Remembering for narration and autobiographical memory

This article proposes a notion of “remembering for narration” based on Slobin’s (1987) concept of “thinking for speaking” to circumvent issues of autobiographical memory and focus on narrative practices. It suggests that we recognize a special cognitive mode of remembering for narration, which involves selecting from episodic memory those details that fit some conceptualization of the event for present purposes, and are readily encodable in the language and narrative format chosen for the current context. It seeks to demonstrate the value of this perspective in considering constraints on remembering in the storytelling performance in various contexts such as getting one’s story straight with input from recipients, filling in gaps in memory and conjuring up details, developing a personal narrative through co-narration, and producing appropriate personal stories in response to previous stories by other participants, and thereby sheds light on narrative processes and their significance for autobiographical memory and identity construction.