The Construction of Moral Agency in the Narratives of High-School Drop-Outs

Through ethnographic, discourse and grammatical analysis, this article discusses the narratives of two high-school drop-outs and describes the various resources these young people use to fashion their identities through the telling of their stories. Through analysis of both clause-level expression of grammatical agency and discursive and cultural contextualization of agentive actions, it is shown that these young people, despite their apparent limited agency in the larger society, express moral agency through their active narration of the events of their lives. It is not only the content of their narratives, but also the way these stories are told that indicate the moral agency of the speakers. A conceptualization of moral agency is developed as it relates not to static universals, but to the shared particulars among this peer group and the common language they use to talk about their experiences.