you,’ and the FS ‘you.’ Other ‘poems’
were added or substituted wherever there was significant methodological justification for doing so.
The entries in the ‘poems’ are numbered according to their order in the original text,
following the Listening Guide’s sequential principle. In order to illustrate any apparent clusters in
each ‘voice,’ three dashes signify a significant break10 in the given sequence, during which other
pronouns or tenses were used. Paraphrasing is kept to a minimum, as great care is taken to preserve
the original content, form, meaning, and feeling of each pronominal voice. Entries in parentheses
signify direct talk with me within the narrative, as when the interviewee asked me a question
(rhetorical or not) or interacted dialogically with me. This interpretive decision was a complex one,
but emerged out of a desire to reflect the holistic picture of the text excerpt, including direct
interaction with me, while also differentiating between analytically significant and insignificant
uses of the various pronouns.
Ultimately, the combination and expansion of the second and third steps of the Listening
Guide provide the most useful and comprehensive analytical methodology for this facet of the
research study. It allows a condensed view of each pronominal ‘voice,’ both separately and in
context with the other ‘voices,’ and offers a qualitative view of the quantitative linguistic data
already obtained from the text. This was often the most significant and interpretively meaningful
step of analysis in this study, as the juxtaposition of the ‘poems’ made discursive patterns almost
immediately apparent. Indeed, this type of processing of the data can almost effortlessly expose
repetitions in content or form, vacillations between one or another pronominal ‘voice,’ and
collocation patterns (e.g., ‘present’ tense with a particular pronoun, or ‘past’ tense with a particular
topic or locus of action). Indeed, it was the first pronoun ‘poetry’ analysis of the first interview text
that spawned the initial interpretive hypothesis that the FS ‘you’ is used predominantly in
connection with sensory, traumatic, and/or emotionally charged content.
3.6.2.4 Longitudinal comparative analysis of mechanisms of narrative selection
3.6.2.4.1 Preparation of parallel narrative tables
Through extensive comparative examination of the tables created in the content analysis
step, all ‘parallel’ narratives (i.e., retellings of the ‘same’ narrative at different points in time) were
10
“Significance,” in this case, is relative and depends on the particular characteristics of the ‘poetry’ of each individual
text. That is, if one text is characterized by many 3-entry gaps throughout its ‘poems’ but few gaps larger than that,
then a 6-entry gap would be considered significant, while a 3-entry gap would not. If another text has few gaps at all,
then a 3-entry gap would be considered significant in that case.
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identified and highlighted for more intensive analysis. New tables were then created, juxtaposing
each set of parallel narratives for direct comparison. This step focused exclusively on narratives,
rather than argumentations or descriptive discussions. At minimum, each participant’s pair of
interviews generated respective comparative tables for his BL and FU TANs and BL and FU LNs.
Parallel narratives about coping, fear, and a variety of experiences as a bus driver were also often
gleaned for most of the participants. In addition, lengthy narrative responses to certain questions
(e.g., “What is an Israeli man, in your view?” or “How were your army experiences similar or
different to your experience of the terror attack?”) which appeared in both interviews were also
placed into comparative tables. Often, there were more than two parallel narratives, as certain
narratives came up in different forms and elaborations multiple times across a given interview, and
this generated comparative tables with three or even up to five columns.
Given the relative dearth of literature on retelling and comparative qualitative analysis, this
analytical technique has rarely been used, and thus can be considered innovative in many ways.
Therefore, in an attempt to explain the various steps involved as clearly as possible, as analytical
justification as well as offering a possible methodological contribution, a demonstrative sample of a
comparative table is presented below. This illustrates the first step of this analysis, wherein parallel
narratives are identified and juxtaposed.
Table 3-5: Raw excerpt pair from parallel narrative table
BASELINE INTERVIEW
Let’s (FS) say like this I am driving, line [20], it was
winter [February], rain. (2) Approach the [bus] stop, take
on th’passengers, take, you (FS) know, [bus] passes
money MONEY. Suddenly I see someone come to a
standstill in front of {the bus. (2) I do [gesture] to
himmm} like ‘Go past.’ (1) Because I want to put on the
blinker and leave the [bus] stop. (1) And then he winks,
winks his eye at me does like this ((winks at me)) I do to
him like ‘What?’, [he] opens the zipper coat, takes ouut a
rifle and ‘Brrrrrrrrrr’ ((makes a sound of an automatic
weapon firing in succession)). ii
FOLLOW-UP INTERVIEW
Uhh let’s (MS) say eight years, around 2001. A wintery
day pretty wet, rain. I am driving. I remember that I
passed [city center square] if you (FS) know Jerusalem I
arrived next to the direction of [another square] at the
[bus] stop, and then I see sommee somebody who is
standing next to me. (3) /((chuckling)) And I do to him
like go past./ Suddenly he takes out th’, zipper and
Brrrrrr ((makes a sound of an automatic weapon firing in
succession)) in automatic.iii
Once the parallel narratives were placed next to each other, extensive work was done to
break them down into parallel component cells, in order to most clearly view the similarities and
differences across the texts. For instance, in the table of LNs, two parallel cells would distinguish
the participant’s discussion in each narrative of his family; two others would differentiate his army
service; and two others would signify, perhaps, his wedding. If a topic or statement did not appear
in one narrative, that cell was left empty and the narrative would continue in the following cell. No
part of any narrative was removed or taken out of its original order, and thus, if similar statements
or topics appeared at different points in each narrative, this was still demarcated as an occurrence of
parallel cells, but not in the same narrative order. In this manner, the holistic entirety of all of the
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narratives was kept intact, allowing a relating to the surrounding discursive context of every cell
and pair of cells. Each set of cells was also given a basic in vivo code or title (Charmaz, 2006),
often including basic analytical notes as well, for my own ease in poring through the tables. This
analytical step as a whole is illustrated in the table below.
Table 3-6: Excerpt pair from parallel narrative table, broken into component cells
( CODE / NOTES )
“Let’s say” (both!)
8 years, around 2001
I am driving, winter,
rain
Get to the stop (more
details about money
in BL, more details
about route in FU)
I see someone
standing, I do like ‘go
past’
He winks at me
He opens zipper and
Brrrrrrr
BASELINE INTERVIEW
Let’s (FS) say like this
I am driving, line [20], it was winter
[February], rain. (2)
Approach the [bus] stop, take on
th’passengers, take, you (FS) know, [bus]
passes money MONEY.
Suddenly I see someone come to a standstill
in front of {the bus. (2) I do [gesture] to
himmm} like ‘Go past.’ (1) Because I want
to put on the blinker and leave the [bus]
stop. (1)
And then he winks, winks his eye at me does
like this ((winks at me)) I do to him like
‘What?’,
[he] opens the zipper coat, takes ouut a rifle
and ‘Brrrrrrrrrr’ ((makes a sound of an
automatic weapon firing in succession)).
FOLLOW-UP INTERVIEW
Uhh let’s (MS) say
eight years, around 2001.
A wintery day pretty wet, rain. I am driving.
I remember that I passed [city center square]
if you (FS) know Jerusalem I arrived next to
the direction of [another square] at the [bus]
stop,
and then I see sommee somebody who is
standing next to me. (3) /((chuckling)) And I
do to him like go past./
Suddenly he takes out th’, zipper and Brrrrrr
((makes a sound of an automatic weapon
firing in succession)) in automatic.
Perhaps the most valuable contribution of this method lies in its ability to uncover and make
readily apparent the highly analogous nature (when it exists) of two entirely separate narrative
excerpts. In this research, as soon as the separate cells were created, a picture often immediately
emerged of substantially similar content, structure, and chronological order, across narratives told
three years apart. When this picture was achieved, the real analytical work began: a deep, microlevel investigation of patterns in both form and content, in what was told and what was not told,
and in what was emphasized and what was minimized. To this end, after the parallel table was
fully broken down into its component cells, the next step of the longitudinal comparative analysis
involved rereading the parsed narratives both separately and as a series of comparative units in
order to locate and identify any uses of mechanisms of narrative selection (Spector-Mersel, 2011).
3.6.2.4.2 Spector-Mersel’s model of narrative selection
This analytical step is based on Spector-Mersel (2011)’s model for interpreting narratives,
which views the construction of narrative identities as a process of selection from the vast
repository of facts, events, and experiences in the narrator’s life history. In this sense, every selfnarrative is seen as the result of a series of (usually unconscious) decisions regarding what and how
to tell. In particular, the narrative act is conceived of “as consisting of six mechanisms of selection
through which biographical facts are chosen, filtered, and sorted, with the purpose of confirming a
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particular end point” (EP) (Spector-Mersel, 2011, p. 172). These six mechanisms of narrative
selection (MNSs) are delineated below, along with their most recognizable identifying
characteristics, in both form and content:
1) Inclusion: Representation of facts, events, and periods that are compatible with the narrative’s EP,
thereby confirming it
2) Omission: Non-reporting of facts, events, and periods that are irrelevant to the EP
a) Content: Non-reporting of themes
b) Form: Lack of representation of full life periods/stages
3) Silencing: Non-reporting of facts, events, and periods that contradict the EP
(Appears identical to omission, but has a very different motivation)
a) Content: Non-reporting of themes
b) Form: Lack of representation of full life periods/stages
4) Sharpening: Emphasis given to facts, events, and periods compatible with the EP
a) Content: Superlatives (e.g., “very,” “a lot,” “much”); greater detail
b) Form: Repetition of words; emphasis in tone or body language (e.g., louder voice or yelling, use
of body such as pounding on table); emphasis in emotion (e.g., crying, laughing, chuckling,
intakes or outtakes of breath); greater length/volume (i.e., over-representation); dialogue; mininarratives; specific or demarcated placement (e.g., at beginning or end of narrative)
5) Flattening: Condensing of facts, events, and periods because either:
a) they are irrelevant to or contradict the EP
(In this case, flattening resembles omission or silencing, differing only in intensity—rather than
telling nothing, telling only a little bit)
Form: Shortened or condensed length/volume
b) they relate to two opposing parts of the EP
(In this case, flattening serves a dual function—mentioning a fact, event, or period while also
asserting its insignificance)
Content: Double message—superlative expressions juxtaposed with flattening expressions
6) ‘Appropriate’ meaning attribution: Conferring to facts, events, and periods (which perhaps in ‘real
time’ had a different or no meaning) a significance that is compatible with the EP
a) Content: Telling with a meaning that fits the EP
b) Form: Use of different pronouns or active/passive phrasing; demarcation or setting-apart of
particular narratives or parts of them
Spector-Mersel’s (2011) model seeks to pinpoint the expressions of these MNSs within the
narrative, in order to posit and determine the identity claimed therein by the narrator. Within this
model, a single narrative can have multiple—and even contradictory—EPs, but each EP can be
recognizable through a thorough analysis of the MNSs that are utilized to compose and reinforce it,
and therein to claim a narrative identity. This method is holistic and interpretive by nature, and
follows two fundamental principles. The first is treating the story as a whole unit, which presumes
that the MNSs operate in concert and cohesion, complementing each other in service of claiming a
particular EP (Spector-Mersel, 2011). This allows for an inclusive analysis under the assumption
that the same mechanisms may appear throughout a narrative or interview, across topics and
contexts, performing a similar function in their reinforcement of a given EP. The second principle
is regard for content and form, which has already been discussed as a guiding tenet of this study.
The method employed under Spector-Mersel’s (2011) narrative selection model is most
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effective when a two-phased interviewing technique has been used for data collection, such as
Rosenthal’s (1993, 2005) method, which produces a main narrative—the response to a single,
open-ended question (e.g., “Tell me your life story”) with no further interruption or intervention by
the interviewer—and a question-and-answer portion, which tends to generate more directed and
abbreviated responses to more specific questions posed by the interviewer. Spector-Mersel’s
(2011) analytical method involves both a “text mapping” of the main narrative, and a comparative
analysis between the main narrative and the relevant responses in the question-and-answer section
of the interview. For instance, if, after being asked to talk about his family, a participant effusively
remarks that his wife and children are the most important people in his life and that family is
“everything” to him, but had not mentioned them at all in his main life narrative, this would raise
an analytical ‘red flag.’ Similarly, if certain experiences or details were expressed very differently
in the life story than in the question-and-answer portion of the interview, this would, in SpectorMersel’s (2011) view, warrant a deeper investigation of the MSNs at work. In this manner, the
main narrative and specific responses to pointed questions are systematically juxtaposed and
analyzed in order to arrive at the EP(s), and in turn, to understand the identity being claimed.
3.6.2.4.3 Parallel narrative comparison: A new analytical model
The related analytical method used in this study essentially proposes a new and expanded
application for Spector-Mersel’s (2011) model, as a tool for comparatively analyzing two parallel
narratives, rather than (or in addition to) investigating differences between the main narratives and
the later responses to specific questions. In this case, the EP as a tool for claimed identity is not the
central focus of the analysis; rather, the point of interest is essentially a longitudinal EP. Rather
than comparing two pieces of discourse on the same topic in the same interview in an attempt to
understand the message and identity of the narrator at that point in time, the goal here is to compare
two parallel narratives given at two points in time, in order to understand the message of what has
occurred in the interval between the tellings. A deep analysis of what has been included in one
narrative but omitted or silenced in the other, or sharpened in one but flattened in the other, may
suggest a great deal about the individual’s processes of coping and meaning-making over time.
To this end, all tables of parallel narratives were analyzed intensively, with a focus on all
six MNSs and their varied expressions in the texts. This analytical work often took months (or
years) at a time, going over and over the pairs of cells, looking for patterns in both form and
content, both within each narrative and across the comparative unit. In the analysis process,
extensive notes were made and significant words, phrases, and cells were highlighted and
interpreted in order to build evidence for emerging hypotheses. Representative examples of each
MNS were shown and discussed in this dissertation. A comprehensive perspective was ultimately
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reached regarding each participant’s narrative processing and location on the continuum between
‘ease’ (i.e., a generally ‘improved’ state of coping with and after the TA, from BLI to FUI) and
‘dis-ease’ (i.e., a generally ‘deteriorated’ state of coping with and after the TA, from BLI to FUI).
The specific hypotheses that guided this analysis are discussed further in Chapter 4.
3.7 METHODOLOGICAL, LOGISTICAL, AND ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS
3.7.1 Translation and transcription in a non-fluent and micro-analytical context
First and foremost, a central consideration of this study surrounds the fact that I, the primary
investigator, am very much an outsider regarding both the study population and Israeli society and
culture. This has already been mentioned and will be discussed more below, but it should suffice to
say here that while I am now fluent in Hebrew and constantly learning and analyzing its usage in
daily discourse, it is not my mother tongue. The fact that the interviews were conducted in Hebrew
(before I was fully fluent) thus had the potential to create difficulties in my ability to fully
understand the interviewees at the time, in my ability to understand and analyze the transcripts
afterwards, and in the necessity to translate the texts into English for later publication. Following
Nikander (2008), this brief section seeks to engage in a process of “acknowledging, embracing and
discussing the dilemmas of translation and transcription,” in order to maximize my transparency
and accountability as the primary researcher and translator, and attest to my attempts to ultimately
produce “good enough transcripts” herein (p. 229).
It has been suggested that the challenges involved in the creation of a “perfect translation”
are “insurmountable,” as translations must simultaneously take into account issues of vocabulary,
idioms, grammar, and conceptual levels of understanding (Ramírez-Esparza & Pennebaker, 2006,
p. 216). Indeed, the extensive system of grammatical notations in this dissertation makes this
clear—particularly in the need to distinguish the four forms of the ‘you’ pronoun, and in the lessthan-eloquent translations of the various Hebrew prepositions. However, the research area of
translation in qualitative research, in general, and in discourse analysis, in particular, is sparse and
under-theorized (Nikander, 2008; for an exception, see ten Have, 1999, pp. 93-4). Therefore, it is
difficult to judge just how much of an impact (either positive or negative) these issues may have
had throughout the conducting of this research (Riessman, personal communication).
Each
translation choice I made likely held a number of practical, ideological, theoretical, and analytical
implications on the data and research process—only some of which have been possible to discern in
a comprehensible way (Nikander, 2008).
Although I always analyzed the original Hebrew
transcripts and only translated for the final write-up, and while I spent a great deal of time
consulting with native Israelis with regard to language use and equivalent translations, this
nonetheless remains a potentially problematic issue.
111
The transcription process was also not without its complications, primarily because I did not
feel qualified to perform it myself. I conducted the first interview not even two years after my
immigration to Israel, and while I understood the vast majority of the participants’ speech at the
time of each interview, not having a full vocabulary arsenal at my disposal while transcribing made
my first attempt at doing so clearly inadequate. Nikander (2008) asserted that during the process of
transcription, “practical compromises” often must be made between “the ideals of faithfulness to
the original, the readability and accessibility of the final transcript, as well as time and space
issues” (p. 226). Indeed, this was a difficult decision for me—as a researcher and as a ‘new
immigrant.’ It felt highly problematic, and perhaps even inauthentic, to hand off such a critical
stage of the research process to someone entirely external to it. Few researchers discuss this facet,
but I have always viewed transcription as an integral part of the analysis process, rather than a
precursor to it. However, I was far more concerned that my final transcriptions would be sub-par
just because of my inadequate Hebrew, which would surely lead to far more serious damage to the
analysis (and to the research project as a whole). Relatively early on in the data collection process,
therefore, I decided to outsource the transcribing for the entire project.
Finding qualified
transcribers was a huge endeavor in itself, and the transcripts changed hands and underwent
revisions many times throughout the study.
Because of the micro-analytical nature of the research, the transcripts had to be particularly
meticulous, including changes in tone, volume, and speed of speech; lengths of pauses; any signs of
emotion (e.g., laughing, crying, audible inhaling or exhaling of breath); and extra-linguistic or
contextual information (e.g., sound of a siren outside, or sound of the participant pounding on the
table, or a comment made by the participant’s wife). Of course, it was also critical to include in the
transcriptions all of my utterances, as these often held clues as to the interpersonal dynamic
between myself and the interviewee, as well as allowing a more informed view of the flow of the
narratives. Most importantly (and most problematic for the transcribers), because the MIH writing
system is a consonant-based syllabary11 that indicates most vowels by diacritic marks (Dekel,
2010), all of the potentially ambiguous conjugated verb forms and pronominal inflections had to be
notated with vowels. Thus, for instance, because the second-person MS and second-person FS
forms of all verbs are written the same but pronounced differently, if the specific pronoun was not
verbally collocated with the conjugated verb, vowels had to be inserted in order to allow a fully
informed analysis of pronoun use within the transcripts. Because of all this, much time and energy
was spent training and supervising the transcribers, checking their work and making joint
interpretive decisions. This process, referred to by Nikander (2008) as “time consuming, messy,
11
Tobin (personal communication) explained that this type of writing system can be most clearly demonstrated in
English through a popular advertisement from the New York City subway system, circa 1960, upon which was
written, “IF U CN RD THS U CN B A SCRTRY.”
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and imperfect” (p. 226), was extremely challenging for me and for the various transcribers. By the
final version of each transcript, however, I generally felt highly confident about its accuracy.
3.7.2 Confidentiality and anonymity in a media-infused context
The circumstances surrounding the often very specific details of each TA created some
complications with regard to ensuring the confidentiality and anonymity of the participants. I
camouflaged as many personal and potentially identifying details as possible, particularly in
relation to the drivers themselves and their backgrounds, but doing so for the details of the TA each
one experienced proved much more problematic. For instance, the particular date, season, exact
location, and bus line number rarely comprised details that were crucial to understanding the
narratives overall. However, the nature of each attack (e.g., suicide bombing on or near the bus,
shooting, Molotov cocktail, or double bombing, as well as how many passengers were killed or
wounded) was fundamental and often threaded throughout the narratives, and could potentially
compromise the anonymity of the driver involved.
Indeed, all of the TAs were reported, often extensively, in the Israeli television and print
media at the time of their occurrence, and the drivers were all interviewed in person as well. In
particular, because there have been only two bus bombings in Be’er Sheva to date, it would not be
difficult to identify the drivers involved. A ‘rule of thumb’ of research with human participants is
to make all efforts to camouflage personal details to the point that the participant himself would not
be able to recognize himself in any write-ups of the research. This, unfortunately, was entirely
impossible here, and throughout my process of writing up the results for this dissertation and for
various publications, I have been plagued with concern as to whether enough of the privacy of the
participants has been honored. Researching individuals who have spent even a limited amount of
time in the public eye indeed presents some thorny ethical issues, which were grappled with
consciously throughout this process.
3.7.3 The follow-up interview protocol
In the interest of full disclosure for possible future users of the longitudinal comparative
methodology presented here, it should be stated that the objective of collecting as many parallel
narratives as possible in FUIs could potentially be problematic. I presented the purpose of the FUI
to the participants as “checking in” with them and hearing about any changes in their lives in the
interim between the interviews, and I also placed a greater emphasis on the narrative structure of
the interview. The follow-up questions guide (to myself) included this introduction:
“This time the interview will be structured a little differently. Last time we focused a lot on the terror attack
that you experienced, and on your life as a bus driver. This time I would like to focus on you as a person, not
just you as a bus driver. We will talk about the terror attack at some point, and I will ask you some of the
same questions as I did last time, but mostly I would like to hear about you. … In general, this interview is
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aimed at hearing your stories, not necessarily yes/no answers. I want to hear about you, about how you view
the world, and about how you view your own life and life story.”
I was initially concerned that the interviewees would question my motivations (e.g., whether I was
‘testing’ them, or whether I had lost the tapes from the first interview), or tell shorter narratives
because they remembered or were influenced by what they had said before. I half-expected them to
respond to my requests for these narratives with statements like, “Didn’t I tell you this already?” or
“Why do you want to hear this again?” Thankfully and to my surprise, however, the participants
never expressed any reservations about any of the questions I posed to them, and if they
remembered what they had told me in their BLIs, they never expressed this.
In fact, there were several occasions on which I had to remind them of something they had
said (which carried its own potential ethical issues). I also often had to pretend as if I ‘just
happened to remember’ some detail or narrative from the BLI, in an attempt to prompt them to talk
about it. The participants were often surprised by my ‘good memory,’ and seemingly flattered that
I had held such minute details in my mind over the course of such a long time. In reality, of course,
I had spent hours (and years) poring over these transcripts, but could not actually express this to the
participants. There were times that this felt inauthentic to me, but I was not able to find another
way to explain the comparative angle of the study without possibly causing the interviewees to feel
‘tested.’ This part of the methodology may require further refining in future studies.
3.7.4 The effects of the interviews and potential conflicts
There are ethical considerations involved in this research, such as the fact that it required
interviewees—some of whom were interviewed at a relatively early juncture after their terror
experience—to revisit painful and possibly traumatic memories, and in fact, frequently to relive
them during their story-telling. This had the potential to cause more and fresh pain, and this was
discussed with the participants as a possible outcome, prior to beginning their interview. I made
sure to ‘check in’ with them, both throughout the interviews as well as afterwards, in order to
monitor them for such influences on their psychological well-being. The consent form included
contact information for professional resources, and the referring practitioner at Egged Bus
Company was apprised of the interview date in order to do her own monitoring.
I also found that the involvement of the psychologist and social worker at Egged was
associated with its own complications. I often had to consider the conflict between their roles as
recruiters of study participants and as providers of therapeutic care to these individuals. I have no
way of knowing how the study was presented to potential participants, and whether one clinician
pushed her clients to participate, or whether the other chose not to recommend participation at all at
some point. In the beginning, both clinicians were also anxious to hear the results of the study,
even before a thorough analysis was conducted, and at times this put a strain on our working
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relationship. I found that I needed to be careful not to discuss certain aspects of the study with the
clinicians, as they showed an inclination to use this information in their therapeutic meetings with
the participants. All these ethical and logistical issues were kept under consideration throughout
the conducting of this study, and should be held in mind while reading this dissertation as well.
3.8 ‘VALIDITY’ AND TRUSTWORTHINESS: THE QUALITY OF THE RESEARCH STUDY
Throughout this chapter, I have described the various methodological decisions and
spiraling nature of analyses conducted in this research study. I have discussed the analytical
requirements of the study material, as well as the need for an interdisciplinary perspective overall.
I have often included my own perspective as the researcher, within the process of making myriad
interpretations and decisions and attempting to document them as thoroughly as possible. This type
of transparency and reflexivity is of utmost importance in qualitative research, as the guidelines for
‘quality control’ in this context are much different from those commonly used within the
quantitative research world.
Indeed, conventional, positivistic terms such as reliability and
validity—universally accepted and commonplace within quantitative research—represent much
more complex and problematic issues within interpretive inquiry. There have been many attempts
in past decades to set criteria for judging the academic rigor, interpretive ‘validity,’ “goodness,”
and quality of qualitative research (Guba & Lincoln, 2005), with varying success and consensus.
Indeed, much is written about best practices for qualitative research (see Tracy, 2010, for a review).
Perhaps the most widely recognized and adopted set of criteria to purportedly measure
whether “the research findings of an inquiry are worth paying attention to,” has been proposed
under the umbrella concept of trustworthiness, comprised of four components: credibility,
transferability, dependability, and confirmability (Lincoln & Guba, 1985, p. 290). For the purposes
of judging the quality and worthiness of the present study, I have also found Tracy’s (2010) “eight
‘big-tent’ criteria for excellent qualitative research” to be most useful. In addition to essentially
encompassing Lincoln and Guba’s (1985) basic benchmarks, perhaps the greatest import of this set
of guidelines lies in its separation between means and ends; that is, that it proposes “common
markers of goodness [that are not tied] to specific paradigmatic practices or crafts” (Tracy, 2010, p.
839). These eight criteria are: 1) worthy topic; 2) rich rigor; 3) sincerity; 4) credibility; 5)
resonance; 6) significant contribution; 7) ethics; and 8) meaningful coherence (Tracy, 2010). This
section delineates each of the criteria, and discusses how this research purports to meet each one.
3.8.1 Worthy topic
According to Tracy (2010), the first criterion is met by a research topic that is relevant,
timely, significant, and interesting. I assert that this dissertation deals with a number of topics that
can be described as such, chiefly among them: coping with terror; markers of coping in the
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discourse of narratives of stressful life events; the interplay between individual discourse and
societal discourse; the meanings and mechanisms of retelling and meaning-making over time; and
the use of pronouns and tenses as discursive markers of a narrator’s beliefs, attributions, and system
of meanings. As mentioned previously, the period during which the study was conducted was
actually calmer in terms of bus-related TAs in Israel, so in this sense it could be argued that there is
less timeliness and even, perhaps, less relevance within this immediate context. However, I suggest
that the majority of contentions put forth in this research are not at all necessarily dependent on
type of TA (or even type of potentially traumatic experience), or on most of the specific
characteristics of the participants. Research on dealing with terror and trauma is (unfortunately)
becoming more acutely relevant and timely throughout the world, and to the extent that at least
some of the interpretations in this study can be generalized, this topic is quite worthy.
In addition, perhaps the greatest indication of the significance and ‘interestingness’ of the
topic was apparent every time I presented my research to audiences of a variety of backgrounds and
academic levels—B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. students, as well as professors and academics in
disciplines such as psychology, sociology, anthropology, linguistics, social work, and narratology.
Non-Israeli audiences often remarked that the work was “fascinating,” and I received many
requests for copies of my published articles. Israeli audience members frequently remarked that
they had never before been aware of the discursive phenomena I discussed, and I often witnessed
smiles of realization as they became conscious of apparently long-taken-for-granted assumptions
about their native tongue. Nearly every time I encountered Israelis who had previously heard me
speak about my research, they told me they were now acutely sensitized to these discursive
phenomena, and all of a sudden ‘saw’ them everywhere. As one of my reflexive concerns was that
my status as an outsider to the Hebrew language may have caused me to be too sensitive to or
literal about the discourse, these audience reactions felt particularly important and validating.
3.8.2 Rich rigor
Tracy’s (2010) second criterion for excellent qualitative research, rich rigor, is met by
“sufficient, abundant, appropriate, and complex” use of theoretical constructs, data and time in the
field, sample(s), context(s), and data collection and analysis processes (p. 840). I submit that the
comprehensiveness of this chapter attests to the rigor of the methodology and analysis process of
this study. With regard to the sample, although my initial hope had been for at least five additional
participants—and I still do believe that this would have enhanced the research—the circumstances
did not comply, despite great efforts on my part. Serendipitously, the consequent choice to conduct
FUIs actually added great richness and value to the research, as well as an unforeseen
methodological contribution. The duration of a study is often seen as a measure of credibility, and
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while I did not plan for it to last as long as it has, I claim that my prolonged engagement with the
field, data, analysis, and write-up process produced a significantly rigorous piece of scholarship.
Along these lines, Lincoln and Guba (1985)’s concept of confirmability refers to the degree
to which the analysis and results are grounded in and supported by the data material garnered and
whether inferences are logical (Schwandt, 1997; Teddlie & Tashakkori, 2009). Similarly, Wood
and Kroger (2000) contended that discourse analysis is centered not as much on the development of
patterns and interpretations, as on “how you justify your identification of patterns, how you ground
your interpretations” (p. 95). All hypotheses in this study emerged from countless hours of poring
over both quantitative and qualitative data tables, and all interpretations are thoroughly grounded in
the discourse. I have cited multiple and varied examples for each of my hypotheses, and have
looked deeply into the texts for appropriate justifications on the grammatical, structural, and
contextual levels. In any case, all versions of transcripts, tables, and tabulations, as well as consent
forms, participant questionnaires and materials, and field notes, will be kept in my possession
indefinitely, should the need for a confirmability audit arise (Teddlie & Tashakkori, 2009).
In the interest of sincere (see below) and full disclosure, it feels necessary to note that I did
not scrutinize to the same extent every single page of every transcript of the interviews I conducted
for this study. As there were over 600 pages of transcribed text from just the five participants
presented in this dissertation, early on in the analysis process I realized it was not realistically
possible (at least for me, given my limitations in Hebrew) to become intimately familiar with every
word of every interview. Although I initially invested many, many hours attempting to do so, I
finally decided to reframe the primary analytical unit for the majority of the analyses as the TANs.
This decision emerged, in part, out of my desire to conduct thorough, consistent, deep, microfocused, and grounded analyses, and out of the attendant logistical issues involved.
However, methodological and theoretical justifications exist here as well. When a narrative
researcher purports to focus on an entire interview (often upwards of 100 pages) as the unit of
analysis, it may be interpreted as suggesting that a ‘complete’ understanding of the interviewee was
achieved because the text was analyzed in its entirety. In this sense, for me to attempt to take into
account every narrative and every argumentation on every page of the texts I procured from my
participants is to assume that this is ‘enough’ information on which to base my interpretations. But
the truth is that there is never ‘enough,’ and never will be. There is an infinite amount of additional
potential ‘texts’—which may support, confirm, weaken, challenge, and/or contradict every bit of
information provided in any given interview—existing every day within the interviewee himself.
And the narrative researcher has no access to all this. So this study represents my best—‘good
enough’—attempt to analyze the material at my disposal, to ground my hypotheses in this material,
and to make interpretations accordingly, while never purporting to (and never suggesting that I
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should) know ‘everything’ about the topic, the participants, or the phenomena under investigation.
3.8.3 Sincerity
The third criterion, sincerity, requires “self-reflexivity about subjective values, biases, and
inclinations of the researcher(s)” as well as transparency with regard to the methods and
methodological challenges therein (Tracy, 2010, p. 840). This criterion is particularly relevant in
this case due to the unique complexities of its interpersonal context. As previously discussed, this
research brought together an American-born, primarily English-speaking, relatively new
immigrant, ‘outsider’ researcher with native Israeli, Hebrew-speaking, ‘insider’ participants. This
pairing involves a number of advantages and disadvantages, and questions and issues that I have
grappled with throughout the research. For instance, how can a researcher who is not an inborn
member of the culture or native speaker of the participants’ language presume to understand what
they are speaking about? What might be overlooked because of these ‘deficiencies,’ and what
might be ‘gained’ or viewed differently through non-native eyes? And how can an ‘outsider’
researcher successfully analyze (and translate for other audiences) not only the discourse used by
her interviewees, but also the sentiments, unspoken assumptions, and dynamics of the interview?
This research study relies on the claim that a sign-oriented semiotic analysis of language
can illuminate discursive patterns and communicative strategies therein. Because the gendered
pronouns at the heart of the patterns and strategies uncovered in this study do not exist in English,
many of the most important and interesting findings would not have existed had the interviews not
been conducted in the interviewees’ mother tongue. Of course, by the same token, not conducting
the interviews in the interviewer’s mother tongue led to an inevitable loss of some level of
understanding of the nuances and perhaps even outright parts of the ‘insider’ experience. This may
have had an effect on the interview dynamic and on the interviewees’ perception of whether they
were being fully understood. Ultimately, I claim that it is possible to wade one’s way through
interviews and interactional phenomena in one’s foreign language and cultural context, and come
out the other side with meaningful and valuable results. This should be undertaken, however,
alongside a conscious and reflexive perspective on the problematic nature of this endeavor.
While all of the various approaches and methods described throughout this chapter provide
excellent sources of triangulation for the interpretations put forth, at the core of this research
process has been my own primary attempt to trust my experience with and understanding of
narrative inquiry, and to allow my own eye to guide, at least in part, the analysis and the decisions
made therein. However, it is important to note that my ‘eye’ was not unassisted. Throughout the
research process, I took part in several analysis groups comprised of M.A. and Ph.D. students
utilizing qualitative methods, meeting frequently to collaboratively analyze our interview materials.
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I also participated in a Reflexivity Group, where I was able to discuss with other qualitative-minded
students a variety of dilemmas (personal, methodological, and ethical) emerging from our
respective research processes.
Shenton (2004) referred to frequent debriefing sessions and peer scrutiny of the research
project as two important strategies for ensuring trustworthiness, and credibility in particular, in
qualitative inquiries. Indeed, my participation in these groups allowed me to see how native
Israelis read my interviewees’ discourse, and to clarify any issues or questions that may have been
unclear to me because of my ‘outsider-ness.’ It also provided me with opportunities to check
emerging hypotheses with others and receive feedback, from their perspectives both as researchers
and as inborn members of the society under study. Perhaps the most valuable benefit of these
groups lay in the ongoing opportunity to practice qualitatively analyzing texts and continually hone
my skills, knowledge base, and capacity for reflexivity as a qualitative researcher, with all the
inherent uncertainties and dilemmas. In this sense, I view my involvement in these academic
communities as a fundamental and important part of the qualitative methodology of this research.
Josselson (2000) described a process of consulting with colleagues regarding her various
interpretations, as part of ensuring reliability; ultimately, however, she suggested “present[ing]
several cases in great detail and mak[ing] my interpretive process apparent; the reader is thereby
free to agree or disagree with my interpretations” (p. 466). In general, the multitude of decisions
regarding what to analyze and how to analyze it were ultimately made by myself, after much
deliberation and consultation with my advisors as well as an array of colleagues. The decisions
regarding what to present in this dissertation were even more difficult, as I often found myself
wanting to include every analysis, every insightful result, and every illustrative quotation. In
particular, the decision to present the results in a participant-focused manner, essentially as minicase studies, and to focus on some of the participants more than others, was not an easy one. It
should suffice to say that this dissertation, as lengthy as it is, actually represents only a small
fraction of the analyses conducted and findings reached. But what is included is the most sincere
possible representation of the study. Tracy (2010) stated, “Sincerity means that the research is
marked by honesty and transparency about the researcher’s biases, goals, and foibles as well as
about how these played a role in the methods, joys, and mistakes of the research” (p. 841). I have
gone to great lengths to infuse this dissertation with this kind of honesty and transparency.
3.8.4 Credibility
The fourth criterion for excellent qualitative research, credibility, is in line with Lincoln and
Guba’s (1985) original definition of the term, which refers to whether or not the research findings,
interpretations, and reconstructions are “credible to the constructors of the original multiple
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realities” (p. 296). This is, essentially, a reflection of the strength, accuracy, and authenticity of the
connection between the study participants’ lived experience and the representation of those
experiences in the study report (Schwandt, 1997). Credibility is thought to be obtained by research
using “thick description, concrete detail, explication of tacit (nontextual) knowledge, and showing
rather than telling” (Tracy, 2010, p. 840). Thick description, a term first coined by Geertz (1973)
within the discipline of anthropology, refers to a process of writing up the results of a qualitative
research study using much detail, examples, and discussion of the relevant concepts, contexts, and
data within their culturally-situated meanings.
Thick description is most often achieved by
showing—that is, providing enough information so as to allow the audience to arrive at their own
conclusions and understandings about the phenomena—rather than simply telling the reader which
assertions are being made and what to think about them (Tracy, 2010). Josselson (2009) concurred,
claiming the importance of the researcher’s taking “interpretive authority (Chase, 1996)” for his/her
own understandings of the participant’s words, while simultaneously “liberally reproduc[ing]”
those words as substantiation for the credibility of his/her interpretations (p. 652). Only in this
manner, Geertz (1973) suggested, can meanings and psychosocial phenomena be sufficiently
communicated by or through the researcher, about the participants, to the reader or audience.
Tracy (2010) also suggested an honoring of multivocality, the inclusion of multiple and
varied voices in the qualitative research report, and Guba and Lincoln (2005) referred to the
inquirer posture within the constructivist paradigm as “passionate participant” and “facilitator of
multivoice reconstruction” (p. 196). As Tracy (2010) contended, “Qualitative researchers do not
put words in members’ mouths, but rather attend to viewpoints that diverge with those of the
majority or with the author” (p. 844). This study is principally interested in the particular situated
reality of each participant, and seeks to identify patterns across participants only where the relevant
experiences and/or contexts converged sufficiently to allow such collective conclusions. Multiple
hypotheses and possible interpretations are always offered, and wherever evidence for a greater
likelihood for a particular hypothesis is either present or lacking, this is stated. I claim that the
abundance of participant material, deep analyses, and varied perspectives presented throughout this
dissertation satisfy the criteria of thick description, showing rather than telling, and multivocality.
In addition, triangulation of data and/or analyses is often employed in the service of
obtaining credibility, in an attempt to garner similar or converging interpretations through multiple
avenues and perspectives.
Denzin (1978) defined credibility by means of triangulation as a
convergence on the same conclusion by or through at least two different researchers, sources or
types of data, or theoretical frameworks, and referred particularly to a ‘within-method’ or
methodological triangulation, which utilizes multiple analytical tools and techniques for
interpretation and hypothesis-testing. While this conceptualization of credibility remains popular in
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the field of qualitative inquiry, its realist assumption that the “same conclusion” can be reached,
particularly by two divergent researchers, seems problematic. I see narrative inquiry, specifically,
as far too subjective, interpretive, and multidimensional to be able to achieve this criterion.
However, an attempt to garner a multifaceted, cohesive, and comprehensive perspective on
a research question is critical to quality qualitative research, and this study subscribes to Ellingson’s
(2008) concept of crystallization, the practice of the utilization of multiple and various theoretical
perspectives, conceptual lenses, types and sources of data, analytical methods, and researcher
viewpoints, in order to arrive at a rich and multidimensional perspective, rather than a single “same
conclusion.” This comes from a post-structural and performative viewpoint, and follows Tracy’s
(2010) assertion that the goal of crystallization is “not to provide researchers with a more valid
singular truth, but to open up a more complex, in-depth, but still thoroughly partial, understanding
of the issue” (p. 844).
The interdisciplinary and multifocal methodological framework and
collection of analytical tools—both quantitative and qualitative, and focused on both content and
form—employed in this research study attempts to accomplish this type of crystallization.
Along with these components of credibility, Lincoln and Guba’s (1985) criterion of
dependability refers generally to the “ability of the human instrument to yield consistent results”
(Teddlie & Tashakkori, 2009, p. 296); that is, the likelihood that similar conclusions might be
reached if the ‘same’ research process were to be conducted by someone other than the original
researcher. While this also appears problematic within the view of narrative inquiry as particular,
contextually-situated, and reflexively-influenced by the researcher’s identity, background, and
stance, it does seem warranted to document the research process as accurately and comprehensively
as possible. Yin’s (1994) suggestion that dependability is achieved through careful and detailed
record-keeping with regard to research procedures, field notes, analytical and interpretive
processes, and various consultations has thus been implemented throughout the conducting of this
study. Again, all files related to the study will be kept in my possession indefinitely for the
purposes of a dependability audit (Teddlie & Tashakkori, 2009). Furthermore, all analyses were
conducted on the original Hebrew transcripts, and, according to Nikander (2008), “hiding the
original data from the reader’s view clearly violates the ‘validity through transparency and access’
principle” (p. 227). Therefore, in an effort to maximize my own accountability as translator and in
order to allow native speakers to audit (and challenge, if need be) my translations and analytical
interpretations (Nikander, 2008), every translated excerpt presented in the body of this dissertation
has attached to it an endnote denoting its original Hebrew quotation in its entirety (see Appendix 4).
However, it must be noted that, while great care has been taken to document every step of
the data collection and analysis procedures, this was done more in service of the criteria of rigor
and sincerity than of the possibility of achieving dependability. Indeed, the research process
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undertaken here was, in many ways, unmistakably unique to the interpersonal contexts at hand.
The texts that were garnered and analyzed for this study emerged from a single irreplicable moment
in time, between pairs of individuals who will never exist in that specific form, set of emotions, and
mental state again; in a set of personal, interpersonal, familial, societal, and cultural contexts that
will never exist in that exact form again; within a co-constructed relationship that will never exist
again; about topics that will never appear, be experienced, or be perceived exactly the same way to
or by either of us. This is, in part, because the interview experience itself changed us in infinite and
indistinguishable ways. And so, within and taking into account all of these limitations, I made my
analytical decisions, attempting to do so and document them as credibly as possible.
3.8.5 Resonance
The fifth criterion, resonance, necessitates that the research “influences, affects, or moves”
its audience through “aesthetic, evocative representation,” “naturalistic generalizations,” and/or
“transferable findings” (Tracy, 2010, p. 840). In the case of this study, this criterion feels closely
connected to two of the previous criteria: the worthiness of the topic and sincerity. I have already
stated that this study has sparked great interest and even personal insights in large audiences of
students, professors, and other academic colleagues of mine. That a single presentation of these
research findings might have the power to create even a tiny shift in thinking or in one’s
consciousness of his/her use of language is an indication of this criterion having been met.
Regarding the intersection between sincerity and resonance, I myself have been deeply
moved by Josselson and Lieblich’s (1996) call for an end to the use of “passive voice, bloodless
prose, and hedged statements” in narrative research in psychology, and by their contention that the
discipline of psychology might be better served by researchers who:
“tell the real stories of their work—to consider their own role as coparticipants in designing the questions,
choosing participants, shaping the context, and structuring the results; choosing the language that seems to
them suitable for sharing what they learn; and, in general, reflecting on the complexities of the process of
knowing” (p. 651).
This served as one of my most important foci in my process of writing this dissertation, as I have
striven for a balance between the personal and the professional; between the student of psychology
and the doctoral researcher attempting to forge a new interdisciplinary path; and between the
academic analyst and the new immigrant just hoping and trying to understand the foreign culture
into which I have implanted myself. Tracy (2010) wrote that “The use of the first person voice
(e.g., ‘I said,’ or ‘They reacted to me by…’) effectively and appropriately reminds readers of the
researcher’s presence and influence in participating and interpreting the scene” (p. 842). I have
thus used the first-person voice throughout this dissertation not only as a representation of myself,
but as a conduit for the reflexivity, sincerity, and resonance of this piece of work. It is also, of
course, the pronoun that most honors a research study on the uses of pronouns and their meanings.
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Tracy’s (2010) reference to transferability and generalizability relates to “a study’s potential
to be valuable across a variety of contexts or situations” (p. 845), and loosely correlates to Lincoln
and Guba’s (1985) original conceptualization of transferability, which refers to the more specific
potential for generalization or application of the data, interpretations, or conclusions, from the
particular context of the given research study to other or larger contexts (Schwandt, 1997). As the
use of this term in positivistic, quantitative research circles generally involves ‘objective’ statistics,
random representational sampling, minimization of ‘noise’ or confounding variables, and isolation
of phenomena under study from their culturally-situated context, this conceptualization is entirely
irrelevant and of no use in a phenomenological, interpretive qualitative inquiry (Tracy, 2010).
However, the aspiration of a quality naturalistic research study to garner findings that “can
be extrapolated beyond the immediate confines of the site, both theoretically and practically”
(Charmaz, 2005, p. 528) is important and relevant—but as an audience-driven, rather than
researcher-driven, process (Tracy, 2010). In this sense, Tracy (2010) regarded transferability as
having been achieved “when readers feel as though the story of the research overlaps with their
own situation and they intuitively transfer the research to their own action” (p. 845). The present
study provides a rich context for this, as the language phenomena under investigation here are
universal in MIH and other gendered languages, and are readily apparent and abound in daily
conversation. Similarly, while the focus is on bus drivers’ narratives of TAs, I claim that the
discursive patterns found are not limited to extreme cases of (potential) trauma; rather, they may
occur in a variety of types of narratives, particularly those describing myriad life stressors.
Josselson (2006) discussed the complexities involved in the accumulation of knowledge
gained through narrative research, and the manner in which the findings of this study are presented
has been influenced by my own desire to maximize the potential for both naturalistic generalization
(Stake & Trumbull, 1982) and amalgamation of conclusions with other relevant studies. Josselson
(2006) suggested that narrative knowledge might potentially be merged through, among others, the
linguistic ground of comparison; that is, focus should be placed on the ways in which researchers
“report the language patterns of their participants as the participants, in different languages, try to
give verbal shape to their experiences” (p. 8). Josselson (2006) also discussed the comparative
ground of case studies, suggesting that the potential for amalgamation of narrative knowledge may
lie in “layering studies in a way that establishes correspondence and difference,” and building
“support for repeated patterns that remain situated rather than generalized” (p. 8).
Although Josselson (2006) primarily referred to the accumulation of knowledge across
narrative studies, I see these recommendations as entirely relevant within studies as well, and as
having the potential to promote a research report that may lend itself more readily to transferability.
I have thus attempted to follow both of these recommendations in this dissertation. Discursive
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patterns and communicative strategies are uncovered in each individual participant’s narratives, and
situated within his particular personal, experiential, and social context. Patterns across participants
are also illustrated, in an attempt to understand which factors may cut across contexts and may thus
be further transferable. The results themselves are arranged in a case study format—both separate
and layered, pointing out both similarities and divergences, and seeking both the particular and the
generalizable. Perhaps the greatest potential for transferability of the study’s findings exists in its
theoretical, methodological, and practical contributions (discussed below), all of which are not at
all bound to the specific context of the study population or research question.
3.8.6 Significant contribution
The sixth criterion, significant contribution, can take place in the conceptual/theoretical,
practical, moral, methodological, and/or heuristic domains, and asks, among other things, whether
the study extends knowledge, improves practice, generates ongoing research, and/or liberates or
empowers (Tracy, 2010). This research has the potential to do at least the first three items in this
list, and, as it is not situated directly in a feminist, critical, or social action-oriented paradigm, does
not attempt the latter. As was stated in the introductory chapter, this study offers theoretical,
methodological, and practical innovations, all of which may potentially bring with them significant
impacts in their respective domains. This research proposes an interdisciplinary bridge between the
psychological, sociological, and linguistic fields, which may lead to topical contributions to the
literatures on coping with terror; narrative methods and representations of coping; coping and
meaning-making over time; and the relationship between individual and societal discourse. This
study also proposes a two-pronged methodological contribution: 1) a new form of mixed methods,
represented in the integration of sociopsychological discourse analysis and sign-oriented semiotic
analytical tools; and 2) a new model for a longitudinal comparative analysis of mechanisms of
narrative selection and a variety of other discursive and communicative strategies. And finally, and
closely related, this research has produced a potential practical contribution: the Narrative Method
for Assessment of Psychosocial Processing of Stressful Life Events (NMAPP).
All of these
contributions will, of course, be discussed further in the coming chapters.
3.8.7 Ethics
The seventh criterion requires that excellent qualitative research be ethical, considering not
only procedural ethics (e.g., accepted guidelines for research on ‘human subjects’), but also
situational, cultural-specific, and relational ethics (Tracy, 2010). Tracy (2010) also referred to
exiting ethics, which relates to the manner in which the researcher leaves the domain of the research
and shares its conclusions with a wider audience. The various ethical considerations that were most
prominent and problematic throughout the process of this research were already mentioned above,
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but a discussion of the overall ethical stance of the study seems warranted here.
This study followed all appropriate and necessary ethical guidelines, including undergoing a
formal ethical review board; explaining the research goals to and obtaining informed consent from
the participants; and following conventional protocol for ensuring confidentiality and anonymity.
Having attended at least a dozen different university courses, workshops, and specialized trainings
in qualitative research methods and interviewing techniques, I believe that I have sufficient
qualifications and skill to “conduct an empathic, nonjudgmental and respectful interview,” in
addition to having “thought through and given reasonable consideration to the possible effects the
inquiry may have on the participants,” and being “prepared to deal with consequences in an
ethically sound way” (Josselson, 2007, p. 558).
However, some ethical issues simply remain thornily present within this study.
My
concerns about attempting to analyze and interpret often deeply culturally-ingrained issues and
phenomena as an outsider to this culture continue to plague me. So too does the possibility that my
‘outsider-ness,’ or my age, or my gender, or my academic status may have influenced the
interviews to an extent that may render my interpretations of the data and ultimate conclusions
much less reliable than I contend. My inability to fully ‘read’ the interpersonal dynamics between
myself and my interviewees, with regard to their assumptions and expectations about me as well as
possible perceptions of my expectations of them, may have impacted the nature of relational ethics
therein. As a researcher, I subscribe most closely to what Ellis (2007) referred to as an ethic of
care, which “recognizes and values mutual respect, dignity, and connectedness between researcher
and researched, and between researchers and the communities in which they live and work” (p. 4).
Alongside of this, however, I continue to struggle with issues of exiting ethics, particularly
surrounding publications and presentations of facets of the research study. Indeed, with regard to
the aforementioned difficulties involving the ensuring of anonymity in a media-infused context,
Chase (1996) pointed to similar issues when participants are members of the same sub-community,
in which case any attempt to “disguise” them would most likely prove futile. Josselson (2007)
referred to Amia Lieblich’s recommendation that:
“researchers in these instances…take great care to collaborate with participants about what will be published
and…be ready to rescind any material the participant feels might be injurious to others or to their relationships
with others. If we suspect at the outset that there is no way of doing the research such that the participants or
the important others in their lives can be sufficiently disguised so as to be unrecognizable to others, then one
simply cannot publish the research unless all those significantly mentioned read what is to be published and
agree to its dissemination” (p. 554).
This feels sincere, ethical, and honorable within many research contexts. However, in this case it
causes another thorny issue, which simultaneously may simplify the original problem but make the
above recommendation impossible to fulfill. This dissertation is written in English, as are the
majority of articles containing findings from this research published thus far. With little command
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of the language, how might the participants go about reading and approving the reports and
interpretations of their data? Of course, the language barrier also creates a near-zero possibility that
they, or likely most of the members of their nuclear and extended community, will ever personally
encounter these write-ups. Again, this simultaneously represents a relief and a concern for me.
Ethically, I have done ‘the best I can’ in this domain, and practically, it is likely that no problems
will ever arise. Yet, writing about someone who does not possess the ability to read what has been
written about him does not feel quite right. Perhaps, in the end, I can do little else but take comfort
in Josselson’s (2007) contention that “Many, if not most, perhaps all, narrative researchers end their
studies with some questions about the absolute ethicality of what they have carried out, although
only a few have said so in print... This seems to me to be the most ethical position of all” (p. 559).
3.8.8 Meaningful coherence
The final criterion, meaningful coherence, aims at determining how well the research study
achieves its purported purpose and deals sufficiently with its purported topic (Tracy, 2010). This
includes a successful use of appropriate methods and procedures, as well as the forging of a
meaningful interconnection between the literature and theoretical foundation, research questions,
findings, and interpretations (Tracy, 2010). I have made all attempts to ensure that this dissertation
and the research it presents “hangs together well” (Tracy, 2010, p. 848), incorporating and
integrating multiple perspectives, disciplines, and methodologies and methods, in addition to the
analyses and discussion of those results, into a cohesive and coherent final product. With regard to
existing literature upon which to ground some of the interpretations, I have encountered a
surprising dearth of theoretical and/or empirical studies in several specific areas relevant to this
research—for instance, with regard to retellings of multiple ‘parallel’ narratives; or sufficiently
substantiated psycholinguistic investigations into pronoun and tense use in discourse; or any
research at all on bus drivers in Israel. I have reviewed the literature that is currently in existence to
the absolute best of my abilities, and, in retrospect, perhaps this lacuna was necessary to produce
this dissertation. This study thus offers theoretical, methodological, and practical innovations in an
attempt to fill these gaps in the various literatures, and endeavors to do so with as much meaningful
coherence as possible.
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CHAPTER 4
PRELIMINARY RESULTS
AND FUNDAMENTAL HYPOTHESES
4.1 INTRODUCTION
The process of analysis for this study began soon after the first interview was conducted,
and was ongoing throughout and beyond the data collection phase. I found it useful to shift back
and forth between the collection and analysis phases—similar to what Mendlinger and Cwikel
(2008) referred to as “spiraling” through the data—as frequently an insight found in one domain
was used to inform and revise the other, and vice versa. Almost immediately after the analysis
process began, however, I noticed that something interesting was going on in the interviewees’ talk,
and I realized that some of the basic discursive phenomena that I had begun to uncover would
require a deep exploration and dedicated explication. I felt, then, and still do assert, that these
preliminary findings regarding the participants’ discursive patterns are the essential building blocks
of this research. And while they are innovative and important findings in and of themselves, for
this study they should be viewed more as the starting point, rather than the end result. Indeed, the
four central discursive patterns that were found represent the foundation for the basic hypotheses 1
that were later explored throughout the study, and for the comparative longitudinal analyses that
paved the way for the proposal of a narrative tool for the analysis and assessment of coping with
and processing of stressful life events.
Essentially, the foundation for this study overall, and for the initial analyses of the interview
texts, is the linguistic assumption that the non-random distribution of language within the drivers’
discourse may hold a specific set of meanings and messages—which may, in turn, offer insight into
their inner psychological worlds. In particular, the initial guiding hypothesis is that the drivers’
patterned use of pronouns and tenses may reflect their feelings, attributions, and perceptions
surrounding the terror attack (TA) they experienced2, and its place within their life narrative (LN)
and life history. The results of the initial set of analyses did, indeed, uncover a series of patterns in
the drivers’ texts, and a set of preliminary claims emerged regarding a possible psycholinguistic
connection between their discourse and some of their specific perceptions and attributions. These
claims were then extrapolated to produce a set of secondary psychosociolinguistic interpretive
hypotheses, in two distinct directions: within-participant and across-participant. Finally, building
upon and alongside the process of exploring these hypotheses, a set of hypotheses was asserted
with regard to the practical implementation of all of these assumptions and findings.
1
2
The use here of the term, hypothesis, should not invoke and does not reflect a positivistic or experimental stance.
Rather, it refers to an interpretive theory or supposition—subjective in many ways and not absolute. As Josselson
(2009), following Denzin and Lincoln (2000), Glaser and Strauss (1967), and Polkinghorne (1988), contended,
“Narrative inquiry does not test hypotheses; instead, patterns are inductively adduced, documented, and
conceptualized” (p. 650). As according to qualitative interpretive methodologies, analyses with regard to these
hypotheses are discussed here in terms of possible support or evidence for a given premise, rather than proof or
confirmation. This analytical phase is entirely inductive, and all of these hypotheses emerged from the analyses
conducted in a ‘bottom-up’ approach, rather than being adopted from external sources in a ‘top-down’ approach.
This is also relevant for other particularly emotionally charged narratives (of particularly difficult life events), such as
in Dani’s case, which will be discussed in Chapter 6.
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Namely, this research study asserts the following: 1) there exists a number of specific, nonrandom patterns in the discourse of these drivers; 2) there exists a relationship between each
individual driver’s discursive patterns and his relevant perceptions and attributions; 3) there exists a
meta-connection between this relationship and each driver’s perceptions of his surrounding societal
discourse, particularly with regard to coping and resilience, masculinity and heroism, and
‘acceptable’ behavior; and 4) this multifaceted dynamic relationship between the individual’s
discourse, his inner psychological world, and his perceptions of the surrounding societal discourse
can be utilized as a window to assess his longitudinal process of narrative processing of the event
he experienced.
This chapter first outlines the fundamental psycholinguistic results, organized by pronoun
use and their interpreted meanings and messages. This first section explores the relationship
between the individual participant and his manner of processing and narrating the TA experience,
with a particular focus on the motivations behind his discursive choices. The second section
connects these findings to a macro-level societal view, to assert the essential psychosociolinguistic
hypotheses that guide the individualized analyses of the participants. This involves an exploration
of the relationship between the manner in which the participants tell their stories and their
perceptions of the expectations and cultural discourses of their surrounding society. The final
section presents the central hypotheses that provide the foundation for the longitudinal withinparticipant comparative analyses, which aim to define trajectories toward ‘ease’ and ‘dis-ease’ in
coping with and processing the TA experience, as viewed through the narrations of the stories.
4.2 FUNDAMENTAL PSYCHOLINGUISTIC FINDINGS: THE RELATIONSHIP
BETWEEN THE INDIVIDUAL AND HIS INNER PSYCHOLOGICAL WORLD
This section briefly presents the four central discursive patterns evident in the interviewees’
texts, along with basic and generalized hypotheses about the linguistic meaning and extra-linguistic
messages of each phenomenon. Each discursive pattern will be more deeply explicated and
demonstrated through “exemplar” texts (Mishler, 1990), along with lengthy discussions of (more
individualized) potential interpretive hypotheses, within the framework of the following three
results chapters. These findings relate primarily to the manners in which these bus drivers narrated
their experiences, in particular, and in which their perceptions of the social and cultural discourse
surrounding them may influence the personal discourse of its members, in general. Of course, one
could always suggest that the linguistic patterns highlighted here are just common, ‘normal,’ or
simply ‘how people talk,’ particularly within the context of narratives of stressful life events. This
may or may not be the case. Nonetheless, I suggest that these discursive choices are not arbitrary
and certainly not meaningless, no matter how common, conventional, and socially accepted they
may be. That is to say, there are specific moments and contexts within which certain grammatical,
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discursive, and communicative techniques are used, and there are other moments and contexts
within which others are used. Embedded within these choices, there is a meaning, a message (or
multiple messages), and a significance—in both the patterns of usage and the contexts surrounding
them. I propose that the discursive choices made and communicative strategies used—as reflected
in the form as well as in the manifest content—by the interviewees in telling their narratives serve
to express their feelings and perceptions about themselves, their bus and work, their society and
culture, and their sense of responsibility with regard to the terror event(s) they experienced.
4.2.1 Personalization and possession: Use of first-person possessive pronouns and phrases
The interviewees showed a discursive pattern of personalizing or owning certain statements
in a way that appeared to demonstrate a deeper motivation or communicative strategy. Some
referred to their bus or parts of their bus as theirs or even themselves (e.g., “the passengers got onto
my bus,” “the passengers got on to me3,” or “my door was warped”). Some referred to those who
were injured or killed in the TA as their casualties.
Others showed a tendency to separate
themselves from the collective aspect of the TA and focus only on their own singular experience,
narrating the event as if they were the only victims or ‘experiencers’ and referring to it as “what
happened to me.” This personalization or possession of certain statements or topics may be
understood as a corollary of a phenomenon known as extension of identity (Hyvärinen, personal
communication), within which each driver’s own bus is viewed as his home, an extension of
himself (and his self). Indeed, as these drivers spend at least eight hours a day on ‘their’ bus, and as
many of them have driven on the same routes for long periods of time, it is understandable that they
would come to view their bus as their own, as a personal possession or an extension of themselves.
Another hypothesis regards the sense of personal responsibility to which the interviewees
seemed to be referring in their discourse. Viewed in this vein, the drivers may see their own bus as
not only their possession but also their territory, which must be protected against threat. This sense
of (possibly over-)protectiveness may lead them to feel guilty or at fault in the face of evidence that
they were unsuccessful at preventing, avoiding, or acting more proactively during the TA. Indeed,
much of the discourse of these interviewees was riddled with the theme of guilt, responsibility, and
self-judgment, in many different forms and contexts—particularly apparent in the significant
number of statements that began with, “I should have…”, “I could have…”, “I wish I had…”, and
“I wanted to…” Several drivers also expressed that they still (and always will) consider themselves
to be soldiers, just without a uniform at the moment. Their sense of ownership and protectiveness
can be viewed within this perspective, as they perceive their bus as both their battleground and their
3
The pronoun used here, “etzli”, was discussed at length in Chapter 3 (Section 3.5.2.3). An exact translation into
English is impossible (although it is comparable to ‘chez’ in French), but it can be understood as ‘at me,’ ‘by me,’
‘on me,’ or ‘in me,’ depending on the context.
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territory to protect. Indeed, the oft-made references to their casualties evoked an image of the
drivers as commanders on a battlefield, referring to soldiers in their charge who had been hit by
enemy fire, or as captains of a ship, responsible for all of their passengers.
I assert that it is through the discursive choices to personalize the statements made at these
specific contextual moments that the participants expressed—both latently and manifestly—their
feelings and attributions about themselves, their work, and their sense of responsibility with regard
to the terror event that occurred. It could be argued that personalized statements about their own
unique experiences and emotions represent, in fact, the most ‘logical’ response, given that I was
interviewing them individually and asking them to tell their own specific stories. Perhaps it is only
‘natural’ that they would talk about their experiences from their own personalized perspective, and
make no attempt to enter into the minds or experiences of the other ‘experiencers.’ And yet, not all
of the interviewees spoke in the same manner at the same discursive points or about similar facets
of their stories; the discourse of at least one participant stands as a contrast to this pattern.
Therefore, it is plausible that careful analytical attention paid to the moments and contexts in which
the drivers chose to use first-person possessive pronouns and phrases can illuminate the facets of
the experience about which they feel the most personalized, possessive, and/or responsible.
4.2.2 Depersonalization and universalization:
Use of the second-person masculine singular pronoun and/or third-person ‘others’
The interviewees showed a tendency to depersonalize, generalize, universalize, neutralize,
and/or normalize their statements at times, and used two distinct means of doing so. The first was
characterized by narrative moments in which the interviewees were clearly telling about a personal
experience of their own, but chose to utilize a third-person ‘other’ or outside entity (such as “a bus
driver” or “he”) as the subject.
The second was demonstrated frequently across the various
interview texts and contexts in which the unmarked second-person masculine singular (MS)
pronoun (‘you’ (MS), or the generic ‘one’) was used in the general, generic, and/or impersonal
sense. This was most commonly apparent in statements such as, “When you (MS) drive the bus
every day…” and “You (MS) are not normal if you (MS) won’t be scared.”
The two statements directly above utilize the same discursive strategy, and because both
emerge out of a choice against the use of the ‘I’ pronoun, both have a depersonalized extralinguistic message. I assert, however, that the motivations behind each of them are different. The
former comes out of a basic, conventional, and widely accepted generalization technique in Modern
Israeli Hebrew (MIH). The entire structure of the sentence is unmarked, generic, and habitualized,
as represented by the use of the proximate ‘present’ tense and the phrase, “every day.” The
motivation here appears to be a manner of encouraging, or helping, or even requesting of, the
decoder to understand and relate to the driver’s daily experiences and, perhaps, to himself. In this
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sense, the speaker is attempting to generalize and collectivize the described behaviors, actions,
feelings, or attitudes by means of discursively distancing them from himself and the personalized
realm. Indeed, the personalized alternative—“When I drive the bus every day…”—places the
experience solely in the world of the speaker/encoder and disallows the forging of any connection
with or identification by the audience. In contrast, the statement, “When you (MS) drive the bus
every day…” allows the decoder to imagine the action being performed by the everyman—an
infinite repository of subjects that could even include the decoder himself. This may open up the
discursive opportunity for greater understanding by the interviewer and/or wider audience.
The statement, “You (MS) are not normal if you (MS) won’t be scared,” represents another
category of motivation behind this pattern of pronoun use, which was also evident across the
interview texts. In this sense, the motivation for generalization and universalization appears to be
related to a more specific agenda—that is, a need for not just understanding, but acceptance. This
use of the MS ‘you’ often emerged when the interviewees were describing moments of passivity or
‘weakness,’ in which they apparently didn’t act in accordance to their perceptions and definitions of
‘manliness’ or heroism, or in which they were being acted upon (particularly by the perpetrator of
the TA), through no fault of their own. The agenda therein is to universalize and normalize the
experience, behavior, or emotion in order to explain, justify, and/or attempt to garner (societal)
approval for their role within it. When the interviewees were not able or willing to discuss ‘weak’
emotions in an ‘I’-statement, they often utilized the MS ‘you’ in order to acknowledge them
covertly, under the ‘safe cover’ of the collectivized and normalized experience of them. Within this
interpretation of the statement presented here, then, the encoder seems to believe that if he can
convince the decoder that the ‘standard’ reaction to a TA would be fear, even from a macho and
‘acceptable’ generic Israeli man, then he can feel secure in a societal ‘approval’ of his own fear
reaction—even if he himself does not approve of or is ambivalent about his role and behavior.
4.2.3 Bringing in the audience: Use of the second-person feminine singular pronoun
One of the most notable discursive tendencies exhibited by these interviewees was their
unusual patterned use of the second-person feminine singular (FS) pronoun, in a non-generic,
marked discursive context. This is perhaps the most central and innovative preliminary finding, as
the pattern is particularly unconventional and yet, highly consistent (albeit to varying extents)
across the participants. The analyses revealed that the FS ‘you’ was used most frequently in
conjunction with the most difficult or stressful experiences described by the participants (most
often within the terror attack narratives (TANs)), and particularly within the sensory, bodily, and
highly emotional facets therein—such as looking, seeing, hearing, feeling, and being (afraid,
wounded, etc.). Perhaps most significantly, it was found that the majority of the interviewees
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uttered nearly the exact same statement at least once in their interviews: “You (FS) see the blood.”
As previously mentioned, grammatical and discursive conventions in MIH dictate that an
encoder, when not speaking directly in ‘I’-statements, would utilize the MS ‘you’ for generalized or
generic statements, and the FS ‘you’ only for specific statements or questions directed at me (e.g.,
“Are you (FS) familiar with Jerusalem?”). That is, standard MIH pronoun usage norms involve a
wide variety of contexts and statements that can be collocated with the MS ‘you,’ regardless of the
actual gender (and number) of the audience. Furthermore, as discussed in Chapter 3, the marked
FS ‘you’ is reserved for either generic or personalized statements only in all-female contexts, in
situations in which two females are talking to each other, or in unusual instances when at least the
majority of an audience is female and the speaker is an ideological feminist. Even in these cases it
is perfectly socially acceptable to use the customary unmarked MS ‘you’ instead, or
interchangeably.
I thus walked into the interviews conducted for this study—all with male
interviewees, all but one of whom were over the age of forty, and none of whom had made a
declaration of being a feminist—assuming I would hear the FS ‘you’ only in discursive contexts
directed specifically at me, in the current moment of the interview framework (e.g., asking if I
wanted coffee or if I understood what was being said). It is, therefore, highly unusual that the
interviewees made use of the FS ‘you’ within the narrative context of their TANs, while discussing
their own experiences from their own perspectives. The frequency and extent of these usage
patterns varied by participant, but the discursive phenomenon appeared in the texts of all of them.
My initial hypothesis, which actually emerged during the process of the first interview
conducted for the study, was that while the MS ‘you’ seems to serve as a ‘first-degree’ distancing
technique, the FS ‘you’ represents a second degree of distancing, or even projection. That is, the
former provides a discursive shift from the personalized ‘I’ to the unmarked generic subject, and
the latter facilitates an even more directed bridge from the generic to the specific marked FS
subject, which in this case was me. I felt, at the time, that this interviewee was making a concerted
effort to discursively pull me into and inside of his story. In a sense, this is really just the ‘flip side
of the coin’—the more distant the experiences and emotions are from the encoder, the closer they
can be to the decoder; and the more the narrator attempts to personalize his discourse for the
audience, the more removed it may necessarily be from himself.
It can thus be hypothesized that the use of the FS ‘you’ is motivated by a desire to bring the
(female) decoder in to the narrated story and experience, and the following section presents several
hypotheses as to reasons behind this motivation. In particular, it must be acknowledged that I,
personally, typify a particularly complicated decoder in this case. Not only was I clearly at least ten
and up to 35 years younger than the majority of the interviewees (and generally appear even
younger than that), but I am also plainly not a native Israeli. My obvious American accent may
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have made my interviewees dubious about my ability to understand their words at all, much less the
meanings and possible cultural significance behind them. In addition, my declared status as an
advanced-level psychology student may have introduced a differential power dynamic. At least
one of the interviewees interpreted my ‘title’ as being on par with a licensed clinical psychologist,
and thus, as having the potential to influence his struggle for reparations for his TA-related injuries.
It thus must be acknowledged that the interviewees’ need to bring me in to their discourse, as
represented by their patterned use of the FS ‘you,’ could be hypothesized to be only an ‘artifact’ of
our unique interview dynamic and context. I assert, however, that this discursive phenomenon is
much deeper and more universal, as will be apparent in the specific analyses and results to follow.
4.2.4 Claiming ownership: Use of the first-person singular pronoun
The final pattern apparent throughout the interviewees’ discourse was a consistent tendency
to use ‘I’-statements at points in their narratives at which they were describing their specific actions
and agency—particularly before, during, and after the TA. It was indeed extremely rare to find a
use of the MS or FS ‘you’ in narrations about what the drivers did actively at the scene of the
attack. Thus, as represented in the common types of statements found in the texts: “You (MS) are
not normal if you (MS) are not scared,” and “You (FS) see the blood,” but “I opened the door of the
bus,” and “I picked her up and told her not to worry.”
I assert that the interviewees’ use of the ‘I’ pronoun signifies a willingness and capacity to
claim the experience, thought, feeling, or behavior as their own and as worthy of their ownership.
This, in turn, suggests a self-evaluation of acceptance or approval of the described events and
circumstances and their role therein, and a belief that their audience (and their surrounding society
at large) would agree with this appraisal. Indeed, the participants appeared much more comfortable
claiming ownership discursively of an experience or facet therein if it involved them playing an
active role, at least, or performing in a manner that could be perceived as courageous, powerful,
and heroic, at most. Thus, while the most difficult, upsetting, ‘weak,’ and potentially traumatic
facets of the TA experience were relegated to the FS ‘you,’ and the facets about which the
interviewees were ambivalent or uncertain were ascribed to the MS ‘you,’ the ‘I’ received all the
action, agency, positive self-imagery, heroism, and glory.
I contend that these linguistic patterns in the individual discourse of these drivers may
essentially reflect and be influenced by a perceived message sent by the hegemonic cultural
discourse of Israeli society; namely, that it is not ‘acceptable’ to be affected by an event, or to be
passively acted upon therein. Rather, one must actively affect the event itself—being the hero, not
the victim; the strong and powerful man, not the weakling. In this perceived view, only when he
has behaved ‘correctly’ can the actor/narrator be proud of his actions, and, in turn, be given the
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social opportunity or right to ownership of the experience, both experientially and discursively.
4.3 PSYCHOSOCIOLINGUISTIC INTERPRETIVE HYPOTHESES:
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE INDIVIDUAL, HIS INNER PSYCHOLOGICAL WORLD,
AND HIS PERCEPTIONS OF THE SURROUNDING SOCIAL DISCOURSE
The previous section put forth the fundamental psycholinguistic patterns upon which all the
analyses presented in the coming chapters are based. To summarize, the central discursive patterns
found across the interviews conducted for this study were the following:
1) First-person singular possessive pronouns (such as, ‘me,’ and, ‘my’) and phrases were frequently the
subject of the sentence when the encoder was:
a) describing an experience that he saw as personalized for himself; or
b) attempting to personalize the experience for himself.
2) The second-person MS decoder (‘you’ (MS)) was frequently the subject of the sentence when the
encoder was:
a) describing an experience that he saw as depersonalized from himself; or
b) attempting to distance the experience from himself; and/or
c) describing an experience in which he behaved passively and/or was being acted upon
(particularly by the perpetrator of the TA).
3) The second-person FS decoder (‘you’ (FS)) was frequently the subject of the sentence when the
encoder was:
a) describing difficult, stressful, and/or upsetting sensory experiences (particularly relating to the
TA and its aftereffects); and/or
b) describing something that he perceived as particularly important for me (the young, female,
‘new immigrant,’ advanced psychology student and interviewer) to know, understand, and/or
vicariously experience.
4) The first-person singular encoder (‘I’) was frequently the subject of the sentence when the encoder
was:
a) describing an experience in which he was performing in an active, powerful, and/or ‘heroic’
manner; and/or
b) describing an experience or behavior of which he approved, or saw as ‘acceptable.’
Furthermore, from a basic quantitative assessment of the pronoun and tense collocations in the
interviewees’ TANs, the following clear patterns emerged:
1) The MS ‘you’ collocated most frequently with the ‘present’ (proximate + experience-able) tense.
2) The FS ‘you’ collocated almost exclusively with the ‘present’ (proximate + experience-able) tense.
3) The ‘I’ could be collocated with all tenses, with the following interpretive sub-patterns therein:
a) Collocation of the ‘I’ with the ‘past’ (remote + experience-able) tense seemed to indicate a
higher (more ‘ease-ful’) level of narrative processing and (appropriate) psychological distance.
b) Collocation of the ‘I’ with the ‘present’ (proximate + experience-able) tense seemed to indicate
a lower (more ‘dis-ease-ful’) level of narrative processing and a greater sense of proximity and
salience (‘alive-ness’ of the narration).
The preliminary analyses that were conducted in order to explore these patterns then led to
the emergence of four interpretive hypotheses, some of which were introduced in part above.
Indeed, when connecting the linguistic patterns to the stated personal feelings and attitudes of the
interviewees about their experiences and their perceptions of their surrounding societal discourse,
the following psychosociolinguistic hypotheses for their communicative strategies can be asserted:
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1) First-person singular possessive pronouns and phrases are used in contexts in which the encoder
feels particularly connected to or responsible for the experience he is describing.
This can be viewed as a discursive technique that can pinpoint the speaker’s sense of responsibility
and/or guilt (or lack thereof) regarding the narrated experience, and identification with facets
therein (e.g., the victims—both animate and inanimate, such as the bus itself). A heightened focus
on the speaker’s personalized sense of the experience appears to substitute for an acknowledgment
of the collective nature of it in actuality.
2) The unmarked MS ‘you’ pronoun is used predominantly in contexts in which the encoder is making
an attempt to generalize, universalize, collectivize, and/or normalize what he is describing, out of a
need to fit in with his surrounding society (and its norms).
This can be viewed as a technique aimed at encouraging, assisting, or requesting of the decoder/
audience to relate in a generalized manner to the speaker himself and/or to particular aspects of the
described experience. This may be utilized in neutral contexts, but may also come into play in
connection to ‘less acceptable’ aspects of the experience, which are often steeped in ambivalence
and uncertainty for the driver. This may particularly involve moments during which, he apparently
believes, he could or should have acted, thought, or felt differently—and thus, sees himself as
having not lived up to certain internalized personal, cultural, and/or societal expectations. The MS
‘you’ thus helps the encoder to send the message that the given issue or experience should be
universal, or that he wishes it were universal. In this sense, if the behavior or feeling is presented as
universal and ‘normal,’ then it can at least be a candidate for reinterpretation by the audience as
‘acceptable,’ in spite of the speaker’s ambivalence about it.
3) The marked FS ‘you’ pronoun is used predominantly in the most difficult experiential contexts, in
which the encoder is making an attempt to connect specifically and personally with me (the young,
female, ‘new immigrant,’ advanced psychology student and interviewer), and bring me in to what he
is describing.
This can be viewed as a technique aimed at dealing with the most difficult and emotionally charged
aspects (the ‘unacceptable’ parts) of the described experience. These facets often simply do not
lend themselves to universalization, generalization, or normalization, as they are frequently the
most specific and specialized details of the event, such as the experience of seeing blood and
smelling burning flesh. Because discursive ownership of these descriptions (by means of the ‘I’
pronoun) may be viewed, in the drivers’ eyes, as an acknowledgment of all the psychological
‘baggage’ that would likely accompany such an experience, the FS ‘you’ is most frequently
employed to displace these difficult and charged statements, or to share them with the decoder. In
this sense, the FS ‘you’ takes on all the facets of the experience that are viewed as ‘unacceptable’
within Israeli society—the trauma, the weakness, the moments of paralysis before the ‘correct’
measures were taken. This is perhaps the most complicated of the interpretive hypotheses, because
it carries with it five potential sub-hypotheses with regard to motivation:
a) An attempt to both distance the given feeling, statement, or experience from himself and
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project it onto me—as represented in the (hypothetical) statement, “I bring you in to it so you
can take it away from me.”
b) An attempt to cause me to personally identify with or experience vicariously the given feeling,
statement, or experience—as represented as, “I bring you in to it so you can share it with me.”
c) An attempt to cope with the given feeling, statement, or experience—as represented as, “I bring
you in to it so it won’t be so hard for me to handle/so you can take some of the burden off me.”
d) An attempt to educate me—as represented as, “I bring you in to it as much as I can so you can
try to understand it, because no one can understand it without going through it.”
e) An attempt to connect, for the simple sake of connection—as represented as, “I bring you in to
it as much as I can, because I feel so alone with it.”
All of these motivational hypotheses are equally valid and plausible, and it may not always (or
ever) be possible to discern with certainty which may have specifically contributed to a given
interviewee’s use of the FS ‘you’ at any given discursive moment.
Furthermore, this
communicative strategy prompts the fundamental question as to whether a visceral, discursive
connection with one’s audience—regardless of the motivation for doing so—can, in itself, help the
narrator in some way to cope with or process the difficult aspects of a stressful life experience, such
as a TA. It is possible that each of the interviewees used this discursive strategy for different
reasons; each nonetheless forged a connection with me in the process, and by doing so seemed to
find some relief from the troubling effects of the experience and from telling about it. It is
nonetheless important for the purposes of this study to take notice of the particular statements and
contexts in which the FS ‘you’ was utilized by each of the interviewees, in order to detect where
their particular difficulties with the experience may lie.
4) The ‘I’ pronoun is used predominantly in relation to actions, feelings, or experiences that the
encoder is willing and able to claim as his own, out of a degree of personal acceptance and/or a
sense that the surrounding society would approve (particularly with regard to his behavior).
This can be viewed as a technique aimed at calling attention to the ‘acceptable’ parts of the
described experience, and sending the message to the audience that, “This is what I did right.” This
is most commonly collocated with active and agentic behavior at the immediate scene of the TA,
