8. Discussion of the homepage texts as narratives

Structure is one important means for expressing texture. In the homepage texts, texture is created by means of adverbials of time in the Theme slot. The clauses which start with an adverbial of time, taken together, create a time-line throughout the text to give the readers an insight into the past, present and future events of the authors' lives. The authors can thus be said to give a narrative account of their personal experiences. Labov (1997) discusses the concept of narratives of personal experience. He defines this type of narrative as "a report of a sequence of events that have entered into the biography of the speaker/writer by a sequence of clauses that correspond to the order of the original events" (p. 2). In my data the homepage authors use narrative to create one particularly important part of their own lives - the academic part.

The concept of personal narrative is further discussed by Linde (1993) who introduces the notion of life story. She defines the life story as an oral linguistic unit that is part of social interaction. However, the notion of a life story can fruitfully be used in the context of homepage texts since a written text, too, can be regarded as a form of social interaction. According to Linde, all people have life stories which are stories that express our sense of self. A life story is related to our internal sense of having a life story that organizes our understanding of our past life, current situation and imagined future. They reveal who we are and how we got that way. Furthermore, "…we use these stories to claim or negotiate group membership and to demonstrate that we are in fact worthy members of those groups, understanding and properly following their moral standards" (p. 3). This is particularly interesting in connection to the current data which are homepages constructed by a particular group of people in society - doctoral students who are still novices, striving to establish themselves as acknowledged academic professionals.