Multivoicedness in Historical Representation: American College Students' Accounts of the Origins of the United States

Wertsch, James V.; O'Connor, Kevin

doi:10.1075/jnlh.4.4.04mul

Article published In: Historical Representation
[Journal of Narrative and Life History 4:4] 1994
► pp. 295–309

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Multivoicedness in Historical Representation: American College Students' Accounts of the Origins of the United States

James V. Wertsch | Clark University

Kevin O'Connor | Clark University

Published online: 4 August 2015

https://doi.org/10.1075/jnlh.4.4.04mul

Abstract Individuals' representations of history involve a process in which narratives provided by the sociocultural setting are appropriated and used in specific settings to produce concrete texts. This process involves various forms of multivoicedness. The distinction is made between heteroglossia and means conflict as forms of multivoicedness, and these two forms are used to analyze a set of written texts produced by college students about the origins of the United States. This analysis indicates that these students relied very heavily on a single basic narrative as a "mediational means," but they invoked it in a range of different ways, thereby generating different forms of multivoicedness. The nature of this multivoicedness is explored in terms of notions of resistance and consumption. (Education; Psychology; Historical Narrative; Multivoicedness)

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