Self-narratives: Comparisons between Anglo-Australians and Singaporean Chinese

To date, there is a lack of empirical studies of cross-cultural differences in self-narratives. Greimas’s model of narrative structure was used in three studies to analyze the self-narratives of Western (Anglo-Australians) and Eastern (Singaporean Chinese) cultural groups. The aim of this research was to investigate the viability of Greimas’s framework as a methodological approach in studying cross-cultural differences and to examine what cross-cultural differences might be revealed. The current project employed a structured online survey and applied both qualitative as well as quantitative methods to study the differences in Western and Eastern structure of self-narratives. The results indicated significant cross-cultural differences in the self-narrative structure. Anglo-Australian self-narratives were structured in a way that emphasized the role of the ‘self’ while the Singaporean Chinese considered their self-narratives were based more on ‘others’, such as their ‘mother’, ‘parents’ and/or ‘family’. Moreover, the Singaporean Chinese focused more on ‘family’ enhancement while the Anglo-Australians focused more on ‘self’ enhancement. In addition, there were more Singaporean Chinese than Anglo-Australians who were unclear about their self-narratives, suggesting that there are cultural differences in narrative identities and/or that the self-narrative is more of a Western concept. These results have important implications because they not only provide empirical evidence for the usefulness of Greimas’s model of narrative structure in investigating cross-cultural differences in self-narratives, but the findings deepen our understanding of culture and self.