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Article published In:
Narrative Inquiry
Vol. 27:1 (2017) ► pp.47–65

Talent stories in youth sports

Discursively shared narratives of success

| Stockholm University

Success stories are a frequently investigated genre of shared cultural narratives. This paper will pay particular attention to success stories in sports and investigate how young participants in selection camps in soccer and hockey are using a set of shared narratives in order to produce their personal stories of success. By looking at narratives-in-interaction in this specific context, these interviews are investigated as a narrative genre. The analysis shows how a set of shared narratives are used in storylines in order to legitimize the personal story of success and how a number of dilemmatic spaces are addressed. This study shows how personal success stories are intimately tied to “discursively shared narratives” and how this context constitutes a specific narrative framework.

Keywords: success-stories, talents in sport, talent selection, culturally shared narratives, narrative genre, discursively shared narratives
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • From culturally shared to discursively shared narratives
  • Discursively shared narratives in sport
  • Data and analytic approach
  • Findings
    • The humble story
    • The hard work-story
    • The natural talent-story
    • The Zlatan-story
  • Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • References


This article is currently available as a sample article.

Published online: 3 August 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ni.27.1.03kil
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