本文借用Bakhtin、人類學以及文化心理學中的相關理論觀點，來思考 故事講述中的個人（the personal)。這些理論觀點都認為故事不只是種表意 的形式，同時也是種社會文化實踐。故事不只是以時間序列來召喚事件，它 在人們的生命中也有其歷史。我透過在幾個文化與族群殊異的地點的民族 誌工作、所蒐集的三種口語敘事文類為例，探索上述概念。個人經驗故事和 生命故事明確的很「個人」（personal)，敘事者派定故事角色時選擇第一人 稱；但轉述的(vicarious),經驗故事則召喚了他人經驗（第三人稱）。然而轉述 敘事也是個人的，因其反映且創造了講者與聽者間的連結。在這個論點之上，
我主張任何故事--------書寫的故事、新故事、電視看來的故事---都可以透過
與自身經驗的故事聯結，而被個人化。這種敘事的個人化再製（personalized reworkings)在生命歷程的各個階段中出現，也跨越不同文化群體存在。個人 講故事的個人化（personalization)過程，有助於闡明心理人類學和文化心理 學中的一個關鍵問題一一個人與文化的相互建構。

In this paper I reflect on the personal in personal storytelling, drawing upon Bakhtin and allied theoretical perspectives in anthropology and cultural psychology. These perspectives converge on the idea that stories are not only forms of representation but also sociocultural practices. Stories do more than evoke events in temporal sequence: they have histories in people’s lives. I explore this idea via examples of three oral narrative genres collected as part of ethnographic work in several culturally and ethnically diverse sites. Stories of personal experience and life stories are explicitly “personal” in that the narrator casts the story in the first-person, but stories of vicarious experience invoke (in the third-person) a story about someone else’s experience. Yet vicarious tellings are also personal in that they reflect and create bonds between teller and listener. Building on this point, I argue that any story—a written story, a news story, a story from television—can be personalized via contact with stories of personal experience. Such personalized reworkings of narratives occur across the life course and across cultural groups. This process of personalization via personal storytelling helps illuminate a key problem in psychological anthropology and cultural psychology, namely, the co-creation of person and culture.