which positions the driver as masculine, powerful, heroic, and unfailingly Israeli (in his perception
of the definitions of these terms). While he was in shock or passively experiencing the event, the
‘I’ is most often silenced, and transferred to either the MS or FS ‘you.’ But when he was acting,
helping, or saving, the ‘I’ is recruited to express this unambiguously and unabashedly.
Finally, extending these hypotheses about the interpretive relationship between the
interviewees’ discourse, their inner psychological world, and their perceptions of the surrounding
societal discourse, I propose the following three macro-level (across-participant) hypotheses:
1) The driver(s) who perceive(d) themselves or were perceived as having behaved most actively and
‘heroically’ before, during, and/or after the event use ‘I’ at a higher rate than the other interviewees.
2) The driver(s) who are/were most affected (psychologically, emotionally, and/or physically) by the
event use the FS ‘you’ at a higher rate than the other interviewees.
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3) The driver(s) who are/were most ambivalent about the ‘acceptability’ of their behavior before,
during, and/or after the event use the MS ‘you’ at a higher rate than the other interviewees.
Thus, the first major goal of this study is to analyze the drivers’ discourse in their baseline
interviews (BLIs) only, investigating the relationship between their patterned communicative
strategies, on the one hand, and their beliefs and attributions about the ‘acceptability’ of their
behavior and feelings surrounding the stressful event they experienced, on the other. The following
four chapters, comprising the Baseline Analyses section of this work, present this exploration from
an individualized participant-focused perspective on the interviewees who utilized each of the three
main pronouns more than the other participants (Chapter 5 analyzes the BLI of Yossi, who used the
FS ‘you’ more; Chapter 6 analyzes the BLI of Dani, who used the MS ‘you’ more; and Chapter 7
analyzes the BLI of Motti, who used the ‘I’ more). Finally, Chapter 8 offers a macro-level and
contextualized psychosociolinguistic comparative analysis of the relationships between the
experiences and discourses of all three participants. These four chapters attempt to systematically
investigate each of the hypotheses set forth herein, in order to fully understand the dynamic
relationship between the individual, his inner psychological world, and his perceptions of the
expectations of the society and culture surrounding him.
4.4 SOCIOPSYCHOLOGICAL LONGITUDINAL COMPARATIVE GUIDELINES:
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE INDIVIDUAL AND HIS NARRATIVE OVER TIME
Building upon the fundamental psycholinguistic findings and the extrapolated psychosociolinguistic micro- and macro-level hypotheses delineated above, the second principal objective of
this study is to explore the drivers’ longitudinal processes of coping with, working through, and
processing of the TA experienced, as evident in their narrations of it. I propose that this can be
accomplished by a comparative analysis of the participants’ uses of the six mechanisms of narrative
selection (MNSs) (Spector-Mersel, 2011)4—inclusion, omission, silencing, sharpening, flattening,
and ‘appropriate’ meaning attribution—in both the form and content of their BLI and follow-up
interview (FUI). This may serve to elucidate where the individual stands at the present moment
(that is, at the time of the FUI), with regard to: 1) the TA experience and its potential psychological
traumatic effects; 2) the process of narrating, processing, and working through the experience, and
where and how it stands in the LN (and life itself); 3) his perceptions and appraisals of his behavior
before, during, and after the TA experience and related emotional attributions, such as guilt and
responsibility; 4) his perceptions of his surrounding society’s perceptions and appraisals regarding
coping, resilience, and heroism (both in general and in relation to his particular case); and 5) his
sense of emotional and functional well-being vs. isolation within the experience and its effects.
4
Spector-Mersel’s (2011) model of narrative analysis and the six mechanisms of narrative selection were explicated in
detail in Chapter 3 (Section 3.6.2.4.2).
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Furthermore, I propose an additional narrative selection category relevant for the
comparative analyses conducted within the purview of this study, which I have named transferring.
Under this category falls the central psycholinguistic patterns upon which this study is based—that
is, it refers to the systematic discursive shift from the use of one pronoun to another and/or one
tense to another, in connection to a given topic, feeling, attitude, or experience or facet therein.
Rather than constituting an additional MNS in itself, transferring can be viewed more as an
intersection between silencing and ‘appropriate’ meaning attribution. The latter mechanism can
generally subsume such form representations as motivated pronoun or other word use, and the
former mechanism can also be viewed as involved, as a use of the ‘you’-voice can be interpreted as
a related silencing of the ‘I’-voice on the given topic. However, transferring is focused more
intently on the specific communicative strategies surrounding pronoun and tense use outlined in
this study, and comprises both of these facets, thus warranting an additional integrative category.
This stage of analysis attempts to define development in processing from a longitudinal
perspective on parallel narratives. That is, comparative analyses are conducted on primarily the
LNs and TANs of each participant’s BLI and FUI, according to six central hypotheses. Because, as
discussed previously, this study is fundamentally based on a salutogenic conceptual framework, it
is more appropriate to refer to a continuum of progression in either direction, rather than utilizing
more dichotomous terms (such as ‘improvement’ or ‘deterioration’). Therefore, this comparative
analysis model refers to trajectories toward ‘ease’ or ‘dis-ease’ in narrative processing. Below are
outlined the six Narrative Guidelines5 for a progression toward more ‘ease-ful’ processing:
1) More inclusion (less omission and silencing) of non-TA-related content
a) More discussion of life before and/or after the TA, or content beyond the TA, within the LN
b) More space and attention focused on life before and/or after the TA, or content beyond the TA,
within the LN
The first sub-criterion refers primarily to the content of the text, while the second refers to the form
and is represented in both raw line counts and percentages. That is, relative to the BL LN, it would
be expected to see in the FU LN a greater number of lines of text, as well as a greater percentage of
the whole, dedicated to non-TA-related topics. In this case, there is a complementary nature to the
MNSs, as more inclusion necessarily infers less omission and less silencing. This guideline could
be reflected, for example, in more talk about family, childhood, or current daily life.
2) More omission (less inclusion) of TA-related content
a) Less discussion of the TA within the LN
b) Less space and attention focused on the TA within the LN
Again, the second sub-criterion, which is more form-focused, is represented in both raw line counts
5
The term, guidelines, is used here more or less synonymously and interchangeably with, and can be understood as,
“hypotheses,” or, “criteria.” However, it is important to note that these are not rigid categories with specific cut-off
points or quantitative requirements. Rather, they are general guidelines based on qualitative data and interpretive
analyses, which should be used to garner a holistic picture of the functioning and processing of the encoder/narrator.
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and percentages. That is, relative to the BL LN, it would be expected to see in the FU LN a lesser
number of lines of text, as well as a smaller percentage of the whole, dedicated to the TA and TArelated topics.
Here, more omission necessarily infers less inclusion, but no complementary
inference can be made about the relationship (or lack thereof) with silencing within this ‘equation.’
In addition, it may be tempting to assume that Guidelines 1 and 2 complement each other as well—
that is, it seems logical to assume that more inclusion of non-TA-related content necessarily leads
to more omission of TA-related content. However, it must be remembered that, at least in absolute
numbers, this is not representative of a negative correlational relationship. Relative to its respective
BL LN, an FU LN can include both more TA-related content and more non-TA-related content—
indeed, it could be four times as long as the BL LN. This would simply mean that that comparative
narrative assessment met the first guideline for more ‘ease-ful’ processing, but not the second.
These criteria are only complementary when viewed through the lens of percentages.
It should be acknowledged that omission of TA-related content could, in some cases or
contexts, indicate ‘dis-ease-ful’ processing, rather than the opposite. Indeed, in a therapeutic or
psychodynamic setting, for instance, a refusal or inability to talk about a traumatic life event might
constitute evidence of a maladaptive coping strategy, such as denial or repression. However, in the
context of the present study, the purpose of which is primarily research-based, multiple parallel
narratives are compared longitudinally and the MNS of omission is indicated only relative to prior
or subsequent inclusion. Indeed, given the comparative nature of this analytic model, without
inclusion of a topic in one of the interviews, there is actually no way of determining what was
omitted in the other. And omission of a great deal of TA-related content in both the BLI and FUI
would not qualify as meeting this guideline (and likely would indeed indicate denial or repression).
Therefore, the contention here stands that greater omission of TA-related content in the FUI,
relative to the BLI, may imply a progression toward more ‘ease-ful’ narrative processing.
Contrarily, more omission of TA-related content in the BLI, followed by greater inclusion of TArelated content in the FUI, may indicate a trajectory toward ‘dis-ease-ful’ processing.
3) Less silencing of the ‘I’-voice regarding particularly difficult and upsetting TA-related content
a) More ‘I’-statements (preferably in the ‘past’ tense) about sensory experiences of the TA and
TA-related traumatic effects (both during and after event)
b) More ‘I’-statements about topics such as passivity, weakness, lack of heroism, and/or guilt
This is not necessarily limited to the LNs as were the previous two guidelines, but rather, may be
evident throughout a participant’s two interview texts. However, the strongest indication of a shift
toward more ‘ease-ful’ processing would be the use of the ‘I’-voice in particularly sensory or
emotionally charged statements in the FU TAN (especially those that were collocated with the FS
‘you’ in the BL TAN). This is a particularly complex hypothesis, as upon first glance it may
appear that the criterion calls for more inclusion of difficult content surrounding the TA
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experience—which would stand as contradictory to Guideline 2. On the contrary, Guideline 3
seeks not additional content in the FUI, but rather, a shifting (or transferring) of focus and
discursive strategies within content that existed, in a different form, in the BLI.
Indeed, this criterion seeks evidence that the individual has (at least) begun processing the
most upsetting facets of the experience, as reflected in the shift from non-‘I’- to ‘I’-statements. I
assert that this is one of the most powerful narrative representations of coping with and working
through a difficult life event such as this. For clarification, if a participant did not discuss the topics
of weakness or guilt at all in his BLI, and then devoted a great deal of time to them (whether with
‘I’-statements or not) in his FUI, this should be viewed as an example of greater inclusion of TArelated content—and thus, as evidence of a shift toward ‘dis-ease-ful’ processing, according to the
second guideline. However, if a participant discussed these topics in the MS ‘you’-voice in his
BLI, and then in the ‘I’-voice in his FUI, this is a good indication of Guideline 3.
4) Less sharpening (more flattening) of TA-related content
a) Fewer mini-narratives and shorter narratives overall
b) Less emphasis, superlatives, and repetition in form
c) Less within-narrative dialogue
This guideline is fully complementary in its foundation, as less sharpening is essentially more
flattening, and vice versa. The representations therein can exist in both content and form, and are
sought primarily within the main TAN and other TA-related mini-narratives. Sub-criterion 4(a)
focuses predominantly on content, as represented by raw line counts and percentages. This is a
logical offshoot of Guideline 2, as this facet of flattening differs from omission only in intensity.
And Sub-criteria 4(b) and 4(c) seek a discursive shift in the form of descriptions—as in, “It was
difficult,” as opposed to, “It was very very difficult”; and, “I told her to sit down,” as opposed to,
“I told her, ‘Sit down’.”
5) More attributions of meanings consistent with ‘owning’ and processing
a) More seamless incorporation of the TAN into the LN, rather than the TAN standing apart from
or outside of the LN
b) More acceptance of variety of roles and actions before, during, and after the TA
c) More willingness and capacity to explore the ‘greys’ of coping and effects of the TA
d) Greater focus on the collective nature of the TA
This guideline involves both form and content.
In Sub-criterion 5(a), evidence of the TAN
‘standing apart from or outside of the LN’ can be represented in content by demarcation marks or
narrative breaks (e.g., “And that’s it”), or questioning surrounding the introduction to the TAN
(e.g., “Do you want to hear about the terror attack now?”), and in form by significant pauses, sighs,
or changes in tone of voice. In this sense, this sub-criterion seeks an LN that includes the TAN, but
is not divided by it. The more ‘ease-fully’-processed LN should simply flow from one topic to the
next, at some point flowing into the TA experience, and later flowing out of it to the next topic,
with little fanfare or partitioning—similar to any other life event discussed within the LN.
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As previously mentioned, this guideline is closely connected with both the silencing and the
following transferring hypotheses. In Sub-criteria 5(b) and 5(c), the focus is primarily on the
content of the discourse, although a fundamental assumption is that this content be expressed in
more ‘I’- than non-‘I’-statements. In general terms, this guideline seeks less rigidity and strict
divisions between ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ behavior; between ‘acceptable’ and ‘unacceptable’ feelings;
and between ‘heroic’ and ‘non-heroic’ actions. The more ‘ease-fully’-processed narrative text will
show a greater acceptance of the full variety of the speaker’s behaviors and emotions surrounding
the TA experience, as represented in spoken content as well as in greater numbers of ‘I’-statements.
This may include more open discussion of traumatic effects and symptoms; need for medication or
therapy; participation in support groups; or consultations with mental health professionals.
In addition, mini-narratives about coping or heroism—such as discussions of other drivers
who had similar experiences and did or did not return to work, or fellow army buddies who fought
in wars with the narrator—would be expected to be presented in less ‘black and white’ terms. That
is, there should be an acknowledgment of the complexities of coping—that it may not always be
‘correct’ to ‘return to the field’ immediately after a difficult experience such as a TA, and that
experiencing traumatic effects does not automatically imply weakness or lack of masculinity.
Finally, Sub-criterion 5(d) seeks a greater focus on the collective nature of the TA, as represented
in the form of the discourse as less personalization and more use of collective pronouns (e.g., “what
happened to us,” as opposed to, “what happened to me”; and “we arrived at the bus stop,” as
opposed to, “I arrived at the bus stop”). All of these sub-criteria may present evidence of greater
‘owning’ and more ‘ease-ful’ processing of even the most troubling aspects of the TA experience.
6) Less transferring of difficult, upsetting, or ambivalent TA-related content away from the ‘I’-voice
a) More ‘I’-statements (of either ‘past’ or ‘present’ tense):
i. instead of ‘present’ tense FS ‘you’-statements
ii. instead of ‘present’ tense MS ‘you’-statements
b) More ‘past’ tense ‘I’-statements instead of ‘present’ tense ‘I’-statements
Again, closely related to the guidelines on silencing and ‘appropriate’ meaning attribution, this
wholly form-related hypothesis seeks more specific discursive ‘owning’ of the potentially traumatic
effects and most difficult facets of the TA experience.
Thus, Sub-criterion 6(a) would be
represented in the substitutions of statements such as, “I saw it,” for, “You (FS) see it”; and, “I was
afraid,” for, “You (MS) are afraid.” Sub-criterion 6(b) focuses more specifically on tense use; as
represented, for example, in the substitution of, “I did it,” for, “I do it.” All of these discursive
shifts are indicative of a trajectory toward more ‘ease-ful’ narrative processing of these topics.
Whereas all of these guidelines are fundamentally relative—in the sense that comparisons
are conducted between the BLI and FUI of each participant separately, and no comparisons are
made between participants—it is particularly critical to note the relativity of the transferring
guideline. If, for instance, a participant employed the FS ‘you’ in 40% of his BL TAN pronouns
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and in only 15% of his FU TAN pronouns, this can be viewed as a meaningful degree of
transferring.
If another participant’s use of the FS ‘you’ stood at 15% in his BL TAN and
decreased to 3% in his FU TAN, this can also be a significant demonstration of transferring. This
criterion focuses on the pronoun and tense uses delineated as the fundamental patterns found in this
study, seeking any substantial shift away from depersonalizing and projecting techniques and
toward owning and claiming techniques. I assert that a longitudinal shift toward heightened use of
both the ‘I’ pronoun and the ‘past’ tense may constitute evidence of a greater degree of processing
of the TAN, and thus, of working through and psychological coping with the TA experience itself.
The above discussion has carefully defined the central hypotheses upon which an
assessment of longitudinal ‘improvement’ in, or more ‘ease-ful,’ narrative processing, would rest.
The inverse of this is ‘deterioration,’ or a trajectory toward more ‘dis-ease-ful’ processing, which
essentially involves the opposite of each of these guidelines. The table below demarcates the
specific characteristics of a given FUI fitting each assessment description, organized by MNS.
Notation is present if the analytical focus lies predominantly on the LN or TAN. For clarity, the
mechanisms of sharpening and flattening are presented together, as the end result in each cell is the
same—that is, “less dialogue” is the consequence of less sharpening and more flattening in more
‘ease-ful’ processing, and of more sharpening and less flattening in more ‘dis-ease-ful’ processing.
Table 4-1: Guidelines for characteristics of narrative processing in a follow-up interview,
relative to the respective baseline interview
Inclusion
Omission
Content
Content
Silencing
Content
Sharpening
Content
and
Flattening
Form
‘Appropriate’
meaning
attribution
Transferring
Content
and
Form
Form
‘EASE-FUL’ PROCESSING
More non-TA-related content (in LN)
Less TA-related content (in LN)
More ‘I’-statements about
difficult/upsetting facets of TA
Fewer mini-narratives (in TAN(s))
and shorter TAN(s) overall
Less emphasis, superlatives,
and repetition (in TAN(s))
Less dialogue (in TAN(s))
TAN is integrated within LN
More acceptance of varied roles and
actions before, during, and after TA
More exploration of ‘greys’ of coping and
traumatic effects of TA
Greater focus on
collective nature of TA
More ‘I’ and less ‘you’ overall (in TAN)
More ‘past’ tense and less
‘present’ tense overall (in TAN)
‘DIS-EASE-FUL’ PROCESSING
More TA-related content (in LN)
Less non-TA-related content (in LN)
More non-‘I’-statements about
difficult/upsetting facets of TA
More mini-narratives (in TAN(s))
and longer TAN(s) overall
More emphasis, superlatives,
and repetition (in TAN(s))
More dialogue (in TAN(s))
TAN stands apart from LN
More ambivalence about and/or
less acceptance of roles and actions
before, during, and after TA
More rigidity and ‘black and white’
attitudes about coping and traumatic
effects of TA
Greater focus on
individual experience of TA
Less ‘I’ and more ‘you’ overall (in TAN)
Less ‘past’ tense and more
‘present’ tense overall (in TAN)
Overall, for the purposes of this study, the operationalization of a trajectory toward more
‘ease-ful’ narrative processing involves an FU TAN that is more distanced and less proximal and
personalized than the respective BL TAN. The FU TAN is less vivid, salient, and ‘alive,’ as
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represented by a heightened use of the remote ‘past’ tense and less use of the proximate ‘present’
tense. There is more talking about, as opposed to talking within, the TA experience, as represented
through less emphasis and dialogue. And there is less transferring of the most difficult, upsetting,
and/or ambivalence-causing facets of the experience from the ‘I’-voice to either of the ‘you’voices. There is a sense that there is more to the individual’s life (history and story) than the TA, as
represented by its taking up a smaller volume within the LN, and by a less stark division or no
partition at all between the periods of life before, during, and after the TA. There is more evidence
of coping and processing, as represented in an increased capacity to discuss and work through
issues that may not be so ‘black and white.’
In contrast, the operationalization of a trajectory toward more ‘dis-ease-ful’ narrative
processing involves an FU TAN that is more personalized and proximate, more vivid and
descriptive, and more ‘alive’ (narratively and psychologically) than the respective BL TAN. There
is more representation of this in the discourse, as the narrator uses more emphasis and dialogue to
bring the story to ‘life’ for himself and his audience. This will include more transferring of any
troubling or traumatic aspects of the TA experience away from the ‘I’-perspective and onto either
the MS or FS ‘you,’ depending on the motivation for the transfer. There is a sense that the
individual’s life has become condensed and reduced to little more than the TA, as demonstrated in a
substantial increase in the volume occupied by the TAN within the LN. The TAN may also stand
alone or (discursively) outside of the LN, in a reflection that it is perceived by the individual as
standing outside of his ‘normal’ life history.
In this sense, the more the TA conspicuously
protrudes from the LN, the less likely it is that it has been ‘ease-fully’ processed, worked through,
and coped with by the narrator. Finally, the individual who shows evidence of greater ‘dis-ease’ in
his narrative processing will show a decreased willingness and capacity to explore the range of
possible reactions to a stressful life event like this. He may instead demonstrate a stricter adherence
to more rigid attitudes about ‘correct’ and ‘acceptable’ norms, and thus, may find it difficult to
discursively claim any of his own behavior that he perceives as not fitting these requirements.
The second section of results, comprising the Longitudinal Comparative Analyses section of
this dissertation, explores these fundamental comparative hypotheses and guidelines in an attempt
to assess narrative processing, again from an individualized participant-focused perspective on
three of the interviewees. Chapter 9 analyzes both the BLI and FUI of Yossi, who best exemplifies
a trajectory toward ‘ease’ in his longitudinal processing of the TA he experienced, while Chapter
10 analyzes both the BLIs and FUIs of Eli and Shimi, who both exemplify static longitudinal
processing of the TAs they each experienced. Finally, Chapter 11 presents a comprehensive
discussion of these results and the possible innovative contribution of this method of analysis as a
qualitative narrative assessment tool for individuals after stressful and/or traumatic life events.
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PART 2
Baseline Analyses
Herein are presented three separate baseline case studies. Each chapter begins by
introducing the specific participant and giving a summary of his demographic
background and of the terror attack he experienced, as well as a discussion of my initial
impressions, the interview contexts, and our interactions. Then, there is a detailed
presentation of the pronominal discourse of the interviewee’s baseline interview, with
particular focus on the pronoun used more predominantly. This is followed by a
quantitative analysis of the distribution of pronouns and tenses in the central analyzed
narrative(s) of the baseline interview, and then by a qualitative ‘poetic’ analysis of the
same narrative(s). Each chapter concludes with a discussion of the central findings and
main messages illustrated in the analysis.
Three participants are focused upon, each as an exemplar of predominant usage of a
different pronoun. Chapter 5 presents Yossi, who used the second-person feminine
singular pronoun the most. Chapter 6 presents Dani, who used the second-person
masculine singular pronoun the most. Chapter 7 presents Motti, who used the firstperson singular pronoun the most. Finally, Chapter 8 offers a comparative acrossparticipant analysis of all three, from a psychosociolinguistic macro-level perspective.
Comparative focus is placed on their pronoun and tense use, meanings, and messages, as
well as their relevant personal experiences that may place these discursive findings into
greater context. Finally, connections are demonstrated between the study hypotheses,
findings, and the interviewees’ own words, particularly related to the larger topics of
individual and collective coping and societal pressure and expectations.
CHAPTER 5
YOSSI:
“YOU (FS) SWALLOW ALL OF THE ATROCITY”
—
BRINGING THE AUDIENCE IN TO TRAUMATIC EXPERIENCE
AND ‘UNACCEPTABLE’ WEAKNESS
5.1 INTRODUCTION TO YOSSI: BACKGROUND, CONTEXT, AND IMPRESSIONS
At the time of the baseline interview (BLI), Yossi was 56 years old and married with three
children. He was born in Iraq and immigrated to Israel with his family at the age of eighteen
months. He completed twelve years of schooling and served in the Armored Corps during his
compulsory army service. Yossi fought in the Six Day War (1967) and the War of Attrition (196870) during his mandatory service, and as a reserve soldier he fought and was wounded in the Yom
Kippur War (1973) and the First Lebanon War (1982). Yossi worked as a bus driver in Jerusalem
for approximately 35 years without a single break, even continuing to work part-time after his
‘retirement’ at the age of 49. Nineteen months prior to the BLI, at the age of 54, Yossi experienced
a suicide bombing on his bus. The terror attack (TA) was extensive, with many casualties and
injuries, and Yossi suffered a permanent partial loss of hearing as a result. He was not working at
the time of the BLI, and appeared to be suffering from significant post-traumatic symptoms.
I was referred to Yossi by the psychologist at Egged. It took quite a while to schedule the
BLI, due in part to his inability or lack of willingness to plan in advance. Every time I called to ask
him whether we could book a meeting in the upcoming week, he would always answer that the first
day of the week would be “great” for him, but that it was “hard to plan beyond that.” I got the
impression that it was related to a variable work schedule, such that sometimes he was busy in the
mornings and other times in the afternoons. At one point it took me almost a week to catch Yossi
on the phone, during which time his son answered one call and mentioned that his father was on
“holiday.” All of this combined to cause my surprise when Yossi stated during the interview that
he does not work anymore, and repeatedly attested that all he does is sit “right here on the couch.”
He never directly addressed our scheduling difficulties and I never asked, but I later deduced that
most of Yossi’s ‘“busy”-ness’ during this period was related to his struggles with the National
Insurance Institute (NII), which became a central topic of his BLI and is discussed further below.
The BLI lasted approximately three hours, and I found it difficult for two primary reasons.
First, at the time of the interview Yossi was embroiled in a dispute with the NII over whether he
could be recognized as disabled as a result of his injuries from the TA, and if so, how much
compensation he would be eligible to receive. Most of the interview was dominated by Yossi’s
long-winded and angry rants about this battle, which clearly was very upsetting for him. At the
time, I found it frustrating and challenging to keep him ‘on-task’ as far as the (my) overarching
objectives of the interview. Indeed, there were several moments when Yossi entered into what I
could only describe as tirades on one or another topic—most often, his experiences with the NII
and the way he perceives the government as having treated him after the TA, or his feelings on
Arabs and terrorism in Israel. It was close to impossible to interrupt him when he was in the throes
of these argumentations, and even more so to redirect him. The first time on each subject, I ‘let’
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him talk uninterruptedly as long as he chose, while in subsequent appearances of the same topic I
allowed myself more leeway to interrupt and gently try to steer him to a new subject. However, I
since came to realize that what Yossi did present was clearly important for him and an informative
window into his life story in any case (and that perhaps I should have intervened less in this
process). And yet, I also later noted that Yossi repeated each tirade at least one other time in the
interview in nearly the same exact words and manner, leading me to believe that he may actually
have some organic memory impairment. This may also have been influenced by his age and/or the
repetitive rhetoric of Israeli conversation in general (Tobin, personal communication).
It is also possible that these speeches had become rehearsed to the point of being almost
rote; a likely result of having given them repeated times in the past, perhaps to anyone who would
listen and empathize with him. As I perceived this apparent need for ‘a shoulder to cry on’ at the
time of the BLI, I made great efforts to validate Yossi’s feelings throughout all of these speeches,
by nodding and agreeing that these experiences must be very frustrating for him. However, I was
left wondering if Yossi perhaps viewed me as a professional of some kind—thus, in his mind,
deserving of hearing these tirades and perhaps responsible for alleviating his distress. My fears
were further amplified after the formal interview had concluded, when he requested that I write up
a report of my “professional” opinion of him and his condition. I replied that I am unqualified to
write any report of a clinical nature, but he did not seem convinced. I still feel fairly certain that
Yossi viewed me not as a student, but as a psychologist, and as such, part of the ‘establishment.’
The second reason for my discomfort during the BLI lay in Yossi’s manner of presentation
of his terror attack narrative (TAN), which was extremely vivid, descriptive, and detailed—in fact,
quite gruesome. He talked at length about the bodies of the victims, their dismembered limbs and
heads, their twitching body parts, and the blood and pieces of flesh strewn all over the bus. It was
as if he were putting on a performance, and he seemed to go out of his way to tell the story in the
goriest way possible. Yossi also employed facial expressions, gestures, and body movements to act
out parts of the narrative, pulling his body rigid and widening his eyes while describing the victims’
heads, and twitching and clenching his arms and fists while describing their detached limbs.
From the viewpoint of the interviewer/researcher, I must admit that this narrative was
incredibly difficult to deal with (to hear initially as well as to analyze for hours afterwards). I was
highly disturbed throughout Yossi’s ‘performance,’ and found it nearly impossible to not be
affected by the gruesomeness of his discourse. I was equally intrigued by the cognitive dissonance
I was feeling. Indeed, within the framework of my B.A. thesis research, I conducted similarly indepth narrative interviews with twenty Holocaust survivors. I had borne witness to narratives of
significant trauma and pain and descriptions of unspeakable atrocities, and I was no ‘stranger’ to
the effects of these types of narratives. Yet, while I never had a problem keeping my composure in
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any of those interviews, I found myself struggling not to be overcome with emotion during Yossi’s
interview. While I had certainly expected that I would be exposed to unpleasant stories throughout
this research project, I felt that something else was going on between me and Yossi that fell outside
the purview of a simple imparting of a narrative by interviewee to interviewer.
Indeed, Yossi mentioned a few times that these were the images that still follow and disturb
him endlessly, with comments such as, “You (FS) would never forget it,” and, “You (FS) can’t
work after something like this.” At some point, I began to get the sense that he was trying to affect
me in the same way in which he was affected. It actually felt like Yossi was attempting to pull me
into his story, and was using any means at his disposal to make his statements more personal for me
and thus, easier for me to connect with. At the time of the interview, I thought that this could be
reflected in Yossi’s choice to tell his narrative of the TA in such a vivid and descriptive manner.
(Only in the analysis process did I realize that Yossi’s patterns of pronoun usage were significantly
different from those of the other interviewees, and it was this realization that led to a major shift in
the focus of the research study overall.) Suffice it to say, I left Yossi’s interview feeling as if I had
a huge weight on my shoulders. I could viscerally feel the effects of what I viewed as his attempts
to project his difficult experiences onto me, and it was only after a few days of feeling upset and
emotionally drained that I felt as if I had fully recovered from the interview. I did not have this
type of reaction to any of the other interviews, and it is of note that none of the other interviewees
told their TANs in a manner even approaching the gruesomeness in Yossi’s telling performance.
My overall impressions of Yossi after the BLI were that he was clearly depressed and
affected by what he had experienced. It had been a little over a year and a half since the TA, and he
was still very much upset. He made repeated references to what I would classify as anhedonia (an
inability to experience pleasure in normally pleasurable activities) and it did appear that his
symptoms at the time would have qualified as clinical depression and/or post-traumatic stress. This
notwithstanding, Yossi was able to talk quite animatedly and at times I did see some flickers of
positive emotions. His face literally lit up several times during the interview—first, at the mention
of his wife and wedding, and later, at references to his granddaughter. I also observed that, even
after saying that there aren’t too many stories to tell about his work (“I just work, that’s it, nothing
special”), a narrative he subsequently told about an old man who took his bus every day came out
almost effortlessly, and Yossi’s face looked almost enchanted as he told it.
Following the BLI, I had ‘classified’ Yossi as decidedly not resilient, according to my
research definitions at the time. Indeed, one of my primary ‘criteria’ had been the ability to return
to work (or at least ride on a bus) after being in a TA, and Yossi was adamant about his refusal to
go near a bus (as well as to let anyone in his family do so). However, Yossi did mention that he
defines himself “one million percent” as a survivor, and that, at least before the TA, he saw himself
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as strong and brave for the work he did. At the time, I wrote in my field notes that “perhaps there is
something else in this interview that will make itself known as part of the ‘real story’.” And
indeed, Yossi, both as an individual participant and as reflective of a greater psychosociolinguistic
phenomenon, quickly became absolutely central to the research as a whole.
5.2 YOSSI’S BASELINE INTERVIEW: WHAT HE SAID AND HOW HE SAID IT
Relative to the other interviewees and throughout his BLI, what most characterized Yossi’s
discourse was his propensity for statements utilizing the second-person feminine singular pronoun
(‘you’ (FS)).
Nearly every time I asked a question that I viewed as clearly calling for a
personalized and specific answer (e.g., “How was that experience for you?” or, “Were you
afraid?”), he gave responses such as, “Listen, you (FS) are afraid of many things,” or “When you
(FS) do…” There were discursive moments in which Yossi would put me (presumably, the ‘you
(FS)’ in question) into the role of a psychologist, or an NII representative, or a bus driver, or a bus
passenger, or, perhaps most significantly, himself as experiencer of the TA. Each use of the ‘you
(FS),’ as well as of each of the other pronouns, in each context carries with it interpretations and
implications of its own. It is, therefore, critical that attention be paid to specific examples of the
discursive choices made by Yossi, within their specific contexts.
Overall, Yossi showed four distinct patterns of pronoun choice throughout the BLI, all of
which were reflected in his TAN and life narrative (LN). First, he utilized first-person possessive
pronouns (such as, ‘me,’ and, ‘my’) and phrasing as a strategy toward creating a sense of
personalization and possession of the topics or objects of reference. Second, he utilized a number
of third-person ‘others’ (such as, “a bus driver”) as a strategy for creating a sense of
depersonalization, or distance, and universalization. Third, he utilized the FS ‘you’ as a strategy to
bring his audience in to the experience he was describing. Finally, he utilized the first-person
singular pronoun (‘I’) as a strategy toward claiming ownership of the experience or role he was
describing. Each of these strategies is discussed in turn below, with demonstrative examples.
Use of first-person possessive pronouns and solitary phrases
From the beginning of his BLI, Yossi frequently used discourse that appeared to be
personalizing his bus and events he had experienced through the use of first-person possessive
pronouns, referring to certain objects as his own or even as himself.1 For instance, rather than
saying that the door of the (or even his) bus had been gashed open, he said, “My door was warped,
1
This discursive mechanism is known in linguistics as metonymy, defined as a device in which one entity is used to
stand for another associated entity, generally portraying some actual relationship between the things signified. In
Yossi’s uses of this mechanism, the use of “me” most often refers to the bus he generally drove or the bus he was
driving at the time of the TA.
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gashed.”i At another point he said, “I thought that it’s a truck that ran into me hard,”ii as opposed
to “…ran into my bus,” or, “…ran into the bus.” He also referred to both passengers on his bus and
casualties that his unit suffered during the Yom Kippur War as his own, as in the following two
statements: “Two girls got on me [my bus],”iii and, “Now I was wounded in the Yom Kippur War,
(4) I received a direct hit, and I had two casualties (MP).”iv The latter sentence could be interpreted
as Yossi’s inclusion of “[having]” two casualties under the umbrella of his own ‘personal’ wounds.
That is to say, Yossi may not differentiate between the “direct hit” he personally suffered and the
two casualties—both appear to be, in his mind, his wartime wounds. Similarly, he referred to his
casualties during the TA almost as if he were a commander on a battlefield during a war, with
soldiers under his command who had been hit by enemy fire.
Yossi also referred to the TA itself as “what [they] did to me”v at one point, and also many
times as “what happened to me.”vi At other points, however, he referred to it euphemistically, as
simply “what happened.”vii Yossi showed a general tendency to focus more on himself and on his
own role, responsibilities, and actions, and what he experienced and suffered at the time, rather than
generalizing the event and recognizing that it did, indeed, involve and cause a great deal of stress to
other (still living) people as well. Yossi spent much time discussing the bodies of, and in general,
the victims of the attack, but scarcely mentioned the other survivors. From his discourse, it almost
seemed as if the TA was an event solitarily experienced by him, nearly from beginning to end, and
as if he was the sole survivor of it. In addition, the communicative strategy reflected in the use of
first-person possessive phrases and pronouns may suggest a sense of guilt or responsibility for what
happened, as if he expected to be able to protect his passengers from an attack happening on his
bus. This notion of personal ‘experience-ability’ and responsibility under fire could be viewed as a
byproduct of having served in the Israeli army, and of the social mentality surrounding the cultural
supremacy of ‘The Israeli Warrior’ prevalent in Israel during the period in which Yossi grew up
and fought in multiple wars (Tobin, personal communication). In this sense, the TA may be
perceived by Yossi as another ‘wartime’ incident that he experienced, whether he was in uniform or
not—and thus, his discourse surrounding both contexts is notably similar.
5.2.2 Depersonalization, generalization, and universalization:
Use of third-person ‘others’ and the second-person masculine singular pronoun
Atypically in relation to most of the other interviewees, Yossi did not use the second-person
masculine singular pronoun (‘you’ (MS)) at all in his TAN. This finding makes sense, in light of
the hypothesis that the use of this pronoun signifies universalization and collectivization, and given
Yossi’s many statements about his overarching sense of isolation (both as an effect of the TA and
as a result of his battles with the NII to have his injuries recognized and compensated). Notably,
however, Yossi made use of a number of third-person ‘others’ (most specifically, “he,” “a person,”
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and “a bus driver”), in discursive locations in which the MS ‘you’ might be expected as the
conventional choice. He offered this exemplar account as part of the introduction to his TAN:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
“That’s it. I also worked (1) without taking any breaks. I would leave happy, I had those three hours,
four hours, I would come back home. Like filled up my day. And uhh, of course, when youuu (FS)
dr-, whenn a bus driver, it’s a person whoo knows his passengers, you (FS) know, you (FS) ride with
him every day, so, uhh, he knows the problems. It is like for example a psychologist of people.
People tell him what they have been through, and he tells them, and what is happening with them,
and ‘Why are you (FS) sad?’ and ‘Why are you (MS) sad?’ and ‘What’s the problem?’ and all.
When [they] get onto a bus everyone (MS) unwinds and tells his story. So over time you (FS) get to
know people. So you (FS) get on routinely with him ont-, on-, onto the bus, and sit (FS) in one of the
places, and you (FS) know hello [to] this one (FS), hello [to] that her, or hello [to] that him.
Everyone (MS) gets on (MS), and sits down (MS), annd uhh, that’s it. So you (FS) know the
people, and someti- and sometimes you (FS) are like this, like, like a sort of little family. You (FS)
know the people, you (FS) know the- their problems, everyone (MS), and [they] keep riding,
everyone (MS) is smiling, and everyone (MS) is running around [busy]. And, uhh, some of the
people I didn’t know, and that was like every normal day. Like every normal day. Uhh, in the
morning I got up, and usually we put on tefillin. (2) I prayed, and uhh, I went to work.” viii
In this short section of text, Yossi utilizes three distinct pronominal techniques, with what at first
appears as very little ‘logic’ with regard to his choices in a given moment or sentence. He begins
his description2 with several specific statements about himself, using the ‘I’ pronoun—making it
clear that these experiences happened to him, and that he is recounting them as himself. After this,
however, the subject of the bulk of the report becomes the indefinite third person—“a bus driver”
or “a person” who is nameless, universal, and non-personal. Yossi, in fact, likens this bus driver to
a psychologist at one point, and then continues to refer to the subject as “he” or “him.”
Alongside of this, Yossi introduces another subject: the second-person FS pronoun. It is
unclear to whom he is referring, but it appears that he sees this FS ‘you’ as a prototypical
passenger, as is most apparent in lines (L.) 3-4 and 7-9. Indeed, while Yossi is likely directing
these statements to me specifically (as represented by the marked and personal use of the pronoun),
it is also possible that he is introducing an unconventional generic and impersonal use of the FS
‘you,’ to relate to a non-specific female third party. Finally, Yossi completes this description—
which, it becomes clear at this point, is only a prelude to his TAN—by switching back to ‘I’statements (L.14-15). He returns to become the subject of the narrative, and the ‘experiencer’ of
the events he is describing, as opposed to the majority of this text section.
Particularly discernible in Yossi’s choices of pronoun usage throughout this excerpt is the
apparent inconsistency therein. Indeed, the boundary between objective description and subjective
comment was frequently blurred, and the choice at certain points to employ the subjective function
of the FS ‘you,’ collocated with the proximate-present (PPr) tense, for actions and events that
2
According to Rosenthal (1993), this text would be labeled as a condensed situation, which is a subcategory of
description in her thematic field analysis typology (story, description, argumentation), as it is framed as one
exemplary situation comprised of a compression of events that were frequently experienced by the interviewee. This
type of discourse is generally collocated with a timeless or neutral tense (Tobin, personal communication)—as in,
“This is what we would do every day,” as opposed to, “This is what we did”—and often with the use of words such
as “usually” or “generally” to indicate the frequency and/or familiarity of the ‘compressed’ events.
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actually took place in the past, was highly unusual. This, in addition to the various uses of the
third-person forms collocated with the timeless use of the PPr tense, combined to create a picture of
a mix of communicative strategies apparently aimed at both distancing and bringing in the decoder
at different points in the discourse. As part of the analysis of this passage, therefore, it is critical to
ask first, “How else could each statement have been expressed?” and second, “If there is a logic
underlying the choices expressed here, what might it be?” The following table offers several
alternative (i.e., more personalized) manners of expressing the statements that Yossi generalized.
Table 5-1: Actual (generalized) quotes and possible (more personalized) alternatives
ACTUAL QUOTE FROM TEXT
“a bus driver, it’s a person who knows his passengers”
(L.3)
“you (FS) ride with him every day” (L.3-4)
“People tell him what they have been through, and he
tells them, and what is happening with them” (L.5)
“So you (FS) know the people, and someti- and
sometimes you (FS) are like this, like, like a sort of little
family.” (L.10-11)
POSSIBLE ALTERNATIVES
“I knew/was familiar with my passengers.”
“I knew/was familiar with the passengers on my bus.”
“The passengers rode [on the bus] with me every day.”
“I drove with some of the same passengers every day.”
“People used to/would tell me what they have been
through, and I used to/would tell them…”
“I knew the people, and sometimes we were like a sort of
little family.”
Here, the various possible alternatives for some of Yossi’s statements show the different discursive
atmosphere created by each. It seems that Yossi chose to generalize or distance many of his
statements from himself, in addition to formulating the sentences in a habitualized framework (as
seen in the use of the timeless function of the PPr tense). This creates the sense that his statements
pertain to all bus drivers in a universalized context, rather than describing a specific situation,
condition, or feeling that he personally experienced. It is possible that Yossi’s use of the timeless
tense form collocates with his use of the generalized third-person pronouns, while other—perhaps
more emotionally charged—tense forms tend to be utilized together with the less neutral—and also
more emotionally charged and personal—pronouns (Tobin, personal communication).
Yossi did utilize the MS ‘you’ in his BL discourse, albeit extremely sparingly. It was most
often employed to refer discursively to male individuals other than himself, in the context of
generalized discourse and yet, in a strangely specific manner. For instance, the following quotation
came as part of a long diatribe about “Arabs who put bombs on buses,” and Yossi’s opinion of the
difference between fighting heroically as a soldier and the “cowardly act” of bombing women and
children in the midst of their daily lives:
1
2
3
4
“But you (FS) also start to hate these things. To hate these people, because, because. I am saying, at
the moment that, that you (MS) get onto the bus, it is not a war, it is a crime. It is not a war. (2) In
any case I would understand this war that you (MS) are going to kill a soldier, you (MS) are going to
fight against soldiers, bomb, kill, you (MS) understand? Great. To appreciate that.” ix
The next quotation employing the MS ‘you’ followed later in this speech:
1
2
“Listen (FS), it’s crazy! (1) It’s crazy! Imagine (FS) that you (FS) are going and taking a stroll in
the old city, alone, nothing, without a weapon, nothing, without protection, you (FS) are not doing
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3
4
5
6
7
8
anything. Anyway you (MS) come stab a soldier, uhh, I still kind of understand. But when you (MS)
come stab a little girl, or a little boy, or a pregnant woman, or a man, or an old man who is going to,
the what kind of crazy, despicable war is that? So this is what bothers me. This is what makes you
(FS) angry. And then if they (MP) caught him, and he doesn’t have blood on his hands, {you (MS)
let him go}. What are you (MP) crazy? What are you (MP) stupid? People like that shouldn’t be let
go at all, no, no. They shouldn’t see the light of day. (2) At all.”x
Here, Yossi continues to use the MS ‘you’ as a discursive stand-in, first for the ‘Arab aggressor’
(L.3-4), and later for the unacceptably-acting Israeli police force and/or judicial system (L.6-7).
This again represents an unusual use of this pronoun, as it appears distanced from the ‘Israeli
everyman.’ Indeed, Yossi’s use of the various third-person ‘others’ seemed to accomplish a
function closer to that of the MS ‘you’ in the discourse of most of the other interviewees.
The question remains with regard to what ‘logic’ he was employing (either consciously or
unconsciously) within these discursive processes.
Perhaps Yossi’s use of these third-person
‘others’ serves as a discursive representation of his sense of marginalization and disconnectedness.
Or perhaps his use of these strategies simply reflects his view of these experiences as generalized,
universalized, and ‘usual.’ Indeed, the text excerpt refers to a very conventional situation, one that
Yossi experienced nearly daily for decades: driving on the same bus, on the same route, with many
of the same passengers. Regardless of the myriad possible motivations for this discursive strategy,
of primary importance here is the system of choices reflected—choices that tend to favor the ‘other’
over the ‘I’ in these generalized contexts. The continuation of the analysis below reveals which
contexts and likely motivations led to discursive choices by Yossi favoring the FS ‘you’ and the ‘I.’
Significantly more than any of the other participants, Yossi’s BL discourse was riddled with
the FS ‘you’ pronoun, and indeed, a half hour into his interview, I had noticed clearly that in certain
discursive contexts, he rarely used ‘I’-statements at all. Much of Yossi’s TAN had the FS ‘you’ as
its subject; two nearly consecutive representative sections of text are presented below:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
“You (FS) look and you (FS) see that your (FS) eyes, it is from, it, it, it (2) the, everything like opens
up to you (FS) in horror, in in in, it, you (FS) aren’t afraid, it iit is atrocity, it isn’t, it isn’t fe-, you
(FS) are scared, it isn’t fear, it is something that is impossible to define. Because there is no, nothing
to be afraid of, but, it is’it is atrocity that is impossible to describe. And you (FS) look (3), and no
one gets near the bus. No one. The bus is going up in flames. (3) I look, and then I do like this with
[my] ear- with my hands, with [my] head, (1) ‘Wow,’ I say to myself things like, ‘What happened?’
‘It can’t be!’ You (FS), you (FS) hear silence, and then you (FS) hear from within the silence “Aii,
aii, aii, it hurts, aii.” All sorts of shou- cries like that. And you (FS) look, you (FS) see people, (1)
hanging. (2)”xi
Here, the entire text section is in the PPr tense, which, according to Tobin’s (1989b) interlocked
semantic tense sub-systems, signifies that this experience is perceived by Yossi as ‘close to his
heart’ and experience-able. Except for a single, “I look” (L.5), he claims a statement for himself
only when there is distinct action, such as when he does and says (L.5-6). Every other verb in this
excerpt is attributed to the FS ‘you,’ and involves sensory/emotional statements—looking, seeing,
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being (afraid or not afraid), and hearing. This pattern is maintained in the subsequent section:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
“You (FS) see people without heads. Some without arms, halves of bodies. Now you (FS) see all the
stuff inside of the bodies. Everything is on the floor. If you (FS) can imagine, there are twelve
bodies, twelve people who were pulverized, it’s not people who died and were whole. Because if
you (FS) see a corpse, so you (FS) don’t, don’t think about it, you (FS) say that the person maybe is
asleep, like, because there is no, uhh, sense like that. But it’s not like that. It is something else.
You (FS) see mutilated people. You (FS) see hands moving. You (FS) see legs very few, it, it
everything is hot. You (FS) see, everyything is throbbing, you (FS), everything everything is
moving, everything, is boiling. People are like, the movements of the eyes too, of the hands too,
everything is moving. Everything is moving. And now I started to push. When I had already
recovered, (2) I started to push, limbs so that I wouldn’t go on top of them. To hear, I went to
the middle of the bus, and I came back. And all of this I swallow, that one is moving hands here,
moving legs. Everything, all the flesh, [it is] moving people, halves! Moving! I came back to
the front of the bus a girl was lying there, she also had wounds, all over her too, full of blood.
‘Driver, help me.’ And so I picked her up. You (FS) get strength, that you (FS) don’t know from
where. You (FS) get supernatural powers, it is really, impossible to define it. (2) My door was
warped, gashed. Everything was gashed. I grasped the door, by force, I opened a little, and then,
and then, only then, a head [of a security person] appeared.”xii
Here, Yossi continues to bring in the FS ‘you’ subject, discursively placing the entire sensory
experience of the bombing onto his audience (me). Rather than discussing the event as something
he personally went through in the past—indeed, he was the one who saw all of these sights, heard
all of these cries, and felt all of these feelings—Yossi uses the combined communicative strategies
of the PPr tense and the second-person FS pronoun to denote his attitude toward these experiences.
Notably, however, the above section includes a small interlude during which Yossi tells a
mini-narrative with himself as the agentic ‘I,’ in a personalized and active role. From the sentence,
“And now I started to push” (L.9), until the sentence, “And so I picked her up” (L.14), Yossi is the
main character and there is no ‘you’ subject to whom he is talking or referring. Suddenly, the
narrative takes on an entirely different feeling, with no detached, ‘other’ character passively seeing
and experiencing all the carnage. The ‘I’ here is active, powerful, and even heroic. Significantly,
and in an equally stark contrast to the rest of the excerpt, Yossi also uses the ‘past’ (RPa) tense—
denoting a remote and experienced event—almost exclusively in this interlude, reinforcing the
message that he definitively performed these actions. After this mini-narrative, Yossi returns to the
PPr tense and to employing the FS ‘you,’ when he asserts that “you (FS) get strength,” and “you
(FS) get supernatural powers” (L.14-15). Then, again, Yossi jumps back to ‘I’-statements and the
RPa tense, again describing his specific actions at the time.
Throughout Yossi’s entire BL TAN, the second-person FS pronoun was used most often to
describe his own experiences rather than in collocation with any direct dialogue with me (as
conventional MIH pronoun usage rules would dictate), and in the initial analysis it was difficult to
determine whether there was a particular pattern or meaning therein. As Yossi’s discourse became
more intense and descriptive, however, it became clear that nearly all of the statements therein
utilizing the FS ‘you’ were sensory in nature. Complementing this pattern, it was found that the
majority of statements with regard to seeing, feeling, touching, or hearing had the FS ‘you’ as their
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subject. Yossi did attribute a comparatively small number of sensory statements to himself and his
own personalized experience (e.g., “I look,” in L.5 of the first excerpt above; and “And all of this I
swallow,” in L.11 of the second excerpt above—significantly, both collocated with the PPr tense).
Notably, however, there were almost no statements in the TAN that were directed toward the FS
‘you’ and not sensory in content. Furthermore, the predominant pattern of collocation between the
FS ‘you’ and the PPr tense is highly indicative of a particular communicative strategy at work.
This strategy is likely aimed at bringing me in to the experience with him, although perhaps
the most important question is why. Within the context of the TAN, the fact that I am most often
discursively brought in when the focus of the statement is sensory seems to point to a particular
need surrounding the most gruesome details of the TA—perhaps, a need to not experience them
alone. Yossi himself may provide some insight to support the hypothesis that the manner in which
a story is told may be influenced by the narrator’s sense of loneliness or isolation in the experience,
and by his desire to have someone share in and empathize with his pain. At one point, Yossi took a
short break from his TAN to explain:
1
2
3
4
5
6
“You (FS) don’t know what it is. I don’t wish on anyone to see it. Iit is impossible to describe it, it
is something that even in hell is impossible to see a thing like this. (2) And also I still didn’t
understand what happened. And then, like in some sort of horror film, I turn around, towards, the
inside of the bus. Like, I turn back around, and then, like in some sort of horror film, you (FS)
swallow all of the atrocity. It is something that is impossible to define. Difficult, very difficult.
Difficult also to endure it.”xiii
Here Yossi appears to exhibit a sense of frustration, as he attempts to both describe his experience
and explain why it is impossible to describe and define. While on a manifest level, he verbally
expresses that he does not “wish on anyone to see it,” the rest of his narrative—filled with vivid
descriptions of blood, body parts, and the sensory experience of an incinerated and still-burning
bus—seems to belie this statement, perhaps revealing a subconscious, very real desire to bring his
audience in to his experience, for them/me to truly “see it” as he did. Indeed, this seems to
represent a contradiction between the form and content of Yossi’s discourse.
This ambivalence also shows in Yossi’s alternating use of ‘I’ and ‘you (FS)’ throughout this
section, and particularly in his statement, “You (FS) don’t know what it is” (L.1). While on the one
hand, this is an absolutely valid assertion and he is simply stating the obvious (that I personally
have no idea what it is like to experience a bombing), Yossi’s use of the FS ‘you’ here may reveal
again his desire, on some level, for me to learn (from him) “what it is.” The most significant
message in this excerpt occurs when he says, “I turn around…I turn back around” (L.3-4), and
follows it directly by, “you (FS) swallow all of the atrocity” (L.4-5). Revealed here again is
Yossi’s system of choices—to use ‘I’ when describing his physical action of “turn[ing] around,”
and to use ‘you (FS)’ in conjunction with the metaphorical action of “swallow[ing].” Thus, while
the ‘I’ is agentic, the FS ‘you’ victim is passive, receiving or having “all of the atrocity” loaded
153
onto ‘her’ through no fault of ‘her’ own.
Again, there are a number of potential explanations for these discursive patterns, and for the
communicative strategy of using the second-person FS pronoun in general.
While a basic
contention of this research is that the FS ‘you’ connotes the speaker’s attempt to bring his audience
in to the experience he is describing, the question of motivation still remains. I propose three
possible hypotheses that appear to be the most likely, and because Yossi’s use of the FS ‘you’ in
his TAN followed such a specific and systematic pattern (that of collocation with the PPr tense and
sensory content), two additional excerpts from other places in Yossi’s BLI will be presented in
order to show the variety of his uses of the FS ‘you’ and of the contexts in which they are situated.
One hypothesis for Yossi’s motivation to bring me in to his discourse using the FS ‘you’
would suggest that he wants to personally educate me (the young, female, American ‘new
immigrant,’ psychology student and interviewer) as to the ‘Israeli experience’ overall, and being in
a TA, in particular. This would account for the prominent use of the pronoun throughout his entire
interview, but does not specifically explain the particular FS ‘you’ focus on sensory content within
his TAN. The following excerpt, which comprises the first part of his response when I asked him
to tell me about a positive experience he had had as a bus driver, or something that he loved about
being a bus driver, shows the more generalized and timeless use of the FS ‘you’:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
“…there are some people who love {their} job. But, we also, sometimes out of a lack of choice,
because you (FS) have to support [your] family. … So I would ge- get up in the morning and go to
my job, you (FS) have usually at Egged, about uhh, you (FS) have a fixed work schedule. You (FS)
come, you (FS) have a fixed bus line, for instance, line [4] I would work. [I] would go out in the
morning, do my line, know th’people, laugh/joke3, throw words out here, every girl, or every guy,
whoever gets on, when you (FS) know him and you (FS) become friends, you (FS) like it. You (FS)
get up [in the morning], and you (FS) always want to see those’people. Every morning [you (MP)]
see them. Regularly. And you (FS) enjoy talking about it, it you (FS) don’t have, umm, uhh,
experiences. For instance, sometimes many times I would drive in the morning. I would do-, at 4:30
I would leave here [the house], in the night, dark, rain, downpour, it would be coming down. I drove
toward [area]. I would have to do a collection, of drivers, from [area]. In the morning, at 4:45. So I
would leave the house aat 4:20, from here, in order to get to [area].” xiv
Here, the FS ‘you’ is chosen as the subject when Yossi is making more universalized statements
about his usual, or average, day. Again, this choice is significantly opposed to the conventional
discursive strategies of Israelis, which would call for the use of the unmarked generic masculine
form of this pronoun in this case (Tobin, 2001). There is also always the option to utilize the ‘I’
pronoun in this context, even collocated with the timeless function of the PPr tense—as these
experiences did, after all, happen to him personally, no matter how familiar and timeless they have
come to be perceived by him now. Indeed, it is evident in L.2, L.4-5, and L.9-12 that Yossi is
willing and able to make ‘I’-statements about many of the generalized and timeless facets of this
story. And in fact, directly after this Yossi proceeded to tell a detailed story about an old man
3
This is the same word in Hebrew, and thus, it is not possible to ascertain which of these words in English constitutes
the best translation of Yossi’s message here.
154
whom he used to pick up every morning and drive to the Western Wall to pray, and how important
this daily interaction was for him. Significantly, there was not a single FS ‘you’ in that narrative
(which will be presented further below). So there is clearly a non-random choice mechanism at
work, and the hypothesis that Yossi’s motivation for these choices lies in a desire to educate me
about ‘a day in the life of an Israeli’ or the ‘Israeli experience’ may provide a piece of the puzzle.
Another—more psychologically-oriented—hypothesis might be that Yossi’s sense of
isolation within what he experienced (particularly due to his depressive symptoms and his battles to
have his disability recognized by the NII) leads him to make attempts to bring me in to the
experience with him, in order to alleviate some of his pain and solitude within it. This could be
viewed as a desire for an ally, or confidante, or perhaps simply an empathic ‘shoulder to cry on’
(i.e., the ‘misery loves company’ syndrome). A possible reflection of this hypothesis can be found
in the following excerpt from a lengthy speech into which Yossi launched directly after (or perhaps
still as a part of) his TAN, about his struggles with the NII:
1
2
3
4
5
6
“Now against Bituach Leumi it totally became an ‘Arabian Nights’4 story, and still, they gave me
twenty percent here, and I went to a psychologist, or to a psychiatrist, uhh, [name], [do you (FS)]
know her? And she decided on at least thirty percent and above for me. And so you (FS) have to
deal and tell them, what you (FS) are going through, and it doesn’t interest anyone. It doesn’t
interest the government, or the, absolutely nobody is interested. Because you (FS) are stuck in a
request here, and it doesn’t interest them. They don’t care about it.” xv
Here, Yossi chooses to utilize the FS ‘you’ when referring to the need to “deal” with the
bureaucracy of the NII and to discuss “what you (FS) are going through,” as well as when he
mentions the isolation and sense of frustration he has experienced at the hands of this governmental
institution (“you (FS) are stuck in a request”). In this excerpt, it seems clear that Yossi could have
used any other pronoun as the subjects for these statements, which only further supports the
communicative strategy view. Yossi’s choice to invoke the FS ‘you’ for this particular topic seems
to validate the hypothesis that he wants to bring me in to his experience at points that are
particularly painful and that may require some ‘extra support,’ in his eyes.
Still another—sociopsychologically-oriented—hypothesis asserts that Yossi’s pronoun
choice within any given context can be linked to the discursive act of claiming ownership of the
feeling, state, or experience described. That is, when he feels uncomfortable, unable, or unwilling
to claim certain things as his own or as having been experienced himself, he chooses to discursively
‘give’ them to his audience. In this sense, nearly all of the sensory statements surrounding the
TA—which represent Yossi’s passive absorption of the most traumatic effects of it—were
collocated with the FS ‘you’ and the PPr tense, in an effort to disown them from himself and
4
The literal translation of this term in Yossi’s text is, “One Thousand and One Nights,” which refers to a collection of
Middle Eastern and South Asian folk tales, often referred to in English as “Arabian Nights.” The expression can be
understood as a reference to a neverending story, which, according to Yossi, has been his experience of his seemingly
endless dispute against the NII, with the aim of getting his disability recognized and compensated appropriately.
155
project them onto me. This may also explain why, in the excerpt directly above, he brought in the
FS ‘you’ in his statements about having to talk openly with the NII about his personal problems and
being stuck and isolated in his requests from them. Going even further into the realm of the
societal and cultural discourse surrounding Yossi, this discursive strategy may be viewed as
allowing him to claim the more ‘acceptable’ actions for himself—the strong, unflappable Israeli
male—and to distance himself by ‘handing off’ the less ‘acceptable’ facets of his experience to
me—perceived as the weak, vulnerable American female. This hypothesis is further validated
below, in an exploration of the discursive contexts in which Yossi chose to use the ‘I’ pronoun.
Yossi’s use of the ‘I’ pronoun appears throughout his TAN discourse as particularly
prominent in its stark contrast against his profuse use of the FS ‘you’ pronoun. Returning to a
section of text within Yossi’s TAN that was discussed above with regard to the FS ‘you,’ a
dedicated focus on the second half shows that it is much more ‘I’-centered:
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
“And now I started to push. When I had already
recovered, (2) I started to push, limbs so that I wouldn’t go on top of them. To hear, I went to
the middle of the bus, and I came back. And all of this I swallow, that one is moving hands here,
moving legs. Everything, all the flesh, [it is] moving people, halves! Moving! I came back to
the front of the bus a girl was lying there, she also had wounds, all over her too, full of blood.
“Driver, help me.” And so I picked her up. You (FS) get strength, that you (FS) don’t know from
where. You (FS) get supernatural powers, it is really, impossible to define it. (2) My door was
warped, gashed. Everything was gashed. I grasped the door, by force, I opened a little, and then,
and then, only then, a head [of a security person] appeared.”xvi
Here, for perhaps the first time since he had begun to describe the bombing itself, Yossi appears as
the central character, the actor-agent within his narrative. He “pushed” the limbs, “went” and
“came back,” “picked [the girl] up,” and “grasped” and “opened” the door “by force”—all verbs
that require one to be alive, potent, conscious, and able to use his wits and strength. Even Yossi’s
use of the verb, “swallow,” seems more active here than in the aforementioned excerpt, perhaps
because of his use of ‘I’ and perhaps because of all the active descriptive terminology surrounding
it (although its collocation with the PPr tense and sensory content attests to a heightened emotional
charge, relative to the other statements in this section). Notably, all but one use of the ‘I’ pronoun
here is collocated with the RPa (unmarked narrative) tense, giving a strong sense that these actions
were not general, usual, or timeless—but rather, were completed once, definitively, only by Yossi
himself, and cannot be ‘transferred’ to any other actor or subject.
In addition to the form, the content of Yossi’s narrative here also contributes much to an
impression of him as the ‘heroic’ actor of the story. Indeed, amidst all the carnage, he hears a girl
ask for his help and he picks her up, uses his strength to open the door, and not only brings her to
safety but also brings reality and consciousness (in the form of security personnel) into the
experience. The image presented is of Yossi as the hero and savior, of the girl and perhaps the rest
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of the passengers as well, as he was apparently the first to open the door of the still-burning bus.
A similar pattern is evident in the excerpt presented below (which directly followed the
excerpt above), wherein the ‘I’ pronoun is again used with primarily active and ‘heroic’ deeds:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
“I said “Do me a favor buddy, help me get this woman down [off the bus].” We took her off [the
bus], and I got [back on the bus] and I began to check. And all of this inside flames. After III saw
that I can’t do anything else, there is nothing, whoever waas wounded jumped out of the bus, fell
onto the ground, or flew outside. Because everything went up, everything was pulverized. …
Annd uhh, (3) I got [back on the bus] again, I checked, and I stood inside the bus. And then, like,
like someone poured tons of, of, of, of steel on you (FS). {When it fell [hit me], I began to cry}, I
began, uhh, to scream, uhh, until suddenly, uhh, po-, security guards and policemen arrived, and an
Egged member arrived, (2) who came, grabbed my hand. My whole strongbox, all of my things, had
flown out. [He] grabbed my hand “Shitrit, what happened? Nothing happened buddy. You (MS) are
in good hands.” [He] hugged me, “Come, come we are going to get off [the bus] very slowly.” I told
him “But look what happened, look what they did to me”.”xvii
Notably, here Yossi refers twice to his having gotten back onto the bus to check for more wounded
passengers—it is unclear whether he is repeating himself (as a sharpening technique to emphasize
his heroism) or whether he actually did get back on the bus twice. Nonetheless, in sharp contrast to
the previous excerpts highlighting the use of the FS ‘you’ collocated exclusively with the PPr tense,
this section is told completely in ‘I’-statements collocated exclusively with the RPa tense.
Significantly, there are two statements here that can be viewed as both agentic and as representative
of the traumatic effects of the TA (“I began to cry,” and, “I began…to scream,” in L.6-7). The
examples above demonstrated that seeing, hearing, and sensorily experiencing the acute scene of
the bombing was most often attributed to the FS ‘you,’ but here, Yossi’s bodily/emotional reaction
to these sensory experiences is placed firmly in ‘I’-statements. This may provide another important
clue as to the discursive choice mechanisms at work, in relation to both pronoun and tense.
Below is the continuation of a text section above, which came as a response to my request
for Yossi to tell a positive story about his time as a bus driver. After a lengthy generalized
introduction, with a number of protestations that he didn’t really love his job and didn’t have any
real experiences to tell me, he launched easily into this personal(ized) and quite touching narrative:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
“It’s like in the movies. I would meet an old man, (2) elderly, one hundred plus years old, at least.
Bent over like this, and walking and walking and walking. A little, like, lit-. Screech, I would stop
next to him “Grandpa, where are you going? My lord, in the rain, downpour, Grandpa, to where?”
He tells me “My son, I am going toward the Western Wall.” Going to pray, with the praying shawl,
with everything. “But my lord,” I tell him, “Rain.” “God will help, what should concern me,” he
says. And it doesn’t bother him, he is full of water. “Okay, at least come, I will take you (MS) to, to
the Jaffa Gate.” Every morning, I would wait for him. I know that at 4:20 I leave, and he will be
walking there. There were days that I would be running a little late sometimes. I mean not late, I
would wait there, in order to see him. There were days that I would see him, and there were…
((unintelligible)) and to this day so far, when since then, it was a long time ago, I haven’t seen him.
And every morning I would wait for that man, to take him. Back then it was a kind of, kind of, like a
kind of, uhh, don’t know, kind of, don’t know, some kind of nice, wonderful, feeling, to wait for that
man, to take him toward the Western Wall there. There were beautiful things. There were (2) all
kinds of dreams, of, uhh, that’s it, your (FS) daily job. You (FS) liked it, or you (FS) didn’t like it,
but you (FS) would get up [in the morning] and go to work. Thirty-six years, or 37 years you (FS)
worked on a bus, that you (FS) got on and you (FS) got off. And almost, the bus itself already knew
th’way on its own.”xviii
Most apparent here is Yossi’s clear ability to speak in the ‘I’-voice when he chooses, and when he
157
finds it necessary and warranted to do so. This narrative is highly personalized and proximate, and
the use of the timeless PPr function reflects (and creates) that sense. Notably, Yossi shifts back into
both generalized statements and the use of the FS ‘you’ in L.14-16, along with an abrupt shift in
narrative mood—most apparent in the contrast between, “There were beautiful things” (L.13), and,
“You (FS) liked it, or you (FS) didn’t like it” (L.14-15). This transition was prefaced by discursive
clues suggesting some discomfort with the “nice, wonderful, feeling” and “beautiful things” that
perhaps Yossi did not want to discuss, as represented by the stammering and repetition of “kind of”
and “don’t know” (L.11-12) and summarization phrase, “that’s it” (L.14).
The above excerpts, taken from contexts both within and outside of the TAN, show a
pattern of choice with regard to when and how Yossi used the ‘I’ pronoun. While the use of the ‘I’
has traditionally been understood to connote a focus on the narrator and the placement of the
speaker in the center of the narrative ‘action,’ something much deeper may be involved. Yossi’s
collocation of the ‘I’ with the RPa tense in some cases and contexts, and with the PPr or timeless
tense in others, along with several notable examples of systematic switching between the FS ‘you’
and the ‘I,’ seem to suggest a more complex communicative strategy at work. Once again, there
may be more than one motivation for this complex and varied use of personal pronouns and tenses.
Perhaps the most likely hypothesis, however, suggests that Yossi speaks in ‘I’-statements
when he is describing something that he is comfortable claiming as his own, such as situations in
which he acted in a manner deemed ‘appropriate’ by his own or societal standards. Israeli society
has fairly set (and impossibly high) expectations of the behavior of its men—namely, that they take
control in uncontrollable circumstances and act as heroes at any cost—and these expectations have
become deeply ingrained and internalized, particularly in men of Yossi’s generation. It is therefore
possible that Yossi’s choice of pronouns may reflect his beliefs about the ‘acceptability’—both in
his own mind and in his perception of the appraisal of his surrounding society—of his behavior
during the TA. Thus, when he is discussing a facet of the experience that involves him acting as he
‘should’ have, he uses the ‘I’ pronoun to claim the ‘acceptable’ behavior as his own. Contrarily,
when he is referring to parts of the experience that are less fitting with the societal expectations of
masculinity and invincibility—such as being affected by the trauma or being acted upon by the
terrorist—he is more likely to choose not to use ‘I’-statements. It is within this view that it is
suggested that the discursive choices and communicative strategies of the individual can be
reflective of the larger social context and societal discourse surrounding him.
5.3 QUANTITATIVE DISTRIBUTION OF PRONOUNS AND TENSES WITHIN
YOSSI’S BASELINE TAN: HOW MUCH AND WHEN HE SAID IT
In order to give a comprehensive picture of the phenomena discussed above, the following
table and graph present quantitatively the distribution and percentage computations of Yossi’s uses
158
of (the primary analytical foci) pronouns and tenses within his BL TAN.
Table 5-2: Pronoun and tense distribution in Yossi’s baseline TAN
‘Past’
‘Present’
‘Future’
% use of each pronoun6
‘I’
56
18
1
63%
‘YOU (MS)’
0
0
0
0%
‘YOU (FS)’
0
40
0
33%
‘WE’
4
1
0
4%
% use of each tense5
50%
49%
1%
There were 78 total lines of text in the TAN, and a total of 120 relevant pronouns (and therefore,
120 tense uses), and the ratio of pronouns per line was calculated to be 1.54. The graph below
presents the patterns of collocations of each pronoun with each tense.
Figure 5-1: Pronoun-tense collocations in Yossi’s baseline TAN7
With a view on the essential assertions of this study with regard to the extra-linguistic meanings of
the uses of the various pronouns and tenses, this graph presents a picture of an individual who, at
the time of his first interview, was claiming parts of the TA experience for himself nearly twothirds of the time (nearly half of the time in a less proximate manner), and spending a third of his
TAN attempting to bring his audience in to those parts of the experience with him.
5.4 PRONOUN ‘POETRY’ OF YOSSI’S BASELINE TAN:
THE ESSENCE OF WHAT HE SAID AND HOW HE SAID IT
According to the method described in detail in Chapter 3 (Section 3.6.2.3), the following
table is the ‘poetic’ result of the 78 lines of text of Yossi’s baseline TANxix.
Poems were
constructed only for the significantly-used pronouns, and thus, there are no columns for the MS
5
6
7
The use percentages of each tense were computed as relative to the total number of tense-marked verbs in the TAN.
The use percentages of each pronoun were computed as relative to the total number of these pronouns in the TAN.
The bars on the graph represent the absolute numbers of pronouns/verbs in each category, and the percentages above
each bar are relative within the TAN.
159
‘you’ or ‘we,’ as it was established above that these pronouns were virtually nonexistent herein.
However, because Yossi often substituted a number of ‘others’ to achieve what was argued to be a
comparable communicative strategy (generalization/universalization), a column for the ‘others’
poem is included here. The ‘you (FS)’ and ‘others’ poems are almost exclusively in the ‘present’
tense, and so are not separated by tense as is the ‘I’ poem, but ‘past’ tense entries are noted with a
double-underline. It should be noted that all within-narrative dialogue was excluded from both the
poems and the tabulations (i.e., the sentence, “I asked them, “Why are you sad?”” would be
included in the ‘I’ poem, but “Why are you sad?” would not be included in the ‘you’ poem).
Table 5-3: The pronoun ‘poetry’ of Yossi’s baseline TAN8
‘I’ POEM (74)
‘PAST’ (RPa) (56)
‘PRESENT’ (PPr) (18)
1
32
I also worked
I don’t remember the
2
I would leave happy
exact hour anymore
3
37
I would come back home
I remember it well
----25
53
I didn’t know some of the
I still don’t know that an
people
explosion happened
26
54
I got up [in the morning]
I still totally don’t know
27
I prayed
that an explosion
28
I went to work
happened
29
55
I went out [from the bus
What I do know is that
terminal]
there is darkness
30
56
I did one trip
I am all of me–
31
57
I drove
I am like looking
33
59
I collected passengers
I am looking forward
34
60
I continued to drive
I am not looking
36
I got to [street]
backward at the whole
38
I told her that “Sit (FS)
bus
61
behind me”
I am looking
39
68
I got to the [bus] stop
I don’t wish on anyone to
40
see it
41
70
I left [the stop]
I turn around towards the
42
I didn’t feel anything
inside of the bus
43
I thought that it’s a truck that 71I turn back around
80
ran into me hard
I look
44
81
I didn’t hear the explosion
I do like this with [my]
45
I lost my hearing
ear- with my hands,
46
I had lost my hearing already
with [my] head
47
82
All of me flew
I say to myself things
48
I lost consciousness
like, ‘What happened?’
49
All of me flew
--50
105
I lost consciousness
I swallow all of this
51
129
I woke up
Could I identify you?
52
I got up
--62
I woke up
63
I got up
8
‘YOU (FS)’ POEM
‘OTHERS’ POEM
((42) (2)9)
(13)
4
5
When you dr[ive]A bus driver, it’s a
6
(You know)
person who knows his
7
You ride [the bus] with him
passengers
8
every day
He knows the problems
12
9
You get to know people
He tells them [his
13
You get on [the bus]
problems]
14
You sit in one of the places 10[They (MP)] get onto a
15
You know hello [to] this
bus
11
one (FS)
Everyone (MS) unwinds
18
You know the people
and tells his story
19
You are like a sort of little 16Everyone (MS) gets on
17
family
[Everyone (MS)] sits
20
You know the people
down
21
You know their problems 22Everyone (MS)
23
--Everyone (MS) is
58
If you are looking
smiling
67
You don’t know what it is 24Everyone (MS) is
72
You swallow all of the
running around [busy]
35
atrocity
Everyone (MS) smiled
73
You look
--74
78
You see that your eyes–
No one gets near the bus
75
79
You aren’t afraid
No one
76
You are scared
77
You look
83
You–10
84
You hear silence
85
You hear from within the
silence
86
You look
87
You see people hanging
89
You see people without
heads
90
You see all the stuff inside
of the bodies
91
If you can imagine
92
If you see a corpse
The numbers to the left of each entry signify its location in the overall order of 131 pronominal entries. Three dashes
(- - -) signify a significant break in the given sequence, during which other pronouns or tenses were used. Italics here
signify a repetition in the discourse.
9
Entries in parentheses signify direct talk with me, as when he asked me a question (rhetorical or not) or interacted
dialogically with me. These uses of the FS ‘you’ were not included in the pronoun-tense collocation analyses.
10
Pronouns not collocated with a verb were necessarily not included in the pronoun-tense collocation analyses.
160
You don’t think about it
You say that the person
maybe is asleep
95
You see mutilated people
96
You see hands moving
97
You see legs very few
98
You see
99
You–
--108
You get strength
109
You don’t know from
where
110
You get supernatural
powers
--117
(Did you see the bus?)
125
You don’t see
126
You don’t recognize
127
You don’t know
128
You could be a terrorist
with a bag
130
Can you check everyone
64
93
65
94
I stood up
All of me was–
66
I was all of me covered in
blood, flesh
69
I still didn’t understand what
happened
--88
I knew a person
--100
I started to push
101
I had already recovered
102
I started to push limbs
103
I went to the middle of the
bus
104
I came back
106
I came back to the front of
the bus
107
I picked her up
111
I grasped the door
112
I opened [the door] a little
113
I said ‘Do me a favor buddy,
help me get this woman
down [off the bus]’
114
I got [back on the bus]
115
I began to check
116
I saw that I can’t do
anything else
118
I got [back on the bus]
again
119
I checked
120
I stood inside the bus
121
I began to cry
122
I began to scream
123
I told him ‘But look what
happened, look what they
did to me’
124
Did I see that guy
131
I said ‘No, I really don’t
recognize him’
The condensation and juxtaposition of each of these poems together allows a comprehensive
picture of the discursive choices and communicative strategies at work in Yossi’s BL TAN. Most
apparent here are the conspicuous holes—at different points, of course—in each poem. These
discursive breaks, or shifts, may hold an important clue as to the motivations behind Yossi’s
pronominal choices. The dominant poem, or viewpoint of the TAN, is clearly the RPa ‘I,’ as is
generally the case in narratives told about an encoder’s own life experience. What is significant,
however, is when and where and in what contexts Yossi chooses to leave the RPa ‘I’-perspective
and describe what he is telling from the viewpoint of another pronoun and/or tense. This analysis
discusses each poem separately (as much as possible), with a focus on the holes in each and the
clusters in the others that fill those holes.
The RPa ‘I’ poem opens the TAN itself and commences prior to the day of the TA, with
three generalized introductory sentences about Yossi’s life as a bus driver before his life was
changed forever. His phrase, “I would leave happy” (entry (E.) 2), seems to reflect the main
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message he wants to send about this time—everything was good, and he was happy, before. There
is then the first prominent and lengthy hole, during which Yossi switches to the FS ‘you’ and
‘other’ pronouns to continue telling the story of life before the TA. He then returns to the RPa ‘I’
to begin narrating the day of the attack—waking up, praying, and going to work. This part of the
story is narrated systematically, with detail and seemingly nothing left out. Yossi continues,
discussing the bus route, his collecting of passengers, and his arrival at the fateful bus stop.
Then comes the explosion, and Yossi’s admissions that he didn’t feel or hear anything. At
this point (E.45-52, 62-63), the poem is filled with repetition: “I lost my hearing,” twice
successively; “All of me flew,” twice and, “I lost consciousness,” twice, interspersed with each
other; and, “I woke up,” and, “I got up,” paired together once and then again ten entries later. Here
appears the second hole—bookended by these two repetitions of, “I woke up,” and, “I got up”—
which exists (almost literally) between Yossi’s loss of consciousness and his subsequent regaining
of it. The discursive series directly before and after this hole seems to be a narrative climax for the
RPa ‘I’-voice, as it is the only place in the poem where Yossi describes what happened to him and
what he experienced in the acute context of the bombing. It makes sense, therefore, that the
discourse here is filled with repetition and confusion. It is here, surrounding this climax, that Yossi
makes his only descriptive reference to the gore of the scene from the viewpoint of the RPa ‘I’: “I
was all of me covered in blood, flesh” (E.66).
Directly after this is a nearly complete hole of over 30 entries, most of which is filled by the
FS ‘you’ pronoun and all of the gruesome details of the bombing scene. When the narrative returns
to the point of view of the RPa ‘I,’ its focus, perspective, and content have changed dramatically—
from waking up, getting up, being “covered in blood,” and not “understand[ing] what happened,”
to, “I started to push” (E.100). The ensuing series of seven entries (100-107) places Yossi in the
center of the action, as the heroic agent who has recovered from the blast and has begun to ‘get to
work.’ All of Yossi’s actions here—“push[ing] limbs” (repeated twice), going and coming “back
to the front of the bus” (also repeated twice), and picking up a wounded girl—are placed firmly into
the RPa ‘I’-voice. The only exception is a single statement in the PPr ‘I’ poem—“I swallow all of
this” (E.105)—which, significantly, relates to metaphorical action rather than physical action.
After a brief hole of only three lines, Yossi again returns to the RPa ‘I’-voice with another
unbroken cluster of twelve entries (111-123), to continue the narrative of what he did on the bus
directly after the bombing. The final three entries (121-123) in this series relate to the emotional
effects of the experience, with Yossi describing how he “began to cry,” and “began to scream,” and
began to realize what had taken place. And finally, the RPa ‘I’ poem ends with Yossi’s admission
(to the security person who later interviewed him) that he did not identify the terrorist before, nor
could he do so in any pictures afterwards. This concluding sentence seems particularly significant,
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perhaps suggesting that Yossi is still struggling with feelings about his role in not preventing the
TA. It is notable that, although the majority of the RPa ‘I’ poem deals with Yossi’s active, sentient
behavior during the TA, the final sentence rests on his inability to perceive and act accordingly.
The PPr ‘I’ poem begins late in the TAN (E.32), and already focused on the topic of the
attack itself, with two single statements about Yossi’s remembering of facets of the TA experience
—the first regarding what he does not remember and the second regarding how well he does
remember. After a significant absence of entries (during which the narrative was centered around
the RPa ‘I’) the poem then continues with a nearly uninterrupted sequence (E.53-61) that entirely
fills the first hole of the RPa ‘I’ poem. This series of entries is occupied first with not knowing and
knowing, and then with looking and not looking, broken only by a single FS ‘you’-statement also
about looking (E.58). It seems that the climax of this poem exists here, in its only significant
cluster, which is filled with the confused and confusing sensory experience of the moment directly
following the bombing. The rest of the PPr ‘I’ poem consists of single or paired statements,
primarily concerned with “turn[ing] around,” “looking,” making gestures with his hands, asking
himself what happened, and “swallow[ing] all of [the atrocity].” Overall, this poem subsumes less
‘hard’ action than the RPa ‘I’ poem, but also less traumatic content than the ‘you (FS)’ poem.
The ‘you (FS)’ poem begins in a generalized manner, interspersed intricately with the
‘others’ poem. Both begin by telling the story of the (also intertwined) experience of being a bus
driver and a bus passenger in the generic and universal life before the TA. Everything was normal
and pleasant, and everyone was smiling and talking and familial before. Notably, here Yossi seems
to have chosen the FS ‘you’ and the various ‘others’ for nearly identical functions; that is, to
present a generic and timeless picture of what was. Nearly every one of the entries up until the first
holes in both poems could have their pronouns interchanged, and the meanings would not change.
The ‘you (FS)’ poem then has an extensive hole of 37 entries, after which it offers two
single statements punctuating the RPa and PPr ‘I’ poems and then two significant clusters (E.72-77
and 83-99) that encompass nearly all of the gruesome, sensory descriptions of the acute scene on
the bus directly after the bombing. Here, the poem is exclusively in the ‘present’ tense and almost
exclusively related to senses and emotions—looking, seeing, and hearing, in addition to
(metaphorical) swallowing and being afraid/scared—as well as cognitive experiences such as
imagining, thinking, and saying. Significantly, both of these clusters exist chronologically within
the largest hole in the RPa ‘I’ poem, the boundaries of which are marked by, “I still didn’t
understand what happened” (E.69), and “I started to push” (E.100). This suggests that all of these
sensory and cognitive experiences constitute the narrative of what Yossi experienced between his
immediate disoriented state and his later awakening and regaining of his ability to act
(‘appropriately’). Indeed, nearly all of the trauma and distressing images are here, in the ‘you (FS)’
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poem—while the ‘heroic’ actions actually performed by Yossi are ‘allowed’ into the RPa ‘I’ poem.
The only exception to this lies in entries 108-110, in which Yossi’s statements about
“get[ting] strength” and “supernatural powers,” and not knowing from whence they come, are
attributed to the FS ‘you.’
It could purportedly be expected that, according to the central
hypotheses of this research, any discussion by Yossi of strength or power would be assigned to the
‘I,’ and so these three entries in the ‘you (FS)’ poem seem, at first glance, out of place. However, it
is possible that, for Yossi, getting strength and powers—from an unknown source, no less—rather
than organically having strength and power, may illustrate exactly the type of weakness that he
does not want to own. Indeed, the hypothetical alternative statements, “I had strength,” or “I felt
like I had supernatural powers,” feel very different in both form and content.
Nonetheless, these three entries comprise the only place in the ‘you (FS)’ poem in which
there is any mention of real action or strength. The rest of this poem comes toward the end of the
overall TAN, with a short series of statements dealing with the inability of ‘you (FS)’ (ostensibly
Yossi) to identify the terrorist. Here, Yossi alternatingly puts the FS ‘you’ into the role of the
generic bus driver as well as of a terrorist, and seems to again be placing onto the female subject
what he may view as his vulnerability. From this view, his possible sense of guilt, responsibility,
or inadequacy stemming from his inability to have recognized the terrorist and, therefore, to have
prevented the attack, may still be something Yossi has not fully processed or worked through.
Ultimately, the entirety of each of these four ‘poems’ of Yossi’s BL TAN provide a
condensed but comprehensive picture of his experience of the TA and the discursive messages he
may be attempting to send while narrating it. It appears that the primary objective of the ‘others’
poem is to present the story of the ‘everyman,’ both the generic driver and passenger on a generic
bus, that exist in Yossi’s pre-TA world and context. This poem serves to provide the counterbalance to the acute narrative of the TA; the before to the ‘I’ and ‘you (FS)’ poems’ during and
after. In contrast, the primary objective of Yossi’s RPa ‘I’ poem seems to be to present his actions,
both before the bombing and after he ‘recovered’ and managed to become an effective helping
agent (that is, a ‘hero’), but not during the period of time in between (when he was presumably too
affected to act ‘acceptably’). Related to this, it appears that the main purpose of Yossi’s PPr ‘I’
poem is to present a minimal explanation of what happened to him and why he was unable to act
‘appropriately’ during the immediate bombing experience and aftermath—indeed, the precise
period of time ‘missing’ from his RPa ‘I’ poem. The concentration of this facet of the experience
into the ‘present’ tense reflects a higher degree of emotional charge for him, and its status as more
salient, ‘alive,’ and ‘close to his heart’ than those facets described in the RPa ‘I’ poem.
Finally, it seems that the central aim of Yossi’s (wholly PPr) ‘you (FS)’ poem is to present
all the traumatic and upsetting content that is almost entirely ‘missing’ from all of the other poems.
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This largely consistent pattern suggests that the ‘acceptable’ (i.e., agentic, courageous, powerful,
and heroic) acts are worthy of ownership by the ‘I,’ while the less ‘acceptable’ experiences (i.e.,
those demonstrative of vulnerability, emotional affectedness, and perhaps weakness) are brought in
or passed off to the discursive domain of the FS ‘you’ subject—who, herself, may be perceived by
Yossi as more weak, vulnerable, and worthy of ownership of less heroic behavior. This deep
discourse analysis of Yossi’s BL ‘pronoun poetry’ thus indicates that his choices surrounding
pronoun and tense use may be highly influenced by his perceptions of what his surrounding society
deems as satisfactory behavior and emotions for an Israeli male such as himself. Because, at the
time of the BLI, these perceptions may have contributed to Yossi being unable or unwilling to
claim ownership of certain (particularly distressing) aspects of the TA experience, he may also have
found it difficult to fully process, work through, and put into perspective these aspects or even the
entirety of the experience. In this sense, Yossi’s discursive and narrative patterns may provide
insight into his inner psychological world and functioning.
5.5 CONCLUSION
This chapter began from a broad, holistic perspective on Yossi himself and the BL interview
context and experience, then explored the overall patterns in his discourse, then showed a basic
quantitative view on the non-random distribution of these patterns, and finally moved to a
qualitative ‘poetic’ analysis of both the form and content of these patterns. This deep, spiraling
analysis of Yossi’s outward discursive choices was employed in an attempt to understand his
related inner psychological beliefs, attitudes, and perspectives.
The following two tables
summarize the central findings of Yossi’s BLI, within the discursive and narrative categories that
were analyzed. The first focuses on Yossi’s patterns of pronoun (and tense) use.
Table 5-4: Summary of pronoun use findings and interpretations in Yossi’s baseline interview
PRONOUN USE
First-person
possessive pronouns
and solitary phrases
Third-person
‘others’
MS ‘you’
INTERPRETIVE FINDING

