Understanding Cancer Patients’ Narratives: Meaning-Making Process, Temporality, and Modal Articulation

Temporality is a fundamental dimension of each narrative process of meaning making. In fact, the narration constructs and organizes temporal frames that connect one’s own experiences. From this point of view, oncological illness is experienced as a traumatic experience that interrupts the sense of continuity of one’s own life, resulting in the configuration of different temporal frames, which are not always able to support the processes of elaboration of this experience. The aim of this article is to ex- plore the way the modal verbal predicates (must, can, will, know) are organized and work in relation to the representation of time in narrations of cancer patients. The modal verbal predicates—introducing the meanings of possibility, knowledge, will, desire, duty, need, or ability—allow us to organize the relationship between the subject, action, and context. Six narrations of cancer experience were analyzed—one for each time frame (linear, circular, fragmentary, static, cyclic, and spiral) proposed by Brockmeier (2000)—by means of quali-quantitative analysis of the use of modal verbs. Narrations show specific modal positioning: dispersion, plasticity, focusing, rigidity, and poverty. It is possible organize them along a continuum from plasticity to rigidity. The modal plasticity is the capacity to reconfigure a new temporal relation between subject and context, whereas modal rigidity shows a repetition of a specific and same modality in connecting subject and context. This preliminary research allows us to reflect about some possible clinical implications to support and foster processes of meaning making of cancer conditions.