Explicating Ways to Recollect Autobiographical Material During German-Language Biographical Interview

Volgograd State University, Department of Germanic and Romance philology, 40062 , pr. Universitetsky 100, Volgograd, Russia

^* Corresponding author: LNRebrina@volsu.ru

Abstract

One of the subsystems of memory that is allocated from the bio-psychological and sociological points of view is autobiographical memory characterized by certain functional patterns. Autobiographical practices constitute socialized, culturally determined, materialized form of fixing autobiographical memory which is determined by memory mechanisms, communication laws and regulations. Their analysis allows making certain observations about the structural characteristics of autobiographical memory. Narration within biographical interviews is based on the interaction of the three forces (telling “I”, being told “I” and coordinating their attitude “I”) aimed at harmonizing the structures of life experiences and narrative structures, at the social acceptance of narration. This makes the implementation of the implicit principles of narrative associated with the structural elements of communication (the rules of integrity and completeness, dramatizing, explicitation). The autobiographical material in memory is constituted with “bright”, “important”, “crucial”, “essential” events that correlate with the level structure of the memory subsystem. Revival of each of these types of autobiographical material in the biographical interviews under study is characterized by a certain specificity.