Suggests sense of responsibility and guilt for his bus, for his passengers, for what happened

Suggests solitary sense of experience—“what happened to me”

Suggests generalized, ‘usual,’ timeless experiences with generic, universalized subjects—
perhaps disconnected from them himself

Relative lack suggests very little need or ability to generalize, universalize, collectivize,
and/or normalize (in)to a larger context world

Suggests great and acute need to bring audience in to the most difficult, upsetting sensory
facets of experience—either to educate, to join him in his pain and solitude, and/or to ‘take
on’ the projected traumatic and/or passive (‘unacceptable’) facets instead of him

Suggests desire and ability to claim ownership only of parts of experience in which he was
acting ‘heroically’ (‘acceptably,’ in his perception of the viewpoint of Israeli society)

Relative lack suggests very little to no acknowledgment of the collective nature of
experience—“what I did”; “what happened to me”
FS ‘you’
‘I’
‘We’
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As a final analytic summarizing exercise, presented here is a list of suggested hypothetical
messages, or end points (Spector-Mersel, 2011), which appeared central to Yossi’s BL TA
narrative and discourse. Some of them may have appeared as more conscious or less so, but all
were either expressed manifestly or seemed present in some way between or underneath the lines of
his interview text. While most are essentially my own formulations of what I understand and
interpreted as Yossi’s ‘main messages,’ I believe they most succinctly summarize and illustrate the
results of the comprehensive analyses conducted throughout this chapter—with regard to both form
and content, and particularly related to the found pronoun and tense use patterns.
Table 5-5: Suggested ‘main messages’ of Yossi’s baseline interview

I experienced the ‘acceptable’ facets of the terror attack.

You (FS) experience the worst, most traumatic, and least ‘acceptable’ facets of the terror attack.

Various ‘others’ generally take on the generic/universalizable facets of the terror attack.

You (FS) are traumatized by the terror attack.

You (FS) are affected by the (many) sensory, most emotionally distressing facets of the terror attack.

I was active and behaved ‘appropriately’ during parts of the terror attack experience.

I did not act heroically or ‘acceptably’ enough during other parts.

What happened to my passengers, on my bus, might have been my fault.

I think there was a societal/cultural expectation that I could or should have done more to prevent the terror attack.

I need and deserve the support of Bituach Leumi since the terror attack.

I am in a constant battle with Bituach Leumi, and I feel helpless and angry.

I was and am all alone in my experience of the terror attack and its aftereffects.

I feel alienated and isolated from my surrounding community and society because of my sense of aloneness in my
experience of the terror attack.

The terror attack is a big part of my life—it is my life.

