Exploring the Autobiography as a Genre and a Data Collection Tool

Book excerpt: This book provides researchers and teachers of different disciplines, such as literature, cultural studies, and applied linguistics, with a deeper understanding of the autobiography, both as a genre and a data collection method. The book presents a variety of forms of autobiographies produced in varied fields, including confessional poems, politicians’ autobiographies, and autobiographical novels. Unique among these autobiographies are those that were produced in the field of education, namely foreign language education. The richness of the studies reported in the chapters lies in the wide variety of qualitative and quantitative analytical tools borrowed from different disciplines (mainly applied linguistics and ethnography). The book features conceptual metaphor analysis, appraisal theory, multimodality analysis, generic analysis, and content analysis.