The terror attack split my life into (before vs. after) pieces, and my life and I will never be the same.
Yossi’s baseline interview provided a particularly rich opportunity for an investigation of the link
between an individual’s hypothesized inner psychological world and his perceptions of the societal
attitudes and cultural discourses surrounding him. Yossi was found to have used the FS ‘you’ in
his discourse to a much greater degree than the other participants in this study, as well as to have
been the most psychologically and emotionally affected by his terror experience. Thus, Yossi was
presented here as an exemplar of a difficulty ‘owning’ the most traumatic and ‘weak’ (that is, least
‘heroic’) facets of his TA experience, and of a heightened need and attempt to bring me in to these
facets, for various possible reasons. Yossi’s case will be revisited in Chapter 9, from a longitudinal
comparative perspective on both of his interviews and on his narrative processing over time.
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CHAPTER 6
DANI:
“YOU (MS) ARE NOT NORMAL IF YOU (MS) WON’T BE SCARED”
—
AMBIVALENCE ABOUT AND UNIVERSALIZATION OF
THE LESS ‘ACCEPTABLE’ EXPERIENCE
6.1 INTRODUCTION TO DANI: BACKGROUND, CONTEXT, AND IMPRESSIONS
At the time of the baseline interview (BLI), Dani was 29 years old and single. He is a
native-born Israeli. He did not excel in his studies, and did not finish high school. He served in the
Border Patrol in the Jerusalem area during his mandatory army service. Dani had been working as
a bus driver in Jerusalem for six years, and he experienced three different terror attacks (TAs) over
the course of his employment as a driver: once when a terrorist opened fire with an automatic
weapon on his bus while it was standing at a bus stop, wounding a number of his passengers
(henceforth referred to as the ‘main’ TA); once when he witnessed a bus in front of him explode
from a bombing; and once when a single bullet was fired at his bus as he was driving. He also was
involved in a traffic accident (TrA) while driving his bus that nearly fatally wounded a pedestrian,
which he described as the most traumatic of all of these incidents. Dani was working as a bus
driver at the time of the BLI, and he proudly reported that he had never taken more than a two-day
break after any of the incidents he experienced.
I was referred to Dani by the social worker at Egged. The BLI lasted approximately two
hours, and was conducted in two parts (about a month apart). During the first session, he was an
open, cooperative, and willing interviewee, although it was difficult at times to elicit unbroken
narratives from him. Indeed, as much as I attempted to present only open-ended questions and
probes that encouraged narrative responses, Dani often persisted in turning the interview into a
ping-pong-style question-and-answer session. (On the other hand, the narratives that did emerge
were fluent and extremely rich.) When we first met and I realized how close we were in age, I was
initially concerned about possible potential interpersonal complications such as Dani trying to flirt
with me—and in truth, at times I did feel that he was being more friendly and familiar with me than
the other interviewees had been. In addition, because Dani was living with his parents at the time,
both BLI sessions were conducted in his bedroom. This was initially off-putting for me, but he was
polite and respectful of my boundaries throughout. In any case, I left the first session convinced
that Dani had enjoyed the interview and his time with me, and that it would not be a problem to
schedule and complete the second session.
In actuality, I could not have been more wrong. While Dani initially seemed very willing to
be interviewed and it was easy to schedule the first interview session, it took an enormous amount
of (unrequited) effort on my part to schedule the second. Near the conclusion of the first session,
Dani had made a comment that the questions I had asked had been incisive and had caused him to
“think a lot.” I took this as a compliment, but over the course of the subsequent month, I began to
question whether Dani saw this as a positive facet of our interview together. I had informed him at
the time that we had not finished all the questions I had for him, and began attempting contact with
him soon after the first session. To my chagrin, Dani frequently did not answer my calls or return
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my messages, and repeatedly claimed that he was having “trouble” with his cell phone. However,
when I blocked my phone number (so it appeared on his Caller ID as “anonymous”), he always
answered right away—and then, upon realizing it was me, would profess to be busy and promise to
call me back within the hour. Of course, he never did, and this process repeated itself several times
over the course of the month following the first session. Once he offered to meet me in a coffee
shop for a half hour, saying that was “all [he] could do,” but I persisted, telling him we would need
a quieter atmosphere to conduct the conclusion of the interview.
When we finally managed to schedule and conduct the second BLI session, Dani’s behavior
was decidedly different than in the first. He was pleasant upon my arrival, but also seemed
distracted. The television was on when I entered his room, and he avidly watched a soccer game
while I set up my recording devices and prepared my materials. When I announced that I was
ready for us to begin the interview, he was still watching television and did not make a move to
turn it off. He seemed to want to keep it on, and perhaps to just mute it, throughout the interview,
and when I requested that he turn it off he seemed a bit surprised. Although he gave the appearance
and lip-service of being willing to talk, I couldn’t help but feel opposition in some of his behavior.
It seemed that he made less eye contact with me than in the first session, and his responses to my
questions were decidedly shorter and less descriptive.
While there were enough interview
questions left over from the first session to fill at least an hour (assuming he would have responded
in a similarly open and cooperative fashion), the second session lasted a mere 22 minutes.
I left the interview confused and frustrated, with no comprehension of what had caused this
dramatic shift in Dani’s mood and willingness to speak and share with me. Lacking the courage
(and uncertain if it was appropriate) to confront him directly about it, I could only assume at the
time that this process of being asked such pointed questions and being required to “think a lot”—
perhaps in ways with which he was unfamiliar and uncomfortable—about his experiences had been
unpleasant for him, for reasons about which I could only speculate. My overall impressions of
Dani after the BLI were that he was utterly committed to presenting a picture of himself as
unaffected by the TAs he had experienced, and as a strong, ‘manly man’ who could handle any
dangers that might be thrown at him. It was unclear to me, however, whether this picture actually
reflected his internal experience, or whether he only wished it did. My initial instinct suggested the
existence of a disconnect in this domain, or an ambivalence that created the discomfort that Dani
seemed to be feeling in (at least the second, if not both) interview context(s).
Although this chapter focuses predominantly on Dani’s BLI, the experience of and events
surrounding his follow-up interview (FUI) were also illuminating and significant for the overall
analytical process, and therefore, necessitate a brief discussion here. When I initially decided to
conduct FUIs with the study participants, my biggest concern was Dani. I had spent a great deal of
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time analyzing his BLI and focusing on the ambivalence that I felt was expressed significantly
therein, and a number of important hypotheses and findings had emerged from this process. I felt
desperate for the chance to hear how (or whether) his narratives had evolved over the ensuing three
years, and to clarify some issues that had become critical to my developing research.
Unfortunately, I was just as desperately convinced that, if (for whatever reason) Dani had been so
reluctant to cooperate in the previous interview session, persuading him to participate in yet another
one would be virtually impossible. And sure enough, although my first phone call to Dani after
three years of no contact was met with warmth and enthusiasm, the familiar pattern of avoidance
and empty promises commenced again shortly thereafter.
Finally, after a (second) month of this, my desperation got the better of me and I left a
(slightly overly) honest, pleading, and yet forceful message on his voicemail, to the effect of: “Hi,
it’s Alison again. It seems clear that you do not want to participate in another interview with me,
which is unfortunate but I understand. But when you tell me that you are willing, and to call you
back, I cannot ignore that because I very, very much want to interview you again. If you are just
being polite, then I will understand and not call you again.
I don’t want to bother you
unnecessarily, but I must try as hard as I can to get you to participate, because another interview
with you will be so important to my research. Your first interview helped my work so much, and I
really hope that you will be willing to be interviewed again, to help my project and the others out
there who will benefit from this study.” To my great surprise, Dani called me back immediately,
telling me he was so pleased to hear that his first interview had helped my work and that he would
be “happy to help again.” We scheduled the FUI for the following week, and he complied fully.
The FUI with Dani lasted approximately an hour and a half, and he was once again open,
cooperative, willing, and forthcoming. He stated repeatedly how happy he was to be involved, and
how proud he was to be a part of helping me and others. Several times he professed his belief that
my doctoral project felt to him like his “own doctoral project” (which felt, to me, like a bit of an
overstatement). Apparently, my phone message had had a significant effect on him, and I realized
that through this lengthy interactional process I had learned a crucial lesson about Dani himself: it
was of supreme importance to him to feel needed, useful, and valuable. This message is evident in
Dani’s interview texts as well, but had I not been lucky enough to see it manifestly and learn it in
our direct interactions together, it is quite possible that I would have missed it in my analyses.
6.1.1 Dani’s ‘non-narrative’ narratives
Dani constituted a particularly complex case for analysis, as an ability and/or willingness to
tell long, flowing, uninterrupted narratives—the type abundant in Yossi’s texts, for instance—
simply was not apparent in his interviews. Most of his ‘narratives’ resembled reasonably lengthy
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‘answers’ to my pointed questions, which were asked out of necessity (stemming from the repeated
blank stares and silences I received whenever I posed a more open-ended narrative request). It
seemed that Dani was most uncomfortable with the open-endedness and abstract nature of the
request for his “life story,” and simply did not appear willing or able to construct a global narrative
of this nature. Indeed, his life story had no real narrative structure; rather, it was dominated by
staccato bullet points with almost no elaboration, and filled with requests for information and
elaboration by myself. (The opening set of statements of his life narrative was: “I am 29 years old.
I was born in Jerusalem. Live in [neighborhood in Jerusalem]. (1) Single. (3) Work at Egged for
six years.”i) On a number of occasions throughout his interview, I attempted to wait and allow the
silence between us to encourage elaboration on Dani’s part, but it rarely came. More often than
not, I would ask an open-ended question, he would respond with a bullet point or extremely
succinct statement, and then we would look expectantly at each other until I finally ‘broke down’
and asked a follow-up question. The predominant majority of Dani’s texts were thus less than ideal
for the purposes of this type of narrative research, and so I often found it difficult to decide which
‘narratives’ to analyze.
Indeed, the conventional narrative approach guiding this research prescribes that, if a
researcher’s aim is to understand and draw conclusions about an interviewee’s discursive choices,
analysis must rest on his spontaneous, uninterrupted responses to the most open-ended interview
questions (such as, “Tell me your life story,” or, “Tell me what happened”). This guideline dictates
that this type of ‘untampered-with’ data can most credibly reveal the interviewee’s choices in both
form and content, and the moment that an intervention (e.g., a new question posed by the
interviewer) or interruption (e.g., any type of validation, such as “Really!”, or invalidation, such as
“Are you sure?”) beyond basic ‘reflexive listening’ techniques (e.g., “Um-hmm”) takes place, these
choices are consequently potentially influenced, redirected, and/or negated entirely. I believe in
these methods, and wherever possible, I attempt to employ them. In analyzing Yossi’s interviews,
for example, it was easy to locate and identify the lengthy, uninterrupted narratives and, because of
their abundance, a focus on only a small number of these texts resulted in a deep analysis.
In Dani’s case, however, I consistently felt it unavoidably necessary to widen the analytical
‘net.’ As mentioned previously, for instance, Dani’s life history included four potentially traumatic
incidents—three separate TAs, as well as a TrA that he himself referred to as “traumatic.” The
result was multiple ‘narratives’ of analytically significant content—each with varying degrees of
‘completeness,’ narrative coherence, depth, and volume; and none, unfortunately, entirely free of
intervention by myself. All were punctuated by at least one additional probe from me (beyond,
“Tell me about it”) to attempt to garner more details, and most included many questions of this
nature. All of Dani’s narratives were relatively brief and ‘thin,’ characterized by much less
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elaboration and more of a ‘report’ style than most of the other interviewees’ narratives.
Because of all these issues, it felt neither appropriate nor useful for the analytic focus of this
case to rest solely on one or another of Dani’s narratives of the terror attacks he experienced
(TANs); and due to space constraints of this dissertation, it could not rest on all of his significant
narratives. Therefore, this chapter utilizes a spiraling approach, not only among the levels and
depth of analysis, but also with regard to the analytical unit itself. That is, as in Yossi’s case, the
analysis herein begins with a general overview of Dani’s BLI and the specific pronominal patterns
across the discourse. The ‘magnifying glass’ is then focused on Dani’s narrative of the traffic
accident (TrAN), from both a quantitative and then qualitative ‘poetic’ perspective. Finally, a
multilayered analysis is presented as a comprehensive interpretive exercise to gain deeper insight
into Dani’s beliefs and attributions. In this final section, both the form and content of Dani’s
narrative of the ‘main’ TA are analyzed from a holistic perspective, and then ‘validation’—from
Dani’s own more direct statements on the relevant topics—is brought in to shed light on the
interpretive claims put forth throughout the analysis. These analytical choices were not made
easily, and may certainly be open to criticism or disagreement, but I believe that they allowed the
most multidimensional and comprehensive view possible (within the space constraints) of Dani and
his discursive messages, and of the theoretical and interpretive assertions central to this study.
6.2 DANI’S BASELINE INTERVIEW: WHAT HE SAID AND HOW HE SAID IT
Relative to the other interviewees and throughout his BLI, what most characterized Dani’s
discourse was his propensity for statements utilizing the second-person masculine singular pronoun
(‘you’ (MS)) in its generic message function. He appeared significantly preoccupied with the
universal ‘you’ and what the ‘normal’ Israeli man would or should have done in situations such as
he described. Nearly every time Dani discussed how he had behaved during any of the many
stressful events in his life history, his statements included declarations and/or suppositions about
what “you (MS)” would do, or what he wished he had done, or what he felt he “should” have done.
I claim that this pronominal pattern suggests an ambivalence in his own appraisal regarding his
behavior, and an uncertainty in his perceptions of his surrounding society’s appraisal (that is,
possible disapproval) of his behavior—particularly during the main TA Dani experienced.
Overall, as in Yossi’s chapter, this section focuses on four prominent and distinct patterns of
pronoun choice throughout Dani’s BLI, all of which were reflected in his various narratives. First,
he utilized first-person possessive pronouns (such as, ‘my’) and solitary phrasing as a strategy
toward creating a sense of personalization and possession of the topics or objects of reference.
Second, as aforementioned, he utilized the MS ‘you’ as a strategy toward creating a sense of
generalization, universalization, and normalization. Third, he utilized the second-person feminine
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singular pronoun (‘you’ (FS)) as a strategy to bring his audience in to the experience he was
describing. Finally, he utilized the first-person singular pronoun (‘I’) as a strategy toward claiming
ownership of the experience or role he was describing. Each of these strategies is discussed in turn
below, with demonstrative examples.
Use of first-person possessive pronouns and solitary phrases
Throughout the BLI, Dani frequently used discourse that appeared to be personalizing the
events he had experienced and those who experienced it with him through the use of first-person
possessive pronouns. Similar to Yossi, Dani spoke of his casualties almost as if he were on active
military duty in the middle of a war, with soldiers in his command who were hurt on the battlefield.
At one point, when discussing the passengers on his bus who had been struck by the shooter’s
bullets, Dani said, “my people were wounded.”ii
This signifies a form of personalization,
particularly as the statement could be formulated in other ways (e.g., “There were wounded people
on the bus”). In the context of the TA he witnessed, Dani also showed a tendency to separate
himself and focus on his own solitary experience, rather than on the collective nature of the
experience for all those who existed within it at the time. This is apparent in the following account:
1
2
3
4
“This is the third terror attack. (1) Like that I really saw LIVE LIVE I saw it LIVE you (FS) know,
[line] [28] takes a left toward [street name], line [10] also takes a left, line [10] passed through
th’intersection, stood at the bus stop, went past the stop a little bit, exploded went up, {and I am still
standing here and seeing the whole scene, maybe 30 meters away from me, and hearing everything}.”iii
From this excerpt alone, it sounds as if Dani was standing on a sidewalk, alone, watching these
events unfold. In reality, however, the surrounding context of his account reveals that Dani was on
duty at this time, at the wheel of a bus full of passengers who all witnessed the same event. There
was a collective quality to this experience to which Dani’s discourse here does not attest; rather, the
picture he paints is a wholly solitary one, with no mention of those who shared it with him. Indeed,
similar to Yossi’s BL discourse, aside from mentioning those of his passengers who were wounded
in the main TA on his bus, Dani rarely related to the other ‘experiencers’ of any of the TAs he
narrated. This singular focus on himself may reflect Dani’s preoccupation with his feelings and
attributions with regard to his behavior before, during, and after the TAs he experienced.
6.2.2 Depersonalization, universalization, and normalization:
Use of the second-person masculine singular pronoun
The most apparent and significant pattern in Dani’s BL discourse was his frequent use of
the MS ‘you’ pronoun, almost exclusively in conjunction with statements existing on a more
universal and generic plane, rather than those that could be tied uniquely to him and to his own
experiences. His recurrent, patterned use of the MS ‘you’ seemed to have two predominant themes.
With few exceptions, the MS ‘you’ was found to appear in Dani’s discourse when he was
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describing an experience or feeling that: 1) was distanced from him or from which he was making
an attempt to distance himself; and/or 2) involved him being passive or acted upon by some other
(presumably more active and powerful) ‘character’ (e.g., a terrorist or bus passenger). There exists
a complementary or interactional nature to these two themes, as often Dani seemed most invested
in distancing himself from events or experiences during which, in his perception, he behaved in a
passive (that is, in his mind, ‘unacceptable’) manner.
The interpretive claim, therefore, is that Dani—most prominently so, of all the participants
—utilized the MS ‘you’ to achieve two discursive goals: 1) as a distancing technique, either as a
reflection of an experience or feeling that was already distanced from him or as an attempt to
distance something that was ‘too close’ to him, for whatever reason; and 2) as a universalizing,
collectivizing, and/or normalizing technique, used when Dani may have been uncomfortable with
his own role in the experience or feeling he was describing, and thus as part of an attempt to place it
into the realm of his surrounding society’s appraisal of ‘acceptable’ or ‘appropriate’ behavior and
norms. In Dani’s texts, these discursive strategies were often utilized together, and at times it was
difficult to discriminate between them. Because their purposes are essentially complementary, it
often appeared unnecessary to even make this distinction.
Yet, there were places in Dani’s
discourse when each technique did appear separately, and these cases proved informative for the
interpretive process overall. Presented below are several examples of Dani’s extensive use of these
techniques, both separately and complementarily, in his patterned usage of the MS ‘you.’
Dani’s discourse surrounding the various TAs he experienced as well as the TrA in which
he was involved was filled with the MS ‘you,’ particularly in places where the topics of
responsibility and guilt surfaced. For instance, within the TrAN Dani stated:
1
2
3
4
5
6
“…you (MS) say “Oh no what did I do? What did I do? How did I not put on the brakes? How did I
not avoid him?” But you (MS) go back over it you (MS) say “I didn’t see him at all, and what am I
going to tell the investigator?” And your (MS) whole heart is shaking. Now gone is the driver’s
license gone is the job, gone is the, you (MS) work that job. And you (FS) see him down there, he
doesn’t get up, he doesn’t anything, tons of blood from the head, you (MS) killed a person that’s it
you (MS) killed a person. (2)”iv
Here, Dani’s use of the MS ‘you’ is apparent in its distancing function, particularly in relation to
the elements of the narrative within which it seems most difficult for him to reconcile his own role.
His internal dialogue with himself (“you say…”, in lines (L.) 1-2), his mental reconstruction of the
circumstances (“you go back over it,” in L.2), and his emotional reaction (“your whole heart is
shaking,” in L.3) are all placed onto the distanced, generic MS decoder. Perhaps most significant
here is Dani’s repetitive declaration, “you (MS) killed a person” (L.5-6), in which he chooses to
place a charged action onto the generic other. The emotional import of this is apparent, as the
possibility that he could have been involved in a fatal accident is likely extremely distressing for
Dani. As he seems unable to allow himself to discursively own this statement and this possibility,
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the MS ‘you’ is recruited here again within its distancing/generic function, as Dani’s attempt to
cope narratively with the experience.
Later in the interview, I asked Dani to compare the TAs he had experienced with the TrA, to
which he responded:
1
2
3
4
5
6
“Umm, it’s difficult. … Because it [a traffic accident] is something that you (MS), (1) {that it is up to
you (MS)}. … Here [in a terror attack], {it isn’t up to you (MS)}. You (FS) understand? … {If you
(MS) can prevent it, (1) so of course you (MS), (1) you (MS) will have a little something} onnn [your]
conscience. … {Understand (FS)}? As long as it isn’t up to you (MS), {so okay, what? What can I
do? It is the fate}. … I didn’t kill {th’people on my bus. It is the terrorist killed them, not me.
Understand (FS)}?”v
Rather than personalizing his statements (e.g., “If I could have prevented it, so of course I would
have had a little something on my conscience”), Dani again employs the generic MS ‘you,’ giving a
sense of distance and collectivity to his assertions, as if it is something that ‘we all’ would grapple
with, and that has very little to do with him personally. Significantly, Dani does shift to ‘I’statements when he says that he did not kill the people on his bus (L.5), although he could easily
have continued using the distancing language (e.g., “You didn’t kill the people on your bus”). This
may lend further support to the hypothesis that patterned pronoun choice represents ability and
willingness (or lack thereof) to claim ownership of the referenced experience, role, or emotion.
Indeed, it could be hypothesized that it is easier for Dani to personalize statements related to his
lack of culpability for the TA on his bus, while it may still be difficult for him to use personalized
language with regard to his own role in the TrA that he was unable to prevent. It may thus be more
comfortable for Dani to universalize the experience and position himself (as much as is possible
discursively) as a member of a larger collective, to which any of these events could happen.
The next excerpt exemplifies the use of the MS ‘you’ as a marker of passivity or being acted
upon. When I asked Dani to talk about the worst part of being a bus driver for him, he responded:
1
2
3
4
5
6
“The worst? \((thinking to himself)) The worst, I think\ it’s the, it’s that [they (MP)] get on your
(MS) nerves, that like {passengers} curse you (MS) out. … {[They (MP)] threaten you (MS) [they
(MP)] spit at you (MS) that’s the worst in my opinion, like you (MS) are serving them annd
sometimes you (MS) know, not everything has to be on the dot, so it happened that there is traffic,
\((whispering)) he curses you (MS) out\}. … {((coughing)) That’s the worst thing in my opinion, that
a passenger like curses you (MS) out and wants to hit you (MS) or raise his hand to you (MS)}.”vi
Here, Dani utilizes the MS ‘you’ in its generic and generalizing function, while showing a
consistent pattern of placing the bus passengers as the actors and the MS ‘you’ (himself,
essentially) as the passive receiver/object of their actions. One could even suggest that Dani is
placing the passengers in the role of the perpetrator and himself in the role of the victim. The
behaviors of note are conventionally active—cursing, threatening, spitting, hitting, and handraising—as well as less so—such as getting on his nerves. Each of these phrases that utilize the
MS ‘you’ could be formulated differently, in a manner that places Dani as more of a central
character. This would be accomplished primarily by recruiting ‘I’-statements and placing the
‘perpetrators’ in the predicate of the phrase, utilizing the active (focus on agent) rather than passive
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(defocus of agent) forms—as in, “I get cursed out by passengers,” instead of, “Passengers curse you
(MS) out”; or, “I get spat at,” instead of “[They (MP)] spit at you (MS).” Thus, a distinct
discursive choice is evident on Dani’s part, in positioning the main character in his description as
the passive, generic male grammatical object, rather than as himself as the ‘I’ subject. Perhaps his
apparent lack of willingness to own these experiences stems from some level of shame that he has
been the receiver of such disgraceful behavior, or perhaps he is uncomfortable with the fact that his
career as a bus driver places him in a serving role (perhaps perceived by him as inferior, as evident
in, “you (MS) are serving them,” in L.3). Or perhaps Dani is simply attempting to send the
message that all bus drivers—that is, the everydriver—experience such things from time to time.
Another prominent content theme that was frequently associated with the MS ‘you’ in
Dani’s discourse surrounded fear and its psychological repercussions, such as being hypervigilant
or being reminded of the fearful experience afterwards. When Dani discussed the main TA he
experienced and his perceptions of fear, his discourse showed even greater vacillations between
uses of ‘I’ and the MS ‘you,’ as seen in this section of text:
1
2
3
4
5
6
“I was afraid, I was afraid. But when it is/was1 over, you (MS) kind of say ‘My God, (2) what a,’
like, if it had been possible, I would have wanted to go back and do the things better, maybe to kill
him {too}. You (FS) understand? … I was afraid, it doesn’t mean that I wasn’t afraid I was
shhhaking. There is no I don’t have, what is it? A pers-, â terrorist is shooting at you (MS) from
four meters away, you (MS) won’t be scared? You (MS) are not normal if you (MS) won’t be scared.
I screamed “Mama!” and everything^.” vii
Above, L.1, in particular, exposes a certain level of confusion between the personalized and the
generalized experiences—that is, between references to his own lived experience of the attack (“I
was afraid, I was afraid”) and more universalized statements using the unmarked subject (“you
(MS) kind of say…”). It is as if, while Dani is willing here to admit that he was afraid, he may
have difficulty remaining ‘in the moment,’ within the personal experience and connection to the
full realization of what could have happened to him. Directly after this, he shifts to statements
about what he would have liked to have done or wished he had done—a method he utilized
repeatedly throughout his interview (i.e., retreating to the ‘safety’ of assertions about what he could
have done, after making more psychologically threatening or distressing statements about what he
did not do). Here, too, is a demonstration of the generalizing/collectivizing technique, with which
Dani attempts to convince his audience that, ‘Yes, it’s okay that I was afraid, because the MS
‘you’—that is, any normal person—would be afraid in this situation.’
Later in the BLI, when I asked Dani what he was feeling and thinking in the moment that he
first got back onto a bus following this TA, he responded:
1
2
3
1
“The truuth? (1) On, on that specific [bus] line, when I passed by from thhe it, a bit {you (FS)
know, you (MS) are looking, you (MS) are on alert, on alert}. You (FS) know what that is? … {On
alert is liike, YOUR HEART BEATS, YOUR (2) yoouu (MS) are looking, you (MS), are expecting
It is not possible to ascertain whether Dani was using the ‘past’- or ‘present’-tense morphological form of this verb.
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4
5
6
7
8
9
10
something. A different [bus] line like it doesn’t matter what what but when you (MS) pass by there
you (MS) also know you (MS) are reminded you (MS) say “Wow, God, what a miracle I had here.”
You (MS) look you (MS) say “My God right here it happened to me right here that I pulled over right
here” I am trying to}, to penetrate it. … You (FS) understand? To penetrate th’, mem- memory. …
And it comes back, sometimes. {You (MS) say “My God”, suddenly} brrrrr, ((sound of an
automatic weapon firing in succession)) {you (MS) hear the, like} echoing in your (MS) head.
Reminded. Yes? Sometimes [you/they/we (MP) are] reminded.”viii
I then asked him if this still happens for him, to which he responded:
1
2
3
“Iin no. In, the pas- two years no no. (2) In the first year it would happen to me a bit. … {You (MS) are
reminded a bit, the, the cries the you (MS), suddenly you (MS) know (FS) are reminded (MS) you (MS)
start to uhh, (2) get}, (2) a memory kind of.” ix
Both of these excerpts seem to demonstrate Dani’s attempts to distance himself from the emotional
effects of the stressful experiences he has undergone, but the distinctly patterned usage of the MS
‘you’ appears to provide another important clue as to his narrative ‘agenda.’2 Indeed, keeping in
mind the central contentions of this research regarding the FS ‘you’ pronoun and given the
emotional charge of many of these statements of Dani’s (“you (MS) are reminded,” in the first
quote above (L.5) and twice in the subsequent quote (L.1-2); “you (MS) hear the…echoing in your
(MS) head,” in L.9), it might have been expected that these statements would have appeared in
conjunction with the FS, rather than MS, ‘you’ pronoun.
This might have reflected the
emotionality and difficult psychological nature of these “remind[ing]” experiences, and an
attendant need to bring me in to them. As was apparent in Chapter 5, this was a central hallmark of
Yossi’s BL pronoun use patterns.
So why might Dani be showing such a different pronominal pattern, by keeping these
experiences in the generalized, universalized, distanced and generic MS ‘you’ discursive sphere?
Perhaps they do not possess an emotional component for him, or perhaps he is attempting to deny
their inherent emotionality. Or perhaps he is intent on not bringing me in to these experiences, for
myriad potential reasons. Dani’s discursive patterns here warrant a deeper investigation, and the
following excerpts provide added insight into his narrative choices. The first is from his response
to my request that he tell me about specific incidents that happened to him during his army service:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
“There is, uhh an incident when a Molotov cocktail that [they (MP)] threw at us onto the Jeep, the
Jeep [mistaken word], caught fire, (2) and we had to react fire extinguishers and extinguish th’Jeep,
annd get all of theee equipment out [of the Jeep]. (1) Stones, rocks, shooting. A Frigidaire that falls
on you (MS) from, do you (FS) know what a Frigidaire is? … A Frigidaire in a refugee camp, {[they
(MP)] bring it down onto you (MS) on the po- from the porch, down}. If you (MS) don’t pay
attention, the Frigidaire, crushes you (MS). … Understand (FS)? Dangers like those that you (MS)
need to anticipate them. If you (MS) are complacent and laid-back, (1) so you (MS) will be
surprised.”x
The next text comes from Dani’s description of the first moments of the main TA, when the
terrorist opened fire, and his attempt to stay level-headed and act ‘appropriately’:
1
2
2
“If right now I won’t find a solution and if right now I go into shock and if right now I get scared and
my hands will shake, \((whispering)) as far as I’m concerned it’s over, the story is over.\ {Right now
The term, agenda, here is employed and should be interpreted cautiously, as any motivations Dani may have for his
narrative choices are likely subconscious or unconscious.
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3
4
5
6
7
8
9
I need to forget everything, make a cut, be me, and my head and not think about anything, think
about what you (MS) are doing, \((whispering)) you (MS) and yourself (MS)\}. … {Bend down,
underneath the steering wheel as he is still firing at you (MS), bullets are exploding [all around] you
(MS), [he] keeps on firing, and fires and fires and you (MS) drive meanwhile and the whole foot is on
the gas and fly out of there as fast as possible. Understood (FS)? … Because if you (MS) won’t do
that, you (MS), and you (MS) killed another 20}. … {Because if he hurts you (MS) the story is over
for the whole bus, because he messed with me, he didn’t mess with any’one \((whispering)) else\}.”xi
Both of these quotations have one apparent theme in common: Dani’s professed perceptions of how
one ‘should’ react—the ‘acceptable’ and normative behavior for an Israeli man who may find
himself in such a situation. In the first text above, he describes what can happen to someone who
isn’t paying attention (“the Frigidaire, crushes you (MS),” in L.5-6) or who is “complacent and
laid-back” (“you (MS) will be surprised,” in L.7-8). The message here appears to be that a ‘good’
Israeli (male) soldier is vigilant, on guard, and constantly capable of anticipating possible dangers
and reacting quickly, efficiently, and appropriately.
In the second text section above, Dani begins with a series of ‘I’-statements, emphasizing
his own personalized role and obligation to act ‘correctly’ at the time of the TA. But by the end of
L.3, he has switched to the MS ‘you’ subject, which is employed exclusively for the remainder of
the excerpt. Here, the MS decoder is positioned as both the passive receiver/object of the attack
(“he is still firing at you (MS),” and, “bullets are exploding [all around] you (MS),” in L.5-6) and as
the focus of Dani’s instructions as to the ‘appropriate’ manner of acting in such a situation (“think
about what you (MS) are doing,” in L.3-4). Dani’s statements in L.7-8 are perhaps the most
powerful, expressive, and demonstrative of this communicative strategy, sending the message: ‘If
you (MS) don’t act the ‘right’ way, you (MS) will cause irreparable harm.’ He emphasizes this
even further in L.8-9 with the message that, essentially, if he had been wounded during the TA, all
of the passengers on the bus would have been killed. The responsibility that Dani has placed on his
own shoulders here seems enormous, and this is also reinforced in L.9, when he states outright that
the terrorist “messed” only with him, and not with anyone else.
Based on these interpretations of Dani’s communicative strategies, the central underlying
message of his BLI can be hypothesized as essentially: ‘The correct and acceptable way of being an
Israeli man is to be brave, heroic, vigilant, constantly prepared and ready to act, and able to execute
the correct solution immediately and without fear or paralysis.’
Accompanying and often in
dialogue with this message seems to be Dani’s entrenched hope that he fits this description, despite
possible evidence to the contrary. If the statements further above, in which Dani mentioned some
of the psychological effects of the TA, are revisited, a more comprehensive understanding of his
narrative choices can be achieved, as viewed from within the prism of Dani’s apparent deep need to
prove that he fits his own prescription for the normative Israeli man.
Indeed, when Dani refers to looking, being on alert, and expecting something, he seems to
be sending the message that these are the ‘appropriate’ behaviors for a bus driver working during
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an Intifada. And when he refers to being reminded of the TA and hearing the echoes of the
terrorist’s weapon firing in “your (MS)” head, Dani appears to be attempting to express that this,
too, is appropriate and acceptable. Dani seems intent on universalizing and collectivizing even
these very personal and emotional experiences, because if they are able to be successfully placed
into the sphere of the Israeli everyman, then it may be ‘tolerable’ that he experienced them himself.
If, on the other hand, they discursively remain Dani’s own personal ‘owned’ experiences, they may
be deemed reflective of pain, trauma, or weakness—which, in his perception, is ‘unacceptable.’
His narrative ‘agenda’ here appears to be to send the message: ‘A good Israeli man acts like A, C,
and E.’ Dani’s actions and experiences—B, D, and F—are not exactly on this list, so he places
them discursively onto the ‘good’ Israeli everyman, and seems to hope that they ‘stick.’ The result
is that the expanded definition of a ‘good Israeli man’ includes actions and experiences A, B, C, D,
E, and F, and Dani can then theoretically fit into it. This is Dani’s most overarching patterned
discursive strategy and most prominent narrative message, appearing in various themes and forms
throughout his interviews. Below is a discussion of how this influences his use of the FS ‘you.’
While Dani employed the FS ‘you’ often, nearly all of these usages were recruited for direct
dialogue with me or questioning directed toward me, such as, “you (FS) know…”, or, “Do you (FS)
understand?” These phrases were frequently rhetorical in nature, or even seemingly used as ‘filler’
or phatic3 communicative discourse—indeed, more often than not, Dani did not appear to be
seeking, and did not wait for, a response from me. Further analysis found that Dani’s use of the
phrases, “Did you (FS) understand?”, “You (FS) understood?”, and, “you (FS) know,” was higher
than that of the other participants.
This, along with a more frequent use of English words
throughout his discourse, seemed to reflect Dani’s apparently significant need for understanding
(Perez & Tobin, 2009). This usage of the FS ‘you,’ however, is not the focus of this study.
What is of significance here is the finding that Dani did use the FS ‘you’ in discursive
contexts that did not involve direct talk with me—the FS ‘you’ of analytic importance for this
research—but did so extremely rarely. There were so few of these usages throughout the BLI, in
fact, that the pattern of collocation of the FS ‘you’ with statements of sensory content appears even
more prominent and systematic. Indeed, although Dani used the FS ‘you’ much less frequently
than did Yossi, when this pronoun does appear in Dani’s discourse, it is most often in sentences
that were significantly similar to those made by Yossi.
For example, as he talked about the passengers on his bus who had been wounded by the
3
In linguistics, a phatic expression or communication constitutes a speech act that has the sole function of performing
a social task, as opposed to transmitting information.
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terrorist, Dani said, “Becauuse some one of them took some two bullets to the foot, and so much
blood, my God, you (FS) see the blood, you (FS) know the steps of the bus trickle drip drip drip,
like some kind offf, stream, of, water of blood.”xii Later, Dani described his experience of
witnessing a bus bombing, stating, “A second later you (FS) see his roof go up in the sky with a
boom, like you (FS) never {heard} in your (FS) life.”xiii Here, the FS ‘you’ is employed by Dani
along with sensory verbs, such as seeing and hearing, in the most difficult and emotionally charged
contexts, such as the immediate lived experience of the TAs. As mentioned in Chapter 5, Yossi
also used the phrase, “you (FS) see,” repeatedly, all followed by highly graphic images of the TA
scene (e.g., “hanging people,” “mutilated people,” and “hands moving”). It is notable that, even
with the dearth of (non-dialogic) FS ‘you’ pronouns in Dani’s discourse, the FS ‘you’ was used in
nearly identical manners and contexts in both Dani’s and Yossi’s texts.
Below is part of a narrative Dani told about going back to pick up his bag, which had been
taken by the bus company for safekeeping after the TA, while Dani had been taken to the hospital:
1
2
3
4
5
6
“You (FS) see the bus, afterwards I went to the [Egged bus] branch, because myy bag was still there
everything, [they] took my’bag. Two weeks later, I, for no particular reason, am straightening up, I
see tons of glass shards inside the bag. Tons of glass. (4) {In the end, and you (FS) see the bus, my
God, it is full of holes, I am saying “Whoah, God, III, really,” I ow-, owe God my’life}. Understand
(FS)? (3) A huge miracle, let’s (FS) say that. A big miracle happened here, in my case, that I wasn’t
hurt, there are some who, you (FS) know, were killed. PLEASE, IIII ((chuckles)).”xiv
Here again, the phrase, “you (FS) see the bus,” appears twice in the exact same formulation (L. 1
and L.3). Dani shows a willingness and ability to use an ‘I’-statement to describe seeing glass
shards inside his bag (L.2-3), in addition to declaring that he, and no one else, owes God his life
(L.4).
But concerning his experience of seeing his bus after the TA he experienced, Dani
repeatedly chooses the collocated use of the FS ‘you’ and the proximate-present (PPr) tense. This
pattern is reiterated as a consistent communicative strategy to distance the encoder (the actual
‘experiencer’) from the experienced events and draw in the FS decoder, while sending the message
that the events described are both proximate and experience-able to the encoder (and decoder).
As mentioned above and as in Yossi’s case, Dani’s choice to employ the FS ‘you’ most
frequently coincides with sensory statements and highly charged or descriptive contexts. The
following excerpt from Dani’s TrAN further reflects this:
1
2
3
4
5
6
“Someone jumped in front of me into the street, totally ran without looking, and I hit him in the
corner I didn’t see him even, I didn’t step on the brakes didn’t anything like like a mosquito that gets
into your (FS) car and you (FS), (1) no chance, all of a sudden [it is] smeared on your (FS) window,
boom to the corner. (1) Really the truth really it I was scared totally it really, you (MS) say “My
God, I killed the man,” and I didn’t kill him. {But you (FS) see him lying there, poor guy, covered in
blood}.xv
Here, Dani utilizes the FS ‘you’ in a highly vivid and descriptive simile, likening the collision of
his bus and the pedestrian to what happens to a mosquito who gets trapped in “your (FS) car” and
then smeared all over “your (FS) window” (L.2-3). Then, again, the phrase, “you (FS) see,” is
employed in Dani’s description of the pedestrian lying on the ground after the accident, “covered in
179
blood” (L.5-6). Later in the narrative, Dani used this phrase again: “And you (FS) see him down
there, he doesn’t get up, he doesn’t anything, tons of blood from the head, you (MS) killed a person
that’s it you (MS) killed a person.”xvi These examples, in addition to those presented directly
above, appear qualitatively divergent from the previous excerpts showing Dani’s use of the MS
‘you,’ and this reflects the communicative opposition created by the distinct discursive patterns and
strategies at work here. Dani employs the FS ‘you’ in personalized contexts that entail experiences
that were emotionally charged and difficult for him, and that he may not be ready or able to ‘own.’
There is no need or opportunity for generalization or universalization regarding these experiential
elements, as there appears to be no societal agenda involved. In Dani’s apparent perception, these
facets of the experience are those that the ‘good Israeli man’ should not undergo, because he should
have been vigilant and heroic enough to prevent or avoid them in the first place. But once the
mistakes have been made and the damage done, it is the FS ‘you’ who discursively experiences
them and their effects.
Indeed, being involved in a TrA in which Dani’s bus caused enough damage that he had to
see the victim laying in a pool of his own blood can absolutely be traumatic, and Dani himself
referred to the experience as such. So it makes interpretive sense that, similar to Yossi’s case, it
would be the most traumatic and emotionally charged elements of the experience that Dani might
feel the need to bring me in to or project onto me, as a coping mechanism. This is equally relevant
to the texts above, in which the FS ‘you’ was collocated with experiences such as seeing the blood
of his passengers trickle down the bus steps during the main TA; seeing and hearing the roof of a
bombed bus explode into the sky; and seeing his bullet-riddled bus after the attack. These difficult
experiences are brought into the discursive realm of the FS ‘you’ because, according to the central
assertions of this research, the ‘ideal’ MS ‘you’ shouldn’t see, hear, or have them; and the ‘I’
doesn’t want to own that he did actually see, hear, and have them.
Dani’s use of the FS ‘you’ in the following excerpt seems to even further support this
hypothesis. When I asked him about his thought processes during the Intifada, and whether he still
thinks “nothing bad can happen” to him or whether any fear did or does enter into his
consciousness, he responded:
1
2
3
4
5
6
“IIII at at work no but sometimes you (FS) know that you (FS) are thiinking for no reason like all of
a sudden you (FS) are alone with yourself (FS) {you (FS) say, (2) ‘Something like that can happen
yes, that suddenly’} (1) but that only you (FS) like in in a muse like that like you (FS) doon’t, you
(FS) are alone with yourself (FS), you (FS) and {your (FS) own personal} peace. {You (FS) like for
no reason are sitting and thinking. That’s when I am thinking. If I am sitting down it happens to me
a lot that I take a walk and III think}.” xvii
Here, the FS ‘you’ is employed repeatedly, in one of the rare appearances in Dani’s interview of
discourse surrounding introspection and contemplation. As Dani’s discourse is so much more often
focused on doing, acting, and experiencing, both the content and form of the excerpt seems to
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reveal that Dani is not entirely comfortable with questions (and answers) regarding his thought
processes and consciousness. To that end, he once again places the actions and experiences that he
is not willing or able to own onto the FS ‘you,’ where they can presumably be more easily and
comfortably discussed and explored. Essentially, the topic here is vulnerability (as seen in the
statement, “you (FS) say, ‘Something like that can happen yes…’, in L.2-3), and the FS ‘you’ is
deemed by Dani the appropriate pronoun for such a sensitive topic.
Significantly, the same pattern is evident in the following text section, which was Dani’s
response when I asked about the atmosphere in his bus branch during the Intifada:
1
2
3
4
“There was tension. (2) There was also a bit of fear. People {like that you (FS) know}, diiidnn’t,
didn’t laugh like they used to laugh there were terror attacks and all that, so the atmosphere a bit uhh,
was kind of calm quiet. [They (MP)] saw that there is tension. (2) Annd uhh, but we went out to
work and everything. But how do you say? You (FS) feel {the tension} in the air.”xviii
Here, again, the FS ‘you’ appears exclusively in the sensory context of feeling, and in the PPr tense.
Indeed, in Dani’s discursive view, “you (FS) feel the tension,” but, “we went out to work”—the
Israeli men did what needed to be done in a difficult situation, and the female decoder deals with
the emotional repercussions.
This patterned collocation strategy again seems connected to
vulnerability—as the distanced statement, “There was tension” (L.1), is imparted with no pronoun
subject; and the generalized, “[They (MP)] saw that there is tension” (L.3), is placed onto the
generic MP decoder; but the more emotionally charged statement, “You (FS) feel the tension in the
air” (L.4), is projected onto the sensing, feeling, thinking, experiencing FS decoder.
This hypothesis that vulnerability exists in Dani’s discourse almost exclusively in the
feminine realm may be further reinforced in the following excerpt, from Dani’s description of
having seen the terrorist for the first time directly before the main TA: “He [the terrorist] stood
there, a regular guy with a coat it was rain, {and suddenly he took out th’M-16, you (FS) can’t do
anything}.”xix
Placing this text into dialogue with all the other examples presented here, a
significant discursive contrast is evident between Dani’s perception of the MS decoder—the strong,
capable, active, heroic Israeli male—and the FS decoder—the weak, helpless, powerless, ‘actedupon’ female. Whenever Dani is describing actions or experiences that fit into the latter category,
he employs the FS ‘you,’ as he may not be able or willing to claim them for himself. Essentially,
he couldn’t do anything at that moment, and he felt helpless and powerless. On the other hand,
whenever Dani is describing actions or experiences he believes he should have or wishes he had
done or had—that is, the ‘correct’ and ‘acceptable’ actions and reactions—he employs the MS
‘you,’ in an apparent possible attempt to make himself worthy of claiming them. And whenever
Dani seems able to claim any actions or behaviors that fit into the description of the ‘ideal’ Israeli
male, he does—using the ‘I’ pronoun. This discursive process is discussed below.
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Dani’s use of the ‘I’ pronoun seemed to reflect an overarching preoccupation with his own
role—particularly in the TAs and the TrA in which he was involved—which was a prominent
theme in both the form and content of his BLI. Below is a lengthy section of Dani’s main TAN, in
which he described in detail his own actions before and while the terrorist was shooting at his bus:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
“I am driving, line [20], it was winter [February], rain. (2) Approach the [bus] stop, take on
th’passengers, take, you (FS) know, [bus] passes money MONEY. Suddenly I see someone come to
a standstill in front of {the bus. (2) I do [gesture] to himmm} like ‘Go past.’ (1) Because I want to put
on the blinker and leave the [bus] stop. (1) And then he winks, winks his eye at me does like this
((winks at me)) I do to him like ‘What?’, [he] opens the zipper coat, takes ouut a rifle and ‘Brrrrrrrrrr’
((makes a sound of an automatic weapon firing in succession)). {And I didn’t se-, am I dreaming? I
DREAM? What? What?} Straight away, like liike [they] taught me in the army, I bent down
underneath the steering wheel, I am small. (1) The bullets passed me over my head he fired in a
burst, innn automatic, not single shots, ONE ONE, in a burst. I went down underneath, with the
steering wheel, and I started to drive, I wanted to run him over but he got away. Now I look, I see
him pump full of bullets thhh’people who were at the [bus] stop. (3) What did I do I escaped,4 I went
to the right towards [name of hospital], there was a hospital nearby, I went off the route, now my
people were wounded, tons of blood on the bus. I said ‘I have to get th’bus out [of here], otherwise
he is tearing us apart,’ understand (FS)?”xx
This entire narrative section is told exclusively in ‘I’-statements, with not a single use of secondperson pronouns of either gender (save for direct dialogue with me), thus creating a sense that Dani
was present, active, and agentic in this experience. Here, amidst all the chaos, he is able to think
quickly enough to not only save his own life, but also to spring into action, extricate the bus and its
passengers from the scene, and bring them to safety and to critical medical attention. As in Yossi’s
similar texts, the image presented here is of the bus driver as the hero and savior of those in his
charge. There is only a hint of remorse in Dani’s discourse here, in his statement about what he had
wanted to do (L.10), which notably also makes use of the ‘I’ pronoun. This is one of many
assertions of this nature, always told in a personalized and ‘owned’ manner, which reveals what
may be an underlying sense of guilt and inadequacy with regard to his behavior during this event.
Notably, the extra-linguistic messages of the pronouns Dani utilized here interact and
correspond with the meanings of the tenses in his discourse. That is, there is a near-absolute split in
the patterned tense use between the first and second halves (L.1-7 and L.7-14, respectively) of the
above narrative, with the former being told in the PPr tense and the latter almost exclusively in the
remote-past (RPa) tense. The primary dichotomy within the two sub-sections can be hypothetically
stated as, ‘what happened to me’ vs. ‘what I did in response’ (or, more generally, ‘what was done to
me’ vs. ‘what I did’). While Dani positions himself as the central character of the narrative overall,
the use of the PPr tense in the first half suggests an even more proximate, salient, and ‘alive’
experience. This may be motivated by a number of possible, related issues: 1) this description of
4
There appears to be particular significance to Dani’s word choice here, as he could have said, “left/went out,” or,
“drove,” or even, “I got the bus out of there.” The choice of the word, “escape,” here seems to suggest a value
judgment Dani may be placing on his own behavior, and indeed, this was not the only time this word and/or its root
was used. This will be discussed further, later in this chapter.
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the terrorist’s active role in the incident may have been experienced by Dani as more upsetting and
stressful, and this manner of telling the narrative may be a reaction to the painful effects of the
event; 2) Dani may be attempting to make this part of the story more proximate to me and/or easier
for me to imagine; and/or 3) Dani may not want to fully claim his role discursively in this part of
the narrative because, as the terrorist was acting, Dani’s role was more passive and less ‘heroic.’
In the second half of this narrative section, the use of the RPa tense gives a stronger sense
that what Dani is describing happened definitively, in the past, and that the experience is more
distanced. This, coupled with the exclusive use of the ‘I,’ creates a narrative picture that Dani was
present, active, and central in this experience. This section describes his response to the terrorist’s
actions, and Dani presents himself as having acted immediately and decisively. He “bent down,”
“went down,” “started to drive,” “got out of there,” “went to the right,” and “went off the route”—
all immediate and effective actions, spurred by quick thinking and vigilant reaction to the emergent
situation at hand. By comparison, although Yossi’s TAN had only a very small number of sections
in which any ‘I’-statements were made, there is a significant similarity between his and Dani’s texts
in this context, in their collocated use of the RPa tense with their own agentic actions. At the exact
narrative moment in which both Yossi and Dani began to describe their own roles and actions
within their respective TA experience, they switched from PPr to RPa tense, and showed an
increased use of the ‘I’ pronoun. Dani’s only return to the PPr tense in this section (“Now I look, I
see him pump full of bullets…”, in L.10-11) is again in relation to the terrorist’s actions, and not his
own; that is, although the main character in the sentence is still Dani, the main actor is the terrorist.
This essentially supports the third hypothesis offered above.
The next example provides the larger narrative context of one of the shorter quotations that
was presented above as a demonstration of Dani’s use of the FS ‘you’ (L.3-4 below). This larger
excerpt, in which Dani discusses the bombing he witnessed on the bus in front of him, makes even
more evident the specific contexts in which he makes his patterned pronominal choices:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
5
6
“Again I am telling you (FS), luck. Hhee, went through the traffic light which was turning yellow,
went left, like passed through the intersection, and I God said to me, ‘Stay there. Don’t need to take
it [the light], for what? So two more minutes what is wrong with that?’ A second later you (FS) see
his roof go up in the sky with a boom, like you (FS) never {heard} in your (FS) life. Immediately I
understood that it is a bombing, I made a U-turn I escaped from that place. (1) I escaped.5 You (FS)
know what kind of a smell [there was]? My God. Smoke was coming out of its roof. The roof of the
back section [of the accordion-style double bus], totally split into two. So you (FS) say luck? I
believe in luck I believe in luck I be-, no doubt about it. Luck is a separate part of me. 6 You (MS)
say that if I had stayed close to him, {I also would have gone}. Because that bombing demolished his
whole back section, {that huge bus}.”xxi
Again, Dani’s choice of the word, “escape,” here is notable (particularly as repetition is utilized as well), as again, a
variety of alternatives were potentially available to him. The meaning and possible significance of this narrative
choice will be discussed in further detail, later in this chapter.
It is not entirely clear what Dani meant by this statement. From the context, it seems likely that Dani may have said
or meant, “inseparable,” or, “integral,” rather than, “separate.” The original recording may not have been of a good
enough quality to permit a correct hearing of this phrase, or there may have been some confusion on Dani’s part.
183
Dani again appears to make an unambiguous switch between the FS ‘you’ and the ‘I’ when the
action and actor in the sentences shift from relatively passive and potentially emotionally difficult,
to active and fitting of ‘correct’ Israeli male behavior. This can be observed in L.3-4, when the FS
‘you’ is used with seeing and hearing the effects of the bombing—presumably the most
emotionally charged elements of this experience for him. This contrasts with the subsequent two
sentences (L.4-5), in which Dani utilizes the ‘I’ in conjunction with the actions of understanding
that a bombing had taken place, making a U-turn, and escaping (twice) from the immediate scene
of the TA—all initiatives performed consciously and agentically by Dani, rather than by someone
else and imposed upon Dani. According to the central hypotheses of this research, these actions
may constitute the epitome of Dani’s perception of ‘acceptable’ behavior for an Israeli man in such
a situation, and his combined use of the ‘I’ pronoun and the RPa tense reinforces this message.
Most evident here is the pattern regarding which parts of the experience Dani is willing and able to
claim, and which elements might be perceived as less ‘acceptable’ (that is, those exposing
weakness or passivity, in his view) and are, therefore, projected onto a second-person decoder.
DANI’S BASELINE TRAN: HOW MUCH AND WHEN HE SAID IT
As previously mentioned, Dani’s life history included four analytically significant incidents
—three separate TAs, as well as a TrA that he referred to as “traumatic.” Theoretically, the
analysis proposed in this study does not necessarily require a narrative of a TA, per se; rather, just a
particularly emotionally charged narrative. It was thus particularly critical in this case to decide on
the appropriate text unit upon which to focus the analytical ‘magnifying glass,’ in order to best
explore Dani’s discursive patterns.
It became clear throughout Dani’s BLI that the TrA he
experienced was actually more difficult for him than any of the TAs, and upon analysis of the
narratives of all four incidents, it emerged that Dani’s TrAN was indeed the most representative of
the patterns discussed above, which were apparent across the BLI overall. That is, as Dani
appeared to use the MS ‘you’ to a greater degree throughout his entire BLI than did the other
participants, he showed the same proportional pronoun usage in his TrAN. Therefore, in order to
give a comprehensive picture of the phenomena discussed above, the following table and graph
present quantitatively the distribution and percentage computations of Dani’s uses of (the primary
analytical foci) pronouns and tenses within his BL TrAN.
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Table 6-1: Pronoun and tense distribution in Dani’s baseline TrAN
‘Past’
‘Present’
‘Future’
‘I’
19
13
0
52%
‘YOU (MS)’
4
8
0
19%
‘YOU (FS)’
1 (2)8
6 (5)
0
11% (11%)
‘WE’
0
0
4
6%
38% (3%)
43% (8%)
6%
There were 43 total lines of text in the TrAN, and a total of 63 relevant pronouns (and therefore, 63
tense uses), and the ratio of pronouns per line was calculated to be 1.47. The graph below presents
the patterns of collocations of each pronoun with each tense. The directed/phatic uses of the FS
‘you’ (those not of analytic significance) are not represented.
Figure 6-1: Pronoun-tense collocations in Dani’s baseline TrAN10
the time of his first interview, was claiming parts of the TrA experience for himself half of the time
(nearly a third of the time in a less proximate manner); spending about one-eighth of his TrAN
attempting to bring his audience in to those parts of the experience with him; and universalizing
and/or normalizing parts of the experience nearly one-fifth of the time.
7
The use percentages of each tense were computed as relative to the total number of tense-marked verbs in the TrAN.
The number outside the parentheses signifies uses of the FS ‘you’ that are of analytic significance (e.g., “You (FS)
see the blood”), while the number inside the parentheses refers to phatic talk with me, as when he asked me a
question (rhetorical or not) or interacted dialogically with me (e.g., “You (FS) understand?” or, “you (FS) know…”).
9
The use percentages of each pronoun were computed as relative to the total number of these pronouns in the TrAN.
10
each bar are relative within the TrAN.
8
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6.4 PRONOUN ‘POETRY’ OF DANI’S BASELINE TRAN:
Just as the above quantitative representation of these data is useful to uncover patterns, so
the qualitative view is an essential part of the analytical puzzle. According to the method described
in detail in Chapter 3 (Section 3.6.2.3), the following table is the ‘poetic’ result of the 43 lines of
text of Dani’s baseline TrANxxii. Here, again, poems were constructed only for the significantlyused pronouns. The ‘you (MS)’ and ‘you (FS)’ poems are almost exclusively in the ‘present’ tense,
and so are not separated by tense as is the ‘I’ poem, but ‘past’ tense entries are noted with a doubleunderline. And again, all within-narrative dialogue was excluded from both the poems and the
tabulations. As discussed previously, Dani’s narratives were not uninterrupted, and the three
questions that I asked herein are represented as breaks in the overall ‘poetry.’
Table 6-2: The pronoun ‘poetry’ of Dani’s baseline TrAN11
‘I’ POEM (32)
A: When you were driving?
6
You say “My God, I killed
the man”
2
I hit him
3
I didn’t see him
4
I didn’t step on the brakes
5
I was scared
7
I didn’t kill him
9
I couldn’t…get back to the
wheel right away
10
I got on [to the bus]
11
I said “I have to be at
home a bit”
12
A: So tell me, after you did that, what did you do?
20
Maybe I am guilty
You take the statements of
17
I am a bit guilty[?]
the people who were
18
I am a lot guilty?
with you
21
--You drove slowly
31
[That] I am not at all guilty 22[It’s his luck that] it was
at all
you
23
You say to yourself
‘Dammit, I’m not guilty
and not anything, so why
let him destroy my…,
I’m not guilty. I did
what I could do. I tried
to get away, I didn’t
succeed’
32
You say ‘Damn, why let
him screw up your…?’
What did I do?
13
What did I do?
14
I did a reconstruction in
my head
15
[Where] I could have
prevented it
19
I said ‘[Dani], you are not
guilty at all’
--28
If I had been a bit guilty
30
[As soon as] I got myself
out of the assumption
16
35
48
I almost fainted
‘YOU (MS)’ POEM
(12)
A: So what was traumatic?
I don’t don’t doon’t, don’t 38You say ‘Oh no what did I
11
‘YOU (FS)’ POEM
((7) (7)12)
1
(You know)
--You see him lying there
8
24
You see
You come to that situation
[conclusion]
26
You say ‘Okay, I’m totally
okay, I’ll move on. I
don’t need to be, uhh,
with a guilty conscience.
And even if I had killed
him, God forbid, like it, I
couldn’t have done
anything I didn’t do it on
purpose of course and I
didn’t, and I’m not guilty
at all’
27
(You understood?)
29
(You know)
33
(You understood?)
25
34
Did you go crazy?
12
Entries in parentheses here signify direct phatic talk with me, as when he asked me a question (rhetorical or not) or
interacted dialogically with me (e.g., “You (FS) understand?” or, “you (FS) know…”).
186
I said “That’s it, I finished
him”
37
I said “That’s it you can’t
let [this] go”
--47
I received a letter
36
think about it anymore
even
50
I take it as a motto
51
I am called a nonchalant
driver
52
I am a slow driver
53
I like calm
54
I am [on] line [28]
55
I like a few people
57
I like to be calm with
myself
58
I work with a small
amount of people
do? What did I do?
How did I not put on the
brakes? How did I not
avoid him?’
39
You go back over it
40
You say ‘I didn’t see him
at all, and what am I
going to tell the
investigator?’
41
You work that job
43
You killed a person
44
That’s it you killed a
person
--You see him down there
45
(You know)
46
You go even more crazy
49
(You know where)
--56
(You know all the
Jerusalem [bus] lines)
42
Again, as in Yossi’s case, the dominant poem, or viewpoint of the TrAN, is clearly the ‘I,’ or ‘ego,’
as is generally the case in narratives told about an encoder’s own life experience. However, the
RPa ‘I’ is not as dominant as might be expected, and in fact, none of the poems takes a principal
piece of the narrative ‘pie.’ This analysis discusses each section separately (as much as possible),
with a focus on the holes in each poem and the clusters in the others that fill those holes.
After an initial single dialogic use of the FS ‘you,’ the RPa ‘I’ poem opens the TrAN, and
tells the majority of this first section. The focus here is primarily on what Dani did and did not do:
he hit the pedestrian, he was scared, he got on the bus, and he said; while he didn’t see the
pedestrian, didn’t manage to brake in time, didn’t kill him, and couldn’t get back to work right
away. The emphasis here is on actions—or rather, the dialectic between action and inaction. There
is no thinking, no knowing, no sensing, and very little feeling. Significantly, while this section of
the ‘I’ poem contains a reference to not killing the pedestrian (entry (E.) 7), the MS ‘you’ poem
contains a single reference to the opposite—the possibility, expressed in imagined and generalized
dialogue, that he had killed him (E.6). Similarly, while the ‘I’ poem contains the statement, “I
didn’t see him” (E.3), the FS ‘you’ poem contains, “You see him lying there” (E.8). These direct
oppositions seem to lend further support to the hypothesis regarding Dani’s possible discomfort
with owning some of the most upsetting and difficult sensory facets of the experience—such as the
realization that he could have killed the pedestrian, and the raw and presumably terrifying vision of
seeing him on the ground after the impact (contrasted with not having seen him at all before the
impact, and thus, having been unable to prevent the accident).
In the second section of the TrAN, which was prompted by my request for a chronological
recounting of the ensuing sequence of events, Dani continues in the RPa ‘I’-perspective, and in his
focus on his own actions and non-actions. He repeats the phrase, “What did I do?” twice in a row
(E.12-13), which appears to signal (in both content and form) a heightened emotional charge or
distress. Dani then seems to attempt to calm himself by discussing the apparent impossibility of
preventing the accident and using self-talk (this time, notably, with the additional usage of his own
name) to reassure himself of his complete innocence—as seen in the use of the phrase, “at all,” in
187
E.19. Inserted between these attestations to his lack of guilt in the RPa ‘I’ poem exist three
significant statements to the contrary—or at least, indications of ambivalence and uncertainty—in
the PPr ‘I’ poem. Indeed, E.16-18 stand in opposition (again, in both content and form) specifically
to the content of E.19, in their questioning and repetition surrounding the subject of guilt.
Essentially, the hypothetical dialectic here might be phrased as: ‘I was not guilty at all, but
maybe I am guilty to some degree.’ In this case, Dani’s shifts between the RPa and PPr tenses
seem to signify his difficulty reconciling the technical fact that he could not have done anything
differently with the equally reality-based fact that his bus (and by extension, he) nonetheless caused
injury to this individual. That is, in Dani’s apparent perception, factually, he was not guilty of any
wrongdoing; but that does not change a possible inner sense of culpability that harm was caused
‘on his watch.’ This seems to connect with one of the central messages of the discourse of Dani’s
BLI overall: an apparent deep ambivalence regarding his personal expectations for himself and his
perception of his surrounding society’s expectations of him. Here, while Dani “did a reconstruction
in [his] head,” and independently concluded that he could not have prevented the accident and that
he was “not guilty at all” (E.14-16), he still questions (tellingly, in the ‘present’ tense) whether he is
nonetheless “a bit guilty,” or, “a lot guilty” (E.16-18). This may be a compelling representation of
Dani’s personal appraisals interacting discursively with his perceptions of his society’s appraisals.
At this emotional high point in the narrative, Dani’s discourse shifts abruptly to the MS
‘you’ poem, with four sequential entries (20-23) that seem to attempt to generalize and universalize
the experience of the TrA. Most significant is the opposition between E.23 and E.19, whereby
“You (MS) say to yourself ‘…I’m not guilty,” but, “I said ‘…you are not guilty…” This seems to
provide further indication of Dani’s possible ambivalence and uncertainty surrounding the issue of
guilt within this event; indeed, there is not a single entry that simply and unequivocally states, ‘I
was not guilty.’ If Dani speaks in the ‘I’-voice about the possibility of guilt or lack thereof, he
tends to employ the PPr tense, which suggests a more salient and emotional experience, and
possible lack of full narrative processing. And if Dani speaks more definitively about his lack of
culpability, he utilizes a mixture of various other pronouns and dialogue, which seems to obfuscate
the ultimate message. This can be observed again in E.26, which presents a significant emotional
contrast with E.23. While both entries are focused on what could or could not have been done, and
both include the phrase, “I’m not guilty” (within dialogue), the MS ‘you’ entry mentions Dani’s
attempt to not allow the event to “destroy [his life],” while the FS ‘you’ entry is more attentive to
being “okay,” and not having a “guilty conscience.”
Ultimately, Dani’s concerns about his
culpability and his ambivalence about his actions are all presented in non-‘I’-statements (or rather,
‘I’-statements only within non-‘I’-dialogue), which seem to allow him to work more intensively
through the attendant emotionality of the issues.
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This section of the TrAN concludes with seven entries that switch, one after the other, from
poem to poem, with no coherent sequentiality. Dani shifts from talking about being “not guilty at
all” (E.19) to possibly being “a bit guilty” (E.28) in the RPa ‘I’ poem, and from possibly being “a
lot guilty?” (E.18) to being “not at all guilty at all” (E.31) in the PPr ‘I’ poem. In the MS ‘you’
poem, Dani seems to reinforce his position of anger, adding to his first dialogic statement about
“let[ting] him destroy my…” (E.23), by asking again (dialogically), “why let him screw up
your…?” (E.32). Both statements remain unfinished, and both, significantly, place the prospective
blame on the pedestrian (“him”), and seem to allude to fairly far-reaching potential effects of the
TrA on Dani’s life and well-being. Finally, the FS ‘you’ poem completes its contribution to this
section with three entries (27, 29, and 33) that seem to indicate a particular need for understanding,
affirmation from, and co-construction of meaning with, me. It is as if Dani, herein mired in such
confusion and ambivalence, may be expressing a request for support or empathy from his audience.
The final section of this narrative comes after my direct question about the traumatic nature
of the TrA experience, to which Dani himself had originally referred. His immediate response
appears in the FS ‘you’ poem, in the form of a rather incredulous question, perhaps conveying his
assumption (or hope) that anyone would or should find an experience of this nature traumatic. The
next three entries exist in the RPa ‘I’ poem, wherein Dani presents another apparent emotional high
point, albeit in mostly dialogic form. Although the emotional sentiment here is positioned in
saying rather than directly feeling, it seems evident nonetheless. His repetitive use of, “I said,” and,
“That’s it” (E.36-37), following his admission to having “almost fainted” (E.35), send a message
indicating an emotionally charged moment. And Dani’s shifts between the ‘I’ and the ‘you’ in the
dialogue of these entries offer further evidence of a sense of ambivalence and discomfort with his
actions and their unfortunate consequences.
At this moment in the narrative, Dani transfers his discourse to the MS ‘you’ poem, with a
cluster of four entries (38-41). Again, here, there is an emphasis on saying, and lengthy dialogic
discourses questioning what he did and did not do. And again, there is a mixing of the speaking
‘you’ with the dialogic ‘I.’ Dani could just as easily have placed these statements into an ‘I’ poem
(as in, “I said ‘Oh no what did I do?...’” instead of, “You say ‘Oh no what did I do?...’”), and so
their existence in the MS ‘you’ poem may be interpreted as an attempt to generalize a particularly
stressful or ambivalent facet of the experience.
The repeated questioning, self-blaming, and
apparent remorse in E.38 and E.40 may again send a message that Dani is still wrestling with guilt
and uncertainty regarding his role in the TrA.
Here, he has placed these concerns into the
discursive realm of the generic MS ‘you,’ in a possible attempt to universalize and normalize them.
The TrAN is then punctuated by a significant entry in the FS ‘you’ poem, whereby Dani
says, “You see him down there” (E.42). This builds on a repetition already set in place by E.8
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(“You see him lying there”) and E.24 (“You see”), and further demonstrates a pattern observed
across the participants in this study, in which the most frequent sensory use of the FS ‘you’ is
collocated with the verb, “to see.” This phenomenon, which is significant on a very basic level, is
open to a range of interpretations. Perhaps Dani’s experience of looking down from his perch on
his bus and seeing the bloodied, immobilized body of a human being he had injured was the most
traumatic facet of this overall traumatic event. Or perhaps because this was the most graphic and
visceral part of the experience, Dani is most interested in bringing me in to it, and able to do so. It
does appear that this may have been the most emotional, affecting, passive, and uncertain facet of
the experience for Dani—that is, seeing the effects of his actions (or non-actions); not knowing the
extent of the damage he caused; and, most notably, not immediately springing into ‘heroic’ action
to save or care for the wounded man.
Indeed, most conspicuously absent from the TrAN overall is any reference to Dani as a hero
or as having acted on behalf of the pedestrian or his passengers. In fact, his perception that the
entire event was caused by his ‘incorrect’ behavior may be the most traumatic part of the
experience for him. This could explain the subsequent two entries in the MS ‘you’ poem, wherein
Dani repeats the phrase, “You killed a person” (E.43-44)—which may build upon E.6 (“You say
“My God, I killed the man””). This seems to represent a repeated attempt to generalize and
universalize the horrifying experience for Dani of entertaining the possibility that he had killed the
pedestrian. This also, as previously mentioned, is opposed to E.7 in the RPa ‘I’ poem, wherein
Dani declared definitively, “I didn’t kill him.” Therefore, most evident here is a dialectic between
the actual fact, presented declaratively from the RPa ‘I’-perspective, that Dani did not kill the man,
and the imagined possibility, presented both dialogically and non-dialogically from the MS ‘you’perspective, that, “You killed a person.” While E.36 in the RPa ‘I’ poem presents the euphemistic
possibility, “I finished him,” the most difficult and upsetting statement that the man could have
been killed, is placed into the universalized and generalized discursive realm of the MS ‘you.’
Although the experience of potentially or nearly killing a human being is undoubtedly
highly emotionally charged, significantly, Dani does not place it into the FS ‘you’-perspective.
Perhaps this is because this may be viewed by him as a masculine act, or as an agentic behavior
rather than a passive sensory experience (such as, “see[ing] him down there,” in E.42 in the FS
‘you’ poem). This interpretive hypothesis may be reinforced by the repetition employed in E.34
and E.46, wherein Dani twice places the experience of, “go[ing] crazy,” and, “go[ing] even more
crazy,” into the discursive realm of the FS ‘you.’ Perhaps this is an experience or behavior
perceived by Dani as quintessentially female? This may also be interpreted as further evidence for
one of the fundamental claims of this study; namely, that the FS ‘you’ is often recruited to take on
the passive sensory reactions and emotional effects of stressful, difficult, and upsetting experiences.
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The final cluster that essentially summarizes the TrAN exists in the PPr ‘I’ poem, wherein
Dani makes a series of statements about himself as a person and his personality as a bus driver. His
final message here is that he “like[s] calm” (E.53 and E.57), and prefers to drive on the less
crowded bus lines because he likes to work with fewer people (E.55 and E.58). This eight-entry
cluster constitutes a significant percentage within the total number of entries in the TrAN, which
can be interpreted to indicate the importance of this message to Dani, although the meaning behind
it is less clear. Perhaps Dani is reiterating a message he began to make in E.21-22 of the MS ‘you’
poem, where he essentially stated that he had been driving slowly at the time of the TrA, and that
the pedestrian was “lucky” that Dani had been driving at that pace, place, and time, because if it
had been any other driver, the pedestrian would surely have been injured much more seriously. In
this view, Dani’s summation statements surrounding his slow and nonchalant driving (E.51-52) and
preference for calm could be interpreted as an attempt to remind his audience of the pedestrian’s
“luck” and ingrain the message of Dani’s ‘acceptable’ behavior, represented as his ultimate success
in preventing a greater tragedy. Dani may also simply have wanted to conclude this narrative with
a final message regarding who he is as a person and that he is indeed a good bus driver, despite
what may appear to be evidence to the contrary, given the content of this narrative overall.
One final notable finding in the pronoun poetry of Dani’s TrAN regards his only (four) uses
of the ‘we’ pronoun, which appeared sequentially within the dialogue of E.32 in the MS ‘you’
poem. The full dialogue was: “You say ‘Damn, why let him screw up your…? … We will get back
on [the bus] and we will drive properly. And we will drive with confidence and we will do exactly
what I would have done beforehand, and even more.’”xxiii This constitutes a significant and fairly
unusual interjection of the first-person plural/collective pronoun, perhaps symbolizing a discursive
attempt on Dani’s part to integrate himself and his actions at this time into his society’s collective.
Indeed, the content here surrounds what appears to be Dani’s perception of appropriate, ‘correct,’
and ‘acceptable’ behavior in such a context—getting right back onto ‘the battlefield’ no matter how
traumatic the experience; behaving “properly,” “with confidence,” and “exactly” as beforehand;
and not allowing anything or anyone to affect our well-being and ability to perform as we should.
Ultimately, most apparent is Dani’s ambivalence surrounding this event and his role and
level of culpability within it. The RPa ‘I’ grapples with whether or not he was guilty (and in whose
perspective) and what he did and didn’t do. The PPr ‘I’ similarly wrestles with guilt, but ultimately
concludes with a strong, unambiguous message that he is a good person and a good driver. The MS
‘you’ takes on the preponderance of the possible blame for the perceived reprehensible act (whether
accidental or not), and much questioning, anger, and uncertainty about whether Dani could have
done more to prevent the accident. The FS ‘you’ is consistently employed in a search for empathy,
understanding, and discursive sharing in the most passive, upsetting, and difficult effects of the
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experience. And finally, the few but significant uses of the ‘we’ pronoun seem to be used in an
additional attempt to universalize and collectivize, and emphasize the ‘acceptable’ actions that Dani
did manage to perform, even in the face of what he seems to perceive as an ‘unacceptable’ event.
6.5 THE CONNECTION BETWEEN THE MS ‘YOU’ AND THE LIVED EXPERIENCE:
AMBIVALENCE ABOUT PERSONAL VS. SOCIETAL APPRAISALS
Dani has been presented here as an exemplar of an increased use of the unmarked MS ‘you,’
and as such, an analysis of his texts can provide a window into an understanding of the use of the
MS ‘you’ by the other participants in this study as well. Unmarked word forms are generally used
more frequently than marked forms and hold the most general meanings, which in turn confer them
more potential extra-linguistic interpretations, in more and wider linguistic and situational contexts.
The present study found that the unmarked MS ‘you’ is most often used by these interviewees
when they are attempting to generalize, universalize, collectivize, and/or normalize the topic at
hand. The interpretive implication is that the MS ‘you’ is employed most often when the encoder
may be uncomfortable or unable to claim the experience as his own, but does not seek to bring me
in to it. The facets of an experience narrated within the discursive realm of the MS ‘you’ may be
those that, the speaker feels, less exemplify ‘acceptable’ actions or behavior, or about which he
may feel ambivalent or uncertain. This interpretation, in turn, suggests a likelihood that the
unmarked MS ‘you’ may be employed when there is a conflict or contradiction between the
encoder’s personal appraisals and his perceptions of his surrounding society’s appraisals. This
section presents a final multidimensional analysis of a number of Dani’s texts, with a particular
focus on his attributions, beliefs, and perceptions about what is ‘acceptable’ and ‘unacceptable’
behavior for an individual such as himself, in a societal context such as that in which he exists.
6.5.1 The form and content of Dani’s entire main TAN: The ‘less acceptable’ way
Over the years during which I have conducted this research, I have performed several
different analyses on the forthcoming text, as it is particularly rich and representative of many of
the psychosociolinguistic patterns upon which this study is based. And yet, only after reflecting on
the interview dynamic and the joint process of creating shared meaning and understanding (Perez &
Tobin, 2009) did I begin to notice some unique and heretofore unrecognized phenomena in this
text, causing me to question a number of facets that I had long since taken for granted.
It indeed took a great deal of time to find the ‘missing link’ that would tie these various
linguistic signs and discursive forms into a cohesive story explaining the ‘larger picture’ of Dani’s
case. And it was only after deeply analyzing the content and form of Dani’s entire narrative of the
main TA that he experienced that I was able to discern what I believe to be the central message
underlying Dani’s BLI as a whole. This central message, in turn, has shed much light on the
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messages of the other participants’ interviews, as will be seen in later chapters. Although various
portions of this text have been displayed and analyzed above, the transcript section is presented
here in its entirety, as the interaction between us and the process of his story-telling is particularly
relevant.
The dialogue began with Dani describing some of his (self-defined “dangerous”)
experiences in the army, after which I asked him how this period had been for him. He responded:
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D: Fine, challenging, a challenge. I like th’dangers. (1) I like [them]. You (FS) know. (2) They
say that, masochist kind of, masochism, you (FS) know?
A: Hmm.
D: I am like that. Like to put myself in danger, III, (1) don’t know. (2) In the attack that I had, (2)
okay we will get back to the attack I believe, soo, ((sigh)), I will just tell you (FS). (1) If I had
had a gun, I would have gotten off [the bus]. (1) And I wanted to get off I wanted like when I
got th’bus away from the shooting, from the gunfire, from thhee danger, I wanted to go back to
to that place, because he kept shooting.
A: So—
D: I understood and I was not afraid.
A: Okay. Tell me about the first [terror attack], tell me from the beginning.
D: Uhh, from which attack? From the shooting attack, let’s (FS) put it like this I am driving, line
[20], it was winter [February], rain. (2) Approach the [bus] stop, take on th’passengers, take,
you (FS) know, [bus] passes money MONEY. Suddenly I see someone come to a standstill in
front of {the bus. (2) I do [gesture] to himmm} like ‘Go past.’ (1) Because I want to put on the
blinker and leave the [bus] stop. (1) And then he winks, winks his eye at me does like this
((winks at me)) I do to him like ‘What?’, [he] opens the zipper coat, takes ouut a rifle and
‘Brrrrrrrrrr’ ((makes a sound of an automatic weapon firing in succession)). {And I didn’t se-,
am I dreaming? I DREAM? What? What?} Straight away, like liike [they] taught me in the
army, I bent down underneath the steering wheel, I am small. (1) The bullets passed me over
my head he fired in a burst, innn automatic, not single shots, ONE ONE, in a burst. I went
down underneath, with the steering wheel, and I started to drive, I wanted to run him over but
he got away. Now I look, I see him pump full of bullets thhh’people who were at the [bus] stop.
(3) What did I do I escaped13, I went to the right towards [name of hospital], there was a hospital
nearby, I went off the route, now my people were wounded, tons of blood on the bus. I said ‘I
have to get th’bus out [of here], otherwise he is tearing us apart,’ understand (FS)?
A: Hmm.
D: And so, actually14, I wanted to go back, like, that’s it, I saved th’bus, now I want to go back to
that place like, how do they say? To see whaat is going on with the terrorist, to see if they
killed him didn’t kill him what he’s doing maybe it is possible to bring him under control. You
(FS) understand? There is no fear in me I am not afraid. (1) I didn’t go into shock no nothing.
You (FS) can ask [name of the psychologist at Egged]. They came, something like thirty
reporters, [she] says to me “Are you able to talk?”, I told her “Yes.” And two days later I went
back to work. (2) There is no fear in me, there is no fear in my lexicon, {I don’t have it}. (2)
A: Okay.
D: I am not afraid, I don’t know why, maybe I am not normal.
A: Really, in, during the [actual moment]—
D: I was afraid, I was afraid. But when it is/was15 over, you (MS) kind of say ‘My God, (2) what
a,’ like, if it had been possible, I would have wanted to go back and do the things better, maybe
to kill him {too}. You (FS) understand?
A: Hmm.
D: I was afraid, it doesn’t mean that I wasn’t afraid I was shhhaking. There is no I don’t have,
what is it? A pers-, â terrorist is shooting at you (MS) from four meters away, you (MS) won’t
13
Again, it is important to note the possible significance of Dani’s word choice here, as he could have said, “left/went
out,” or, “drove,” or even, “I got the bus out of there.” The choice of the word, “escape,” seems to suggest a value
judgment Dani may be placing on his own behavior.
14
The literal translation of the phrase used here by Dani approximates, “the story is…” or, “the real story is…” It is an
unusual term in Hebrew, and the intended meaning is not entirely clear. It seems likely, however, that Dani chose to
utilize this phrase in order to lend added emphasis to the statement that follows it. Because the consequent statement
could easily have been understood without this introductory emphatic phrase, its presence here can thus be
interpreted as notable and meaningful—and as a discursive marker of significance for Dani.
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It is not possible to ascertain whether Dani was using the ‘past’- or ‘present’-tense morphological form of this verb.
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be scared? You (MS) are not normal if you (MS) won’t be scared. I screamed “Mama!” and
everything^. But, (4) that’s it, how do they say? God tests us. xxiv
Dani begins his response to my question by referring to his professed enjoyment of dangers
and the challenges of his army role, and his narrative contains four separate declarations that he is
and/or was not afraid and that he has no fear, neither in himself nor in his “lexicon” (L.10, L.31,
L.34, and L.36). At first, these assertions come across as emphatic, appearing to reflect a sense of
pride in what Dani seems to view as a notable accomplishment. In L.31-32, for instance, he
elaborates that he experienced no traumatic effects as a result of the TA, and even assured me that I
will receive a corroborating report if I check his statements with another source. (Only a few
minutes later in the interview, Dani reframed this a bit, stating, “After that I was in the hospital,
[they (MP)] came, (1) I wasn’t wounded physically, [they (MP)] said that I had a biiit of, you (FS)
know, what is it called shock? ... Shock yes, something like that.”xxv) In L.36, however, Dani’s
‘façade’ seems to break slightly, as he questions why he has/had no fear, and expresses uncertainty
with regard to whether he is “normal.”
It is possible that Dani’s ultimate admissions of experiencing fear (L.38 and L.42) were the
result of an interaction between myself and him, as my, “Okay,” (L.35) did not appear to be the
response he was seeking. Perhaps he expected me to react in wonderment or admiration, or to
consider the question ‘answered’ and move on to another topic; perhaps in these cases he might
have continued to boast his lack of fear (that is, lack of weakness). But instead, at the time, I strove
to maintain an emotionally ‘objective’ persona, even in my internal surprise and shock that this
man sitting in front of me was suggesting that he experienced this TA with not a shred of fear.
Dani seemed even more perplexed at my attempt to clarify his statements, as I pushed to make sure
that he “really” was never afraid, even in the exact moment in which the TA was occurring (L.37).
I scarcely said three words before he interjected, suddenly admitting readily, and equally
emphatically, that he was indeed afraid at the time (L.38).
Immediately after this, however, Dani distances himself discursively and continues to
vacillate between statements about what he would have wanted to do (L.39-40) and his actual
feelings of fear and even the physiological manifestation of his reaction at the time (L.42). In L.42,
Dani appears to make an attempt to repeat his contention that “there is no fear in me…I don’t have
it” (L.34), but does not complete it. He follows this by employing the unmarked, universal, and
generic discursive technique reflected in the MS ‘you’ (L.43-44), finally imparting what I suggest
is his summation statement: “You (MS) are not normal if you (MS) won’t be scared” (L.44).
There appears to be an emotionally charged and highly ambivalent ‘play’ with words and
meanings in Dani’s discourse, particularly surrounding the issues of fear and being “normal.”
While, at one juncture, he states categorically that fear does not exist in his lexicon (L.34), only
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seconds later, he asserts not only that he was afraid, but that what he had said previously “doesn’t
mean that [he] wasn’t afraid” (L.42). Meanwhile, he questions whether he is normal because of his
lack of fear (L.36); then admits that he was afraid (L.38 and L.42); then questions rhetorically
whether the universal MS ‘you’ wouldn’t be scared if he were in Dani’s place (L.43-44); and
finally agrees that this generic ‘you’ is indeed not normal if [he] wouldn’t be scared in a
comparable situation (L.44). Here, Dani seems to qualify his statements about his own fear with a
reference to the purportedly universal experience of fear, suggesting that the generic/normative MS
‘you’ must or should be scared in this context.
By stating that the universal subject is “not normal” if he does not react as Dani did, he may
be attempting to justify his own reaction, while collectivizing and normalizing it at the same time.
There are several potential and plausible hypotheses with regard to Dani’s judgments about how the
“normal” Israeli man should react in a situation of this nature, which could be viewed essentially as
a reflection of Dani’s perceptions of Israeli society’s judgments of the behavior of its (male)
members: 1) Dani may believe in his statement that “You are not normal if you won’t be scared,”
and thus may believe that his own fear reaction was “normal”; 2) Dani may believe that Israeli
society would perceive his own fear reaction as “normal,” but he may not agree that it was; 3) Dani
may believe that his own fear reaction was “normal,” but may believe or fear that Israeli society
would not agree and might disapprove of or be unwilling to justify his reaction, and Dani may thus
feel a need to justify his feelings for himself and/or me; and/or 4) Dani may believe neither that his
fear reaction was “normal” and acceptable, nor that the ‘average’ Israeli should or would react this
way, but may be attempting to convince me otherwise and thereby justify his ‘abnormal’ reaction.
Indeed, Dani demonstrated significant ambivalence with regard to his own fear reactions,
which may provide a clue as to which of these hypotheses may be closer to explaining his lived
experience and attributions therein.
While it appears that Dani often directly contradicted
statements he made mere sentences beforehand, there may indeed be an internal logic to his
discourse. Perhaps what appear to be contradictions are actually signs of Dani’s attempts to make
sense of his ambivalence and his own realizations that some of his statements may seem
paradoxical. Indeed, this may be evidence of a working-through process functioning within the
discourse—a gradual shift from lack of willingness to willingness to admit to his fear reactions and
an attempt to accept his own behavior. This appears particularly perceptible through the patterned
communicative strategies that may encourage collectivization and universalization.
Viewed through this lens, a re-examination of the initial section of the above text makes
apparent a significant disconnect between Dani’s summation statement and his earlier assertions.
Before I had even mentioned the topic of TAs, and even coupled with an admission of his
understanding that “we will get back” to this subject, Dani nonetheless presented me with the
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opening statement of his TAN: “If I had had a gun, I would have gotten off [the bus]” (L.5-6). I
claim that this sentence is essentially the title of Dani’s narrative of this event, and his placement of
it at this juncture—preceding and outside of the TAN itself—may be his way of clarifying for me
that this is, in his eyes, the most important facet of his story.
Indeed, in the single unbroken text section presented above, Dani expressed in five different
places and ways his feelings about what he wanted to do, would have wanted to do, and/or wished
he had done, if the circumstances had been different (i.e., get off the bus if he had had a gun (L.56); go back to the scene because the terrorist kept shooting (L.7-8); run over the terrorist (L.22-23);
go back to see if it was possible to bring the terrorist under control (L.28-30); and “go back and do
the things better, maybe to kill him too” (L.39-40)). Notably, Dani’s ‘title sentence’ includes and is
followed by the most elaborated expression of this (L.5-8). It seems to hold particular importance
for him to make his point unequivocally and early on in—or even as a prelude to—the narrative,
perhaps in order for me to fully comprehend the rest of it. Perhaps, in Dani’s eyes, I would only be
able to understand or appraise or—possibly most importantly—accept his actual behavior during
the TA if I view it from within a perspective already influenced by my knowledge of what he had
wanted to do, and would surely have done, if he had had the resources and opportunity.
Notably, in L.39, Dani stated that he would have wanted to “do things better,” which is his
only fully articulated attestation to feeling that he did not “do things” in a manner that he (or
perhaps his society) finds ‘acceptable.’ He also provided three reasons for having not acted in a
“better” manner, assuring his audience that if these conditions had been in place, his “better”
behavior would undoubtedly have followed: 1) Dani did not have a gun (L.5-6); 2) the terrorist got
away (L.22-23); and 3) it was not possible (to go back to the scene and “do the things better”;
L.39). While the first two reasons are very practical and specific, the third encompasses all
possible conditions, essentially absolving Dani of any ‘less than’ behavior. Here, significantly, his
most telling admission seems wrapped in a paradox: if it was not “possible” for him to return to the
scene and “do the things better,” why is he so preoccupied with his failure to do so?
It actually seems to be Dani himself who expresses an inability to accept or ‘make peace’
with his actions and perceived lack thereof, during this event. This is particularly visible in L.28,
when his use of the phrase, “that’s it,” seems to send a distinct message as to what he and/or his
society expected of him in this context, and that he did not live up to these expectations (i.e., ‘task
#1: save the bus—done = ‘acceptable’); task #2: kill the terrorist—not done = ‘unacceptable’’).
Indeed, it was found that all the interviewees made statements of this nature, revealing expressions
of doubt, regret, guilt, and responsibility. Much of their discourse contained the interjections, “I
should have…”; “I would have…”; “I wanted to…”; and/or, “I wish I had…”; as if they were
apologizing for not being ‘heroic’ enough, or ‘man’ enough, or ‘Israeli’ enough. These drivers
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seemed to feel a need to prove themselves as powerful, honorable, and ‘heroic’ (that is, productive
and ‘acceptable’) members of their society. I suggest that these feelings extend into their work and
into their TA experiences, as their discourse showed an almost overactive sense of obligation to
protect and/or save their clientele, even under essentially impossible circumstances. In Dani’s case,
this may show itself in his repeated choices to use forms of the word, “to escape,” which seems to
hold much more judgment and emotional charge than, for instance, the word, “to leave.”
A final, and particularly notable, piece of evidence of a possible preoccupation with
‘acceptable’ and ‘correct’ behavior, as perceived by the individual of the hegemonic societal
expectations surrounding him, comes from Dani’s main TAN in his FUI. Rather than stating, as he
had in his BLI, that he had wanted to run over the terrorist at the time of the attack, three years later
Dani made the following statement: “The truth [is] I tried to run him over {I didn’t succeed}. I
tried to run him over he escaped ttoo the shops over there…”xxvi I assert that this may be a
significant demonstration of Dani’s desire and attempt to transform his TAN from an account of
what happened (as viewed through his eyes) to at least a partial account of what he wished had
happened.16 The BLI took place nearly five years after this TA, when Dani was apparently still
focused on what he did and did not do, and what he wished he had done, during the event itself. At
some point during the ensuing three years between the BLI and FUI, Dani apparently managed to
convince himself or decided to try to convince me that, rather than simply wanting to run over the
terrorist, he had actually tried to do so. That is, this part of his narrative shifted from initially
discussing what he wished he had done, to later actually stating that he had done it.
It is possible that, in Dani’s eyes, wanting to do something and trying to do something are
actually interchangeable concepts. It may also be that, at the time of the BLI, he was more
concerned with emphasizing his desire to run over the terrorist—without relating to whether or not
he was able to implement or succeed in this desire—while in the FUI, he may have been more
willing and/or able to admit and discuss that he had tried but ultimately failed. It is difficult to
determine with certainty which motivations lie behind Dani’s discursive choice here. I nonetheless
claim that the presence of this shift in word choice is significant, and does appear to be related on
some level to Dani’s preoccupation with the ‘acceptability’ of his behavior during the TA, both in
his own eyes and in his perception of the appraisal of his surrounding society.
6.5.2 ‘Validation’: Dani’s own words about the ‘acceptable’ way
The above analyses rested on a deep interpretative discourse analysis of both the form and
content of a number of Dani’s significant narratives. This uncovered several patterns and possibly
16
This is a process in which humans tend to engage throughout their lives as story-tellers, and should not prompt
judgment or criticism. It is, nonetheless, intriguing to see what appears to be this process unfolding in ‘real time’ in
this case.
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unconscious motivations and messages that may exist in his discourse. In an attempt to further
explore Dani’s perceptions of what is ‘correct’ and ‘acceptable’ behavior on the part of a man in the
context of Israeli society, it may also be helpful to simply turn to Dani himself—that is, to bring in
some of his more direct statements on this issue. During the question-and-answer session of his
BLI, I asked Dani specifically whether he had felt that he had a responsibility to his passengers
and/or obligation to act in a certain manner during the main TA he experienced. He responded:
1
2
3
“Of course. … I had to. To get the bus out of there. Had to. I said that that’s it, the responsibility is
on my shoulders, that if I screw up I am like the captain of the ship if I, screw up, right now I am
killing too, I am killing along with me another 20 {people}.”xxvii
Here appears manifest evidence of Dani’s perceptions of his duties and responsibilities as a bus
driver in the context of this TA. He speaks in absolutes, as seen in the repetitive use of the phrases,
“had to,” and, “that’s it” (L.1). He also refers (twice) to a failure to act in the expected manner as
“screw[ing] up” (L.2), and as inevitably leading to him “killing” his passengers (L.3). There is no
‘grey area’ in Dani’s discourse here, in which he could be viewed as unable or unwilling to act
‘appropriately’ but nonetheless not consequently a killer, or in which the terrorist could be viewed
as the killer regardless of Dani’s own actions. Dani seems to view himself as having been totally
responsible for the well-being of his passengers at the time of the TA, regardless of the fact that he,
too, was technically a victim. His perception of himself as “captain of the ship” seems to confer an
almost superheroic status, which, as evident throughout his text, apparently brings with it almost
superhuman expectations. Indeed, while Dani did manage to get the bus out of the shooter’s range
with admirable speed and agility, he still appears to suffer from a great deal of guilt about his
failure to return to the scene to subdue the attacker.
At another point in the interview, while Dani was talking about his army service, I asked
him whether he sees any connections between what he experienced as a soldier and what he
experienced in the various TAs he had been through. He responded:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
“Yes. Coping, pressure courage, in the army we would go into’uhh, {refugee camps, we would get
rocks [thrown at us] we would gettt that. In the beginning in the army I was scared. In the beginning
in the beginning. But afterwards}, as time went on I began like to [get into a] routine. Let’s say I got
a rock [thrown] at the bus so {I diddnn’t didn’t pay it any mind, (1) okay a rock, two rocks no big deal,
I got a lot more in the army}, army taught meee how to deal, (1) to be more, (1) more ‘with it,’ more
functioning, to find solutions let’s (FS) say like that here [they (MP)] threw a rock at me so I {will
drive faster so I will look for whoever threw th’rock and tryyy}, to get away from him and not.
Things like that it the army taught me to deal with stressful situations and not to be afraid that’s the
most important.”xxviii
Here again, Dani expresses his perceptions of the ‘appropriate’ behavior in this type of context, and
thus, what he seems to believe was expected of him. He states repeatedly that “in the beginning”
(presumably, before he became a ‘correctly-performing’ soldier) he was scared (L.2-3)—but soon
thereafter became accustomed to the appropriate routine. Dani employs several phrases to define
what this routine entailed, and what the ‘correct’ behavior involved: not “pay[ing] any mind” to
rocks being thrown at his bus (L.4); attributing this experience as “no big deal” (L.4); and being
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“more ‘with it,’ more functioning…find[ing] solutions” (L.5-6). The ultimate message here can be
discerned in L.5 and L.8, wherein Dani states that the “army taught [him] [how] to deal with
stressful situations.” Indeed, Dani’s summation statement is his most unequivocal declaration: that
he sees “the most important” thing as “not to be afraid” (L.8-9). In light of this assertion, the
central message of Dani’s main TAN, and perhaps of his entire BLI—“You (MS) are not normal if
you (MS) won’t be afraid”—seems fraught with dilemma, contradictions, and ambivalence.
The question remains: whence do these (seemingly impossibly high) expectations come,
and how and why do they exert such a powerful influence on the perceptions, attributions, beliefs,
and experiences—and through these avenues, the discourse—of Dani and the rest of the
interviewees? This is one of the central areas of inquiry of this study, and it will continue to be
‘worked through’ from different perspectives and analyses of the other interview materials.
6.6 CONCLUSION
This chapter began from a broad, holistic perspective on Dani himself and the BL interview
quantitative view on the distribution of these patterns, and then moved to a qualitative ‘poetic’
analysis of both the form and content of these patterns. Finally, a multilayered analysis of the
content of Dani’s discourse, with a focus on his attributions and perceptions, was offered. This
deep, spiraling analysis of Dani’s outward discursive and narrative choices was employed in an
attempt to understand his related inner psychological beliefs and perspectives. The following two
tables summarize the central findings of Dani’s BLI, within the discursive and narrative categories
that were analyzed. The first focuses on Dani’s patterns of pronoun (and tense) use.
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Table 6-3: Summary of pronoun use findings and interpretations in Dani’s baseline interview
PRONOUN USE
First-person
possessive
pronouns and
solitary phrases
MS ‘you’
FS ‘you’

Suggests sense of responsibility and guilt for his passengers, for what happened

Suggests separation of himself and solitary sense of experience—“what I am seeing in front
of me”

Suggests great need to generalize, universalize, collectivize, and/or normalize facets of
experience that he is uncomfortable claiming as his own

Suggests great need to generalize, universalize, collectivize, and/or normalize (in)to a larger
context world—but unclear how inclusive this world is, in his eyes (all men, or all Israelis,
or all Israeli males, or all Israeli male bus drivers, etc.)

Suggests possible attempt to exclude me (specifically) discursively from the specific context
or experience under discussion

Suggests significant ambivalence and uncertainty with regard to the less ‘acceptable,’
‘appropriate,’ or ‘correct’ facets of experience—such as his behavior and emotions

Suggests possible conflict or contradiction between his appraisals of his own behavior and
his perceptions of his surrounding society’s appraisals

Suggests some need to bring audience in to the most difficult, upsetting sensory facets of
experience, and much of the more emotional and passive experiences—such as feeling
introspective, or helpless or powerless

Directed (non-analytically significant) use suggests great need for my understanding,
connection, and cooperation in our co-construction of meaning within the interview and in
the co-creation of a shared experience, both discursively and emotionally

Suggests desire and ability to claim ownership only of parts of experience in which he was
acting in an unequivocally ‘heroic’ manner (‘acceptably,’ in his perception of the viewpoint
of Israeli society)

Relative lack suggests very little to no acknowledgment of the collective nature of the terror
attack—“what I saw”

Suggests minor attempt to build on the use of the MS ‘you’ as a further mechanism to align
himself with the ‘acceptable’ collective and ‘fit in’ to the societal norms
‘I’
‘We’
messages, or end points (Spector-Mersel, 2011), which appeared fundamental to Dani’s central BL
narratives and discourse. Some of them may have appeared as more conscious or less so, but all
were either expressed manifestly or seemed present in some way between or underneath the lines of
his interview text. While most are essentially my own formulations of what I understand and
interpreted as Dani’s ‘main messages,’ I believe they most succinctly summarize and illustrate the
results of the comprehensive analyses conducted throughout this chapter.
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Table 6-4: Suggested ‘main messages’ of Dani’s baseline interview

I acted during the ‘acceptable’ facets of these difficult experiences.

You (MS) experience the parts of these difficult experiences about which I am more ambivalent and uncertain
regarding their ‘acceptability.’

You (FS) experience the passive, weak, and ‘unacceptable’ parts of these difficult experiences.

I was afraid during the main terror attack, but isn’t that okay?

You (MS) are not normal if you don’t react emotionally in some way to a traumatic experience.

You (FS) are affected by the (few) sensory, most emotionally distressing facets of these traumatic experiences.

You (the interviewer) are my main conduit to understanding, connection, and possibly acceptance of even the less
‘acceptable’ parts of my behavior.

We Israelis are supposed to behave courageously and actively and correctly.

What happened to my passengers during the main terror attack might have been my fault.

What happened to the pedestrian during the traffic accident might have been my fault.

I set myself apart or feel set apart in my experience of the terror attack(s) and its aftereffects.

I was active during parts of the main terror attack, but not heroic enough.

I should have been more active and heroic during the main terror attack.

If I could have, I would have been more active and heroic during the main terror attack.

I think there was a societal expectation that I could or should have done more to prevent (at least the scope of) the
main terror attack.

I think I could or should have done more to prevent (at least the scope of) the terror attack—I should have gone
back to kill the shooter.

A real Israeli man is courageous, never afraid, strong, and always able to find solutions and act to prevent disaster
or injury.

I am highly uncertain and ambivalent as to whether I fit this description.

The various terror attacks I experienced were no big deal; the traffic accident I was involved in upset me more.
Dani’s baseline interview provided another rich opportunity for a further investigation of the link
between an individual’s hypothesized inner attitudes and his perceptions of the societal attitudes
and cultural discourses surrounding him. Dani was found to have used the MS ‘you’ to a greater
degree than the other participants in this study, as well as expressing the most ambivalence with
regard to the multiple difficult life events he had experienced and his roles therein. Thus, Dani was
presented here as an exemplar of an apparent conflict between personal and perceived societal
expectations, and as being most occupied with which facets of his various experiences could be
seen as ‘acceptable’ and thus worthy of being claimed as his own. It was contended that he
employed the MS ‘you’ most often, in an attempt to place the behaviors and feelings about which
he was most ambivalent, into the universalized, collectivized, and normalized discursive realm.
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CHAPTER 7
MOTTI:
“THE HERO DRIVER”
vs.
“I FEEL ABOUT MYSELF THAT I AM VERY WEAK”
—
CLAIMING OWNERSHIP OF ‘ACCEPTABLE’ ACTIONS
AND A WIDER RANGE OF EMOTIONAL EXPERIENCES
7.1 INTRODUCTION TO MOTTI: BACKGROUND, CONTEXT, AND IMPRESSIONS
This chapter presents the case of Motti, the participant who most exemplified a heightened
use of the ‘I’ pronoun in his discourse. Because this linguistic finding has already been discussed
and illustrated in the context of both Yossi’s and Dani’s texts, Motti’s case is presented here in a
more abbreviated fashion, essentially more as a window into a deeper across-participant
understanding, rather than reiterating the entire analytical process conducted.
At the time of the baseline interview (BLI), Motti was 45 years old and single. He is a
native-born Israeli. He completed twelve years of schooling and served in the Armored Corps
during his compulsory army service. He had worked as a bus driver in Be’er Sheva for fifteen
years until the double terror attack (TA) he experienced, approximately 21 months prior to the
interview. The bus next to his exploded from a bombing, after which he drove for about a block
and then pulled over to let off some of his passengers, at their request. At this moment, his bus
went up in an explosion as well, causing the deaths of five and injuries to seven of his passengers.
Motti did not suffer significant physical injuries, but was affected emotionally by the experience.
He did not work at all for approximately a year afterwards, and, having been unable to step foot on
a bus since the attack, was working as a cab driver at the time of the BLI.
One of the central parts of the experience for Motti, and a prominent theme throughout his
BLI, surrounded the media’s interpretation of his actions at the time of the TA. Apparently, the
first to arrive on the scene had been a journalist, who understood that Motti had let off a number of
passengers before the explosion on his bus, thus ‘saving’ their lives. The journalist, and later, the
rest of the Israeli print and television media ‘ran’ with this story, presenting Motti as “the hero
driver” who purportedly had an intuition to pull over and save these individuals’ lives. Of course,
the facts and context of the story makes this ‘scoop’ dubious at best, given that this was the first
(and only to date) bus-related TA in Be’er Sheva, and that he had not chosen to get off the bus
himself or usher the rest of the passengers off. Indeed, Motti spent a great deal of time in his
interview protesting his heroic image, stating emphatically that he had no such premonition or
feeling, and had simply heeded a request by his passengers. Nonetheless, this social status as a
hero seemed firmly implanted in Motti’s experience, and, I claim, deeply impacted his discourse.
I was referred to Motti by a fellow university student, a friend of a relative of his. The BLI
lasted over three and a half hours (by far the longest of any of the study interviews) and was
conducted in two parts (about a week apart). He was a friendly and enthusiastic interviewee,
pleased to cooperate and willing to help “in any way.” His interview was filled with rich and
lengthy narratives. He frequently went out of his way to physically substantiate his descriptions,
bringing out a notebook of newspaper articles about the event and even going to his apartment
window to point out a relevant landmark. Motti was, by far, the most open of all the participants,
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particularly with regard to sharing details about his emotional states and telling elaborate narratives
about his process of coping with the traumatic facets of his TA experience, including various
therapeutic and psychotropic pharmaceutical interventions. Despite a number of references to what
I would classify as depressive and post-traumatic symptoms (e.g., dysthymic affect, nightmares,
and hypervigilance), Motti came across to me as exceedingly well-adjusted—coping resiliently
with very difficult experiences and emotions, and apparently quite confident in his ability to do so.
7.2 MOTTI’S BASELINE INTERVIEW: WHAT HE SAID AND HOW HE SAID IT
Relative to the other interviewees and throughout his BLI, what most characterized Motti’s
discourse was his propensity for statements utilizing the first-person singular pronoun (‘I’), in both
the proximate-present (PPr) and remote-past (RPa) tenses. He rarely used either of the secondperson singular pronouns, and so his discourse was most firmly positioned in his own claiming of
the topics, experiences, actions, and emotions at hand. I claim that this pattern of pronoun use
suggests a high level of comfort with and acceptance of his own behavior, and a perception that his
surrounding society holds a positive appraisal of his behavior during the TA he experienced. As
will be shown throughout this chapter, this stands in contrast to some of the pronominal patterns
and appraisals of the other participants.
This section briefly presents the four patterns of pronoun choice utilized by Motti
throughout his BLI, some of which were reflected most predominantly in his main terror attack
narrative (TAN) and others of which appeared in various other mini-narratives or descriptions in
relation to the attack. First, Motti utilized some first-person possessive pronouns (such as, ‘my’) as
a strategy toward creating a sense of personalization and possession of the topics or objects of
reference. Alongside of this, however, he also used the first-person collective pronoun (‘we’) and
third-person pronouns (such as ‘he,’ ‘she,’ and ‘they’) to describe many facets of the TA that
involved the other ‘experiencers’ of it, either together with him or separate from him. Second,
Motti utilized the second-person masculine singular pronoun (‘you’ (MS)), as well as distanced and
non-personalized phrasing, in certain contexts as a strategy toward creating a sense of
generalization and universalization. Third, he utilized the second-person feminine singular pronoun
(‘you’ (FS)) as a strategy to bring his audience in to the experience he was describing. However,
all of these pronouns were used relatively sparingly throughout the BLI overall, and some not at all
in Motti’s TAN. Indeed, it is the final pronominal pattern—in which Motti utilized the first-person
singular pronoun (‘I’) as a strategy toward claiming ownership of the experience, activity, or role
he was describing—that was the most prominent in all dimensions. Each of these strategies is
discussed in turn below, with demonstrative examples.
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7.2.1 Personalization vs. collectivization:
Use of first-person possessive pronouns vs. third-person pronouns
As seen in Chapters 5 and 6, respectively, Yossi and Dani showed a pattern of personalizing
many aspects of their bus, their role, and their TA experience overall—seemingly sending a
message that, for them, the most important part was their own, solitary experience of the event.
When referring to his bus, Motti used the same highly personalized formulations as did Yossi and
Dani. At one point, Motti said, “There was one woman whose brother was killed at me1 on the
bus…”i In addition, he began his TAN by setting up the scene, actually creating a model for me
and pointing to the various components: “This is [bus] line [8], there was [sic] two buses, this is 8
and this is me.”ii He did not say, “This is 8 and this is my bus,” or, “This is 8 and this is 3.” In fact,
directly after his first statement, I asked him which bus line he had been driving, after which he
answered me and repeated his original statement: “[Three]. It’s like this, this is me, the blue one.
… Now [8] needs to turn left…”iii Motti did not refer to the other bus as “him,” all the while
persisting in referring to his own bus as “me,” rather than, “my bus,” or “[line] three.”
In contrast to the discursive patterns of both Yossi and Dani, however, Motti referred
frequently throughout his BLI to the other victims and survivors of the TA on his bus. He regularly
used the ‘we’ rather than ‘I’ pronoun, as well as making many statements with third-person subjects
(‘he,’ ‘she,’ and ‘they’). At one point, he said, “And then [they (MP)] evacuated us to the hospital
in ambulances,”iv directly after which he repeated himself but personalized the statement, saying,
“And then [they (MP)] evacuated me to the hospital.”v Motti offered multiple narratives throughout
his BLI about encounters he has had with family members of victims, in which he was recognized
as the driver of the ill-fated bus and was asked repeated questions about the victims’ last moments.
Few of the other interviewees related in such detail to the other experiencers of the TA they
underwent, and none with such rich narratives as Motti’s. From the very beginning of Motti’s
TAN, he discussed the perspective and actions of the passengers on his bus:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
“Now, I look at the driver, and I do like this ((waving)) to him. For no particular reason [I] tell him
hi, and as soon as I raise [my] hand it blows up. And I am here. Now, as soon as [it] blows up, I
understood that it is a terrorist. No. I did like this “Wow, wow, wow,” this was my first reaction.
And people from the windows, uhh, I am trying hard like, don’t know, it was an indescribable, sight.
And now everything I am telling [you] it is a matter of seconds. It is an indescribable sight. Now all
the people who were at me in the vehicle, and there weren’t many, they barely filled up the seats,
there weren’t any people standing. There were only people sitting down. And then they came close
to the windows here, to look [at] what is going on there. And [they (MP)] said “Wow, fast, it,” now
[they (MP)] began, people began to run toward that vehicle, right here, difficult to describe what
[you/they/we (MP)] see there, and people began to run to that bus, I went forward.”vi
Here, Motti was referring to the first explosion in the double TA he experienced, which he and his
passengers witnessed immediately preceding the explosion on their own bus.
1
This excerpt,
The pronoun used here, “etzli”, was discussed at length in Chapter 3 (Section 3.5.2.3). An exact translation into
English is impossible (although it is comparable to ‘chez’ in French), but it can be understood as ‘at me,’ ‘by me,’
‘on me,’ or ‘in me,’ depending on the context.
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therefore, can be compared analytically to Dani’s narrative of the bus explosion he witnessed,
which was presented discursively as an event experienced only by him. Dani had stated, “…and I
am still standing here and seeing the whole scene, maybe 30 meters away from me, and hearing
everything.”vii Although the first part of Dani’s description is quite similar to Motti’s statement,
“And I am here” (line (L.) 2), the rest of the excerpt above paints an entirely different picture.
After a cursory mention of his own reaction (L.3), Motti’s narrative appears highly focused on the
actions, reactions, and experiences of the other individuals on his bus at the time of the TA. This
constitutes a significant opposition to the narrative strategies of Yossi and Dani, and may provide
insight into the discursive patterns and attendant messages of all three participants.
7.2.2 Depersonalization and universalization:
Use of the second-person masculine singular pronoun and distancing discourse
Motti’s use of the MS ‘you’ was almost nonexistent in his BLI overall, and the pronoun was
entirely absent from his TAN. This is a significant finding in itself, suggesting that Motti—similar
to Yossi—did not demonstrate a need to depersonalize or universalize many aspects of his
experiences, in the manner that Dani showed in abundance. This section provides just the few
examples wherein Motti did use the MS ‘you’ pronoun, in order to highlight his very specific
discursive choices therein. Indeed, microanalysis of the rare appearances of the MS ‘you’ across
Motti’s entire BLI revealed the significant and consistent pattern of discursive depersonalization
and universalization almost exclusively in relation to the topics of coping and responsibility. Motti
employed both the MS ‘you’ and distanced, non-personalized phrasing in doing so.
For example, when he first discussed his feelings about coping after the TA, Motti
constructed a number of sentences in a universalized and distanced formulation. Particularly, his
use of the phrase, “it is…”, is demonstrated below:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
“The the biggest difficulty is after what happened, after. It is the coping, and the thoughts, it is the
fear of being in noisy hmm places, annd every time that [you/they/we (MP)] see a terror attack on
television, annd [you/they/we (MP)] are not calm. Simply not calm (MP). And at night totally
when I would hear any kind of sound I would jump. Annd really just like this, jump. Like, jump
and hold onto something. Uhh, it is another life. It is a life of coping. Me personally, I take the
coping on myself. I don’t try, uhh, don’t know how to tell you (FS) this, don’t try to get someone to
support me, to help me.”viii
Here, Motti vacillates between impersonal and personal, and between generalized and specific
phrasing. Although it may be that the decoder is to simply understand that Motti is referring to his
own life and his own experiences after the TA, Motti’s manner of expressing much of this
experience creates a sense of dissociation and disconnection, as if he is standing with me outside of
his life, looking in. His repeated use of the unmarked and unspecified MP form (“[you/they/we
(MP)] see,” in L.2, and, “[you/they/we (MP)] are not calm,” in L.3), collocated with the PPr tense,
similarly creates a universalized, habitualized, passive-like, and distant sense in his statements.
205
Only toward the end of the above excerpt does Motti refer specifically to his own coping,
stating, “I take the coping on myself” (L.5-6). Instantly, both the content and the form of these
sentences (L.5-7) seem to reflect a personalization, a shift from the collective experience and
manner of expression. Motti could easily have universalized these statements (e.g., “You (MS)
take the coping on yourself”), but here he makes a personal expression about his own
individualized experience. One potential explanation for this could be that Motti believes that his
choice to ‘take it on himself’ is unusual or not the ‘normal,’ standard, or universal choice of the
normative Israeli man. Perhaps Motti is proud of himself for coping entirely on his own, and feels
it necessary to help or make me take note of this ‘brave’ choice. Another theory could be that he
feels isolated by this behavior and alone in his coping, and his use of ‘I’-statements reflects this.
Possible further explanation for this discursive pattern can be found in a number of
elaborative comments made by Motti later in his interview, all on the topic of coping. The first
excerpt relates to his opinion on coping alone, as opposed to enlisting the help of “professionals”:
1
2
3
4
5
6
“The best in my opinion is to get help from- from psychologists, and if you (MS) feel that they are
unnecessary so don’t go (MS) to them. Don’t go (MS) liiike to say that I was there. If you (MS)
think that they are helping you (MS), so do go (MS). If not, don’t go (MS). If you (MS) think that
you (MS) are strong enough to cope alone, don’t take (MS), not pills, not psychologists, not
psychiatrists, not anything. Cope (MS) with it alone. In my opinion that’s the best. If you (MS) feel
that you (MS) cannot cope alone, so go (MS) to professionals.”ix
Here, Motti shows a degree of ambivalence, most evident in the opposition between his first
sentence, where he suggests that “the best…is to get help” from professionals (L.1), and his
statement toward the end of the excerpt, that “cop[ing] with it alone” is “the best” (L.5). Both of
these suggestions are presented by Motti as his “opinion,” and this entire text section is positioned
within the discursive realm of the MS ‘you.’ In this sense, Motti appears to be sending a message
to the general, universal public (within his surrounding society), regarding his perception of the
‘correct’ and ‘acceptable’ way to cope. The crux of the problem, however, appears to be his
seeming uncertainty about the ‘right’ answer. Motti appears to be sanctioning the practice of
seeking help and support from professionals, be it talk or psychopharmaceutical therapy, when the
acute need is present. But if this is “unnecessary,” or if “you (MS) think that you (MS) are strong
enough” to not need or seek this help (L.3-4), all the better. That is, in Motti’s perception, if “you
(MS) cannot cope alone” (L.6), then it’s acceptable—albeit not ideal—to get help; but if it is at all
possible to “cope with it alone” (L.5), then that is the ultra-acceptable way.
Motti seems to be attempting to reconcile what he perceives as his society’s norms and
expectations (e.g., “coping alone”) with his own ambivalence in accepting the possible reality; that
is, an inability to live up to these standards. This attempt at reconciliation between these two
possibly contradicting sides of the issue can be seen in Motti’s references—few and far between,
but still apparent in his BLI—to the difficulty of coping alone. While talking about the death of his
206
company commander during his army service, for instance, Motti stated, “When you (MS) cope
alone, so it’s possible that [the] coping is harder.”x In addition, in the following narrative section,
Motti gives a much more personalized perspective on his own experience coping after his TA:
1
2
3
4
5
“[They (MP)] are talking with you (FS) and media and people, and after that already three, four days,
you (MS) already begin to cope with it alone. … The coping is {very difficult}, after a few days the
coping is difficult and then suddenly someone again reminds you (MS) of it and again, you (MS)
don’t want to tell him, on the other hand you (MS), he doesn’t leave you (MS) alone. And, okay, you
(MS) try to avoid, and you (MS) again go and again for what to remind you (MS) of it, and again.” xi
Here, as in many other points in his BLI, Motti refers repeatedly to his specific experience of being
reminded of his TA, by both physical landmarks and people who either recognized him from the
media reports or who were connected in some way to the passengers who were wounded or killed
on his bus that day. Motti’s exclusive use of the MS ‘you’ here seems to suggest an attempt to
normalize and universalize these very personal experiences—coping and coping alone; being
reminded; not wanting to talk; not being left alone; trying to avoid; and going (presumably out of
the house) and again being reminded. While he states that this coping process was “very difficult”
(L.2), he nonetheless chooses to neither own it for himself nor bring me in nor project it onto me.
Motti places this description of coping alone onto the generic, universal ‘you,’ which suggests a
desire to generalize it. Perhaps he does not want to admit (in ‘I’-statements) to the magnitude of
the difficulty he personally suffered throughout this process; preferring, instead, to keep it in the
discursively distanced realm. Or perhaps he is attempting to garner support and approval from his
collective, by placing himself discursively into the midst of his surrounding society.
More possible evidence of Motti’s perceptions of his society’s expectations, and of his
beliefs regarding the roles and responsibilities of the average Israeli bus driver, may be visible here:
1
2
3
4
“You (MS) are responsible for the bus. You (MS) are supposed to take care of, that everything will
be okay. You (MS) need to, to take the people home. Suddenly something like this/that2 happens and
you (MS) see the people cut up and, the bodies and, it’s an unbelievable thing. Simply…
unbelievable. Something that (2), unbelievable. Simply unbelievable.”xii
Motti’s use of the MS ‘you’ again seems to serve to highlight his apparent perception of the
‘correct’ and ‘acceptable’ behavior in this given context. He has already stated that “coping alone”
is the “best” way to deal with the aftereffects of an experience such as this, but here he discusses
the general expectations of a bus driver—being “responsible,” “tak[ing] care…that everything will
be okay,” and making sure that one’s passengers arrive home safely.
At another point in his interview, Motti directly juxtaposes these expectations (in the
discursive form of MS ‘you’-statements) with his own appraisal (in the form of ‘I’-statements) of
his actions at the time of the TA he experienced: “But despite that, that everybody in, during the
driving itself was alert, not 100%. I, was not alert. In that case, because you (MS) need to be
2
the best translation of Motti’s message here.
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careful. If I had been alert enough, maybe, not sure, I would have, identified the terrorist.”xiii
Here, Motti’s apparent grappling with his perceptions of the expectations of him as a bus driver and
as a male member of Israeli society comes across in these vacillating pronominal choices. The
generic ‘correctly-behaving’ and ‘approved’ Israeli bus driver “need[s] to be careful,” but Motti
himself was not “alert enough,” and, in his mind, this may have contributed to the TA that took
place.
There seems to be a sense of guilt and responsibility here, which may have been a
motivating factor in Motti’s refusal to return to work as a bus driver. Indeed, when I asked him
what he would do if he found himself forced to return to driving a bus, he responded:
1
2
3
4
5
“To be a bus driver one needs a certain responsibility. … In any case you (MS) are transporting
sixty, seventy people even on the bus. A minimum of responsibility. So I looked at myself, I say,
‘How can I put my hands on the [steering] wheel after what happened, how can I? Regardless of a
terror attack, how will I see.’ I first of all don’t look at the road, I look at who is getting on [the
bus] all the time, look at who like this, who is on the bus…” xiv
This excerpt constitutes a good exemplar of Motti’s sparse but patterned use of the MS ‘you,’
particularly where it is juxtaposed with his use of the ‘I’ pronoun. Essentially, across Motti’s
discourse and in his view, the generalized, universalized, ‘acceptable’ MS ‘you’ is responsible,
taking care of many people in his charge. If a terrorist should appear, the MS ‘you’ is alert enough
and identifies him, presumably thwarting any potential attack or threat. And if a disaster does take
place, the strong, resilient Israeli man copes alone. Motti, on the other hand, seems to struggle with
this “minimum of responsibility”; questions whether he was “alert enough”; and expresses that if he
were to drive a bus again, he would be much more concerned with issues of safety and security than
with driving. As difficult as these ruminations may be for Motti, his ability to differentiate between
what he perceives as ‘acceptable’ behavior and whether he sees himself as capable of meeting these
expectations shows a level of working through that did not appear in the texts of Yossi and Dani.
Indeed, Yossi came across as focused intently on the effects of the trauma and what had
been taken away from him therein, while Dani seemed to acknowledge little trauma but appeared
deeply preoccupied with what he should have done, how he wished he had behaved, and what
would have been more ‘acceptable.’ Motti seems to simply recognize that the TA he experienced
took a certain toll on him, and consequently there are certain things of which he is no longer
capable. In his perception, the MS ‘you’ should be able to do these things, but Motti himself most
likely cannot, and he has more or less accepted this limitation. The next section focuses on Motti’s
usage of the FS ‘you’ and his perception of the discursive role therein.
Motti’s use of the FS ‘you’ was also almost entirely nonexistent in his BLI. According to
the hypotheses set forth in this study, this suggests that Motti—similar to Dani—did not have a
great need to bring me in to or project onto me aspects of his experiences, in the manner that Yossi
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showed in abundance. Below are shown the few examples wherein Motti did use the FS ‘you’
pronoun, in order to illuminate his specific discursive choices. As in Dani’s case, analysis of the
rare appearances of the FS ‘you’ across Motti’s entire BLI serves to only further support the central
finding that this pronoun is used predominantly in sensory, emotionally charged, and potentially
traumatic contexts. The interpretive hypothesis, validated in the cases of Yossi and Dani and
perhaps even more evident here in Motti’s texts, suggests that these contexts represent the most
difficult facets of the TA experience for the narrators, and therefore, seem to require the recruitment
of the audience in the coping and meaning-making endeavor. Their emotional charge also makes
these parts of the experience the most difficult to claim through the use of ‘I’-statements, as they
may be perceived as incompatible with the masculine, heroic, ‘acceptable’ persona.
Motti’s only two (analytically significant) usages of the FS ‘you’ within his BL TAN
occurred within a single sentence describing the direct aftermath of the explosion on his bus:
1
2
3
4
5
“I was sure that I went, and I waited a few seconds, all of me was full of dirt, anndd shrapnel, and
[shattered] glass anndd some other things, thaatt believe (FS) me that to shower, three hours, and you
(FS) think that there are still things on you (FS). It is difficult to describe what, what flew all over
me. In short, and, if I tell it maybe technically I, but uhh, I got off the bus maybe a few minutes later
and I had a bottle of water, I always take [with me] a bottle of water, I began to wash myself…” xv
The FS ‘you’ is utilized here in relation to a highly sensory statement, and its collocation with the
PPr tense makes it stand out distinctly among the surrounding RPa tense usages. This single
sentence seems to hold particular power and meaning for Motti, apparently connected with a need
or desire to bring me in to the experience. Indeed, while his request for me to “believe (FS)” him
necessarily involved a direct relating to me, the other two FS ‘you’-statements could easily have
employed other pronouns (e.g., “…and I thought that there were still things on me”).
The
experience of thinking (or feeling) that the thick and multilayered residue of the attack would not or
could not be washed away represents a powerful metaphor here in Motti’s discourse, bringing to
mind both physical and emotional remnants of trauma. It may be, in fact, that he is referring to
these figurative “things on you (FS),” while attempting to bring me in to this emotional experience.
Later in his interview, Motti returned to the subject of what he saw immediately after the
explosion, and again narrated his first shower after returning home:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
“The images. The images don’t go away. Don’t go away. I never saw, didn’t ((clicking his tongue))
how will I tell you (FS), I never saw a person without an arm. Or without a leg, or his head on the
ceiling. That I am right now talking with you (FS) what I saw. Uhh or that a woman that a moment
before that paid me money, sat down and all of a sudden sheee, very difficult sights. Everything
blood, everything, (2) I don’t want to, to gross out how do [you (MP)] say, like it’s not ((chuckling))
but you (FS) do like this you (FS) see someone’s hairs… (1) Pieces of flesh. I remember, I showered
here, I was here at home, I didn’t want to get out of the shower. … Cleaning myself, cleaning, and
standing and washing m’self, and saying “Maybe more and maybe more and maybe more,” I know.
(2) Difficult, difficult, really difficult.” xvi
Here, Motti refers literally to his attempts to cleanse himself after the TA, and mentions more
specifically that the “things” that flew onto him in the explosion included hairs and flesh from the
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other victims of the explosion. Again, the specific recounted memories are told almost entirely in
RPa ‘I’-statements, with the real-time communiqués with me taking place in the proximate-present
(L.2 and L.3). And again, there is a single phrase employing the FS ‘you’ twice, bringing me in to
a very sensory and emotionally charged past and experienced experience of Motti’s (L.6). Indeed,
he speaks in a general manner of “very difficult sights” (L.4), and uses the ‘I’ to refer to something
he “never saw” (L.1), but when describing something he actually did see and experience—which
was presumably significantly disturbing for him—Motti employs the FS ‘you’ and the PPr tense.
These two text excerpts thus seem to suggest a very specific and non-random pattern to Motti’s
discourse about these facets of the TA experience, similar to that in Yossi’s and Dani’s texts.
This pattern is even more apparent in one of Motti’s only other uses of the FS ‘you,’ which
actually appeared in the conjugated form of the ‘onto’ preposition, much later in his BLI. It came
in his response to my question regarding whether he sees any connection between his experiences
in the army and what he went through in the TA: “In the army of course I saw a body here and
there, but I didn’t see arms, and legs detached, and thi- fly onto you (FS) onto y-, things fly that,
difficult to think about it. Something. It, so much [that it causes] kind of nausea…”xvii Although
the speech is halting in places, Motti here again chooses to use the feminine form when referring to
“things” that “fly onto you (FS).” Given that the three usages of this pronoun mentioned in this
section represent the majority of its distribution across Motti’s BLI text as a whole, this discursive
pattern seems highly significant. It is indeed notable that there was such a sparing distribution of
the FS ‘you,’ occurring at three completely separate and distinct places in the interview, and yet all
were employed so consistently in relation to the same subject matter.
The possible motivation for or psychological interpretation of this pattern is, nonetheless, a
matter of speculation. Perhaps Motti’s use of the FS ‘you’ is related to what he may perceive as
weakness; that is, facets of the experience that he sees as the most difficult or the least masculine.
Or perhaps he was most invested in bringing me in to the experience discursively when discussing
the most traumatic parts—those that made him feel the most isolated and alone. One possible piece
of evidence as to the motivations for Motti’s discursive choices may lie in the following quotation,
part of which was presented above as an illustration of his use of the MS ‘you’: “And yes, after, the
first three days you (FS) don’t know where you (FS) are. [They (MP)] are talking with you (FS)
and media and people, and after that already three, four days, you (MS) already begin to cope with
it alone.”xviii Here, in the final example of Motti’s use of the FS ‘you,’ he employs the pronoun in
what comes across as a profoundly weak context—not knowing where one is. In this case, the MS
‘you’ takes on the active, ‘appropriate’ coping, but the FS ‘you’ takes on the passive experiences of
not knowing, being, and being talked to. The next section investigates Motti’s distributed use of the
‘I’ pronoun, in order to bring all of these discursive patterns into interactional context.
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Motti’s BLI was told almost exclusively in ‘I’-statements, across myriad contexts and
subjects. As, in this case, there is no single specific pattern to speak of, this section presents an
excerpt of his TAN for illustrative purposes, and then provides several examples of Motti’s ‘I’statements that can be compared and contrasted with similar statements made by Yossi and Dani.
Because there were so many ‘I’-statements across Motti’s interview overall, and because this often
simply ‘feels logical’ to the decoder (and analyst), it is particularly important to juxtapose what was
said with what could have been said, and even with similar statements made by other interviewees.
The purpose herein is to distinguish Motti’s use of the ‘I’ pronoun as ‘above and beyond’ that of
the other participants, and then to hypothesize as to the possible motivations for this pattern.
Motti’s narrative of the TA he experienced is nearly completely ‘I’-focused, and he is
clearly the central character in his descriptions. When I initially asked him to tell his TAN, he sat
forward on his couch, leaned down toward the coffee table, and picked up two remote controls and
placed them side by side on the table. Referring to one of them as a model of his own bus, and the
other as representing the bus that had been next to his—essentially creating visual aids to assist in
my understanding of the circumstances—he said:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
“And we are standing like this. Now, I look at the driver, and I do like this ((waving)) to him. For no
particular reason [I] tell him hi, and as soon as I raise [my] hand it blows up. And I am here. Now,
as soon as [it] blows up, I understood that it is a terrorist. No. I did like this “Wow, wow, wow,”
this was my first reaction. And people from the windows, uhh, I am trying hard like, don’t know, it
was an indescribable, sight. And now everything I am telling [you] it is a matter of seconds. It is
an indescribable sight. Now all the people who were at me in the vehicle, and there weren’t many,
they barely filled up the seats, there weren’t any people standing. There were only people sitting
down. And then they came close to the windows here, to look [at] what is going on there. And
[they (MP)] said “Wow, fast, it,” now [they (MP)] began, people began to run toward that vehicle,
right here, difficult to describe what [you/they/we (MP)] see there, and people began to run to that
bus, I went forward. Because I said, ‘There is nothing I can do here.’ To help them I can’t help
them, I am not a doctor, I am not anything, there is nothing I can do here. I will clear the, I wanted
to clear th’field, I knew that ambulances would start coming, and this is all a matter of seconds, by
the way. Now I drive this way, people on the bus, are starting to get nervous, “Driver, driver, driver
driver.” I stopped [the bus] here. Something like that. And, I opened doors. I opened the doors and
people began to get off [the bus]. I didn’t get off. Didn’t, didn’t, didn’t feelll, didn’t feel a ne-, a
need to get off [the bus]. People began to get off [the bus], I estimate that ten people got off [the
bus]. Suddenly {that} bus {exploded}. Explosion, impossible to describe it. And then III say to
myself ‘So, Motti how are you (MS) dying?’ Straight away, I remember it up until today. ‘How are
you (MS) dying?’ ”xix
This excerpt is in line with the central discursive finding of this study that the ‘I’ pronoun, most
often collocated with the RPa tense, is most often associated with agentic, powerful, and ‘heroic’
behavior. Indeed, here Motti looks, does/did, tells, raises his hand, understood, went forward,
said/says, knew, drives, stopped the bus, and opened the doors—all active and potent behaviors. In
this sense, Motti chooses to focus the content as well as the form of his narrative on his role as actor
and agent. Alongside of this, as discussed above, Motti places a significant focus on the actions
and experiences of the passengers on his bus, the fellow experiencers of the TA. Overall, Motti’s
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grammatical choices here seem to create a sense of connectedness and lived experience within this
text—a feeling that Motti was there and directly experienced these things, and is willing to talk
about his personal experiences as such. There is very little need to distance himself, project his
feelings onto others, or universalize or collectivize his experience within this section of discourse.
To illustrate just one comparative example, both Dani and Motti claimed to have understood
immediately after their respective explosions that it had been a TA. Indeed, Motti’s statement,
“Now, as soon as [it] blows up, I understood that it is a terrorist” (L.2-3) is nearly identical to one
that Dani had made: “Immediately I understood that it is a bombing…” This seems to present an
image of both narrators as present-minded and prescient, thinking and understanding even in the
most chaotic and stressful of circumstances—indeed, two individuals who showed courage under
fire and strength under pressure. Significantly, from a discursive point of view, both statements
have the bombing/explosion and/or terrorist positioned in the PPr tense, while the action of the
encoder is in the RPa tense. Semiotically, this suggests that the TA is perceived by Dani and Motti
as more proximate and salient than their understanding of its occurrence.
Overall, Motti dedicated very little space in his TAN to describing the immediate scene or
aftereffects of the TA on his bus, and showed a tendency throughout his BLI to avoid discussing
‘the gory details.’ Several times he stated that he didn’t want to “upset” me, or said, “You
shouldn’t know about these things,” but it was not possible to ascertain his reasons for omitting
these parts of the narrative. However, the omission of these details stands in contrast to Yossi’s
inclusion of vivid and descriptive accounts of the immediate aftermath of the TA he experienced.
In addition, Motti showed a contrasting strategy in the form of his discourse. While the majority of
Yossi’s post-TA descriptions were told predominantly from the perspective of the FS ‘you,’ Motti,
in one of the few descriptions of this nature, offered a more generalized report-style discourse:
1
2
3
4
“What I saw is difficult for me to talk about. Arms all around, and and and a person lying next to you
(MS), not speaking. And, difficult sights, difficult sights. There was silence. Actually, I don’t know
if there was silence or that my ears were plugged up, but everything is red from blood from people,
everything is dirt and [shattered] glass and, end of the world, end of the world {it was}.” xx
Particularly notable here is that Motti says, “What I saw…” (L.1), rather than, “What you (FS)
see…” He also says, “There was silence” (L.2), which represents a significant semiotic opposition
to Yossi’s, “You (FS) hear silence.” While Motti uses, ‘I,’ and, ‘my,’ here, he also once refers to
the MS ‘you’ (L.1-2), in addition to using the PPr tense throughout the excerpt. Thus, in this
proximate but non-personalized and report-style description, Motti shows much less of a tendency
to utilize either of the discursive techniques employed widely by Yossi and Dani. This seems to
suggest less of a need to distance himself from or bring his audience in to the described experience,
which may indicate greater ‘ease’ and ability to own even these difficult facets.
While he was noticeably taciturn with regard to describing the post-attack scene, Motti
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showed a prominent tendency to provide much detail and speak freely about a wide variety of other
related topics throughout his BLI. When I asked him, for instance, to describe the moment when he
got off the bus after the TA, and if someone had helped him, he responded:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
“No nobody helped me. I got off [the bus] all by myself. I, I told you (FS) thaat in the first few
seconds I thought that I am about to die, annd it is tangible. Because I heard rumors that people who
were killed they stayed whole, and insiide, don’t know what happened. So I thought that that’s what
is happening to me. After a few, don’t know to estimate time, maybe half a minute, ten seconds, or a
minute, or something like that, I started to check myself. ((sounds of patting on his body)) Arms,
legs, I started like this, to shake off what, ears to see that it’s okay, nose, like this I remember, I felt
on myself the, and I started to clean myself I remember. And everything therre, where the driver,
everythinngg was bent, and broken, and shattered glass, and. Slowly slowly I got up, I started to take
m’self, to wash m’self, I got off the bus, just then that journalist came, I tell him, he’s the first that I
saw when I got off the bus ((chuckling)) yes, don’t know, [he] pounced on me.” xxi
This excerpt provides another prototypical example of Motti’s profuse use of the ‘I’ pronoun, even
in a relatively sensory and emotionally charged context. This is, perhaps, the closest available
context to the immediate post-bombing scene, and Motti chose to describe it and his actions
elaborately and with abundant ‘play-by-play’ detail. A similar level of elaboration was evident in
Motti’s account of his disembarkation from the bus:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
“…I got off the bus maybe a few minutes later and I had a bottle of water, I always take [with me] a
bottle of water, I began to wash myself like this, to wash, right then apparently apparently a
journalist came at that moment. [He] says to me “You are the driver right?” I told him, the first
words that came out of my mouth, I said “What luck that I opened the doors. And peopllee escaped.”
Whoever stayed in the vehicle, bit it. I think maybe ten, five, were killed. All the rest were
wounded. But the rest escaped, and it is a little comforting, in some way. And then I told him “My
God what luck that I opened the doors,” and I said it to him like, that’s what came out of my mouth,
don’t know why. He made it a scoop. Liike, the hero driver, whose intuition let [him] open doors.
It’s not true. But I said that to the media too. Like it’s not true, it wasn’t my intuition to open doors
that maybe there is a bomber also at me. I didn’t think there is a bomber at me. I like to tell th’truth.
I am not someone who, tries to, to get some award, I could have come and said, ‘Yes, I opened, I had
a feeling,’ that I didn’t say that.”xxii
This excerpt, which is almost exclusively ‘I’-centered, presents a notable illustration of the
narrative selection mechanism of sharpening.
Motti selects for inclusion in his TAN this
significant mini-narrative about his interaction with the journalist, and Motti also makes the choice
to repeat twice what he had told him (L.4 and L.6-7), employing dialogue. And yet, this text is
filled with Motti’s repeated and vehement protestations that the wrong conclusions were reached
and that he is not a “hero driver.” In this sense, Motti appears to be sending a dual message. That
is, in the process of vociferously denying the media’s ‘misinterpretation’ of the events surrounding
the TA and his possibly-heroic role therein, he is nonetheless rebroadcasting, and perhaps
reinforcing, that very misinterpretation. This is particularly apparent in Motti’s use of repetition
throughout, essentially sharpening the message that he is purportedly attempting to deny.
A final comparison between excerpts from Motti’s and Dani’s BLIs provides perhaps the
clearest demonstration of the disparities in their discursive patterns, particularly regarding uses of
‘I’ and the MS ‘you.’ Here, Motti discusses his continued post-traumatic symptoms and associated
difficulties, while Dani talks about his own experiences with hypervigilance and being reminded of
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the TA he experienced. It should be noted that the cells in the table below were divided according
to analogous form rather than content. That is, the content of each pair of cells is not always
parallel, but comparisons can be made between the manners in which the content was told.
Table 7-1: Discursive pattern comparison between Motti’s and Dani’s parallel texts
MOTTI
“The the every time the I once went to the market, I,
it’s hard for me to explain this to you (FS) because I
M1
hope for you (FS) that you (FS) will not experience
it.
But, I went once to the market, my mother wanted a
M2 few things. I got there, I went into the market,
where there is a lot of people and,
it seemed to me that at any moment something is
about to explode. Like, I would walk and I like, here
M3
it is coming now, here it is coming now.
And I would buy quick quick quick and go, buy
quick quick and go. Because at any moment that I
M4 felt that it is about to happen, any moment I felt it is
about to happen. I was at the market no more than a
few minutes.
So I say, ‘How can I be on, on a bus and I’?
M5
I look at the picture now, I get on a bus and drive,
and people get on and people that I don’t know get
M6 on and I am afraid of them and I, I won’t be focused
on the work, for sure. Thaat I definitely won’t be
focused on the work.
That is what I wanted to prevent because in any
case, a minimum of responsibility to transport that
kind of amount of people. I was sure that I am not
focused on the work and then. (1) ((mumbling)) I
M7
didn’t want to lie [to] myself. I didn’t want to lie
[to] myself to say that nothing happened and I can
drive. I will put the people in danger, I for sure that
I would {put the people in danger} in some way.” xxiv
DANI
“The truuth? (1)
D1
On, on that specific [bus] line, when I passed by
from thhe it, a bit {you (FS) know,
D2
you (MS) are looking, you (MS) are on alert, on
alert}. You (FS) know what that is? … {On alert is
D3
liike, YOUR HEART BEATS, YOUR (2) yoouu (MS)
are looking, you (MS), are expecting something.
A different [bus] line like it doesn’t matter what
what but when you (MS) pass by there you (MS) also
know you (MS) are reminded
D4
you (MS) say “Wow, God, what a miracle I had
here.” You (MS) look you (MS) say “My God right
here it happened to me right here that I pulled over
right here” I am trying to}, to penetrate it. … You
(FS) understand? To penetrate th’, mem- memory.
… And it comes back, sometimes. {You (MS) say
“My God”, suddenly} brrrrr, ((sound of an
automatic weapon firing in succession))
{you (MS) hear the, like} echoing in your (MS)
head. Reminded. Yes? Sometimes [you/they/we
(MP) are] reminded.”xxiii
D5
D6
These two texts, when juxtaposed, show a contrast between personalized and generalized discourse.
The overall content topic is essentially the same, but the communicative strategies utilized are
entirely different. Motti speaks only in ‘I’-statements and mostly in the habitual conditional use of
the PPr tense, referring to personalized feelings and experiences—as apparent in, “it seemed to
me…” (cell (C.) M3), and, “I felt…” (twice in C.M4). He then extrapolates from his experience at
the market to the possibility of his returning to work as a bus driver, admitting that he “won’t be
focused on the work” (twice in C.M6; again in C.M7), and would thus “put [his potential
passengers] in danger” (twice in C.M7). Motti’s excerpt comes across as thus personalized in both
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form and content, as he speaks about his feelings from an ‘I’-focus and connects them to a very
personal sense of responsibility.
In contrast, the excerpt from Dani’s interview positions the entire mini-narrative onto the
MS ‘you,’ leading to a significantly different discursive experience. The only use of the (nondialogic) ‘I’ pronoun comes in the opening sentence of the mini-narrative, collocated with the RPa
tense, as he sets the scene. From then on, the experience is generalized and in the habitual use of
the PPr tense, with the apparent attempted message that this is what the MS ‘you’ ‘anyperson’
might experience under these conditions. Some of the direct discursive parallels are evident in the
table above, as in C.M3 and C.D3, when Motti relates to his own feelings but Dani refers only to
the MS ‘you’ and his actions and feelings. This is apparent again in C.M4 and C.D4, when Motti
talks of his actions from a specific and ‘I’-centered focus, while Dani refers to what the MS ‘you’
does in this generalized context. And again, a direct comparison is possible with regard to form in
C.M5 and C.D5, when Motti states, “I say…”, while Dani repeatedly states, “you (MS) say…”
The divergences in discourse are discernible in this comparative presentation, and suggest a
distinct difference in perception and attribution within the post-TA experience for both participants.
Indeed, it is possible to imagine Motti telling the above excerpt from Dani’s story, with the
phrasing, “I would look, I would be on alert,” rather than, “you (MS) are looking, you (MS) are on
alert”; and, “my heart would beat,” rather than, “your heart beats.” I contend that these discursive
strategies reflect each individual’s inner experience and perception of the social discourse
surrounding them. In the case of Motti, his high degree of ability and willingness to own nearly all
facets of the TA experience, as demonstrated by the use of the ‘I’ pronoun, may indicate a greater
level of comfort with his role therein. His relative lack of discursive generalizing, universalizing,
and/or projecting onto me of most parts of the experience may thus be interpreted as a greater
degree of comfort with and acceptance of a wider range of experiences surrounding the TA, both
physical and emotional. The possible motivations for this pattern are discussed further below.
MOTTI’S BASELINE TAN: HOW MUCH AND WHEN HE SAID IT
In order to give a comprehensive picture of the phenomena discussed above, the following
tables and graphs present quantitatively the distribution and percentage computations of Motti’s
uses of pronouns and tenses within his BL TAN. In the first set of analyses, only the first-person
and both singular second-person pronouns are presented, as these are the primary foci of the acrossparticipant analyses.
215
Table 7-2: Primary pronoun and tense distribution in Motti’s baseline TAN
‘Past’
‘Present’
‘Future’
‘I’
48
27
1
95%
‘YOU (MS)’
0
0
0
0%
‘YOU (FS)’
0
1
1
3%
‘WE’
0
1
0
1%
60%
36%
2%
There were 71 total lines of text in the TAN, and a total of 80 of these primary relevant pronouns
(and therefore, 80 relevant tense uses), and the ratio of pronouns per line was calculated to be 1.13.
The graph below presents the patterns of collocations of each pronoun with each tense.
Figure 7-1: Primary pronoun-tense collocations in Motti’s baseline TAN5
the time of his first interview, was claiming almost all of the TA experience for himself, with the
majority of that claiming expressed discursively in a less proximate and more processed manner.
There was virtually no evidence of a need to generalize or universalize, or of a need to bring me in
to any significant part of the experience.
As was discussed in the first section of results in this chapter, it was also found that Motti’s
use of third-person pronouns in his TAN was significant, both in number and in light of its
atypicality, relative to the pronominal patterns of Yossi and Dani. Thus, it seems necessary to
present a widened view of the quantitative pronominal data; and to this end, the table below shows
3
4
5
The use percentages of each tense were computed as relative to the total number of tense-marked verbs in the TAN.
The use percentages of each pronoun were computed as relative to the total number of these pronouns in the TAN.
each bar are relative within the TAN.
216
the first-, second-, and third-person pronoun and tense distribution in Motti’s BL TAN.
Table 7-3: Expanded pronoun and tense distribution in Motti’s baseline TAN
48
27
1
‘YOU
(MS)’
0
0
0
‘YOU
(FS)’
0
1
1
54%
0%
1%
‘I’
‘Past’
‘Present’
‘Future’
% use of each
pronoun7
‘WE’
‘HE’
‘SHE’
0
1
0
10
6
1
3
5
1
‘THEY’
(MP)
29
4
2
1%
12%
6%
25%
% use of each
tense6
64%
31%
4%
This widened analytical lens brings the total pronoun count to 141 (and therefore, 141 tense uses),
and the new ratio of pronouns per line was calculated to be 1.99. The graph below presents the
expanded picture of pronoun-tense collocation patterns evidenced in Motti’s BL TAN.
Figure 7-2: Expanded pronoun-tense collocations in Motti’s baseline TAN8
From this widened analytical view, it is apparent that, although the ‘I’ is still the dominant voice in
Motti’s BL TAN, the variety of third-person characters—in particular, the generic MP ‘they’—
occupy a significant place in the narrative as well. Indeed, this was observable in several of the
excerpts presented previously, when Motti’s discourse was focused intently on the actions and
experiences of the passengers on his bus and the others surrounding the scene of the first TA. Over
and over, Motti made the choice to include them in his narrative and to position these ‘theys’ as
6
7
8
Here, again, the use percentages of each tense were computed as relative to the total number of relevant tense-marked
verbs in the TAN.
Here, again, the use percentages of each pronoun were computed as relative to the total number of the expanded set
of pronouns in the TAN.
Here, again, the bars on the graph represent the absolute numbers of pronouns/verbs in each category, and the
percentages above each bar are relative within the TAN.
217
central characters therein. This discursive pattern was found to be unusual among the group of
participants in this study, and particularly stands in contrast to the TANs of both Yossi and Dani,
who repeatedly referred to their TAs as something they experienced solitarily or that happened to
them alone. In this sense, while Motti’s BLI represents the most prominent use of the ‘I’ pronoun
among all the participants, it also provides a unique case of significant third-person pronoun use.
7.4 PRONOUN ‘POETRY’ OF MOTTI’S BASELINE TAN:
As was done for Yossi and Dani, and according to the method described in detail in Chapter
3 (Section 3.6.2.3), the following table is the ‘poetic’ result of the 80 lines of text of Motti’s
baseline TANxxv. Here, again, poems were constructed only for the significantly-used pronouns,
and thus, there are no columns for either the MS or FS ‘you,’ as it was established above that these
pronouns were virtually nonexistent herein. However, because Motti placed such a significant
focus on various third-person subjects, columns were included for singular and plural poems of
these pronouns. The third-person poems were not separated by tense as was the ‘I’ poem, but
‘present’ tense entries are noted here with a double-underline. As previously, all within-narrative
dialogue was excluded from both the poems and the tabulations.
Table 7-4: The pronoun ‘poetry’ of Motti’s baseline TAN9
‘I’ POEM (73)
7
1
I understood that it is a
I need to keep going
terrorist
straight
8
2
I did like this “Wow, wow,
I look at the driver
3
wow”
I do like this to him
4
--[I] tell him hi
19
5
I went forward
I raise [my] hand
20
I said, ‘There is nothing I can 6I am here
9
do here’
I am trying hard
24
10
I wanted to clear th’field
[I] don’t know
25
I knew that ambulances would 11I am telling [you]
start coming
--28
21
I stopped [the bus] here
I can’t help them
29
22
I opened doors
I am not a doctor
30
23
I opened the doors
I am not anything
32
26
I didn’t get off [the bus]
I drive this way
33
I didn’t feel
--34
36
I didn’t feel a need to get off
I estimate
38
[the bus]
I say to myself ‘So, Motti
--how are you (MS)
40+41
I was sure that I went
dying?’
42
39
I waited a few seconds
I remember it up until
43
All of me was full of dirt
today
45
44
I got off the bus
(if) I tell it maybe
47
I began to wash myself
technically
9
3rd-PERSON POEMS (42)
SINGULAR (21)
PLURAL (21)
48
A journalist came at that 12All the people who were
moment
at me in the vehicle
49
13
[He] says to me “You
They came close to the
are the driver right?”
windows here
56
14
He made it a scoop
[They] said “Wow, fast,
--it”
67
15
He was here
[They] began
71
16
Someone told me
People began to run
afterwards
toward that vehicle
75
17
Someone told me
[You/they/we (MP)] see
76
Some doctor told me
there
18
“Listen, [they] made
People began to run to
you into a hero…”
that bus
82
She is an older woman
--84
27
Someone, couldn’t
People on the bus, are
92
My brother tells me
starting to get nervous
93
31
(He) was at home
People began to get off
94
My brother is older than
[the bus]
35
me
People began to get off
97
She is sitting down
off [the bus]
98
37
She sees
Ten people got off [the
99
She sees her son
bus]
100
She began to cry, and to
--62
yell
They didn’t ask
218
50
I told him
I said “What luck that I
opened the doors…”
53
I told him “My God what luck
that I opened the doors”
54
I said it to him
57
I said that to the media too
58
I didn’t think there is a
bomber at me
61
I didn’t say that
63
I stopped [the bus]
64
I said “Whoever wants, should
get off”
65
I didn’t think
66
I was here
69
I didn’t hear a thing
72
I called it a slaughterhouse
77
I didn’t know this
78
I wasn’t aware of anything
79
I wasn’t aware of anything
80
I couldn’t even answer the
phone calls
81
I caught her [my mother] on
the phone
83
I told her “Mom don’t
worry…”
--95
I told him “Stay with Mom…”
--104
I lied to her
105
I lied for a reason
107
(I say that) I lied
108
I wanted to come home and
then to tell her
110
I didn’t know how hard it [the
coping] would be
111
I thought that okay, what
happened happened
113
I was in a support group
51
46
I always take [with me] a
bottle of water
52
I think maybe ten, five,
were killed
55
(I) don’t know why
59
I like to tell th’truth
60
I am not someone who,
tries to, to get some
award
--70
I don’t know how to
estimate time
--88
I know what
90
I say [it] in quotes
91
I don’t think of myself as
a hero
--106
I say (that I lied)
--114
I am in treatment (till
today)
101
She knew that [they/we
(MP)] had tricked her
102
My brother calmed her
down
103
[He] said that it’s okay
109
She sees me everything
is okay
115
He calls me in, to see
that everything is okay
68
[They] evacuated us to
the hospital in
ambulances
73
[They] evacuated me to
the hospital
74
[They] are coming to see
--85
They had to interview me
86
They asked
87
They pushed/pressured
89
They just asked to
interview ‘the big hero’
96
[They] are watching [the
news]
--114
[They] prepared me for it
What is most apparent from the pronoun ‘poetry’ of Motti’s BL TAN, and what most
distinguishes it from that of Yossi and Dani, is that the RPa ‘I’ poem contains almost all of the
content of the narrative, albeit in a condensed form. In addition, it is predominantly active and
agentic. Notably, it begins with Motti’s declaration that he “understood” that the explosion on his
bus had been caused by a terrorist (entry (E.) 7), and then continues through Motti’s actions and
responses to the attack. The poem has a matter-of-fact feel to it, with Motti describing the sequence
of events from a relatively non-emotionally charged perspective. He repeats the phrase, “I opened
[the] doors” (E.29-30), then repeats that he “didn’t feel” a need to get off the bus (E.33-34). This
double repetition can be interpreted as signifying the emotional high point of the RPa ‘I’ poem, and
seems to represent the central message of Motti’s narrative: that he opened the bus doors (saving
the lives of many of his passengers), but did not do so because of any intuition or premonition.
There are only a very few entries in the RPa ‘I’ poem describing the immediate aftereffects
219
of the TA—particularly the aspect that Motti thought he was dead for a few seconds (E.40-42) and
that he was covered in dirt and debris (E.43)—and here, again, any detailed descriptions of the
post-bombing scene are conspicuously absent. Motti then refers to washing himself (E.47), and
then immediately turns to his interaction with the journalist. There is repetition here as well, of the
phrases, “I told him…” (E.50 and E.53), and, “I said…” (E.51, E.54, and E.57). He also repeats the
phrases, “I didn’t think…” (E.58 and E.65), and, “I wasn’t aware of anything” (E.78-79).
Ultimately, when viewed in ‘poem’ form, what appear to be Motti’s core perceptions and
attributions about his terror experience seem crystallized in these repetitions—opening the doors,
not feeling, telling/saying, not thinking, and not being aware of anything.
The final (triple) repetition lies in E.104, E.105, and E.107, wherein Motti refers to having
lied to his mother about having been on the affected bus. The presumed import of these three
statements can be directly reinforced through a view on the content within the third-person singular
poem, wherein an emotional peak is evident in E.97-99 (with minor build-up in prior entries).
Motti’s description of his mother sitting down in front of her television and seeing him on the news
talking about having been in a TA, is told in the PPr tense, denoting the emotionality, proximity,
and salience of this (imagined) event for him. Similarly, E.109 and E.115 are also told in the PPr
tense, both of which express content relating to “everything [being] okay”; i.e., that Motti is okay
after what he has experienced.
In this sense, Motti’s reference to what he has constructed
narratively as his mother’s experience of understanding Motti’s involvement in the TA and his
admission of having lied to her can be interpreted as significant, meaningful, and emotional facets
of the overall experience for Motti. Evidence for this interpretation can be found in both the
repetition in the RPa ‘I’ poem and the PPr tense use in the third-person singular pronominal poem.
The PPr ‘I’ poem contains the first six pronominal uses of the TAN and begins with the
scene-setting for the overall TA experience, wherein Motti is driving his bus and interacting with
the driver of the bus parallel to his. After shifts to the RPa ‘I’ and third-person plural poems, he
returns to the PPr tense to discuss his inability to help the victims of the first bombing (E.21-23).
Both of these foci involve an apparent lack or lesser degree of agency, as Motti’s role therein is
primarily as a witness and passive bystander. He “raise[s] [his] hand” (E.5) to wave to the other
driver and then sees his bus explode (presumably, as the action of seeing this does not exist in any
of the poems). Motti “tr[ies] hard” (E.9), but “can’t help them” (E.21), because he is not a doctor
or “anything” (E.22-23). As opposed to the RPa ‘I’ poem, in which Motti “understood,” “did,”
“went forward,” “stopped,” and “opened the doors,” here in the PPr ‘I’ poem, Motti’s ‘character’
comes across as much more passive and less able.
Much of Motti’s discourse in this poem also exists outside of the traditional time boundaries
of the TA itself, as in his discussions of what he “estimate[s]” (E.36), “remember[s]” (E.39), and
220
“think[s]” (E.52); what he is telling me within the current interview context (E.44); what he always
does (E.46); what he likes to do (E.59); and what he is (E.60). It is in this poem, in particular, that
the most descriptive details of the immediate post-TA scene seem to be most lacking, contributing
to a sense of lack of coherence and narrative order to the poem itself. There is little action and less
description of the TA experience, and much more meta-discourse surrounding Motti’s present-day
attributions about the experience and himself. Notably, the poem concludes with Motti’s reference
to being in psychological treatment, from directly after the bombing up to “today” (E.114). This
was also the penultimate statement of the TAN overall, suggesting an integration and cohesion
between the TA and the consequent treatment, and the proximity of the treatment to Motti’s daily
life. By way of hypothetical comparison, if Motti’s final sentence had been, “Since then, I have
had to be in treatment,” this might send an entirely different message.
Finally, the third-person plural pronominal poem illustrates a significant focus placed by
Motti on the other experiencers of the TA, as was discussed above. Much of the overall emotional
and physical reactions to the first bombing exist here, with the people exclaiming, beginning to run,
seeing, getting nervous, and getting off the bus—as opposed to Motti, who understood, did, went
forward, and realized that he couldn’t help anyone. Significantly, one of the only PPr tense entries
in this poem concerns the people “starting to get nervous” (E.27), which appears to be the most
emotional reaction in the poem. From E.12 to E.37, all of the third-person plural subjects were the
people on Motti’s bus—the passengers who were ultimately saved from the bombing that took
place on his bus after they got off. There is little to no mention of those passengers who fell victim
to the second bombing, and they, consequently, essentially do not exist in Motti’s TAN.
Then, from E.62 on, the third-person plural subjects were either generic and unspecified, or
journalists wanting to interview Motti. Even when he refers to journalists, he does so in a nonspecific and collectivized way, sending a different message from that of the entries involving the
passengers on his bus. While the latter are referred to in nearly every entry as “people,” the former
are presented almost as an amorphous and impersonal “they” clan, clamoring for an interview,
asking, pushing, and pressuring (E.85-87 and E.89). The only exception here is E.96, wherein
Motti refers to his family, in the context of the previous mini-narrative in which his mother
discovers his involvement in the TA. In consistent form, this entry, too, is presented in the PPr
tense—further confirming that, regardless of the subject pronoun involved, this narrative seems to
exist in the proximate realm for Motti, and was thus told as such across all four pronominal poems.
Ultimately, in (or perhaps due to) the absence of any description of the immediate postbombing scene, and with no FS ‘you’ pronominal poem, it is possible to hypothesize that the
circumstances surrounding Motti’s mother’s discovery of his having been in a TA and having lied
to her may have been the most upsetting facet of the experience for Motti. The consistent patterns
221
of repetition and use of the PPr tense for the emotional climaxes, and the existence of threads of
this mini-narrative across all of the major pronouns employed in his TAN, could be interpreted as
evidence for this hypothesis. It should also not be forgotten that here in Motti’s case, the analytical
lens was widened to include the two third-person pronominal poems because of the absence of both
the MS and FS ‘you’ pronouns in his TAN. The significant predominance of the ‘I’-voice herein
may thus provide the most substantial indication of a higher degree of working through, processing,
and ultimate acceptance by Motti of the TA experience in his life and life story. Only within this
primary interpretation can the relatively emotional and proximate mini-narrative surrounding his
mother be perceived as significant (but secondary) on the scale of processing.
7.5 THE CONNECTION BETWEEN THE ‘I’ AND THE LIVED EXPERIENCE:
WILLINGNESS TO OWN A WIDER AND DIFFICULT RANGE OF EXPERIENCE
The fundamental interpretive finding that the ‘I’ pronoun is used predominantly when the
encoder is discussing his actions and agency within the context of the TA he experienced, was
evident across all of the interviews conducted for this study. While Yossi and Dani showed their
own patterns in uses of the MS and FS ‘you’ pronouns, they still demonstrated this systematic
discursive use of the ‘I’ pronoun. Motti, however, went ‘above and beyond’ all of the participants’
patterned usages, with a preponderance of ‘I’-statements across his entire BLI and in over 90% of
his TAN (as compared with Yossi’s 62% and Dani’s 51%, when taking into account only the firstperson and second-person pronouns). The next chapter delves more deeply into a comparative
analysis across the specific cases of Yossi, Dani, and Motti, but it is important here to provide some
larger content-related context for Motti’s discursive choices and patterns. To this end, this section
attempts to ‘validate’ the interpretations put forth throughout the present chapter, through a
triangulation with some of Motti’s more direct statements about heroism, weakness, coping, and
possible guilt. Several examples are presented of Motti’s willingness to discuss his image in the
media, his feelings about his actions, the indescribability of some facets of the TA, his difficulties
with coping and the prospect of returning to work as a bus driver, and his view of himself as weak.
In analyzing Motti’s BLI, it became apparent that there exists some ambivalence between
his image as “the hero driver” and his own perception of himself and his actions surrounding the
TA. As discussed above, although Motti frequently and persistently protested the heroic image
placed upon him by the media, this nonetheless was expressed through recurrent broaching of the
topic of his heroism throughout the interview. And while he seemed to view himself as weak and
decidedly non-heroic, his very willingness and ability to discuss this self-image may actually
suggest the opposite. Indeed, Motti discussed his coping processes and difficulties after the TA
more than any of the other interviewees, and did so from a perspective of openness and
introspection.
While Yossi offered myriad diatribes about his problems with the National
222
Insurance Institute and feeling abandoned to cope alone by his government, and Dani presented
various prescriptions for how the generic MS ‘you’ should cope but did not speak much about his
own coping, Motti spoke candidly and honestly about his own very personal struggles. Despite
instances in which Motti employed the MS ‘you’ in his discussions of coping, the finding that the
content exists at all in his discourse is what may be considered significant in this case.
Motti spoke frequently throughout his BLI about the media having made him into part of a
“scoop,” as “the hero driver” whose intuition caused him to save the lives of many of his
passengers. He also offered a number of narratives about being recognized almost daily on the
streets of his city, both by people who had seen him on television and those who were connected in
some way to the passengers who had been on his bus that day. The apparent message of these
anecdotes seemed to be that Motti understood his newfound societal role and the image that had
been cast of him. This seems particularly evident in the following excerpt:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
“When I spoke on television I was very nervous, never in my life had I spoken on the radio suddenly
I’m on, television on the news. And I spoke with a friend who works in the media, he says to me
“Television always in every situation looks for, doesn’t matter if it’s a terror attack, if it’s a positive
thing, if it’s soccer. They look for the hero of the moment. So you (MS) were in their eyes the hero
of the moment. That you (MS) saved and you (MS) did and people survived and got off [the bus]. So
everyone is looking for you (MS), they (MP) aren’t looking for someone else.” He says, “They (MP)
are looking for the star of the, of the situation”…”xxvi
Here may be manifest evidence of Motti’s belief that he was perceived, at least in the media’s eyes,
as “the hero of the moment,” as having saved people and as having acted ‘acceptably.’ Later, he
also presented an understanding of the ‘less acceptable’ option, as represented by the driver of the
other bus, who was not perceived as a hero. Indeed, when I asked him whether the other driver had
been interviewed, he responded that he had not, and explained:
1
2
3
4
5
“They grabbed me because I knew how to express myself, I don’t know if I express myself perfectly,
but I knew how to express myself, to talk. And I also am the hero, you (FS) understand, he isn’t a
hero. ((chuckling)) In quotes, again, I am not saying hero so that you (FS) will think that I am really a
hero. … Everything is in quotes. So he wasn’t interviewed anywhere. It’s possible that he was
interviewed in Russian on some radio station…” xxvii
Again, the content here contains many protestations against his heroic image, but the form
(particularly the repetition and sharpening of “hero”-related discourse and themes) seems to serve
to actually reinforce the very perception to which Motti objects. It is possible that Motti’s sole
motivation is simply humility, and that he truly rejects this position into which he was placed by the
media and surrounding society. Nonetheless, given the volume of narratives throughout his BLI
about the various other people who had seen him on television and been exposed to this “scoop,” it
can be presumed that Motti sees this heroic image of himself as having been cemented in his
society’s appraisal. This, in turn, can be interpreted as having a significant impact on his discourse.
Thus, whether or not Motti agrees with this image, I contend that his placement in this category
essentially ‘allows’ him to discuss the full range of surrounding issues—good, bad, and otherwise.
Both Motti and Dani referred to wishes that they had acted differently at the time of the TA
223
they each respectively experienced. While Dani was most preoccupied with his desire to go back to
the scene of the (main) attack and kill or neutralize the shooter, Motti was concerned with his lack
of intuition (the very intuition whose existence the media presumed and publicized). At one point,
Motti pointed to a position on his makeshift schematic of the geographic location of the attacks and
stated: “I say, you (FS) know, if I could go back, I should have opened the bus here. At this part.
Not to keep going, here.xxviii When I asked him why, he responded:
1
2
3
4
“Because there is li-, more people would have gotten off [the bus]. I mean, but I didn’t have the, the
thought that there is someone in the vehicle at me, terrorist. … I didn’t have that thought. It, it is
only because, again, only because of the pressure of the people on the bus, I stopped and opened the
doors.xxix
This was Motti’s only reference to any possible feelings of guilt or regret about his actions or lack
thereof, and stands in contrast to Dani’s repeated ruminations on what he should have done, wished
he had done, wanted to do, and tried to do. Motti’s owning of these feelings and statements, by
means of ‘I’-statements, can be interpreted as an indication of a more ‘ease-ful’ level of processing.
Overall, Motti’s ability and willingness to discuss a variety of his difficulties surrounding
the TA, particularly from the discursive stance of the ‘I,’ can be viewed as reason to place him
closer to the ‘ease-ful’ end of the narrative processing scale. His openness and forthcoming nature
concerning topics such as fear, coping difficulties, psychological struggles and need for both
psychopharmaceutical and talk therapy, membership in support groups, and his inability to drive a
bus since the TA reached far beyond the related content in any of the other participants’ interviews.
And nearly all of these discussions were presented in the ‘I’-voice. Some of Motti’s references to
his difficulties coping with the TA and its aftereffects have already been discussed, in the context of
his use of the MS ‘you’ pronoun, but the excerpt below constitutes one of the many examples of
Motti’s candid ‘I’-voice in this context. It came as a response to my question of whether he might
have been willing to return to driving a bus if he felt he was psychologically able to do so:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
“III, don’t know, III thought about that many times. … I thought about that, also during the nights, I
would think about it. It’s difficult, it’s difficult, it’s difficult. It’s very difficult even. And also uhh,
beyond the fact that it’s difficult for me, I am sure that I feel that I, that I will not give the level of
driving toward the people, the safety/security10 of the people, it won’t be good. … Because the
driving won’t be the same driving that I know, the fear will take control over me and, I will look
more at the people than at the road, for sure my leg will shake while driving. That, also from a
safety/security standpoint, that is also dangerous. And beyond the fact that for personal reasons it
is very difficult. Very difficult. I thought about it, I said, maybe I, what happens if I will go to work
on, I mean I imagine that I am at the [steering] wheel, driver… very difficult. From many
standpoints. It is also safety/security, and also psychologically and. It is impossible even. Despite
the fact that there are people uhh that went back to it.” xxx
Here, Motti repeats over and over how difficult this proposition would be for him, discussing both
potential emotional (“the fear will take control over me,” in L.5) and physical (“my leg will shake
while driving,” in L.6) reactions. In addition to his lengthy discussions throughout his BLI of the
10
the best translation of Motti’s message here.
224
challenges he believes he would face if he returned to work as a bus driver, Motti also made many
references to the difficulty and indescribability of what he experienced in the TA itself. Below is
only a very partial list, collected in the span of under 90 (of a total of nearly 2,800) lines of text:
Table 7-5: Content regarding difficulty and indescribability in Motti’s baseline interview
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
“[It is] difficult to explain to someone, who comes from outside, even thouugh maybe he saw, on television he
sees …”xxxi
“…I am trying hard like, don’t know, it was an indescribable, sight. And now everything I am telling [you]
it is a matter of seconds. It is an indescribable sight.”xxxii
“…[it is] difficult to describe what [you/they/we (MP)] see there…”xxxiii
“Explosion, impossible to describe it.”xxxiv
“It is difficult to describe what, what flew all over me.”xxxv
“Yes, it is difficult, very difficult. It is very difficult. (2) That’s pretty much the gist, and afterwards, what was on
the bus also, it is difficult for me to to explain it, I called it a slaughterhouse. … Really just like that. A
slaughterhouse of (2) of all kinds of things. … It was a slaughterhouse what happened there.” xxxvi
“Uhh, and afterwards the coping. In the beginning I didn’t know how hard it would be. I thought that okay, what
happened happened, one or two days, and [they] prepared me for it…”xxxvii
Both the form and content of these multiple excerpts seem to indicate that Motti experienced many
facets of this event as extremely difficult, both to undergo and to express afterwards. There is a
great deal of repetition of these themes throughout his BLI, and much introspection about the
impact that the experience has had on his psyche and well-being. What is most significant and
unusual here, given the central psycholinguistic assertions of this study and in relation to the other
interviewees, is that the predominant majority of these issues and themes were discussed in the ‘I’voice and thus, owned and claimed by Motti.
Perhaps the most significant piece of narrative evidence can be found barely twenty lines
into Motti’s BLI, in his first reference to the TA, still within the confines of his life narrative. With
no prompting from me and unrelated to either the prior or following subject matter, Motti stated:
1
2
3
“It is possible to say thaat my life has changed since the terror attack, despite the fact that many
[people] don’t see that on me, but I, maybe it’s not good, many told me that, I cope more inside than
outside. I don’t let out what I, feel inside. That’s also maybe not so good.” xxxviii
If this is taken as Motti’s title statement with regard to his TA experience, most apparent is his
preoccupation with the topic of coping and his introspection and self-evaluation on this issue. This
was, indeed, evident throughout his BLI. When contrasted with Dani’s title sentence, “If I had had
a gun, I would have gotten off [the bus],” which also represented much of Dani’s focus throughout
his BLI, a very different image emerges of both individuals and their views of the most important
facets of their respective experience.
Motti appears accepting of the impact that the TA has had on his life, but questions whether
he is coping ‘appropriately.’ Slightly later, he stated: “People see me on the street won’t think that
I went through some terror attack, some kind of thing, but on the inside I, I am very weak, I am
very weak, I feel about myself that I am very weak.”xxxix Herein lies what, I assert, may be the crux
of the issue for Motti: the ambivalent dynamic between what he feels, on the one hand, and what he
225
perceives as the appraisal of him by his surrounding society, on the other. This seems reflected in
his constructed split between the “inside” and the “outside”; what he believes and feels vs. what he
shows; and how he sees and attributes his behavior during the TA vs. how the media viewed him.
Dani’s BLI, too, contained some of these dialectic themes and a great deal of ambivalence
on similar issues, much of which made its mark on his discourse in the form of an elevated usage of
the MS ‘you.’ What is significant in Motti’s case, then, is his ability and willingness to grapple
with these difficult issues from a self-focused position, shown by a discursive use of the ‘I’-voice.
Indeed, even within his TAN, Motti was able to make this rather non-‘heroic’ statement: “…I went
forward. Because I said, ‘There is nothing I can do here.’ To help them I can’t help them, I am not
a doctor, I am not anything, there is nothing I can do here.”xl His candor about what he was able
and not able to do, what he did and did not do, and what (in his opinion) does and does not qualify
him as a hero, all discussed in ‘I’-statements, sets Motti apart from the other participants.
I assert that this is not simply a reflection of difference in personalities or communication
styles, or even due to the divergent TA experiences of the interviewees. Rather, it appears to be
Motti’s certainty and assurance that he has been universally placed into the ‘correct,’ ‘appropriate,’
and ‘most acceptable’ social category—that of “the hero”—that may allow him the psychosocial
freedom to discuss the widest range of emotional and psychological facets of what was clearly a
difficult experience for him. Motti apparently has little need to bring me in or project much of the
experience onto me, because he does not seem to fear being viewed as weak. Indeed, he himself is
even able to proclaim outright that he is weak and feels that he is weak, purportedly because he
knows that his heroic image will ‘trump’ these declarations. (Alternatively, it is theoretically
possible that Motti omitted or silenced the descriptive details of the immediate post-TA scene from
his TAN out of such trauma and upset that he has not even begun to process it. However, the
excerpts presented above did demonstrate that these facets were not silenced entirely from Motti’s
BLI, and his openness on so many related difficult topics appears to challenge this theory.)
In addition, although Motti expresses many of the same ambivalences as Dani, he does not
recruit the MS ‘you’ to the same extent—apparently indicating neither interest nor need to
generalize, universalize, or normalize his experience. In fact, Motti seems to have more motivation
to discuss these issues from the strong and claiming ‘I’-voice, as he exists in his own unique and
‘acceptable’ position. Thus, in many ways, while Motti may or may not agree with his society’s
appraisal of his ‘heroism,’ the existence of the image itself may actually facilitate and allow Motti
to process the experience more resiliently, taking into account the wider range of attendant
emotions and uncertainties. Yossi’s and Dani’s discourse was much more black-and-white, in both
form and content, as they seemed so intent and concerned with presenting their agenda and
convincing me of their desired social position. Motti, I contend, appears to have no need for these
226
agendas, as his image has already been firmly entrenched in the ‘right’ place. Thus, he may be able
to ‘let his guard down’ and open up his ‘I’-voice to discuss a variety of ‘less acceptable’ issues.
This may, indeed, place him closest to the ‘ease-ful’ side of the narrative processing continuum.
7.6 CONCLUSION
This chapter began from a holistic perspective on Motti himself and the BL interview
quantitative view on the distribution of these patterns, and then moved to a qualitative ‘poetic’
analysis of both the form and content of these patterns. Finally, a content-focused analysis of
Motti’s discourse, particularly regarding his attributions, perceptions, and emotions, was presented.
This analysis of Motti’s outward discursive and narrative choices was employed in order to
understand his related inner psychological beliefs and perspectives. The following two tables
summarize the central findings of Motti’s BLI, within the discursive and narrative categories that
were analyzed. The first focuses on Motti’s patterns of pronoun (and tense) use.
Table 7-6: Summary of pronoun use findings and interpretations in Motti’s baseline interview
PRONOUN USE
First-person
possessive
pronouns and
phrases
Third-person
‘others’
MS ‘you’ and
distancing
discourse
FS ‘you’
‘I’
‘We’

Suggests some sense of responsibility and ownership for his bus, for what happened to the
passengers at him

Lack of solitary phrases suggests no solitary sense of experience—no focus on himself to the
exclusion of the other experiencers

Suggests great focus on the other characters and experiencers of the terror attack—“the
people did…”

Suggests acceptance of the shared nature of the experience and little to no need to personalize
it—it did not happen only to him

Suggests generalized, universalized, distanced experiences with unspecified or without
subjects, creating a sense of dissociation and disconnection—“It is the coping”

Suggests some ambivalence with regard to ‘correct’ and ‘acceptable’ coping vs. his own
process of coping

Suggests perception of ‘correct’ behavior as a bus driver surrounding responsibility, alertness,
taking care of the situation and passengers—and uncertainty as to whether he fulfills this
expectation

Relative lack suggests almost no need to bring audience in to experience—highly equipped
and willing to deal with most of the difficult facets of experience in an ‘owning’ fashion

Only very few uses suggest that the most traumatic part of experience was finding human
debris on himself afterwards and trying to wash it off

Suggests much willingness and ability to claim ownership of a wide range of facets of the
terror attack experience—including difficulties with coping, indescribability of experience,
inability to work as a bus driver since, and view of himself as weak

Suggests understanding that his image as a hero has been firmly entrenched in his society’s
perception—he is ‘acceptable’

Suggests much ability to grapple with difficult issues and ambivalences, while still being
introspective, open, and candid from the personal voice

Suggests much acknowledgment of collective nature of experience—“they evacuated us”
227
messages, or end points (Spector-Mersel, 2011), which appeared central to Motti’s BL TA narrative
and discourse. Some of them may have appeared as more conscious or less so, but all were either
expressed manifestly or seemed present in some way between or underneath the lines of his
interview text.
While most are essentially my own formulations of what I understand and
interpreted as Motti’s ‘main messages,’ I believe they most succinctly summarize and illustrate the
results of the comprehensive analyses conducted throughout this chapter—with regard to both form
and content, and particularly related to the found pronoun and tense use patterns.
Table 7-7: Suggested ‘main messages’ of Motti’s baseline interview

I acted, felt, and experienced a range of behaviors, emotions, experiences, and facets of the terror attack, almost all
of which are acceptable to me.

You (MS) need to cope with the aftereffects of the terror attack in an appropriate way.

You (FS) experience a single, more upsetting sensory facet of the terror attack.

They (my passengers, and members of my family) experienced this together with me.

It is best if you (MS) cope alone.

I cope alone, inside.

You (FS) are affected (only) by the single sensory, most emotionally distressing facet of the terror attack—the
debris on you afterwards.

I was seen by the media and my society as “the hero driver,” but I don’t agree with that appraisal.

I don’t see myself as a hero, but on some level I’m glad that I’m seen this way.

What happened to my passengers during the terror attack might have been my fault.

Although I don’t feel pressure from anyone about this, I think I could or should have done more to prevent (at least
the scope of) the terror attack—I should have let the people off sooner.

We experienced the terror attack together, my passengers and I.

The other experiencers of the terror attack and its effects are just as important ‘main characters’ in the story as I
am.

The terror attack changed me and my life, and I accept that.

I have had difficulties coping with the aftereffects of the terror attack, and I am comfortable talking about that.

I say that I see myself as weak, but the way that I talk might show just the opposite.
Motti’s baseline interview provided another rich opportunity for a further investigation of the link
between an individual’s hypothesized inner attitudes and his perceptions of the societal attitudes
and cultural discourses surrounding him. Motti was found to have used the ‘I’ pronoun to a much
greater degree than the other participants in this study, and in conjunction with a much wider array
of contexts and topics. He was also viewed by his society as the most ‘heroic.’ Thus, Motti was
presented here as an exemplar of an ability and willingness to claim and ‘own’ the greatest range of
facets of his terror attack experience.
228
CHAPTER 8
YOSSI, DANI, AND MOTTI IN CONTEXT:
HOW INDIVIDUAL DISCOURSE REFLECTS AND IS SHAPED
BY PERCEPTIONS OF SOCIOCULTURAL DISCOURSE
SURROUNDING ‘ACCEPTABLE’ BEHAVIOR
8.1 INTRODUCTION
This chapter brings together the central psycholinguistic hypotheses and findings of this
study, through a comprehensive across-participant analysis. The pronominal findings of Yossi,
Dani, and Motti will be juxtaposed, quantitatively and qualitatively, through form and content, and
on the micro- and macro-levels, in order to explore the individual and societal messages therein.
By comparatively examining possible explanations for the varied pronoun use patterns across these
interviewees, a deeper understanding may be garnered of the psychosocial phenomena and
motivations underlying their linguistic choices. To this end, this chapter asserts three main points
that emerged from this line of analysis, represented in this first section of results (Chapters 5-7).
First, it is contended that the data presented in this section validated the sign-oriented
linguistic meanings for the Modern Israeli Hebrew pronoun and tense systems (Tobin, 1989b, 1990,
1995; as delineated in Chapter 3 (Sections 3.5.2.1 and 3.5.2.2)). Second, it is claimed that the
frequency patterns shown in the discourse of the individual drivers interviewed herein provided
support for the hypothesized, interpretive extra-linguistic meanings directly associated with these
pronominal forms (as delineated in Chapter 4 (Sections 4.2 and 4.3)). And third, it is asserted that
these patterned extra-linguistic messages, connected to the sign-oriented linguistic meanings of the
pronoun and tense systems, appear to reflect the inner psychosocial values held by the encoders, as
well as their perceptions of the psychosocial and cultural discourse surrounding them. The final
message of the comparative analyses presented here is that societal discourse can have an impact on
individual discourse, and this interaction can also shape and be shaped by the individual’s personal
processes of narrative processing and meaning-making after a stressful life event.
This chapter first shows the patterned pronoun findings from a comparative quantitative
perspective, in both absolute and relative terms. Next is presented a summary of the qualitative
findings and the central messages expressed therein, with discussions of the possible motivations
behind these patterns. Following this, connections are forged between these discursive patterns and
the specific personal experiences of each of the interviewees, in an exploration of the divergences
between them and possible explanations. Finally, several more specific content comparisons are
made between manifest views expressed by Yossi, Dani, and Motti on the topics of coping, societal
pressure and discourse, and views on ‘the Israeli man’ and what may be more or less ‘acceptable.’
All these comparative findings, juxtaposed and integrated, allow a comprehensive perspective on
the interplay between individual and sociocultural discourse and personal narrative processing.
8.2 PRONOUN USE, MEANINGS, AND MESSAGES:
QUANTITATIVE AND QUALITATIVE FINDINGS AGGREGATED AND JUXTAPOSED
While the same general patterns of linguistic meanings of the pronouns used in the drivers’
discourse were found across the texts of Yossi, Dani, and Motti, the actual frequencies and ratios of
229
pronoun usage varied significantly across the interviewees. The extra-linguistic messages of their
pronominal discourse also varied. This section summarizes and juxtaposes the pronominal findings
of these three drivers, in order to highlight the similarities and differences. Below is a comparative
view of the quantitative data already presented in each individual chapter, of each participant’s
pronoun usage in his main narrative of analysis (the most emotionally charged narrative for each
one—that is, for Yossi and Motti, their respective TANs; and for Dani, his TrAN).
Figure 8-1: Comparison of pronoun use in the main narratives of Yossi, Dani, and Motti1,2,3,4,5
Simplified slightly, the essential comparative data reveal the following:
1
2
3
4
5
each bar are relative within each individual’s narrative.
The Chi-square test with Yates correction (with 1 degree of freedom and one-tailed P) was conducted for each
association of uses of the ‘I’ pronoun (‘past’ and ‘present’ aggregated) between the participants. For Yossi’s vs.
Dani’s uses of ‘I’, the Chi-square probability equals 0.2541—thus not statistically significant. For Yossi’s vs.
Motti’s uses of ‘I’, the Chi-square probability equals 0.0344—thus statistically significant. For Dani’s vs. Motti’s
uses of ‘I’, the Chi-square probability equals 0.0098—thus very statistically significant.
association of uses of the MS ‘you’ pronoun between the participants. For Yossi’s vs. Dani’s uses of the MS ‘you’,
the Chi-square probability is less than 0.0001—thus extremely statistically significant. For Dani’s vs. Motti’s uses
of the MS ‘you’, the Chi-square probability equals 0.0003—thus extremely statistically significant.
association of uses of the FS ‘you’ pronoun between the participants. For Yossi’s vs. Dani’s uses of the FS ‘you’,
the Chi-square probability equals 0.0078—thus very statistically significant. For Yossi’s vs. Motti’s uses of the
FS ‘you’, the Chi-square probability is less than 0.0001—thus extremely statistically significant. For Dani’s vs.
Motti’s uses of the FS ‘you’, the Chi-square probability equals 0.0522—thus not quite statistically significant.
association of uses of the ‘we’ pronoun between the participants. For Yossi’s vs. Dani’s uses of the ‘we’, the Chisquare probability equals 0.3984—thus not statistically significant. For Yossi’s vs. Motti’s uses of the ‘we’, the
Chi-square probability equals 0.2331—thus not statistically significant. For Dani’s vs. Motti’s uses of the ‘we’,
the Chi-square probability equals 0.1292—thus not statistically significant.
230
Table 8-1: Relative comparison of pronoun use in the main narratives of Yossi, Dani, and Motti
USE OF ‘I’
Moderate
(63%)
Moderate
(52%)
High
(95%)
YOSSI
DANI
MOTTI
USE OF ‘YOU (MS)’
None
(0%)
High
(19%)
None
(0%)
USE OF ‘YOU (FS)’
High
(33%)
Low
(11%)
None
(3%)
As evident here, each individual used one of the pronouns at a much higher rate than the others:
Yossi, the feminine singular (FS) ‘you’; Dani, the masculine singular (MS) ‘you’; and Motti, the
‘I’. The possible motivations and explanations for these patterned differences will be explored
further in the following section.
Here, first, it is also necessary to view these findings from a qualitative comparative
perspective. To this end, below is presented a series of tables, organized by pronoun, juxtaposing
the main interpretive findings, suggested meanings, and hypothesized messages of the discourse of
each of the interviewees. It may be necessary to state again that these ‘main messages’ are not
direct quotations from any of the participants, but rather, a posited paraphrasing of the essential
extra-linguistic message suggested by the particular set of pronoun findings. The first table deals
with the use of first-person possessive pronouns and solitary phrases by Yossi, Dani, and Motti:
Table 8-2: Findings and suggested ‘main messages’ of uses of
first-person possessive pronouns and solitary phrases
‘MAIN MESSAGES’

YOSSI

DANI
Suggests solitary sense of
experience—“what happened to me”
What happened to my passengers, on my bus, might have
been my fault.

I think there was a societal/cultural expectation that I could
or should have done more to prevent the terror attack.

I was and am all alone in my experience of the terror attack
and its aftereffects.


What happened to my passengers during the main terror
attack might have been my fault.

Suggests sense of responsibility and
guilt for his passengers, for what
happened

I think there was a societal expectation that I could or
should have done more to prevent (at least the scope of) the
main terror attack.

Suggests separation of himself and
solitary sense of experience—“what
I am seeing in front of me”

I think I could or should have done more to prevent (at least
the scope of) the terror attack—I should have gone back to
kill the shooter.

I set myself apart or feel set apart in my experience of the
terror attack(s) and its aftereffects.

What happened to my passengers during the terror attack
might have been my fault.

Although I don’t feel pressure from anyone about this, I
think I could or should have done more to prevent (at least
the scope of) the terror attack—I should have let the people
off sooner.

We experienced the terror attack together, my passengers
and I.

MOTTI
Suggests sense of responsibility and
guilt for his bus, for his passengers,
for what happened

Suggests some sense of
responsibility and ownership for his
bus, for what happened to the
passengers at him
(Lack of solitary phrases suggests no
solitary sense of experience—no focus
on himself to the exclusion of the
other experiencers)
231
Here, the central similarity among the main messages of Yossi, Dani, and Motti seems to surround
a perceived sense of responsibility, guilt, and ownership for what happened to their passengers.
There is some connection between the interviewees with regard to expectations of their behavior
vis-à-vis preventing the terror attack (TA), with differences in their levels of guilt and sense of
pressure. And perhaps the central difference among the main messages of Yossi, Dani, and Motti
seems to be their position on a hypothetical continuum from aloneness to connectedness, both in
the experience of the TA and afterwards. While Yossi seems to feel isolated and abandoned by his
country and government institutions, Dani seems to take it upon himself to set himself apart (both
discursively and otherwise). Motti, on the other hand, comes across as connecting himself to his
passengers—his ‘co-experiencers’ of the TA—in both the content and form of his discourse.
The next table deals with the use of various third-person ‘others’ and other types of
distancing discourse by Yossi, Dani, and Motti:
Table 8-3: Findings and suggested ‘main messages’ of uses of
third-person ‘others’ and distancing discourse
‘MAIN MESSAGES’
YOSSI
Suggests generalized, ‘usual,’ timeless
experiences with generic, universalized
subjects—perhaps disconnected from them
himself
DANI
(Relative lack suggests great focus on the MS
‘you’ as the generalization/collectivization
discursive strategy of his choice)


Suggests great focus on the other characters and
experiencers of the terror attack—“the people
did…”

Suggests acceptance of the shared nature of the
experience and little to no need to personalize
it—it did not happen only to him
MOTTI

Suggests generalized, universalized, distanced
experiences with unspecified or without subjects,
creating a sense of dissociation and
disconnection—“It is the coping”

Various ‘others’ generally take on the
generic/universalizable facets of the terror attack.

I feel alienated and isolated from my
surrounding community and society because of
my sense of aloneness in my experience of the
terror attack.
(None)

They (my passengers, and members of my family)
experienced this together with me.

The other experiencers of the terror attack and its
effects are just as important ‘main characters’ in
the story as I am.
Here, distinct and prominent differences are evident between the main messages of Yossi, Dani,
and Motti. While Yossi employed a variety of third-person ‘others’ in an apparent attempt to
distance himself and/or express a sense of alienation from his surrounding society, Dani did not use
them at all, placing his entire discursive distancing strategy on the use of the MS ‘you.’ And Motti
introduced a number of third-person characters to apparently express that the other experiencers of
the TA, placed as narrative ‘characters’ alongside of himself, were just as important to the ‘plot.’
The next table deals with the use of the MS ‘you’ by Yossi, Dani, and Motti:
232
Table 8-4: Findings and suggested ‘main messages’ of uses of the MS ‘you’
‘MAIN MESSAGES’
YOSSI
DANI
MOTTI
(Relative lack suggests very little need or ability to
generalize, universalize, collectivize, and/or
normalize (in)to a larger context world)

Suggests great need to generalize, universalize,
collectivize, and/or normalize facets of experience
that he is uncomfortable claiming as his own

Suggests great need to generalize, universalize,
collectivize, and/or normalize (in)to a larger context
world—but unclear how inclusive this world is, in
his eyes (all men, or all Israelis, or all Israeli males,
or all Israeli male bus drivers, etc.)

I was and am all alone in my experience of
the terror attack and its aftereffects.

I feel alienated and isolated from my
surrounding community and society because
of my sense of aloneness in my experience of
the terror attack.

You (MS) experience the parts of these
difficult experiences about which I am more
ambivalent and uncertain regarding their
‘acceptability.’

I was afraid during the main terror attack, but
isn’t that okay?

Suggests possible attempt to exclude me
(specifically) discursively from the specific context
or experience under discussion

You (MS) are not normal if you don’t react
emotionally in some way to a traumatic
experience.

Suggests significant ambivalence and uncertainty
with regard to the less ‘acceptable,’ ‘appropriate,’ or
‘correct’ facets of experience—such as his behavior
and emotions

A real Israeli man is courageous, never afraid,
strong, and always able to find solutions and
act to prevent disaster or injury.


Suggests possible conflict or contradiction between
his appraisals of his own behavior and his
perceptions of his surrounding society’s appraisals
I am highly uncertain and ambivalent as to
whether I fit this description.

Suggests some ambivalence with regard to ‘correct’
and ‘acceptable’ coping vs. his own process of
coping

You (MS) need to cope with the aftereffects of
the terror attack in an appropriate way.

It is best if you (MS) cope alone.

I cope alone, inside.

Suggests perception of ‘correct’ behavior as a bus
driver surrounding responsibility, alertness, taking
care of the situation and passengers—and
uncertainty as to whether he fulfills this expectation
Here, the primary difference among the main messages of Yossi, Dani, and Motti involves their
perceptions of and relationship with the hegemonic social and cultural discourse of their
surrounding society. Yossi’s relative lack of use of the MS ‘you’ seems to belie a sense of
alienation—from his society, in general, and from his government and its institutions (specifically,
the National Insurance Institute (NII)), in particular. Dani, on the other hand, seems to place great
emphasis on his society and its appraisals of his behavior before, during, and after the difficult
events he experienced, and comes across as deeply preoccupied with questions regarding whether
he is ‘normal’ and ‘acceptable’ in the eyes of his society. Essentially, Dani appears to want to be
connected to and viewed as an integral member of his society, but seems to fear that he has been
rejected or denied membership into ‘the club.’ Finally, Motti, who has been granted this elusive
status of “hero,” and knows he has found favor in the eyes of his society, seems to place more focus
on his own coping, alone and without (perhaps rejecting) the help of his society, as he seems to
believe it should be.
233
The next table deals with the use of the FS ‘you’ by Yossi, Dani, and Motti:
Table 8-5: Findings and suggested ‘main messages’ of uses of the FS ‘you’
‘MAIN MESSAGES’

YOSSI

DANI


MOTTI

Suggests great and acute need to bring
audience in to the most difficult, upsetting
sensory facets of experience—either to educate,
to join him in his pain and solitude, and/or to
‘take on’ the projected traumatic and/or passive
(‘unacceptable’) facets instead of him
Suggests some need to bring audience in to the
most difficult, upsetting sensory facets of
experience, and much of the more emotional and
passive experiences—such as feeling
introspective, or helpless or powerless
Directed (non-analytically significant) use
suggests great need for my understanding,
connection, and cooperation in our coconstruction of meaning within the interview
and in the co-creation of a shared experience,
both discursively and emotionally
Relative lack suggests almost no need to bring
audience in to experience—highly equipped and
willing to deal with most of the difficult facets
of experience in an ‘owning’ fashion
Only very few uses suggest that the most
traumatic part of experience was finding human
debris on himself afterwards and trying to wash
it off

You (FS) experience the worst, most traumatic,
and least ‘acceptable’ facets of the terror attack.

You (FS) are traumatized by the terror attack.

You (FS) are affected by the (many) sensory,
most emotionally distressing facets of the terror
attack.

You (FS) experience the passive, weak, and
‘unacceptable’ parts of these difficult
experiences.

You (FS) are affected by the (few) sensory, most
emotionally distressing facets of these traumatic
experiences.

You (the interviewer) are my main conduit to
understanding, connection, and possibly
acceptance of even the less ‘acceptable’ parts of
my behavior.

You (FS) experience a single, more upsetting
sensory facet of the terror attack.

You (FS) are affected (only) by the single
sensory, most emotionally distressing facet of
the terror attack—the debris on you afterwards.
Here, there are both similarities and differences among the main messages of Yossi, Dani, and
Motti. As was apparent from the quantitative data, the central distinction here is in the volume of
usage of this pronoun, with Yossi employing it the most, Motti the least, and Dani a minor amount
of times. This is also visible in the qualitative messages, as Yossi’s message refers more to trauma,
while those of Dani and Motti refer more to being affected. However, in keeping with the central
psycholinguistic assertions of this study, all three employed the FS ‘you’ in similar contexts—that
is, the most difficult and upsetting sensory facets of the most emotionally charged experience (their
respective TAs as well as Dani’s traffic accident (TrA)). Even though Motti’s use of this pronoun
came only in conjunction with a single part of his TA experience, it nonetheless followed in line
with this fundamental hypothesis.
The next table deals with the use of the ‘I’ pronoun by Yossi, Dani, and Motti:
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Table 8-6: Findings and suggested ‘main messages’ of uses of ‘I’
‘MAIN MESSAGES’

YOSSI

DANI

MOTTI
Suggests desire and ability to claim ownership
only of parts of experience in which he was
acting ‘heroically’ (‘acceptably,’ in his
perception of the viewpoint of Israeli society)
Suggests desire and ability to claim ownership
only of parts of experience in which he was
acting in an unequivocally ‘heroic’ manner
(‘acceptably,’ in his perception of the viewpoint
of Israeli society)
Suggests much willingness and ability to claim
ownership of a wide range of facets of the terror
attack experience—including difficulties with
coping, indescribability of experience, inability
to work as a bus driver since, and view of
himself as weak

Suggests understanding that his image as a hero
has been firmly entrenched in his society’s
perception—he is ‘acceptable’

Suggests much ability to grapple with difficult
issues and ambivalences, while still being
introspective, open, and candid from the
personal voice

I experienced the ‘acceptable’ facets of the terror
attack.

I was active and behaved ‘appropriately’ during
parts of the terror attack experience.

I did not act heroically or ‘acceptably’ enough
during other parts.

I acted during the ‘acceptable’ facets of these
difficult experiences.

I was active during parts of the main terror attack,
but not heroic enough.

I should have been more active and heroic during
the main terror attack.

If I could have, I would have been more active and
heroic during the main terror attack.

I think there was a societal expectation that I
could or should have done more to prevent (at
least the scope of) the main terror attack.

I acted, felt, and experienced a range of behaviors,
emotions, experiences, and facets of the terror
attack, almost all of which are acceptable to me.

I was seen by the media and my society as “the
hero driver,” but I don’t agree with that appraisal.

I don’t see myself as a hero, but on some level I’m
glad that I’m seen this way.

I say that I see myself as weak, but the way that I
talk might show just the opposite.

The terror attack changed me and my life, and I
accept that.

I have had difficulties coping with the aftereffects
of the terror attack, and I am comfortable talking
about that.
Here, again, the main messages of Yossi, Dani, and Motti revolve primarily around their
relationship with their surrounding society, and their perceptions of its expectations of them. While
Yossi and Dani appear preoccupied with questions relating to whether they were active enough
during the TA, and whether they behaved ‘acceptably’ (that is, ‘heroically’), Motti is not—perhaps
because he may be aware that he has already been appraised as ‘acceptable.’ Dani seems to invest
great energy dealing with the ‘should’s and ‘would’s and ‘could’s of his behavior, perhaps in an
attempt to convince himself and/or his society of his ‘acceptability.’ Yossi, on the other hand,
confines his ‘I’-statements only to those actions or dimensions that he apparently is certain would
be deemed ‘appropriate’ through the perspective of the surrounding sociocultural discourse. And
Motti allows himself to discuss a number of ‘weaker’ facets of his experience, perhaps because he
feels that his society’s acceptance of him into the ‘in-group’ of heroes permits him to do this.
The final pronoun results table deals with the use of ‘we’ by Yossi, Dani, and Motti:
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Table 8-7: Findings and suggested ‘main messages’ of uses of ‘we’
‘MAIN MESSAGES’

YOSSI

DANI


MOTTI
Relative lack suggests very little to no
acknowledgment of the collective nature
of experience—“what I did”; “what
happened to me”
Relative lack suggests very little to no
acknowledgment of the collective nature
of the terror attack—“what I saw”
Suggests minor attempt to build on the use
of the MS ‘you’ as a further mechanism to
align himself with the ‘acceptable’
collective and ‘fit in’ to the societal norms
Suggests much acknowledgment of
collective nature of experience—“they
evacuated us”

I was and am all alone in my experience of the terror
attack and its aftereffects.


I set myself apart or feel set apart in my experience of
the terror attack(s) and its aftereffects.

We Israelis are supposed to behave courageously and
actively and correctly.

We experienced the terror attack together, my
passengers and I.

The other experiencers of the terror attack and its
effects are just as important ‘main characters’ in the
story as I am.
Here, a distinct difference is observable between the three interviewees, again in the realm of a
continuum from isolation to connectedness. While Yossi’s use of this pronoun sends an apparent
message that the TA happened (only) to him, and is a big part of (only) his life, Motti seems to send
the opposite message: that the TA happened to him and the other experiencers together, and they
share this common experience. On the other hand, Dani’s pronominal use here appears to send an
ambivalent message—which may, in some ways, ‘bridge the gap’ between the messages of Yossi
and Motti. That is, Dani suggests that he experienced the TAs (and TrA) alone, but apparently
hopes to insert himself into the collective experience and societal ‘in-group’ through his attempts to
appear courageous, heroic, and ‘acceptable,’ along with ‘all of us Israelis.’
The final table presents a juxtaposed summary of the hypothesized comprehensive extralinguistic ‘main messages’ expressed in the pronoun patterns in the participants’ baseline discourse:
Table 8-8: Comprehensive pronominal extra-linguistic ‘main messages’
YOSSI
DANI
MOTTI

I experienced the ‘acceptable’ facets of the terror attack.

You (FS) experience the worst, most traumatic, and least ‘acceptable’ facets of the terror attack.

Various ‘others’ generally take on the generic/universalizable facets of the terror attack.

I acted during the ‘acceptable’ facets of these difficult experiences.

You (MS) experience the parts of these difficult experiences about which I am more ambivalent and
uncertain regarding their ‘acceptability.’

You (FS) experience the passive, weak, and ‘unacceptable’ parts of these difficult experiences.

I acted, felt, and experienced a range of behaviors, emotions, experiences, and facets of the terror
attack, almost all of which are acceptable to me.

You (MS) need to cope with the aftereffects of the terror attack in an appropriate way.

You (FS) experience a single, more upsetting sensory facet of the terror attack.

They (my passengers, and members of my family) experienced this together with me.
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To clarify and simplify these distinctions even further, the following essential hypotheses can be
claimed here: 1) the use of the ‘I’ pronoun can signify: “I may or may not approve of my
actions/feelings—but I perceive that my society does approve”; 2) the use of the FS ‘you’ pronoun
can signify: “I do not approve of my actions/feelings—and I perceive that my society does not
approve either”; and 3) the use of the MS ‘you’ pronoun can signify: “I am not sure if I approve of,
or I am ambivalent about, my actions/feelings—and I am not sure if my society approves, or I think
my society is ambivalent about them as well.” In this sense, the individual’s perception of the
sociocultural discourse surrounding him and approval or disapproval therein can have a profound
effect on the manner in which he tells his narrative. This can, in turn (as a precursor and/or
consequence), have an equally profound effect on the manner in which he processes this narrative,
works through it, makes meaning out of it, and integrates it into his life and life story.
8.3 CONNECTIONS BETWEEN THE PARTICIPANTS’ PRONOUN USE AND PERSONAL EXPERIENCES
Taking into account the central similarities and differences—both quantitative and
qualitative—delineated above, this section presents hypotheses about the possible motivations
underlying these patterns. In order to do so, the analytical lens is shifted to focus upon the
interviewees’ individual personal experiences, and then widened to consider the larger societal and
cultural context surrounding these individuals, and their attitudes about this context.
Each
participant is discussed here separately, placing into context the particularities of their experience
and the specific pronoun use patterns they employed.
8.3.1 Yossi: “You (FS) are spineless”
As seen in Chapter 5, Yossi came across as having had the most difficulty dealing with and
recovering after what he experienced, and, at the time of their respective baseline interviews
(BLIs), both he and Motti had been (psychologically) unable to board a bus since their attacks.
Yossi fully admitted that he was unable to prevent the attack on his bus, repeatedly referring to the
near-futility and impossibility of attempting to identify a potential suicide bomber. He was not
working at all at the time of his BLI, and repeatedly mentioned difficulties with nightmares and
recurrent vivid thoughts about the TA. Indeed, his ‘performance’ of his terror attack narrative
(TAN) seemed to suggest that he was reliving the event on a visceral level during his retelling (he
also told me specifically that this was the case).
In this sense, Yossi’s pattern of pronoun usage suggests that he may still be very involved
with the emotional and psychological effects of his TA experience.
He showed the highest
incidence of usage of the FS ‘you,’ indicating that he may have been the most motivated to attempt
to draw me into these post-TA emotional experiences, either with him or in place of him. The
moderate incidence of the ‘I’ pronoun in Yossi’s discourse can also be viewed against the
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background of his stated inability to prevent the attack and respond immediately thereafter in a
‘heroic enough’ manner. He made frequent references to his inability to hear and general confusion
and shock directly following the explosion, almost as if he was explaining why he did not do more.
This may suggest that Yossi may not see his reactions or behavior in a positive light, and therefore,
that he perceives himself as having less justification or ‘right’ to discursively claim these parts of
the experience by speaking in the first-person singular voice. Indeed, later in his interview, when I
asked Yossi whether he thought that “what drivers do” is courageous, he replied:
1
2
3
4
“Very courageous (MS), very courageous (MS). You (FS) need to be courageous (FS) in order to
do those things. Because if you (FS) were, if you (FS) are spineless6, or something like that, you
(FS) get up and say (FS) ‘Listen, I cannot (FS) drive {anymore}, I cannot (FS) be in that b-, in that
box and tomorrow fly into the air’.”i
Significantly, here Yossi continues to use a predominant majority of the FS ‘you,’ even as he
describes, more or less, exactly what his own response was to the prospect of driving after the TA.
This seems to reinforce the hypothesis that the FS ‘you’ is the discursive ‘main character’ when the
topics of discussion are weakness, “spineless[ness],” inability to act, and lack of courageousness,
power, strength, and heroism. In contrast, the generic and universalized MS ‘you’ is courageous.
In that he has been so affected by the traumatic nature of his TA experience, Yossi’s overall
relatively lesser amount of ‘I’-statements, along with his heightened use of the FS ‘you’ pronoun,
may indeed suggest his perception that he is not following his society’s prescription for ‘successful’
(that is, courageous and heroic) coping and general behavior.
8.3.2 Dani: “The society pities him in my opinion”
Viewed through this lens, Dani’s patterns of pronoun use also validate the hypotheses
suggested in this study. He barely spoke of the emotional effects of either the TAs or the TrA he
experienced, and spent most of his BLI attempting to deny the existence of any effects at all. It
therefore fits that his use of the (analytically significant) FS ‘you’ was low, as he appeared to have
little need or opportunity to attempt to bring me into his emotional or sensory experiences—
because, in his eyes, they simply do not exist (or so he apparently wanted me to believe). Dani did
make a number of ‘I’-statements with regard to the actions he did perform, in the context of both
the TAs and the TrA. Indeed, although he also mentioned not being able to prevent the main TA,
he did think and act quickly during it, possibly preventing much greater injury to his passengers by
evacuating the bus immediately to a nearby hospital. And yet, Dani repeatedly stated that he
wished he could have done more, and would have done more if circumstances had permitted.
It supports the central claims of this study that the MS ‘you’ receives the most usage in
Dani’s discourse throughout his BLI, in the contexts of the TAs as well as the TrA he experienced.
6
The phrase Yossi used here can be literally translated to, “weak of character.”
238
This pronominal pattern can be interpreted as a reflection of Dani’s efforts to ‘fit in’ with his
society, to universalize his actions and the experiences themselves, and to present the argument that
he is no better or worse than ‘the next guy,’ who is “not normal if [he isn’t] scared.” Dani’s
ambivalence, however, seems to lie in his desire to indeed be better than ‘the next guy’—Dani
wishes he had behaved more heroically and courageously, and he wishes he hadn’t been scared. In
this sense, the consistent message of the majority of his BLI appears to be a presentation of his
perception of ‘the ideal Israeli man,’ and his attempts to prove to me that he fits this description.
The following unbroken four-part series of Dani’s responses to my direct questions aimed at
understanding his perceptions and attributions in this area may shed light on this interpretation. I
first asked Dani to define for me, a non-native Israeli, “what is an Israeli man,” and he responded:
1
2
3
4
“An Israeli man, it’s a person who deals. A person who, experiences things annd needs to give,
needs to deal with them, things that are not nice things, (2) difficult things let’s (FS) say the army and
it’uhh peop- people don’t know. (1) A man who, needs to deal with dangers and needs to find
solutions for them let’s (FS) say like that. Âlways have to be on alert.^”ii
Much of this constituted a reiteration of what he had already said about his own army experiences
and what he had learned therein. I then asked Dani what kind of “solutions” he was referring to, to
which he replied:
5
6
7
8
9
“\((apparently thinking to himself out loud)) {What kind of solutions? What kind of solutions?}\ For
instance [they (MP)] come, \((apparently thinking to himself out loud)) {what kind of solutions?}\
you (MS) see let’s say a suspicious-looking person on the street, you (MS) have to don’t know what,
to, to ask him something, ttoo investigate him that [he] woooon’t, you (FS) understand? That he
won’t, go up explode, blow himself up.”iii
This is a particularly significant excerpt, wherein Dani essentially offers his perception of the
‘acceptable’ and ‘correct’ Israeli man as one who takes action, even in a potentially highly
dangerous scenario. The focus here is also on a prevention of disaster, rather than acting or coping
well after a disaster has occurred. This holds meaningful implications for Dani’s views of his own
behavior, both before and during the main TA he experienced, and surrounding the TrA that
occurred on his watch. He has already shown that he is all too aware that he did not prevent either
of these incidents, and that a number of individuals were harmed as a result. The lack of discussion
here of any worthiness of ‘heroic’ action after a disaster already occurs, can reasonably be
interpreted as further evidence that Dani may not view his own behavior at the time of these events
as fitting into the definition of ‘correct’ or ‘approved’ Israeli male conduct. That is, thinking fast
and springing into action quickly, managing to get the bus out of the line of fire quickly (and while
still under fire), and racing his wounded passengers to the nearby hospital for treatment, is all
simply not enough, in Dani’s appraisal, or in Dani’s view of his surrounding society’s appraisal.
Following this line of thought in the interview, I then asked if Dani thinks there is pressure
in Israeli society to be masculine or macho, and he responded:
10
11
“Umm, (1) don’t know. One needs to be masculine in, in this country in my opinion. … Because it’s
a country, {it’s a country, how can I explain this to you (FS)}? (5) It’s a country that is like, that
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12
13
14
[you/they/we (MP)] need in the, don’t get offended (FS) I men, courage. … People who aren’t afraid
people, (1) who are built so that their hearts are strong {let’s (FS) say like that}. … Because if not
{then it’s difficult to live in this country}, with everything that happens. … {Understood (FS)}?”iv
Here, again, Dani expresses what appears to be his perception of the normative prescription for the
universal Israeli man—courageous, not afraid, and built with a strong heart (lines (L.) 12-13). He
presents this as a simple matter of survival in a country such as Israel, which is constantly beset by
war and terrorism. Particularly notable here is Dani’s entreaty to me to not “get offended” (L.12)
as he launches into his description of the kind of men this country needs. (I am still uncertain as to
why he assumed this might offend me.)
Finally, and perhaps as an unconscious response to this exchange, I asked Dani how, in his
belief, Israeli society relates to someone who doesn’t fit the description he provided or live up to
these standards. After a brief pause, he replied:
15
16
17
“The societtyyyy pities him in my opinion. … {Let’s (FS) say like this}, that someone [let’s] say
who does not go back to work and suddenly in that7 so the society takes care of him of course, but it
is from you (FS) know someone like that it’s, (1) pity already. … {Do you (FS) understand}?” v
Herein, I contend, may lie the crux of the dilemma for Dani. He tries to admit that he wasn’t afraid,
but ultimately admits that he was afraid, and then apparently attempts to justify his own fear by
protesting that everyone would react in the same way. But he appears to strongly believe the exact
opposite: that a real Israeli man copes no matter what; deals with dangers by finding solutions and
not by falling apart; and is masculine, courageous, and unafraid. In Dani’s own words, a real Israeli
man’s heart is strong, and he is built to withstand all the difficulties inherent in living in Israel. In
Dani’s mind, anything less deserves pity, and is not worthy of any sense of personal ownership.
Indeed, it could be claimed that hypothetically, if Dani had managed to go back to the scene
of the main TA and kill the terrorist, or if he had killed him immediately or even prevented the
shooting altogether, Dani’s employment of the MS ‘you’ throughout his BLI might have been
significantly lower. In this case, Dani might have felt more justified claiming ownership (through
‘I’-statements) of more, if not all, of his experiences immediately before, during, and after the TA.
Even if he had been emotionally affected by it, or by the TrA as well, he would likely have shown
more discursive evidence of being willing and able to admit this, as he would have already
established himself as worthy of sociocultural praise, rather than pity.
8.3.3 Motti: “I don’t think of myself as a hero”
Possible support for this hypothesis may lie in Motti’s case. Similar to Yossi and Dani,
Motti also was unable to prevent either the TA on the bus next to his or that which occurred on his
own bus. However, because he opened the doors and let off some of his passengers (who requested
that he do so), he was perceived by the media as a hero, as if he had had a ‘sixth sense’ to behave
7
It seems that Dani is referring here to experiencing post-traumatic stress symptoms after a difficult event such as a
TA—as in, “someone who does not go back to work and is suddenly in trauma.”
240
how he did. In the moments directly following the TA and to this day, Motti has been portrayed in
the press as “the hero driver,” who saved many people. The following two excerpts demonstrate
both Motti’s perceptions of the media’s strong motivation to label him as such, and his fundamental
discomfort with the image of himself as a hero, or as having acted in any way heroically:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
“…right then apparently apparently a journalist came at that moment. [He] says to me “You are the
driver right?” I told him, the first words that came out of my mouth, I said “What luck that I opened
the doors. And peopllee escaped.” Whoever stayed in the vehicle, bit it. I think maybe ten, five,
were killed. All the rest were wounded. But the rest escaped, and it is a little comforting, in some
way. And then I told him “My God what luck that I opened the doors,” and I said it to him like,
that’s what came out of my mouth, don’t know why. He made it a scoop. Liike, the hero driver,
whose intuition let [him] open doors. It’s not true. But I said that to the media too. Like it’s not
true, it wasn’t my intuition to open doors that maybe there is a bomber also at me. I didn’t think
there is a bomber at me. I like to tell th’truth. I am not someone who, tries to, to get some award, I
could have come and said, ‘Yes, I opened, I had a feeling,’ that I didn’t say that.”vi
1
2
3
4
5
6
“The press already like, in quotation marks, was searching for the hero driver. Someone told me
there, some doctor told me “Listen, [they] made you into a hero, you don’t know what is going on
out there, all the press is talking about you.” I didn’t know this, I wasn’t aware of anything. I
wasn’t aware of anything. Phone calls, I couldn’t even answer the phone calls. The whole world
was calling. Everyone knew that it was me. … So three, four hours, they just asked to interview ‘the
big hero,’ and again I say [it] in quotes, I don’t think of myself as a hero.”vii
Motti’s candid statements here offer a possible explanation for why he used the first-person
singular pronoun more than the other interviewees, as well as why Yossi and Dani did not. While
all three drivers engaged in various actions that could have been viewed—both by themselves and
by the media—as heroic, it was only Motti who was “made…into a hero.” Indeed, it appears that it
was not the actual actions of the individual that dictated his perceptions of his level of worthiness
or heroism, but rather, the societal perception that emerged thereafter, with the help of the news
and popular media. And while Motti protested repeatedly that the image that was created of him
was decidedly not accurate, these ‘facts’ were irrelevant to the press, and the public’s perception of
Motti’s behavior had been firmly entrenched before the day of his TA had even ended. Indeed,
Motti stated frequently in his BLI that even nearly two years after the TA, he was still getting
stopped on the street and recognized in his taxi as “the hero driver.”
Motti’s linguistic strategies—primarily his nearly exclusive use of the ‘I’ pronoun—
throughout his BLI appeared to reflect his having been bestowed with this powerful label and
consequent solid placement into his society’s ‘good graces’ (or at least, his belief that this is the
case). While the content of his discourse was filled with protestations about not being a hero, much
of the form was reflective of and influenced by an apparent internalization of his society’s
acceptance of him. Indeed, Motti easily and readily discussed (in ‘I’-statements) the emotional
effects of the TA, and even his visits to a psychologist because of psychosomatic symptoms.
Similarly, he appeared comfortable attempting to reject the image of himself as a hero.
In addition, it is analytically significant that, while Motti experienced a bus bombing of
similar proportions to that experienced by Yossi—and perhaps even more intense, given that Motti
241
both witnessed a bombing on the bus next to his and then experienced a bombing on his own bus—
Motti’s TAN contains none of the gruesome and highly descriptive detail that characterized Yossi’s
TAN. Motti’s TAN comes across as personal, individualized, and experiential, while Yossi’s TAN
seems almost like a script—essentially, his way of telling what someone who had been through a
bombing might or should experience or feel. This may be another indication of owning and
claiming, as opposed to distancing from or projecting, the difficult experience. Motti appeared able
to express his experiences without a need for his audience to experience them with him or
vicariously for him, and he was able to discuss a wider range of difficult feelings and experiences,
from his own personalized perspective and while claiming them as his own.
I contend that all of these characteristics of Motti’s discourse are direct corollaries of his
having already been granted membership to the societal ‘in-group’ of heroes. This has allowed him
the ‘freedom’ to shift and move within the existential confines of the group—to claim ownership
of, organize and create coherence within, and internalize his TAN, with all its varied hues of
experience. In this sense, I assert that Motti does not need, and has no motivation, to try to
convince me of his heroism (as Dani did); this has already been done for him, and whether it was
an accurate portrayal or not is now irrelevant. Motti also has no need to use the FS ‘you’ pronoun
(as Yossi did), as he is ‘allowed’ to be emotionally affected. And Motti’s use of the MS ‘you’ is
equally low, as he similarly has no reason or motive to universalize his experience or attempt to
‘blend in’ with the rest of his society. From the perspective of Israeli society, Motti occupies an
even better (perhaps the best) niche: the courageous, intuitive, quick-thinking and fast-acting hero.
8.3.4 Connections and conclusions across the cases of Yossi, Dani, and Motti
Essentially, from the discursive findings of these three cases emerges a pair of acrossparticipant interpretive claims. The first is that Motti was able to (unintentionally) accomplish what
Dani seemed desperate to do: convince his society and perhaps himself (via his audience) of his
heroism. Second, and as a direct result of this, Motti was also able to do discursively what Yossi
was unable to do: claim and fully process as his own all the facets (even those that were difficult,
traumatic, and ‘weak’) of the TA experience and its aftereffects. Perhaps, it could be hypothesized,
if the TA that Dani experienced had involved a suicide bomber rather than a shooter who required
disarming (which Dani did not have the ‘fortune’ of doing), he might have been perceived by the
media as Motti was, and then Dani might not have had feelings of guilt about what he could or
should have done. And perhaps if Yossi had been able to identify the bomber in the TA he
experienced, he also might have been bestowed with the media’s (and society’s) praise. But these
hypothetical scenarios did not take place, and Yossi and Dani were not let into the ‘in-group.’
Instead, they were left alone to cope with the effects of their experiences and even, as seen in their
242
discourse, an apparent sense that they had not lived up to the expectations set out by their society.
Ultimately, the interpretive results of this study suggest that these interviewees expended
significant discursive effort apparently attempting to convince their society that they had reacted, at
the very least, in a ‘normal’ way; and at the most, in a powerful and heroic way. In service of this,
they seemed to discursively distance and/or project onto the decoder and/or audience any possible
sign of weakness (such as admitting fear or traumatic effects). Their use of the ‘I’ pronoun was
visible almost exclusively when they were describing an active or heroic behavior on their part,
similarly reflecting their attempt to make this ‘case.’ However, the far fewer instances of ‘I’statements in Dani’s and Yossi’s discourse, relative to Motti’s, may reveal that they were not able
or willing to fully own what they seemed to view—and/or what they believed their society would
view—as non-heroic actions. Thus, I claim, the discourse of these interviewees is both influenced
by and reflects their perceptions of their surrounding sociocultural discourse: its expectations of its
members; its approval of strength, power, masculinity, ‘courage under fire,’ and heroism; and its
disapproval, and perhaps even disowning, of anything else or less.
8.4 ‘VALIDATION’: CONNECTIONS BETWEEN THE HYPOTHESES, THE FINDINGS,
AND THE INTERVIEWEES’ OWN WORDS
This chapter has presented the findings with regard to the interviewees’ various patterns of
pronoun use, in both quantitative and qualitative form.
A number of hypotheses have been
proffered about the main messages of the discourse of each of the interviewees, and possible
explanations for the motivations behind these patterns and messages have also been asserted.
Although this is based on deep analyses and rigorous attention to the texts under investigation in
this study, much of these contentions are essentially interpretive, likely influenced at least to some
degree by my own analytical eye and worldview. This section attempts to make connections
between these interpretations and the interviewees’ own words on the relevant subjects. This more
direct view on the manifest discourse of Yossi, Dani, and Motti provides a complement and
triangulation for the prior analyses that have focused primarily on the latent form of their talk. This
final spiraling analysis, therefore, may provide a degree of ‘validation,’ in the interviewees’ own
words, for the hypotheses put forth thus far.
8.4.1 Individual coping
One of the topics prominent throughout all of the interviews conducted herein surrounded
coping and resilience after the TA experience, as well as coping with terror and trauma in general
in Israel. The subject surfaced often, sometimes as a result of a direct question posed by me, but
more often spontaneously within various stories, discussions, explanations, and argumentations
brought up by the interviewees themselves. Below is presented a single quotation each from Yossi,
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Dani, and Motti, on the topic of coping. Each came at a different point and in response to a
different question in the respective interview, but all can be considered representative of the general
sentiment on the subject expressed by each interviewee throughout his BLI. In many ways, these
three statements on coping, from each participant’s own manifest perspective, can be viewed as a
microcosm of many of the findings and hypothesized explanations discussed above.
With regard to his own coping, Yossi stated:
1
2
3
4
5
6
“/((slower and in a sad, despondent tone)) After what happened, my coping, it is very simple uhh, (2) I
am not making peace with what happened to me. (1) Becauuse it really bothers me, it really, I am
keeping a lot inside. Very, uhhhh, when something happens, a terror attack happens, it happens, aand I
have no help. I have no hellpp from that perspective of thhee governmental institutions, that [they
should] try to locate, to see what, what hurts, what is going on with me {and that}. That [they
should] give me help, none./”viii
Here, Yossi makes it clear that he has not reconciled with the TA he experienced and its
aftereffects. He expresses some emotional difficulties (“it really bothers me,” and, “I am keeping a
lot inside,” in L.2-3) and seems most upset by his perception that he has “no help” (L.4, twice).
Even when purportedly discussing his personal coping, he quickly descends into an argumentation
about what the Israeli governmental institutions should be doing to help him. This was a familiar
and oft-repeated topic throughout his BLI, indicating much import to him and consequent distress.
This fits, in many ways, with the connections made between Yossi’s pronoun use patterns
and his personal experiences, as discussed above. It was contended that Yossi still appears highly
preoccupied with the emotional and psychological effects of the TA, and thus may have been most
motivated to bring me in to them, with or in place of him—through significant employment of the
FS ‘you.’ This may be connected, in part, to Yossi’s struggles with the NII and persistent attempts
to garner attention, sympathy, and both physical and financial support in the wake of the TA. In
this sense, although it is not possible to determine whether Yossi’s heightened use of the FS ‘you’
is a cause or effect of his inability or lack of willingness to “make peace” with what happened to
him, I suggest that, at the very least, there may be a relationship between these two phenomena.
Yossi’s admission that he is still upset and internalizing his distress also fits the hypotheses put
forth; particularly, that his pronominal patterns indicate a greater degree of psychological distress.
Yossi’s choice to emphasize his lack of “help” when talking about his coping also seems
significant, and may indicate why he narrates his TA experience in a manner that appears to
constitute an attempt to recruit the help of his audience. In this sense, Yossi’s copious use of the FS
‘you’ could be interpreted as his request for my discursive cooperation, collaboration, and physical
and emotional support. In the absence of any ‘real’ help from those who he feels should be helping
him, perhaps he is seeking any help he can get, from anyone who is willing to listen and offer it.
Dani, on the other hand, expresses his thoughts about coping thusly:
1
2
“/((seemingly thinking aloud to himself)) Coped?/ (1) If you (MS) take everything like that in, (1)
calmly like, you (MS) are calm and youuu (MS), don’t get too much into a panic stress and all, in my
244
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
opinion that’s the best coping simply, to do your (MS) job {and not to think too much}. In my
opinion most of the drivers are like this and there are some who are a bit more stressed out {so uhh},
[it’s] natural that they (MP), let’s (FS) say those, [are] more cow- cowards let’s (FS) say like that so
they (MP), if there will be some kind of something so they (MP) let’s say let’s (FS) say wooon’t, (1)
won’t function. {You (FS) understand}? There are those who most of them most of the drivers are,
how do you say? [They (MP)] take everything iiin proportion, like if it’s there already then {there’s
nothing that can be done}. … [They (MP) are] ready for everything. {Understood (FS)}?”ix
Here, Dani focuses less on himself and his own coping processes and more on his suggested
prescription for ‘best coping’ for his fellow Israelis. Even when I asked him more directly about
his own coping, this was the type of response Dani repeatedly offered. Here, he frequently
emphasizes that it is best to stay calm, “do your (MS) job,” and not think too much (L.2-3). Dani
also points to “most of” the other drivers, who “take everything in proportion” (L.8), and are “ready
for everything” (L.9).
In Dani’s opinion, this is the way to keep functioning, to keep from
becoming “stressed out” (L.4), and to keep from becoming a coward.
This supports, in many ways, the connections made between Dani’s pronoun use patterns
and his personal experiences, as discussed above. It was contended that Dani may be most
preoccupied with his behavior and responses surrounding the TAs and TrA he experienced, and
with questions of whether it was ‘acceptable’ to behave in that manner (e.g., to “escape” from the
scene of the shooting and take his passengers to safety and medical care, without subduing the
shooter; to be afraid during the attack; to almost kill the pedestrian who crossed in front of his bus,
even though it wasn’t Dani’s fault). As Dani comes across as highly concerned with whether his
actions measured up to those of his fellow ‘correct’ Israelis, it fits that his discussion of coping
primarily involves his presentation of a specific list of what he perceives as ‘correct’ behaviors.
The implication appears to be that Dani engaged in all of them in his attempt to cope with the
aftermath of his difficult experiences. His coping prescription, most often collocated with the MS
‘you,’ can be interpreted as another attempt to align himself with the universal, generic, collective
Israeli male ‘you,’ who acts ‘correctly’ and ‘acceptably.’
Although coping is generally viewed as an emotional process, there is no discussion of
emotion in Dani’s quotation here. This, too, may validate the finding presented above—that Dani’s
low use of the FS ‘you’ can be explained through his repeated denials of any emotional effects of
what he experienced. Overall, Dani’s description of, or prescription for, coping seems to align
considerably with his definition of the ‘Israeli man’: alert, ready for everything, dealing well with
whatever comes up, and strong and courageous no matter what. This is, perhaps, why Dani may be
fundamentally unwilling to discuss any emotional difficulties he may have had after any of these
stressful events. Because his singular ‘agenda’ seems to be to send the message that he fits this
description, Dani may perceive himself as being unable, or not allowed, to admit to even the
existence of any weakness at all (projected onto me or not). In this sense, even discussing his own
processes of coping may be seen by him as threatening, and therefore, much of his discourse
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remains in the realm of the MS ‘you,’ prescribing the appropriate way to cope and behave.
Finally, and as previously partially presented in Chapter 7, Motti makes the following
statements about coping:
1
2
3
4
5
“People, their coping, and again I am telling you (FS), there are those whoo their coping is obvious,
and there are those whose coping, and I feel this about myself, that it isn’t obvious at all for me.
People see me on the street won’t think that I went through some terror attack, some kind of thing,
but on the inside I, I am very weak, I am very weak, I feel about myself that I am very weak. I, it
happens to me that I am walking to the side and crying.”x
1
2
3
4
5
6
“The best in my opinion is to get help from- from psychologists, and if you (MS) feel that they are
unnecessary so don’t go (MS) to them. Don’t go (MS) liiike to say that I was there. If you (MS)
think that they are helping you (MS), so do go (MS). If not, don’t go (MS). If you (MS) think that
you (MS) are strong enough to cope alone, don’t take (MS), not pills, not psychologists, not
psychiatrists, not anything. Cope (MS) with it alone. In my opinion that’s the best. If you (MS) feel
that you (MS) cannot cope alone, so go (MS) to professionals.”xi
These two quotations are very different in nature, but represent well the range of Motti’s views on
this topic, which came up in many contexts and variations across his BLI. These excerpts, taken
together, are both complementary and contradictory in some ways—a characteristic that seemed to
reflect a central message of Motti’s discourse: that his life, experiences, and perceptions are not of a
black-and-white nature; but rather, they are filled with nuance, uncertainty, and shades of grey.
In the first excerpt here, Motti states emphatically and repeatedly that he feels and sees
himself as “very weak” (L.4, three times), and even discloses that he weeps at times. These
admissions, containing such an open expression of emotion, stand in distinct opposition to anything
Yossi and Dani said on the topic at any point in their interviews. In many ways, this fits with the
hypotheses put forth above—that Motti may be able to freely discuss a wider range of emotions and
difficult experiences, and to do so from the ‘I’-voice, as he has already been identified and
distinguished as “the hero driver.” In his perception, perhaps, a hero can be weak and even cry—as
long as everyone has already agreed that he is a hero. Yossi and Dani are afforded no such
reprieve, as they are still struggling for recognition for their experiences and actions (Yossi, from
his government; and Dani, from the surrounding in-group of ‘acceptable’ Israeli men).
In the second quotation here, Motti, similar to Dani, presents his prescription for ‘best
coping.’ Indeed, some of his comments are nearly identical in form to those of Dani, although the
content diverges (Dani: “…in my opinion that’s the best coping simply, to do your (MS) job and
not to think too much”; Motti: “The best in my opinion is to get help from psychologists,” and,
“Cope (MS) with it alone. In my opinion that’s the best.”). Both Motti and Dani employ the MS
‘you’ as the central subject in these prescriptions, and both seem to be grappling with whether they
themselves followed this model ‘correctly.’ From previous statements, it was evident that Motti
sees himself as having coped alone, for the most part, and feels alone and isolated in his coping.
However, he also made a number of references to treatment (both talk and psychopharmaceutical
therapy) he sought out and received after the TA, as well as membership in a support group. It
246
appears, therefore, that Motti may see himself as fitting into both of the categories of ‘best coping’
that he suggested, which may explain why he offered such an apparently contradictory prescription.
This all fits, in many ways, with the connections made between Motti’s pronoun use
patterns and his personal experiences, as discussed above. It was contended that Motti was able to
claim a much wider range of experiences for himself, through the use of the ‘I’ pronoun, because of
his ‘hero status.’ And indeed, his open statements professing his perception of himself as weak
seem to support this hypothesis. While he employed a similar discursive form technique to that of
Dani when describing coping—notably, offering a prescription for the generalized Israeli male
‘you’—the content of Motti’s prescription was quite different. Rather than describing a single,
stereotyped, rigid picture of ‘correct’ coping behavior (i.e., be calm, don’t think too much, and do
your job), Motti offered a wider range of possibilities (i.e., if you can cope alone, great, and if you
can’t, get help). Here, again, Motti’s discourse seems to take into account the various ‘greys,’ and
is not preoccupied with a strict and judgmental dialectic between ‘acceptable’ and ‘unacceptable.’ I
contend that Motti’s ability and willingness to discuss the varied—and sometimes even ambiguous
—dimensions of coping, resilience, heroism, and ‘acceptability’ in the eyes of his society stems
from his perception that he has already been placed into the ‘acceptable’ sociocultural category.
8.4.2 Societal pressure, collective coping, and perceived weakness
Another topic that appeared in all of the interviews centered on collective and societal
coping, alongside Israeli sociocultural discourse on coping and weakness (as viewed through the
participants’ eyes). This was another subject that showed a tendency to emerge spontaneously just
as often as it was involved in a direct question asked by me. The interviewees sometimes discussed
the pressure they felt by their society to be strong and macho and active, while also expressing their
beliefs about their society and its coping, from a more collective perspective. These topics are
essentially two sides to the same issue, as a society’s ability to cope and specific manners of doing
so can likely become its prescription for its members, whether stated outright or not. For this
reason, Yossi’s, Dani’s, and Motti’s discussions of their perceptions of characteristics such as
strength and weakness was found to be highly illuminating, facilitating a greater understanding of
both their self-perceptions and their views of their surrounding society. Below are presented
quotations from Yossi, Dani, and Motti, on these topics. Once again, there are similarities and
differences among the statements, but I contend that each presents further support for the various
hypotheses suggested above.
Yossi’s most prominent statement on the topic of societal pressure was: “There is, there is
in Israeli society really the, that situation of pressure to be uhh, more, more courageous, more
volunteering, more…”xii This admission of the demands he apparently felt surrounding his own
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behavior before, during, and/or after the TA provides support for the relevant hypotheses put forth.
In this sense, whatever actions in which Yossi engaged that did not fit this definition (e.g., not
identifying the suicide bomber and not being able to prevent the TA), or opposed it entirely (e.g.,
being upset or traumatized by the experience) may serve to remind Yossi of his perceived inability
to hold up to the expectations of his society. This, coupled with the isolation he feels from his
society (in particular, the governmental institutions), is reflected in Yossi’s discourse as less ‘I’statements and more FS ‘you’ subjects, in an attempt to bring me in to his difficult experiences.
Dani’s most prominent statement on the subject was: “In this country [they (MP)] love
strong strong men not men who start to you (FS) know to, to cry about uhh, their bitter fate. … (2)
{So you (MS) say, ‘I will keep it to myself’}.”xiii When I then asked him what his country does to
weak men, he responded: “It steps all over them. … (4) {Steps all over them}.”xiv This constitutes
another declaration as to Dani’s manifest perception of his surrounding society and its expectations
of its members. In Dani’s eyes, a normative and ‘acceptable’ Israeli man must be strong and not
cry, and keep anything upsetting to himself. If he does not manage to hold up to this, in Dani’s
view of his society’s discourse, he is considered weak and will be trampled underfoot.
The apparent rigidity and unforgiving nature of these expectations fits with all of Dani’s
other sentiments on this topic, both manifest and latent, and provides further support and a possible
explanation for his self-criticism and constant talk about what he should/could/would have done
and wanted to do better during both the TAs and TrA. Dani’s view of his society’s strict dialectic
between strong and weak, and perceived refusal to sanction anything ‘unacceptable,’ seems to
validate the finding of his discursive preoccupation with the MS ‘you.’ Indeed, as the hypothesis
suggests, this pronominal pattern may be connected with Dani’s desire and attempts to fit into his
society and its ‘acceptable’ in-group, and this is accomplished through universalizing and
normalizing his perceived ‘less acceptable’ behaviors and feelings. The more he may be able to
convince his audience that his more ‘questionable’ actions (such as being afraid and not returning
to the scene to subdue the shooter) still might fit into the definition of ‘acceptable’ (as even the MS
‘you’ would do/feel the same), the more of a chance Dani sees of being a member of this in-group.
Motti, once again, provides a distinct contrast to both Yossi and Dani. He did not make any
such clear-cut statements on the topic of societal pressure, which is a notable finding in itself.
Motti did, however, express his opinions on the related subjects of societal coping and his own
coping, which appear connected both to each other and to the above statements made by Yossi and
Dani. When I asked how he thinks Israeli society has coped with the security situation over the
years, Motti said:
1
2
3
“It has no choice, it has already become exhausted from the situation. … I think so, people already,
before when there would be a terror attack, 20, 25 years agoooo, there would be a terror attack,
wowww the whole country would jump to its feet. Today there is a terror attack, after a few hours
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4
[they (MP)] clean up what was there, and that’s it, [you/they/we (MP)] forget.”xv
When I then asked him whether he sees this as a sign of good or bad coping, he responded:
5
6
7
8
“It’s a sign of weakness. … That people have become weaker. People don’t care anymore. People
uhh, have become more concerned only with their own interests. Like other people don’t interest
them anymore. People don’t, dooon’t, don’t look right or left anymore, they look after themselves
and that’s it. They dooon’t, don’t pay attention to other things. It seems that way to me.”xvi
Here, Motti presents a description of weakness that diverges significantly from that of Dani, but
which also differs from his own definition of himself as weak, as presented below:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
“I thought that I am strong and such. But it became clear to me that I on the inside am weak. Before
thee thing [terror attack], I wouldn’t make a big deal. I was fine, working, and, I had financial
security, and I had, everything was regular, and everything was fine. After the terror attack I found
out that I became a weak person. Cry over nonsense. Uhh, (1) a lot, (2) uhh, (1) trembling. Uhh,
identify with people. That is to say someone (FS) for example, who her mother passed away at me in
the vehicle, that I would see her, now [she] cried on me once, I cried together with her. Like. Not
strong. Wouldn’t, I wouldn’t define myself as a strong person, who, who, who can cope with serious
things like that. I would more call myself a survivor of things like that, but not strong.”xvii
In this final excerpt, Motti essentially provides his own definition of strength, or at least of being
‘normal,’ which involves not making “a big deal” (L.2), being employed and having financial
stability (L.2-3), and living a life in which everything is “regular” and “fine” (L.3). Motti’s
description of his own weakness here is very similar to Dani’s; i.e., crying and externalizing upset.
However, significant here is Motti’s inclusion of “identify[ing] with people” (L.5) in his definition
of his weakness—as in the previous quotation, he suggested that his society has become weaker
because they are “concerned only with their own interests,” and “look [only] after themselves”
(L.6-7, above). Thus, in Motti’s apparent view, being self-centered and uncaring is a weakness in
others, but connecting with others and showing emotion with them is a weakness in himself.
This provides further evidence of Motti’s possible ambivalence and uncertainty with regard
to ‘the right answer.’ And rather than constituting a potential weakness or fault, I contend that this
tolerance of ambiguity is perhaps Motti’s greatest strength, one which allows him to view the range
of options and not see these issues in such stark and judgmental terms. This ability to see the
‘greys’ may be what helps him to accept his own range of behaviors. Indeed, while he emphasizes
here that he “wouldn’t define [him]self as a strong person” (L.7), and repeatedly states that he sees
himself as weak, he ultimately ‘corrects’ himself and states: “I would more call myself a
survivor…” (L.8). In this sense, it may fit that Motti did not manifestly mention any societal
pressure, and does not provide a specific, monolithic prescription for coping or strength or heroism.
As he sits comfortably with his ‘hero’ label, he comes across as open to exploring the varied hues
of all of these issues, and more ‘ease-fully’ working through his uncertainties and ambiguities
regarding his perceptions and feelings about his behavior.
8.4.3 The myth and reality of ‘The Israeli Warrior’
The final direct content comparison discussed here involves a specific question that I asked
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all of the interviewees8: “Can you define for me (a female, non-native Israeli), what is an Israeli
man?” Across all the interviews I conducted for this study, this question was, by far, one of the
most illuminating. In just briefly analyzing the varied responses, it quickly became apparent that
the interviewees were essentially describing themselves, while being seemingly unconscious of
doing so. The following table presents the responses of each of these three participants, and this
section analyzes these statements—again, in context with each other and in relation to the main
hypotheses of this study. Dani’s full response to this question was already discussed above, so only
the main portion of his response is juxtaposed here with the responses of Yossi and Dani.
Table 8-9: Comparison of Yossi’s, Dani’s, and Motti’s definitions of “an Israeli man”
YOSSI
“/((quiet tone)) ((exhaling)) What is an Israeli man? (6) Because we talked, and we said, that we
are how did you (FS) say? (1) A melting pot. … (1) And the Israeli man aspires, or draws, (2) his
consciousness, his ego, the, his learning, a bit from here a bit from there a bit {from there a bit},
understand (FS)? He lives within that atmosphere. It’s not a mentality let’s say’uhh, let’s (MS)
see that is extreme or something like that, for instance Chinese that they are robots and they
behave because they were told this is how to behave … Or Americans… (1) Here there is no
such thing. Here they learned to be a bit more aggressive, (1), yes? Uhhm, (1) and, he is more,
(1) let’s (MS) say, before the, before the wedding or before something like that, he is more
authoritative, more liiike ‘I am the rooster.’ … ‘I am like, I am my own, I amm thhee man,’ in
parentheses what is a man, I’don’t know, to the, it is like I, I have a higher authority over
every{one}. And/ … This is before the wedding that he … Before the wedding that he is more
authoritative, more’uh aggressive, more’uh uhh everything gets him hot under the collar, more
they (MP) are more irritable more’uh, the Israeli man, annnd, his behavior is more’uh freer. …
He can’uh, uh travel abroad on a whim…”xviii
Y1
Y2
Y3
Y4
Y5
Y6
Y7
Y8
Y9
Y10
Y11
Y12
Y13
Y14
DANI
“An Israeli man, it’s a person who deals. A person who, experiences things annd needs to give,
needs to deal with them, things that are not nice things, (2) difficult things let’s (FS) say the
army and it’uhh peop- people don’t know. (1) A man who, needs to deal with dangers and needs
to find solutions for them let’s (FS) say like that. Âlways have to be on alert.^”xix
D1
D2
D3
D4
MOTTI
“How would I define the Israeli man? (5) Like I know? Don’t know. Everyone with his own
characteristics, everyone with his own personality, everyone with th-, with th-, his own wishes,
don’t know. Haven’t, I haven’t thought about it, like. Not trying to think about it like that.
Really doesn’t, it doesn’t interest me. Like, what does the society think about something. It
doesn’t interest me, like. Again, I see everything in the big [picture]. That people with luck,
people without luck. … Uhh, what else? … I don’t get too deep into little [things], like what does
society think about this, what [it] thinks about that. It doeessn’t, it doesn’t interest me.”xx
M1
M2
M3
M4
M5
M6
M7
I assert that, once again, the responses of each of these three interviewees to this single question
diverge in ways that mirror the differences reflected in their discourse, and lend support to the
hypotheses set forth in this research.
In his definition, Yossi refers to the characteristics of aggression, authoritativeness,
irritability, and freedom to make one’s own decisions. Significantly, he sets a partition between the
Israeli man “before the wedding” (L.Y8 and L.Y11) vs. afterwards, suggesting that beforehand he
is more of all of these things. This division into before vs. after seems to parallel the distinction
Yossi made often in his BLI, between ‘before the terror attack’ and ‘after the terror attack.’ He
8
All of the participants except for Yossi were presented with this question in both their BLIs and FUIs. Yossi was
asked in his FUI only, as the idea for the question emerged only after conducting and initially analyzing his BLI.
250
frequently referred to who and how he was ‘before,’ and stated that he was completely the opposite
afterwards. In many ways, therefore, Yossi’s statements describing his idea of the “Israeli man”
may send the message that he perceives himself as having fit the definition only before his TA
occurred. Since then, he seems to see himself as having become a mere shell of what he was
before. And this ‘shell’ does not appear to hold up, in Yossi’s perception, to the hegemonic
sociocultural expectations of what an Israeli man is or should be.
If this is, indeed, his belief about himself, Yossi appears to have essentially already placed
himself—or believes he has been placed—into the ‘unacceptable out-group,’ which may explain his
feelings of loneliness and isolation, and that no one is “helping” him. His heightened use of the FS
‘you’ may be interpreted as an attempt to bring me in to that group with him, or perhaps as a
reflection of his belief that I, as a (non-native Israeli) woman, already exist there. His descriptions
of and statements about weakness, emotion, and the difficult sensory facets of the TA are presented
in this discursive realm—perhaps, as an expression of their ‘unacceptability.’ Thus, I contend,
Yossi’s definition of the “Israeli man” essentially transmits the message that he perceived himself
as having ‘fit the bill’ before having experienced the significant and life-changing TA, but now sees
himself as a lesser version of himself, which makes him feel alone, abandoned, and in need of help.
In his definition, predictably, Dani provides a list of prescriptive behaviors—among them,
always being on alert; dealing with whatever comes, especially difficult things; and finding
solutions for difficult and/or dangerous situations. There is no reference to emotion or being
affected by any of these challenges, which reflects Dani’s own avoidance of these topics throughout
his BLI. This definition is all about action, and appears carefully confined to actions in which Dani
has successfully engaged. When juxtaposed with the significant volume of discussions dedicated in
his BLI to his actions in the army and during the TAs and TrA he experienced, the similarity and
correspondence is significant. Indeed, Dani’s definition of the “Israeli man” reflects, in some
places word for word, the image he has attempted to present of himself. All other facets of these
difficult experiences, or of being an Israeli man in itself, are disowned, downplayed, or normalized.
In this sense, Dani’s heightened use of the MS ‘you’ may be seen as representing an attempt
to emphasize the ‘acceptable’ parts of his ‘Israeli man-ness’ and deemphasize or universalize the
less ‘acceptable’ or ambivalent facets.
Thus, I assert, Dani’s definition of the “Israeli man”
essentially sends the message that he perceives himself as ‘acceptable’ only when he has acted
‘acceptably,’ and is far more ambivalent about all other facets of his experiences. When he was
afraid, or did not behave heroically ‘enough’ (in his eyes), or could have prevented a tragedy but
was unsuccessful, Dani appears more uncertain and ambivalent about whether he belongs in the
‘acceptable’ in-group. It is at these points in his discourse that Dani brings in the MS ‘you,’ in an
attempt to universalize and normalize these ‘less acceptable’ actions or lack thereof, so as to bring
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himself more in line with the definition, or bring the definition more in line with his behaviors.
Motti, in characteristic form, once again presents the third, non-black-and-white and more
inclusive, perspective. He professes to have no idea how to define the “Israeli man,” and moreover,
to have no desire or interest in doing so. In particular, his comment that “everyone [has] his own
characteristics, everyone [has] his own personality” (L.M1-M2) shows the significant difference
between Motti’s view on this question and the responses of the other two participants. There is no
prescription—for either characteristics or behavior—and there are no universal, rigid, or
stereotypical beliefs about a single, monolithic type. This may provide a possible explanation for,
or reflection of, Motti’s ability to discuss (in ‘I’-statements) a wider range of his behaviors and
emotions, and of the various aftereffects of the TA he experienced. Indeed, it seems Motti is able
to contain and express a greater degree of complexity, ambivalence, and pluralistic experience in
many more facets of his life, perceptions, and attributions.
This is apparent throughout his
discourse, in both form and content, and on both the macro- and micro-levels.
Motti makes an even bolder statement when he expresses that “it doesn’t interest” him to
attempt to ascertain “what…the society think[s] about something” (L.M4-M5 and L.M6-M7). His
complete rejection of this issue and apparent refusal to grant it importance in his belief system
stands out as unusual among the discourse of the entire group of interviewees in this study. It is not
possible to determine whether this viewpoint may have emerged as a result of Motti’s having been
deemed ‘acceptable’ by his surrounding society (and therefore, no longer in need of the knowledge
of what is thought about him), or whether he may have felt this way before the TA he experienced.
However, Motti’s repeated references to his having been labeled “the hero driver”—along with his
repeated protestations that he did not deserve that label—do seem to indicate that he is aware of,
and does have at least minimal interest in, his society’s perception of him.
In this sense, Motti’s predominant and heightened use of the ‘I’ pronoun throughout his BLI
discourse may be interpreted as representing both his acceptance of his society’s appraisal of him
and his behavior, and the effect that this acceptance has had on his own belief systems. Because
Motti appears to be so aware and convinced of his membership in the ‘acceptable’ and heroic ingroup, he is able to admit to, and claim ownership of, a much wider range of experiences. Motti is
essentially released from the rigid prescriptions presented by Dani, as Motti is perceived as having
already fulfilled them. And Motti is less concerned about any isolation that may result from
admitting to emotional difficulties, as Yossi has experienced, because Motti is already in the
‘correct’ societal group. Thus, here, again, Motti shows the potential impact of societal discourse
on individual discourse.
The comparative analyses presented in this chapter have ultimately
provided further evidence for and understanding of the interaction between sociocultural discourse,
individual discourse, and personal processes of meaning-making and narrative processing.
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PART 3
Longitudinal Comparative Analyses
Herein are presented three separate longitudinal comparative psychosociolinguistic
case studies. Chapter 9 returns to the case of Yossi, this time analyzing his material
from a longitudinal perspective, while Chapter 10 presents two similar cases, Eli and
Shimi, together. Here, Yossi is presented as a demonstration of ‘improvement’ in, or a
trajectory toward more ‘ease-ful’, narrative processing, while Eli and Shimi provide an
illustration of unchanged, or static, narrative processing.
Both of these chapters begin with a holistic introduction and short summary of the
given participant’s demographic background and of the terror attack he experienced,
as well as a brief discussion of my impressions and the interview and interactional
contexts. Chapter 9 builds on Chapter 5, providing a quantitative analysis of the
distribution of pronouns, tenses, and topics in the central analyzed narratives of
Yossi’s follow-up interview. This is followed by a qualitative ‘poetic’ analysis of the
most central narrative, and then a deep comparative analysis of Yossi’s uses of
mechanisms of narrative selection throughout both of his interviews. Chapter 10
provides a condensed version of this analysis in the cases of Eli and Shimi, presenting
a comparative discussion of their life narratives and central terror-related narratives.
Both quantitative and qualitative comparative analyses are shown for the baseline and
follow-up data of both participants, in addition to brief analyses of their predominant
uses of mechanisms of narrative selection across both interviews. Conclusions are
presented for each participant with regard to the discourse, meanings, and main
messages presented in their interviews.
CHAPTER 9
YOSSI:
FROM
“YOU (FS) SWALLOW ALL OF THE ATROCITY”
TO
“I EXPERIENCED ALL OF THAT TERROR ATTACK”
—
AN EXEMPLAR OF ‘IMPROVED’ NARRATIVE PROCESSING
9.1 RE-INTRODUCTION TO YOSSI: BACKGROUND AND IMPRESSIONS
This chapter returns to Yossi, here from a longitudinal comparative perspective, analyzing
both his baseline interview (BLI) and follow-up interview (FUI) together.
This section thus
provides a brief reminder of the central biographical information from his life history. At the time
of the FUI, Yossi was 59 years old and married with three children. As mentioned in Chapter 5, he
was born in Iraq and immigrated to Israel with his family at the age of eighteen months. He
completed twelve years of schooling and served in the Armored Corps during his compulsory army
service. Yossi fought in the Six Day War (1967) and the War of Attrition (1968-70) during his
mandatory service, and as a reserve soldier he fought and was wounded in the Yom Kippur War
(1973) and the First Lebanon War (1982).
Yossi worked as a bus driver in Jerusalem for
approximately 35 years without a single break, even continuing to work part-time after his
“retirement” at the age of 49.
Nineteen months prior to the BLI, at the age of 54, Yossi
experienced a suicide bombing on his bus. The terror attack (TA) was extensive, with many
casualties and injuries, and Yossi suffered a permanent partial loss of hearing as a result. He was
not working at the time of the BLI, and appeared to be suffering from significant post-traumatic and
some depressive symptoms. He was adamant at the time about his refusal to go near a bus.
The FUI with Yossi was conducted almost exactly three years following the BLI—in two
parts, just under two weeks apart, lasting nearly three hours in total. It was decidedly easier to
schedule both interviews with him this time, and he seemed pleased to see me again and willing to
help (although he mentioned a few times during the interview that he does not enjoy talking about
the TA and most often refuses requests to do so, out of his desire to put it behind him and “move
on”). The FUI was much easier for me, and seemed easier for him as well—as reflected in a
significant reduction in speeches about his struggles with the National Insurance Institute (NII), as
well as in the much less performative nature of the terror attack narrative (TAN). Indeed, as will be
seen below, both Yossi’s life narrative (LN) and TAN(s) were told in quite different manners in the
FUI, relative to the BLI. In the FUI, Yossi also attested to fewer symptoms of depression and
PTSD, and an improvement in functioning (most evident in his ability to ride buses again).
9.2 YOSSI’S FOLLOW-UP INTERVIEW: WHAT HE SAID AND HOW HE SAID IT
Yossi’s FUI was significantly different from his BLI, particularly with regard to his
pronoun and tense choices in his LN and TANs. Indeed, perhaps the most prominent difference is
that his FUI contained not just a single TAN as in the BLI, but three separate narratives that dealt
with the TA—one mini-TAN within the LN, the main TAN provided at my request, and an
additional spontaneous mini-TAN as a response to another of my questions. The characteristics
and contents of each of these narratives are discussed further below.
253
With regard to the four patterns of discursive choices shown in his BLI, Yossi’s FUI
discourse showed three central shifts. First, his use of first-person possessive pronouns (such as,
‘me,’ and, ‘my’) and phrasing decreased, reflecting an apparent move from personalization and
possession to a technique more readily described as distanced reporting on what seemed to have
become more of a shared experience, in his perception. Second, Yossi’s use of a number of thirdperson ‘others’ (such as, “a bus driver”) seemed to shift toward a greater use of inclusionary
phrases (such as, “like everyone else”), reflecting an apparent move from depersonalization and
distance toward repeated attempts to be included in—rather than excluded from—universalizing
discursive techniques.
Finally, Yossi’s extensive use of the second-person feminine-singular
pronoun (‘you’ (FS)) in his BLI decreased to nearly nonexistent in the central narratives of the FUI,
reflecting an apparent shift from a need to bring his audience in to the described experience, toward
an increasing willingness and ability to claim even the distressing facets of the event as his own.
This, in turn, led to a significant increase in Yossi’s use of the ‘I’ pronoun, as an apparent reflection
of this more pronounced claiming and owning of a wider array of facets and feelings.
9.3 QUANTITATIVE COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS: HOW MUCH AND WHEN YOSSI SAID IT
A quantitative comparative analysis of Yossi’s two interviews, with a focus on both form
and content, reveals a significant convergence of phenomena from all angles. This section provides
a broad quantitative picture of the central analyzed narratives (the LNs and TANs) of both
interviews. First, data is presented on the form and content of the LNs and of the spontaneous
TANs told within them. Then, the content of the LNs is further investigated, looking at the specific
topics that Yossi discussed within them and how much attention he paid to each one. Focus is
placed on how he commenced and concluded (or didn’t definitively conclude) each narrative;
which narratives or mini-narratives were introduced in particular ways; which were given ‘closure’
within the discourse; and which stood out prominently from other parts of the narratives. Finally, a
multidimensional quantitative analysis of Yossi’s uses of pronouns and tenses in all four of his
TANs is presented. The two most ‘complete’1 TANs of each interview are then focused upon, from
within a view on the hypotheses set forth in this study regarding ‘improvement,’ or a more ‘easeful’ trajectory, in narrative processing from the BLI to the FUI.
9.3.1 Life narratives and spontaneous terror attack narratives within them
Yossi’s LNs in both interviews were highly similar to each other, covering almost all of the
1
The term, complete, is used herein not to represent a judgment regarding what should or should not have been told;
rather, it describes a narrative that meets three simple criteria: 1) there was a definitive beginning, middle, and end;
2) it was substantially detailed and elaborated; and 3) there were no obvious ‘missing’ facets (as far as I could tell)
and thus, no need to request more details or information. This term relates, in particular, to the spontaneous TAN
told within Yossi’s BL LN, but not the TAN within his FU LN. It also characterizes the requested TAN in the FUI,
as it was the only one of the three TANs therein that met all of these criteria.
254
same topics in almost the exact same order. The main disparity between the two LNs involved the
amount of each that was spontaneously dedicated to the topic of the TA, as well as the structure and
content of each of these TANs. The table below presents a summary of the basic differences
between Yossi’s two LNs, with a particular focus on the spontaneous TANs within each.
Table 9-1: Comparative summary of LNs and spontaneous TANs in Yossi’s interviews
BASELINE
(100%) – 93 lines
(100%) – 78 lines
11%
84%
5%
No
Yes
Yes
Length of LN (relative to BLI)
Length of spontaneous TAN within LN (relative to BLI)
Percentage of LN occupied by pre-terror attack period
Percentage of LN occupied by terror attack (TAN)
Percentage of LN occupied by post-terror attack period
‘Closure’ to LN
‘Standing-out’ of spontaneous TAN within LN
‘Completeness’ of spontaneous TAN within LN
FOLLOW-UP
115% – 107 lines
44% – 34 lines
25%
32%
43%
Yes
No
No
As evident here, in Yossi’s BLI, only 16% of his entire life story was dedicated to anything other
than the TA—but this percentage increased to 68% in the FUI. It could be argued that this increase
might be due to the addition of three years to his life (and presumably, life story), and this is likely
at least part of the explanation. However, it is particularly significant that, while Yossi increased
his telling about his post-TA life by over 800%, he also increased his talk about his pre-TA life by
over 220%. This disparity is even more apparent when viewed in graph form, as seen below.
Figure 9-1: Distribution of volume dedicated to life periods in Yossi’s LNs2,3
2
3
The bars on the graph represent the absolute numbers of lines in each category, and the percentages above each bar
are relative within each interview (that is, all of the percentages above the blue bars (representing the BLI) together
equal approximately 100%, as do all of those above the red bars (representing the FUI)).
association of LN life period volume between Yossi’s BLI and FUI. For volume dedicated to the pre-TA period in
the BL LN vs. FU LN, the Chi-square probability equals 0.022—thus statistically significant. For volume dedicated
to the TA period (TAN) in the BL LN vs. FU LN, the Chi-square probability is less than 0.0001—thus extremely
statistically significant. For volume dedicated to the post-TA period in the BL LN vs. FU LN, the Chi-square
probability is less than 0.0001—thus extremely statistically significant.
255
What varied most frequently in these two LNs—often significantly—was not the insertion
of new subjects or omission of old ones, but rather, the volume of attention paid to each topic, as
well as to various periods, experiences, and issues in his life. Indeed, it is apparent, particularly
from the graph above, how disproportionate was the amount of narrative ‘space’ dedicated to the
TA in Yossi’s BL LN, and how significantly that proportion had shifted in his FU LN. The table
below presents a summary of the subjects (generally paraphrased) covered by Yossi in each of his
LNs, in order, with the amount of lines (or words) devoted to each. Particularly significant
comparative findings are highlighted in orange.
Table 9-2: Summary of topics and their lengths (by number of lines) in Yossi’s LNs
TOPIC
Introduction: School, army service
During the army, service in wars
Release from army
Work after army, became bus driver
Got married
Service as reserve soldier in multiple wars, war injuries
Got married, children
Work at Egged and in army industry
Spontaneous opening to TAN
Description of life (general and specific) as driver before attack – all was good
Morning of terror attack, prayers
Bus route on day of terror attack
Argumentation4 – lack of drivers’ authority, couldn’t have identified terrorist
Argumentation – fate, who dies when, every person has a time and place written
for his death
Mini-narrative about young woman who gave up her seat to elderly man – she
died and he survived
Rest of ‘complete’ TAN – phenomenological experience of bombing
Since the terror attack – lasting effects of trauma
Since the terror attack – psychological treatment, battles with the NII
Anger at release of suicide bombers
Battles with the NII
Need treatment for hearing problems, headaches, pain
As of today, cannot get onto a bus
Support groups and courses, support from family
Difficulty coping, many stimuli that remind
Don’t want to do anything, don’t care about anything
Closer to religion after terror attack
All the “attacks” experienced – warnings from God
One of kids got married, loves grandchild
Stated end of LN
BASELINE
INTERVIEW
2.25
3.50
1.00
0
1 word
0
0.25
2.75
5.00
11.50
1.00
1.50
0
FOLLOW-UP
INTERVIEW
1.50
9.50
1 word
1.75
0.25
9.00
1.25
3.50
2.25
2.50
4.25
0.75
8.50
0
7.00
6.25
7.25
52.25
5.00
0
23.00
19.75
4.75
3.00
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
3.00
4.25
3.00
0
0
0
5.25
8.75
4.50
1.00
13.00
3.25
0.75
Both LNs began from the same place in Yossi’s life history, and in both, any information
about his birth (day or place), family of origin, and childhood was completely absent. Relative to
his BL LN, Yossi spent much more time in his FU LN describing the period of his life spent as a
4
According to Rosenthal (1993, 2005), the term, ‘argumentation,’ which is a category within her thematic field
analysis typology, is used to describe a section of text that includes reasoning, theorizing, or a declaration of ideas,
and generally shows the narrator’s view(s) of himself and/or the world surrounding him.
256
soldier in the IDF and the wars in which he fought, in both his compulsory service and reserve
duty. In the FU LN, Yossi almost completely omitted the lengthy description told in his BL LN of
his experiences as a driver before the TA he experienced, but inserted two entirely new
argumentations about his perception of a lack of bus drivers’ authority (particularly with regard to
identifying and preventing potential TAs). In both LNs, Yossi told the same mini-narrative—with
nearly identical lengths—about a young woman on his bus who gave up her seat to an elderly man.
However, perhaps the most significant disparity between the two LNs lies in what followed this
mini-narrative. In the BLI, it functioned as merely an introductory opening to the ‘complete’ TAN
that followed—a lengthy, descriptive, elaborative narrative of Yossi’s full experience of the
bombing. In contrast, in the FUI, this mini-narrative functioned essentially as the within-LN TAN
itself, and Yossi did not volunteer any additional information in his LN about the TA.
Significantly, both TANs were directly followed by a statement by Yossi about his
psychological status following and as a result of the TA; but from this point on, the LNs diverged.
In the BLI, Yossi immediately launched into a lengthy, politicized argumentation about Israel’s
release of suicide bombers, directly followed by another long speech about his battles and
frustrations with the NII and his need for treatment from them. The most problematic facet of
Yossi’s BL LN was that it had no definitive ending. There was no conclusive point at which he
switched to an unrelated topic, or paused, or asked for my next question, or (as is most common in
interviews that involve a request for a life story) said, “That’s it.” His discourse simply flowed in
and out of other subjects, which may or may not have been related in his mind to his life story.
Therefore, I was left having to make my own determination as to the end of Yossi’s BL LN,
which was admittedly fraught with dilemma. For the purposes of the initial analysis, I decided to
‘draw the line’ before the long speeches, as they seemed to have a different tone and feel to them.
However, as is apparent in the above table, these two topics appeared also in Yossi’s FU LN—to a
much lesser degree but definitively within the LN. Indeed, the key difference here is represented
by the clear and stated conclusion to the FU LN: Yossi neared the end by talking about his
granddaughter and then concluded by saying, “{and} that’s it you (MP) keep on going with the
flow, I don’t know what, (1) that is roughly the story more or less generally speaking.”i This is,
interpretively speaking, a significant addition, and I assert that it may be evidence of a greater sense
of cohesion and coherence in Yossi’s FU LN, as compared to his BL LN.
Furthermore, as already illustrated, in the FU LN there was a significant increase in
attention paid by Yossi to his life after the TA, related to from within a focus on coping, support
groups, greater religiosity, and his relationship with God. This contained the important inclusion of
Yossi’s discussion of his child’s marriage and his loving relationship with his granddaughter.
Notably, the topics of Yossi’s anger at the government (as viewed through his stated frustration
257
about the release of suicide bombers) and his battles with the NII received in the FU LN only 13%
and 10%, respectively, of the space that they occupied in the BL LN. All this combines to present a
picture of a fuller life story, and presumably, a fuller life, for Yossi. His perspective seemed to
have widened—to include not only more facets of his life unrelated to the TA, but also less of the
experience of the TA itself. The micro-level comparison of both the content and form of Yossi’s
two LNs seems to reflect his gradual process of working through and processing the TA, and
putting it into ‘its place’ within the totality of his life experiences and story.
An in-depth comparative analysis of the spontaneous within-LN TANs of Yossi’s two
interviews can illustrate this process most clearly. The first noticeable difference exists in how he
started them, as seen below in a juxtaposed comparison of the openings of these two TANs.
Table 9-3: Spontaneous openings of the within-LN TANs in Yossi’s interviews
BASELINE INTERVIEW
Y: …I continued working, and uhh, until the
incident that happened. (3) And in the incident
that happened, iit, do you (FS) want to hear now
the story of what happened, or do you (FS) want
to ask more questions? {I don’t know exactly
1
what}.
A: Umm, it’s up to you.
Y: Yeah?
A: Whatever is comfortable for you.
2
Y: That’s it. I also worked (1) without taking any
breaks. I would leave happy…ii
FOLLOW-UP INTERVIEW
Y: …And, I continued working as a bus driver. (3) It was
good. (2) And, as usual, the tensions with thhe our
neighbors with the our Arab neighbors, that every day,
we had a new war pop up and another war and another
war, (2) \((staccato)) and unfortunately,\ I as a bus
driver, (1) there were many terror attacks in
Jerusalem, (1) and like every bus driver, that we check
(MP) and look (MP) at people whoever gets on (MS) to
the bus, and say (MP) to ourselves, ‘It won’t happen to
me, it won’t happen to me’, (3), uhh. (2)
I had joie de vivre, I would always laugh/joke5, smile at
work, (1) at home, with friends, (2)… iii
Both of these excerpts begin the same way—with Yossi referring to his work as a bus driver. In the
BLI, however, he then spontaneously introduces the topic of the TA, causing an abrupt
‘interruption’ of the LN by then asking me pointedly if I want to hear “the story of what happened”
(BL cell (C.) 1). As the interviewer, I did my best to leave this decision to Yossi, at which point he
began his description of the ‘good life’ he had as a driver before the TA—which was essentially his
introduction to the main part of his (only and ‘complete’) TAN.
On the contrary, there is no such abrupt moment in the FU LN; and because of this, the
determination of the precise start of the spontaneous TAN therein also ultimately involved an
interpretive decision. As apparent in FU C.1, Yossi’s discourse flows rather seamlessly from the
topic of his work as a driver, to the political tensions in the region, to wars, and finally to an
introduction of the subject of TAs in general in his city and the collective experience of bus drivers
during this period. This generalized perspective and ‘we’-voice is particularly notable, as it stands
in contrast to the corresponding section of the BL TAN, in which Yossi refers directly and
immediately to “the incident that happened,” with no introductory reference to the larger social or
5
the best translation of Yossi’s message here.
258
political context of the time. Finally, the content of both of these TANs converges again, as Yossi
shifts to a discussion of his happiness/joie de vivre in his life before the TA—although, as evident
in Table 9.2, this section in the BLI is nearly five times longer than the parallel section in the FUI.
Thus, there are three central differences vis-à-vis content in the spontaneous TANs within
the LNs of Yossi’s two interviews: 1) the BL TAN was ‘complete,’ while the FU TAN was
essentially just a short mini-narrative of one facet of the TA experience; 2) the BL TAN ‘stood out’
from the LN and was introduced by Yossi as such, while the FU mini-TAN flowed seamlessly from
and back into related topics in the LN; and 3) the BL TAN comprised over four-fifths of the
volume of its LN, while the FU mini-TAN occupied only one-third of its LN.
9.3.2 Pronoun and tense use distribution within the terror attack narratives
This section presents a quantitative comparative analysis of the form of Yossi’s TANs,
particularly his uses of pronouns and tenses. For the purposes herein, it is necessary to note again
that while Yossi’s BLI contained only one TAN, there were three separate TANs in his FUI—all of
which had different structures and were told as (or within) responses to different interview
questions. Below is a brief description of each of the four TANs, along with their corresponding
codes, which are utilized throughout the comparative analyses shown further below.
Table 9-4: Codes and characteristics of all of Yossi’s TANs
CODE
BLL /
BL TAN
INTERVIEW
CHARACTERISTICS
INITIATION
PROMPT / CONTEXT
Baseline
‘Complete’ TAN
Spontaneous
Within the LN
FUL
Follow-up
A few mini-narratives
and argumentations
Spontaneous
Within the LN
FUR
Follow-up
‘Complete’ TAN
Requested
FUS
Follow-up
Mini-narratives as
elaboration on specific
points of experience
Spontaneous
Request to tell about the terror attack,
from the beginning
Question about relationship between
army experiences and terror attack, how
and why his reactions were different
The tables below present quantitatively the distributions and basic data totals of the (primary
analytical foci) pronouns and tenses across all four of Yossi’s TANs.
Tables 9-5: Pronoun and tense distribution in all of Yossi’s TANs
‘I’
‘Past’
‘Present’
‘Future’
‘YOU (MS)’
‘YOU (FS)’
‘WE’
BLL
FUL
FUR
FUS
BLL
FUL
FUR
FUS
BLL
FUL
FUR
FUS
BLL
FUL
FUR
FUS
56
18
1
13
12
0
51
8
1
12
16
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
40
0
0
2
0
0
0
0
0
26
11
4
1
0
1
5
0
7
0
0
0
0
0
Total lines of text
Total of relevant pronouns / tenses
Ratio of pronouns per line
BLL
78
120
1.54
FUL
34
33
0.97
FUR
43
67
1.56
259
FUS
50
66
1.32
In order to understand the significant discursive differences among Yossi’s TANs, these
numbers must be put into context by viewing their relative percentage tabulations. The following
comparative analysis focuses primarily on the spontaneous TAN within the LN of Yossi’s first
interview (the BLL), and the requested TAN in his second interview (the FUR), for two reasons: 1)
these constituted the only ‘complete’ TANs, and thus, they provide the most similar context and
overall content; and 2) although the FUR is slightly over half the length and contains slightly more
than half the amount of pronouns (and tenses) than the BLL, the ratio of pronouns per line is
essentially identical, thus facilitating the most comparable percentages. It could be argued that the
FUL and the FUS should also be included in all comparative analyses. However, as these two
TANs are essentially only mini-narratives about specific parts of Yossi’s TA experience,
comparing them on the same level and dimensions with the more ‘complete’ TANs would be
problematic, at best; and analytically meaningless, at worst. The FUL was discussed above, within
the comparison between the LNs and within-LN TANs of both of Yossi’s interviews (Section
9.3.1); and the FUS was included within the above quantitative analyses, and is discussed further
below as well. Furthermore, all four of Yossi’s TANs are utilized as material for a comparative
analysis of his uses of mechanisms of narrative selection (MNSs), presented further below.
Narrowing the analytical focus for the present time, however, the table directly below
presents a percentage comparison of Yossi’s uses of (the primary analytical foci) pronouns and
tenses within his two ‘complete’ TANs. The use percentages of each pronoun were computed as
relative to the total number of these pronouns used within the given TAN, and the use percentages
of each tense were computed as relative to the total number of tense-marked verbs within the given
TAN. All percentages are relative within the given interview, not between them.
Table 9-6: Pronoun and tense distribution percentages in Yossi’s ‘complete’ TANs
Uses of ‘I’
Uses of MS ‘you’
Uses of FS ‘you’
Uses of ‘we’
Uses of ‘past’ tense (RPa)
Uses of ‘present’ tense (PPr)
Uses of ‘future’ tense
BLL TAN
63%
0%
33%
4%
50%
49%
1%
FUR TAN
90%
0%
0%
10%
87%
12%
1%
Evident here is a significant disparity between Yossi’s uses of the ‘I’ and the FS ‘you’ pronouns in
each interview, and in his uses of the proximate-present (PPr) and remote-past (RPa) tenses.
Indeed, it almost appears as if the numbers were exchanged, with Yossi transferring (represented
with the arrows in the above table) all the FS ‘you’s in the BLL to ‘I’s in the FUR, and threefourths of his uses of the PPr tense in the BLL to the RPa tense in the FUR. The graph below
presents the patterns of collocations of each pronoun with each tense.
260
Figure 9-2: Pronoun-tense collocations in Yossi’s ‘complete’ TANs6,7
These data indeed indicate the pattern hypothesized in this research (specifically, in Section 4.4) as
reflective of a trajectory toward more ‘ease-ful’ narrative processing of the TA experience. Yossi’s
discourse within the ‘complete’ TAN of his FUI evidenced a significant increase in uses of ‘I’ in
the RPa tense (from 47% to 76%); a slight decrease in uses of ‘I’ in the PPr tense (from 15% to
12%); a meaningful increase in uses of ‘we’ in the RPa tense (from 3% to 10%); and, most
significantly, a decrease in uses of the FS ‘you’ from 33% to none.
With a view on the essential assertions of this study with regard to the extra-linguistic
meanings of the uses of the various pronouns and tenses, this graph presents a picture of an
individual who, at the time of his first interview, was claiming parts of the TA experience for
himself less than half of the time, and spending a third of his TAN attempting to bring his audience
in to those parts of the experience with him. By the second interview, this picture had shifted
significantly. Yossi was no longer discursively involving me in his ‘complete’ TAN at all, and was
now claiming over three-fourths of the experience as his own—in a processed and appropriately
distanced manner. There were still some facets of the experience that he narrated in a more
proximal and salient nature, but overall, he did so much less than he had in his BL TAN. All of this
6
7
Again, the bars on the graph represent the absolute numbers of pronouns/verbs in each category, and the percentages
above each bar are relative within each interview (that is, all of the percentages above the blue bars equal
approximately 100%, as do all of those above the red bars).
association of pronominal uses between Yossi’s BLI and FUI. For uses of the ‘past’-tense ‘I’ in the BLI vs. FUI,
the Chi-square probability equals 0.0309—thus statistically significant. For uses of the ‘present’-tense ‘I’ in the
BLI vs. FUI, the Chi-square probability equals 0.3871—thus not statistically significant. For uses of the ‘present’tense FS ‘you’ in the BLI vs. FUI, the Chi-square probability is less than 0.0001—thus extremely statistically
significant. For uses of the ‘past’-tense ‘we’ in the BLI vs. FUI, the Chi-square probability equals 0.0628—thus
not quite statistically significant.
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comparative quantitative data, according to the central psychosociolinguistic hypotheses of this
study, strongly indicate a more ‘ease-fully’-processed narrative of an event that has been put into
more proportional perspective within the life of an individual with improved daily functioning.
9.4 YOSSI’S FOLLOW-UP PRONOUN ‘POETRY’:
To further deepen the comparative investigation of Yossi’s communicative strategies and
narrative choices in both of his interviews, the analysis will now turn from a quantitative
exploration of the form of his central narratives to a qualitative view on the content within the form.
The forthcoming sections utilize two distinct qualitative analytical methods: the first focuses again
on Yossi’s pronoun and tense use within his two ‘complete’ TANs, while the second delves
comparatively into the discursive and narrative decisions made by Yossi throughout all of his
TANs as well as his LNs in both interviews. Both analyses are aimed at gaining a comprehensive
and triangulated understanding of Yossi’s motivations and manners of telling, and at investigating
the link between his outward discourse and inner psychological world.
The results of these
analyses will then be viewed through a lens focused on Yossi’s current ‘state of affairs,’ with
regard to his processing of the TA experience and his level of daily functioning.
As was evident in Chapter 5, the pronoun ‘poetry’ for Yossi’s BL TAN included four
poems: the RPa and PPr ‘I,’ the FS ‘you,’ and the ‘other.’ It was contended that the primary
objective of the ‘others’ poem was to present the story of the ‘everyman,’ both the generic driver
and passenger on a generic/universal bus, which existed in Yossi’s pre-TA world and context. This
poem provided the counter-balance to the acute narrative of the TA; the before to the other poems’
during and after. In contrast, the primary objective of Yossi’s BL RPa ‘I’ poem seemed to be to
present his actions, both before the bombing and after he ‘recovered’ and managed to become an
effective helping agent (that is, a ‘hero’), but not during the period of time in between (when he
was presumably too affected to act ‘appropriately’). Related to this, the main purpose of Yossi’s
BL PPr ‘I’ poem appeared to be to present a minimal explanation of what happened to him and why
he was unable to act ‘appropriately’ during the immediate bombing experience and aftermath—the
precise period of time ‘missing’ from his BL RPa ‘I’ poem. The concentration of this facet of the
experience into the PPr tense reflected a higher degree of emotional charge for him, and its status as
more ‘alive’ and ‘close to his heart’ than those facets described in the RPa ‘I’ poem. Finally, the
primary hypothesized objective of Yossi’s (wholly PPr) ‘you (FS)’ poem was to present all the
traumatic and upsetting content that was almost entirely ‘missing’ from all of the other poems.
The same analytical exercise was conducted with the ‘complete’ TAN from Yossi’s FUI,
with some significant disparities. First, as aforementioned, there were no uses of the ‘you (FS)’
pronoun in this narrative, so that column was removed. Similarly, there is no significant ‘others’
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poem either; but because Yossi’s use of the ‘we’ pronoun (in the RPa tense) increased from 3% in
the BL TAN to 10% in the FUR TAN, the ‘we’ poem is included here instead. The following table
is thus the ‘poetic’ result of the 43 lines of text of Yossi’s FU ‘complete’ TANiv.
Table 9-7: The pronoun ‘poetry’ of Yossi’s follow-up ‘complete’ TAN (FUR)8
‘I’ POEM (59)
1
7
I said in the beginning
I tend to lay tefillin in the
2
I told
morning
3
16
I was late to work
I don’t know exactly what [they
4
I was late
study]
5
18
I took th’bus
I know them usually
6
30
I drove quickly
I know [the girl who sat behind]
8
34
I drove quickly
I drive every morning on this bus
9
37
I managed to get there
I don’t remember it [the
10
I laid quickly tefillin
explosion]
11
I finished laying [tefillin]
--12
63
I went on [my] way
I still isolate myself [at home]
13
66
I took on passengers
I am in treatment [therapy]
14
I got to the direction of [hospital]
15
I took on passengers
17
I went out in the opposite direction
20
I continued toward
21
I collected all of the passengers
23
I did not identify [the terrorist]
24
I got to [street]
25
I told her not to move
27
I got up
28
29
31
I continued along the trip
32
I saw [the one who let him sit down]
36
38
I didn’t hear [the explosion]
39
I fainted
40
I flew outside
41
I woke up
42
I woke up
43
I heard cries
44
I [still] didn’t know what happened
45
I was with my face toward the front of the bus
46
I turned around toward [the inside of] the bus
47
I didn’t know that there had been an explosion
48
I looked into the bus
49
I saw things that [are] very very very very
very atrocious
50
I heard screams
51
All of me is covered with flesh and blood
52
I hugged her [woman who cried for help]
53
I didn’t know what to tell her
54
I said “Nothing happened”
55
I opened th’door
56
I got really God-given strength
57
I opened th’doors
59
I returned
8
‘WE’ POEM
(7)
19
We drove
22
We went down toward [area]
26
We got to [street]
33
We got to, on [street]
35
We got to [street]
--58
We took th’woman down [off
the bus]
61
We were afraid that it would
burn up
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60
I continued to search for wounded people
I experienced all of that terror attack
64
I laid there [in the hospital]
65
I didn’t give them the goods
62
The first prominent finding is that there are few significant holes in any of the poems, as there are
no major clusters to take any meaningful degree of focus away from the RPa ‘I’ poem. From a
cursory glance at the numbers, it is evident that the dominant poem here is clearly the RPa ‘I,’ and
both the PPr ‘I’ and the ‘we’ poems pale in comparison. While the RPa ‘I’ was also the dominant
voice in Yossi’s BL TAN, the presence of significant holes, wherein entire parts of the TA
experience were predominantly unmentioned, served to create a feeling that something was
‘missing’—and these facets were often ‘found’ in the poems of the other pronouns or tense. There
thus seemed to be a sense of disjointedness and lack of cohesiveness that is not at all present in
Yossi’s FUR TAN, as evident below through a separate examination of each of these poems.
While the ‘others’ poem in Yossi’s BL TAN dealt primarily with a generic idealized bus
context, in the FUR TAN there is no such reference to this context. The ‘we’ poem herein ‘sets the
scene’ in a similar manner, but is told in a personalized/collectivized way, wholly in the RPa tense,
and exclusively relating to the immediate pre-TA context rather than a generalized or universalized
set of circumstances. All but two entries in the ‘we’ poem, in fact, discuss the bus route directly
preceding the bombing, and refer to the entire population of passengers on the bus that day. The
final two entries, which exist in close succession toward the end of the overall TAN, seem to refer
to a more specific “we”—presumably, Yossi and the security officer who together evacuated a
wounded woman from the bus and who “were afraid,” also together. This ‘we’ poem, terse as it is,
seems to send two distinct messages that did not exist in Yossi’s BL TAN.
First, the increase in references to the collective nature of actions such as driving on the bus
and arriving at various streets—which were most often referred to in the BL TAN as individual
actions performed and experienced only by Yossi—seems to suggest that Yossi has become less
focused on his previous perspective on the TA as personally victimizing, and more accepting of the
fact that it was actually experienced collectively by all of the individuals involved, including but
not limited to himself. Indeed, the fact that there was no significant ‘we’ poem in the BL TAN
suggests that a discursive (and likely psychological) shift has taken place in this domain. Second,
Yossi’s choice to ally himself discursively with the security officer in the last two entries of the FU
‘we’ poem seems to imply a newfound dimension to his characterizations of his strength and
heroism at the time of the bombing. Yossi appears here as no longer only experiencing, feeling,
and acting alone; but rather, he now (if only briefly) discursively pairs himself with a symbol of
power and security, positioning himself as a member of a team. Although this increase in Yossi’s
use of the ‘we’ pronoun overall is seemingly small (from 4% to 10%), I contend that it represents a
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shift in narrative processing and psychological perspective that is not at all insignificant.
Within the PPr ‘I’ poem, nearly all of the entries involve more generalized and timeless
statements about Yossi’s life as a bus driver before the TA—as in, “I tend to lay tefillin in the
morning” (entry (E.) 7), and, “I know them usually” (E.18)—and are evenly interspersed
throughout. Significantly, here remembering the explosion or facets therein is placed by Yossi
within the domain of the PPr ‘I’ (E.37), as was the case in his BL TAN as well. Here, also, the
final two entries contain a significantly different nature and message from the rest of the poem, as
they deal with Yossi’s current ‘state of affairs’ vis-à-vis his post-TA psychological and daily life.
The use of the PPr ‘I’ seems discursively necessary, but it is nonetheless significant that Yossi
concludes this poem with a statement of where he is presently as far as the effects of his experience.
Besides (and, in fact, related to) the entire disappearance of the ‘you (FS)’ poem in Yossi’s
FUR TAN, the RPa ‘I’ poem therein shows the most significant transformation, relative to the
parallel poem in the BL TAN. Most apparent here, in addition to (and largely because of) the lack
of any significant holes or ‘missing’ content, is that essentially the entire narrative is told within
this poem—that is, it serves as a microcosm of the FUR TAN as a whole. Yossi begins with his
late arrival to work, but managing to get there and have time to pray, then setting off on his route
and taking on passengers. In E.28, E.29, and E.31, he repeats himself three times (“I continued to
drive,” twice, and, “I continued along the trip”), possibly signifying an impending narrative climax.
Almost immediately following this, there is indeed a lengthy and wholly unbroken series of
entries (38-57)—beginning with Yossi’s not having heard the explosion and fainting, and
continuing through his waking up (repeated twice in E.41-42), hearing cries, and turning around
and looking into the bus. Notably, this cluster also includes Yossi’s having seen “things that [are]
very very very very very atrocious” (E.49), as well as having “heard screams” (E.50) and being
“covered with flesh and blood” (E.51). Then, the poem shifts to Yossi’s (heroic) actions, including
getting “God-given strength” (E.56). What is most significant is that many of these statements—
essentially all the emotional and traumatic facets of the TA experience—existed in the PPr ‘you
(FS)’-voice in Yossi’s BL TAN, and here have been transferred into the RPa ‘I’-voice. Even the
most sensory and descriptive imagery of the BL TAN has been brought into the FU RPa ‘I’ poem,
causing these parts of the narrative to have thus become more condensed, organized, distanced, and
discursively owned.
Perhaps the most telling sentence of this poem exists in E.62, wherein Yossi states, “I
experienced all of that terror attack.” This appears to be essentially the title for Yossi’s FUR TAN,
in which the RPa ‘I’ is not only the dominant pronoun of use, but, in contrast to the BL TAN,
encompasses the entirety of Yossi’s TA experience. Indeed, here the RPa ‘I’ is employed not only
in reference to active and ‘heroic’ behavior, but also with some of the less pride-inspiring, more
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distressing, and less ‘acceptable’ aspects of the experience. This seems to represent a significant
shift in perception and processing. It is difficult to discern whether this change may exist in
Yossi’s own beliefs about the experience and his behavior therein, and/or whether it may involve
his attitudes about the larger societal discourse surrounding him. That is, might the decrease in
Yossi’s use of the FS ‘you’ in relation to what he apparently viewed as the weak, vulnerable, and
traumatic facets of the experience, signify that he no longer perceives these facets as weak and as
necessitating the recruitment of the female subject, or that he no longer feels that Israeli society
sees them (or him) that way? Regardless of the reasons for the discursive shifts demonstrated by
Yossi, these patterns are evident and constitute an outward manifestation of an inner psychological
change in Yossi’s processing of his TA experience. Below, further analysis will continue to delve
into the narrative markers of Yossi’s psychological attitudes towards his experiences.
9.5 COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF MECHANISMS OF NARRATIVE SELECTION:
HOW YOSSI CHOSE WHAT TO SAY AND HOW TO SAY IT
The following analysis was conducted in order to garner a more comprehensive picture of
the similarities and differences between Yossi’s two interviews. Again, here, most of the excerpts
come from his LNs and TANs, which are generally representative of the central differences across
the interviews at large—particularly given that the FUI contained three separate TANs, all of which
are excerpted here in various places. It may be necessary to reiterate that this analysis of the MNSs
at work within the central narratives was driven by the six Narrative Guidelines (delineated fully in
Section 4.4) hypothesized to determine a trajectory toward more ‘ease-ful’ narrative processing.
Essentially, the claim is that ‘improvement’ in Yossi’s processing of the TA experience and ability
and willingness to place it into perspective within the entirety of his life story (and life) would
reflect itself thusly:
1) More inclusion (less omission and silencing) of non-TA-related content
a) More discussion of life before and/or after the TA, or content beyond the TA, within the LN
b) More space and attention focused on life before and/or after the TA, or content beyond the TA,
within the LN
2) More omission (less inclusion) of TA-related content
a) Less discussion of the TA within the LN
b) Less space and attention focused on the TA within the LN
3) Less silencing of the ‘I’-voice regarding particularly difficult and upsetting TA-related content
a) More ‘I’-statements (preferably in the ‘past’ tense) about sensory experiences of the TA and
TA-related traumatic effects (both during and after event)
b) More ‘I’-statements about topics such as passivity, weakness, lack of heroism, and/or guilt
4) Less sharpening (more flattening) of TA-related content
a) Fewer mini-narratives and shorter narratives overall
b) Less emphasis, superlatives, and repetition in form
c) Less within-narrative dialogue
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5) More attributions of meanings consistent with ‘owning’ and processing
a) More seamless incorporation of the TAN into the LN, rather than the TAN standing apart from
or outside of the LN
b) More acceptance of variety of roles and actions before, during, and after the TA
c) More willingness and capacity to explore the ‘greys’ of coping and effects of the TA
d) Greater focus on the collective nature of the TA
6) Less transferring of difficult, upsetting, or ambivalent TA-related content away from the ‘I’-voice
a) More ‘I’-statements (of either ‘past’ or ‘present’ tense):
i. instead of ‘present’ tense FS ‘you’-statements
ii. instead of ‘present’ tense MS ‘you’-statements
b) More ‘past’ tense ‘I’-statements instead of ‘present’ tense ‘I’-statements
While some of the analyses in this dissertation presented single sentences or small quotations
extracted both from any order in their respective interview and often from their larger context, the
excerpts presented below (parts of many of which have already been shown in previous analyses)
are unbroken, sequential, and juxtaposed in tables sectioned into cells in order to make
comparisons. Great effort was made to ‘cut’ the cells in such a way as to position parallel content
from each interview side by side (while still keeping the narratives in their original chronology), in
order to distinguish clearly the similarities and differences in both content and form.
Below, each of the MNSs are presented, with examples and analysis to demonstrate how
Yossi used each one and what can be understood from this usage and its context. The mechanisms
are presented in separate sections, although there are often points of convergence and
complementarity between them. Indeed, for each set of quotations shown as an exemplar of the
main MNS at work, some of the other mechanisms involved may also be discussed as a way to
provide further evidence for others of the Narrative Guidelines. Much support for Yossi having
met the criteria put forth in Guidelines 1 and 2, as well as Guideline 5(a), has already been
provided above, within the quantitative comparative analyses of his LNs and TANs (Section 9.3).
In addition, evidence supporting Guidelines 3(a) and 6 was also found in the pronoun ‘poetry’
analysis of Yossi’s FUR TAN (Section 9.4). Overall, however, the six sub-sections below should
be read on a holistic level, with an attempt to comparatively analyze Yossi’s texts globally and with
all six guidelines in mind throughout. Particularly significant sections are highlighted in orange.
9.5.1 Inclusion
The first MNS to be discussed here is inclusion, whereby Yossi chooses to report certain
facets of or details about the TA he experienced.
This comparative example brings in
corresponding, or ‘parallel,’ text sections from the BL TAN and the FUR TAN. Here, Yossi’s use
of inclusion within both of his ‘complete’ TANs is evident.
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Table 9-8: Inclusion within Yossi’s ‘complete’ TANs
BASELINE TAN (BLL)
1 I got to the [bus] stop,
2 I collected passengers, I left [the stop] (1)
and then there was the explosion.
3
Now I didn’t feel anything. I thought that it’s a truck
that ran into me hard.
First of all, I didn’t hear the explosion. What happened
it’s like I lost my hearing, there was a powerful blast.
5
So already I had lost my hearing, the uhh it, my [ears]
exploded.
Then uhh, and all of me flew, the whole seat, the whole
windshield, it became dark. It became totally dark. I
6 lost consciousness. Then all of me flew onto the front
of the bus, like, almost my whole body was outside, like
this, hanging outside, I lost consciousness like this,
7 until I woke up, I got up, and, and uhh,
8
4
9
still I don’t know that an explosion happened on the
10 bus. Still totally don’t know that an explosion
happened.v
FOLLOW-UP TAN (FUR)
We got to [street], and then at the [bus] stop…
I collected passengers, (1),
there was an explosion. (1) There was an enormous
explosion, (2)
that the truth is I don’t remember it. Because they tell
me, the blast came before the noise/boom. (2)
Then therre was, (1) an explosion in [my] ears, so I
didn’t hear th- (1) {it}.
I fainted and flew outside, ninety percent of my body
was, bent over, toward the steering wheel.
When I woke up, (2) I woke up
I heard cries, on the bus,
and a smell of burning, (1) and a smell of scorched
flesh, (1)
and then still I didn’t know what happened…vi
There is significant similarity between these two excerpts, particularly in their content. Every
chronological ‘step’ of the narratives is nearly the same, in the same order and with most of the
same information. The only two cells of the FUR TAN that do not appear to have corresponding
content in the BL TAN (“I heard cries…” (C.8), and, “and a smell of burning…” (C.9)) do indeed
‘match up’ with nearly identical statements slightly later in Yossi’s BL TAN. Indeed, Yossi
chooses here to include nearly all of the same details, in much of the same language and discursive
strategies as well (for instance, “almost my whole body” vs. “ninety percent of my body” in C.6).
Still, there are several small but significant differences, particularly in the form of the
discourse. First, in C.1 of both interviews, there is a shift in pronoun choice, from ‘I’ to ‘we,’ in the
identical micro-context. Second, in C.10 and as discussed previously, Yossi’s references to initially
not knowing what happened are made in the PPr tense in the BL TAN, and in the RPa tense in the
FUR TAN. Finally, in general there is evidence of more inclusion of details and much more
repetition in the BL TAN—as clearly represented in C.5, where Yossi repeats, “I (had) lost my
hearing,” twice; in C.6, where he repeats, “all of me flew,” “it became (totally) dark,” and, “I lost
consciousness,” twice each; and in C.10, where he repeats “still…don’t know” twice as well.
Overall, the juxtaposed comparison of these two sections provides a number of prototypical
discursive representations of Yossi’s process of working through the TA he experienced.
Longitudinal narrative (and psychological) development appears evident in his discourse about the
event, in three significant domains: 1) from, “what happened to me,” to, “what happened to us”
(i.e., less personalization and more understanding of the collective nature of the experience); 2)
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from his experience and reactions existing in the PPr tense (signifying a proximate and salient
experience, existing in his ‘here-and-now’), to a discursive shift into the RPa tense (more distant
and psychically manageable); and 3) from an apparent inner need to repeat himself and make his
account of the event more ‘alive,’ to a more succinct and distanced reporting of what took place.
The next comparative example brings in parallel excerpts from the BL TAN, the FUL TAN,
and the FUR TAN. Here is demonstrated Yossi’s use of inclusion within only his FU narratives,
but twice therein—as he included the exact same elements in both the within-LN mini-TAN and the
‘complete’ TAN (which were told approximately 80 minutes apart).
Table 9-9: Inclusion within Yossi’s follow-up TANs
BASELINE TAN (BLL)
1
2 Uhh, in the morning I got up,
3
4
and usually we lay tefillin. (2)
5
6
7
I prayed, and uhh, I went to work.vii
8
FOLLOW-UP TAN (FUL)
\((Staccato)) That infamous day, (2)
I got up in the morning
and I was running late almost a
little a bit\ to work. (2) I went,
quickly to work, and with us
[you/they/we (MP)] take th’buses
and leave, fast.
And usually, I arrive to work early,
and lay tefillin, {every day}. (1)
That day I didn’t manage [to do so].
(2) {Okay}.
I drove quickly, to, [name of
hospital where bus route begins]
and from there I went out, (1)
and in actuality I managed to get
there ten minutes early,
I laid tefillin, (2) and, I went on
[my] way. (1)viii
FOLLOW-UP TAN (FUR)
On that day of the attack,
I was late to work. (2) Uhh, I was
late, not by much, because I had a
tiny bit of time uhh. I took th’bus,
and drove quickly,
and usually I tend to lay tefillin in
the morning. (2)
So I drove quickly toward uhh,
[name of hospital where bus route
begins] Hospital.
I managed to get there, about ten
minutes before my departure time.
I laid quickly, tefillin, (2), and
finished laying, and I went on [my]
way,ix
First, as opposed to the first example, here is evident a shift from the collective to the personal, as
demonstrated in C.4: “usually we lay tefillin,” vs. “usually I…lay tefillin,” and, “usually I tend to
lay tefillin.” Because this shift exists within the exact same content and context across both
interviews, and because it is uniquely consistent—as viewed in the two separate FU TANs—this
can be considered a reliable discursive marker of a shift in Yossi’s processing of and perspective on
the event he experienced. The question, then, remains with regard to the motivation for this shift.
Most apparent in this comparative table is the inclusion of the entire mini-narrative that
takes place in C.3-7 of both of the FU TANs—about Yossi running late to work, almost not having
enough time to pray, having to drive quickly to the beginning point of his bus route, and ultimately
managing to arrive in time to lay tefillin. Notably, each TAN corresponds with at least one other
TAN (and most often, all three ‘match’) at specific points (“[getting] up in the morning,” in BLL
and FUL C.2; “usually [laying] tefillin,” in BLL and FUL C.4, and praying/laying tefillin and going
to work/on his way, in C.8 across all three TANs). And yet, in both FU TANs, told over four and a
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half years after the TA he experienced, Yossi chose to include new (and quite intricate) details
about the day it happened—details that he did not include in the interview conducted only one and
a half years after it occurred. Indeed, if I had only interviewed Yossi once, I would never have
known anything about this moment in his life beyond, “Uhh, in the morning I got up, and usually
we lay tefillin. (2) I prayed, and uhh, I went to work.” x In this sense, the addition of the FUI brings
with it an implication of the imperative to ask, ‘where is the ‘truth’ here?’ Perhaps this new mininarrative in Yossi’s FU TANs is a fabrication? How can one know which narrative to ‘trust’?
These questions are thorny, and issues of this nature continue to plague narrative
researchers. However, I assert that the unique opportunity provided by the current analytical
method and implementation, due to its comparative nature and parallel contexts, may lend support
to the contention that questions regarding ‘truth’ and ‘trust’ in a narrative context can and should be
laid to rest. Concern, or even interest, need not be placed on ‘just the facts’ or ‘what may/may not
have actually happened.’ Rather, interpretive analyses might best be served by asking, ‘why might
the narrator have chosen to tell the narrative in one manner the first time, and in another manner the
next?’ Indeed, rather than asking whether Yossi was ‘really’ late to work that morning, or when
and where he was actually able to pray, the analysis should inquire as to what may have motivated
him to leave this mini-narrative out of the BL TAN, while in the FU TANs, he not only included
the detail that he was late but also elaborated intricately on the surrounding circumstances.
From an interpretive perspective, I assert that the details and/or circumstances contained in
this mini-narrative held special significance for Yossi at the time of the FUI, and did not at the BLI.
The excerpts above illustrate a particular emphasis on the ‘near-miss’ nature of the praying; that is,
that Yossi almost didn’t have enough time to pray, but he did his utmost and ultimately managed.
Also apparent is a contrast between what he “usually” does (arriving to work early so as to have
time to pray) and what he actually did on this (decidedly unusual) morning.
Ultimately, this demonstration of inclusion only in the FUI actually runs counter to the
hypothesis that Yossi was in a more ‘ease-ful’ state relative to the BLI, as it suggests that he is
more focused on the details of the TA and expending more energy to make at least this section of
the TAN more ‘alive.’
However, there may be another potential explanation for this added
inclusion. Toward the end of Yossi’s FU LN, he stated: “And by the way when you (FS) uhh
experience a terror attack, (1) I about myself, I don’t know [about] others, you (FS) get much closer
to religion.”xi He then discussed the “three or four attacks” that he experienced over his life,
including his injuries as a soldier. As further explanation of his greater religiosity, he then stated:
1
2
3
4
5
“But somewhere listen (FS) you (FS) say to yourself (FS), uhh, ‘Itt, right or not, why didn’t I get
killed there, and why didn’t I get killed there, and why did they (MP) get killed, and why did those
who were on the bus right next to me get killed but I wasn’t killed.’ So it means this is how it is. (3)
And if I am a believing man, (1) as a believing man [they (MP)] are telling you (MS), (1) ‘Listen
(MS) you (MS) have warning one, and warning two, and [they (MP)] are warning you (MS), and
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6
7
8
9
10
again [they (MP)] are warning you (MS), here you (MS) could have, and again you (MS) could have
and here it is again [they (MP)] are forgiving you (MS) and again yes and, so be (MS) careful,’ (4)
even though I believe that I am not a saint, but I believe that I am okay. But anyway you (FS), say
(MS) ‘Listen (MS), what didn’t, what what what didn’t I do {good}, what?’ (5) And meanwhile [you
(MP)] go with the flow, (1) and you (FS) sit, (2) {that’s it}, wait (MS) for the next miracle.”xii
Most noteworthy here is not only that Yossi spent a relatively significant amount of time discussing
his religious beliefs with regard to why (he believes) he was both warned and spared so many
times, but more importantly, that he did so within the discursive confines of his life narrative.
Indeed, there were several places throughout both interviews that Yossi discussed this and similar
topics, particularly as a response to my own questions about his beliefs in God, fate, and whether
“things happen for a reason.” However, it is particularly significant here—and can be interpreted
as evidence for his status at the time of the FUI—that Yossi chose to include this lengthy
explication of his views on this topic as part of his life story.
The significant decrease in attention and prominence paid to the TA within the LN of
Yossi’s FUI has already been discussed. And if the analytical focus is trained on the places where
Yossi does discuss the TA, it is apparent that he does so primarily as support for his argumentation
that every person has a time and a place written for his death. This is most evident in the inclusion
of the only real story dedicated to the TA within the LN—the mini-narrative about the young
woman who gave up her seat to the elderly man and ultimately was killed, while the man was not.
Thus, this newfound increased focus on religiosity and fate vis-à-vis “everyone’s time and
place” within his FU LN could be interpreted to indicate that Yossi has become more occupied with
these issues than he was at the time of his BLI. In this sense, it is possible that these issues have
become more relevant and/or meaningful to him within his life now, which may have motivated the
choice to include them in his life story. If this is indeed the case, Yossi may have come to view
certain experiences or aspects therein very differently, with a new or changed focus on different
details or information.
Yossi’s inclusion of ‘new’ details about the morning of the TA—
particularly details that clearly relate to his perception of fate and religion, and perhaps the reason
for his survival—would make interpretive sense when viewed through this lens (as opposed to a
lens focused solely on whether inclusion as an MNS indicates more ‘ease-ful’ processing or general
functioning). In the FUI, Yossi may have been more occupied with his religiosity or issues
regarding fate—which may, in turn, have caused him to be more ‘tuned in’ to these facets of a
variety of his experiences, and particularly of the TA. This focus may have then influenced his
consequent process of selecting what to tell and what not to tell, and the narrative reflected this.
9.5.2 Sharpening
The second MNS is sharpening, whereby Yossi chooses to give special prominence or place
emphasis on certain facets of or details about the TA. Sharpening is generally represented in
271
content by verbal emphasis and the provision of great detail, and in form as repetition of words,
greater length of passages, and the telling of mini-narratives to illustrate points viewed as important
in the narrator’s estimation. This comparative example brings in parallel text sections from the BL
TAN, the FUL TAN, and the FUR TAN. Here is evident Yossi’s use of sharpening in both content
and form across three TANs, as well as more specifically in the FUL TAN.
Table 9-10: Sharpening in content and form across three of Yossi’s TANs
BASELINE TAN (BLL)
The one (FS) who sat down next to
her, and let the old man, at the [bus]
1
stop that we went up, that it blew
up, an old senior.
2
He sat down,
3
FOLLOW-UP TAN (FUL)
The elderly man got on, the young,
girl got up, let, like every good
Israeli (MS), let that elderly man sit
down. (2)
and she went where? Went to her
death. Went into the middle of the
4
bus, exactly standing up, went into
the bus,
5
She got up, and went, into the
middle of the bus. (2) And, what
happened happened. That girl got
killed
and the elderly man is still alive.
Soo it shows that a persson he has
th’[his] [time and] place, she was
supposed to die and he wasn’t. If
she hadn’t gotten up he would have
gone in, but she got up {let him,
and she went into her thing
[death]}. So that’s what I’m
saying, and if only we would know
exactly what is happening…xiii
6
FOLLOW-UP TAN (FUR)
Uhh, the elderly man who got on at
me, (2) the girl who sat behind who
I know got up and let him sit down,
I continued along the trip.
And the one who I saw let him sit
down.
and then there was an
7 explosion…xiv
We got to, on [street] to the [bus]
stop where there was the explosion.
(1)xv
Yossi made the discursive choice to include this mini-narrative (aforementioned) about a girl on his
bus who gave up her seat to an elderly man, both within his BL TAN and twice in his FUI, in both
the within-LN TAN and the ‘complete’ TAN. The interpretive conclusion suggests that this story
holds great importance for Yossi, and the possible explanations for such have already been
discussed above. Particularly noteworthy, and demonstrable through this juxtaposed presentation,
is the significant similarity in Yossi’s manners of telling across all three narratives. For instance, he
introduced and concluded the mini-narratives within the two ‘complete’ TANs in nearly the exact
same way (C.1 and C.7).
It may be useful here to reiterate that it is always possible (and, as some researchers have
suggested, inevitable (Mishler, 2004; Bamberg, 2008)) to tell the same story in a different way,
even minutes after the first telling. For example, Yossi could have told this mini-narrative after
describing the explosion or his being transported to the hospital, or outside the confines of the TAN
entirely. But he chose to focus attention on this girl and this elderly man, situated narratively
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before any of them (including Yossi) knew the implications of their actions—creating a sharpening
effect for the message he apparently wanted to send. So the question remains, what might be
Yossi’s message, or end point, here? Why might this mini-narrative be so important to him, at both
points in time? I assert that Yossi’s statements in FUL C.6 most succinctly present his central
sentiments on the topic. Yossi appears preoccupied with issues of fate and the “time and place” for
his death, and the reasons for having been ‘saved’ so many times. These seem to be important
subjects for him, and they consequently become important subjects within both his LNs and his
TANs. It is in this sense that a deep analysis of the MNSs at work within his central narratives can
reveal what is central for Yossi himself. Indeed, this analysis has already shown that his choices to
include and/or sharpen certain facets of his narratives can provide significant evidence as to what
may hold importance for him.
The next comparative example brings in parallel excerpts from the BL TAN, the FUR TAN,
and the FUS TAN. Here is apparent Yossi’s use of sharpening in form only, across the three TANs.
This mini-narrative did not appear in Yossi’s first spontaneous TAN within the LN in the FUI (the
FUL TAN)—which contributed to my decision to request a ‘complete’ TAN later in the interview.
Table 9-11: Sharpening in form across three of Yossi’s TANs
BASELINE TAN (BLL)
1 I came back to the front of the bus
a girl was lying there, she also had
2 wounds, all over her too, full of
blood.
“Driver, help me.”
3
And so I picked her up.xvi
FOLLOW-UP TAN (FUR)
There was someone (FS) that iit,
[she] was wounded beside me
That someone (FS)
who cried “Driver help me,”
cried beside me “Driver, driver help
me.” (2)
And so I looked down, hugged her,
and I am all of me full of blood and
flesh. I hugged her,
told her “Nothing happened,” what
is that nothing happened? I am
coming convincing her nothing
happened. And she is wounded and
my whole bus.xviii
I hugged her
4
5
FOLLOW-UP TAN (FUS)
and I didn’t know what to tell her
very simply I said “Nothing
happened.” (2)xvii
What stands out most significantly here is, once again, the similarity in content and structure of
these three separate mini-narratives. In addition, perhaps the best demonstration of sharpening
exists in C.3, where Yossi utilizes dialogue as a discursive technique to make this facet of the story
more vivid and ‘alive.’ In all three of these TANs, Yossi uses nearly the exact same phrasing and
structures it as having come straight from the girl’s mouth, rather than paraphrasing or describing
in a more distanced manner. The only difference, and it may be a significant one, is that Yossi
introduces the girl’s action in both of the FU TANs (“who cried,” and, “cried beside me”), while in
the BL TAN the dialogue simply appears ‘out of the blue’—which, it could be interpreted, was
essentially how Yossi experienced it in the moment.
273
There are several other differences in both content and form among the three excerpts
above. First, Yossi’s discourse was much less descriptive in the FU TANs than he was in the BL
TAN, particularly about the girl who was lying on the bus floor (“a girl was lying there,” vs.
“someone (FS),” in C.2).
Second, and by contrast, Yossi’s discourse was decidedly more
descriptive about himself in the FUS TAN (“I am all of me full of blood and flesh,” in C.4). Third,
there is a significant divergence in verb choice in C.4, as in the BL TAN Yossi “picked her up,”
while in the FU TANs (three times, consistently) he “hugged her.” Finally, there is an inclusion of
greater detail toward the end of both of the mini-narratives in the FUI only, where Yossi elaborates
twice on what he told the girl after taking her into his arms. This was, significantly, information
that did not appear at any point in Yossi’s BLI.
Ultimately, it seems evident that the sharpening mechanism was utilized here by Yossi to
send the message that this particular story was a pivotal part of his experience of the TA—and this
perspective has apparently not changed over the three years that passed between the interviews.
Indeed, his use of (the same) dialogue in all three of these TANs strongly suggests that this
particular part of the narrative/experience has been mostly unchanged by the passing of time. One
possible explanation is that Yossi has no interest in changing or further processing this story.
Indeed, here he appears as a central character, implored to help someone in distress, acting
heroically to save (and, in the FUI, comfort) her. It is also notable that all three of these excerpts
consistently employ the ‘I’ pronoun and are told nearly exclusively in the RPa tense—all of which
further supports the hypothesis that Yossi is comfortable claiming this facet of the TA. This may
be essentially, in Yossi’s eyes, a ‘good part’ of the narrative of the TA experience, and thus, it has
been ‘cemented’ into the larger narrative as is, with no motivation or need for further processing.
9.5.3 Omission
The third MNS is omission, whereby Yossi chooses not to report certain facets of or details
about the TA he experienced. Omission is generally represented in content by a non-reporting of
specific themes, and in form as a lack of representation of full parts of the event or experience.
This comparative example brings in parallel text sections (or lack thereof) from the BL TAN and
the FUR TAN. Notably, there was no corresponding excerpt within the FUL TAN, as the entire
theme of the horrific nature of the immediate post-bombing scene was entirely absent from the first
(mini-)TAN and from the LN overall—which is, in itself, a significant demonstration of omission.
Here is presented Yossi’s use of omission in content within the ‘complete’ TAN of the FUI.
274
Table 9-12: Omission in content within Yossi’s follow-up ‘complete’ TAN
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
BASELINE TAN (BLL)
And all of me was, my whole hands are hurting, my
body, the thhe my clothes are torn.
I was all of me covered in blood, flesh. Tons. A lot.
You (FS) don’t know what it is. I don’t wish on
anyone to see it. Iit is impossible to describe it, it is
something that even in hell is impossible to see a thing
like this. (2)
And also I still didn’t understand what happened.
And then, like in some sort of horror film, I turn
around, towards, the inside of the bus. Like, I turn
back around,
and then, like in some sort of horror film, you (FS)
swallow all of the atrocity.
It is something that is impossible to define.
Difficult, very difficult.
Difficult also to endure it.
You (FS) look and you (FS) see that your (FS) eyes, it
is from, it, it, it (2) the, everything like opens up to you
(FS) in horror, in in in, it,
you (FS) aren’t afraid, it iit is atrocity, it isn’t, it isn’t
fe-, you (FS) are scared, it isn’t fear, it is something
that is impossible to define. Because there is no,
nothing to be afraid of, but, it is’it is atrocity that is
impossible to describe. And you (FS) look (3),
and no one gets near the bus. No one. The bus is
going up in flames. (3) …
… You (FS) see people without heads. Some without
arms, halves of bodies. Now you (FS) see all the stuff
inside of the bodies. Everything is on the floor. …
… You (FS) see mutilated people. You (FS) see hands
moving. You (FS) see legs very few, it, it everything is
hot. You (FS) see, everyything is throbbing. You
(FS), everything everything is moving, everything, is
boiling. People are like, the movements of the eyes
too, of the hands too, everything is moving.
Everything is moving.xx
FOLLOW-UP TAN (FUR)
I looked into the bus and I saw things, that [are] very
very very very very, atrocious. (3)
People in alll kinds of positions, in alll kinds of, uhh
mutilated states, things that they are still completely
alive, hands that are mooving, hearts that are beating,
heads that are moving, halves of people, uhh, legs,
everything is hanging in all kinds of ways, everything
is jumbled together, covered in blood. (2)xix
There are a number of significant differences between Yossi’s two ‘complete’ TANs, and this set of
quotations shows perhaps the most prominent illustration of Yossi’s narrative process of working
through the experience overall. The most apparent contrast lies in the length and scope of the two
excerpts, as the first section is a total of nineteen lines while the second is a mere two lines. (Seven
lines of the BL TAN—between C.10 and C.12—were removed from the table out of space
considerations.) In his BL TAN Yossi chose to express what he experienced in a manner that
involved great detail, vividness, and repetition; while in his FUR TAN he tended toward relatively
concise and more distanced descriptions. This is most visible in C.5-6, wherein Yossi imparts the
same information in both TANs, but in entirely different ways. The FU cell is not only half the
length, but also told exclusively in the ‘I’-voice and in the RPa tense—while the parallel BL cells
are exclusively in the PPr tense and contain alternating uses of the ‘I’ and FS ‘you’ pronouns.
Significantly, up until the final cells of the above table, Yossi essentially compressed all of
275
the vivid description from the BL TAN into just the single sentence in C.5-6 of the FUR TAN. In
doing so, Yossi entirely omitted a number of what were apparently key details for him in his BL
TAN—e.g., that his “hands [were] hurting,” and, “clothes [were] torn” (C.1); that he was “covered
in blood, flesh” (C.2); that the scene was indescribable and indefinable in its horror (C.3, C.7, and
C.9); and that no one approached the still-burning bus (C.10). In the FUR TAN, rather than
‘walking’ me through every minute “atroci[ous]” descriptor—but not denying the horrific nature of
the scene altogether—Yossi simply offered this single, fairly distanced, report-style sentence.
However, it seems that Yossi was not able or willing to completely disregard the ‘facts’ of
the scene in which he found himself directly after the bomb exploded on his bus—which may have
led him to provide the descriptive discourse at the end of the FUR TAN excerpt above. Indeed, the
most notable facet of this comparative example lies in C.11-12, where Yossi’s discourse imparts
nearly identical pieces of information (content); but again, in entirely different manners (form).
Significantly, there is much of the same choice of words, as in “halves of bodies/people,”
“mutilated,” and “hands moving.” But most apparent here is the prominent shift in pronoun and
tense use, likely signifying a corresponding shift in Yossi’s sense of psychological proximity to the
event described. While these two cells in the BL TAN included a total of seven uses of the FS
‘you’ (all but one collocated with the verb, “see,” in the PPr tense), the corresponding FUR excerpt
utilized not a single subject pronoun at all. The BLL cells contain an actor, an FS ‘victim’ who is
seeing all of the atrocity—while the FUR cell describes the horror from a distanced, objective
viewpoint. While neither of the excerpts involve an ‘I’ subject, this shift from the FS ‘you’ to a
distanced, undefined observer is significant. The previous statement in the FUR TAN (“I looked
into the bus and I saw things…”) does place the action of seeing into Yossi’s own, RPa-focused
experience, which also seems to signify a notable shift in communicative strategy. A closer look at
the entire BLL excerpt above (as well as the rest of the surrounding TAN) reveals a complete lack
of employment of the ‘I’ pronoun with any sensory verb, such as seeing, looking, or smelling.
I contend that this comparative example provides a prototypical illustration of Narrative
Guideline 2, showing Yossi’s more ‘ease-ful’ progress in the narrative processing and claiming of
(both the negative and positive facets of) his experience of the TA. Furthermore, according to the
central assertions of this study vis-à-vis longitudinal narrative processing, I venture a prediction
that if Yossi were to be interviewed again, three years following his FUI, this section of his TAN
might not only be further condensed, with greater use of omission, but also that there might be an
increase in the use of the RPa ‘I’ (perhaps instead of the undefined third-party observer). It is also
necessary to reiterate that while the discourse in the first column was provided spontaneously by
Yossi as part of the ‘complete’ TAN within his BL LN, none of this content was presented in the
spontaneous TAN within his LN in the FUI. This finding, above all else, makes this comparative
276
example perhaps the most significant demonstration of the MNS of omission.
9.5.4 Sil

“You are not normal if you won`t be scared”: A Psychosociolinguistic

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