台灣老人集體生命史研究：老年生活紀事的敘事分析

The Prosopography of the Elderly in Taiwan: A Narrative Analysis of the Elderly’s Life

本研究旨在打破以往對老年／人研究進行問題導向、病理取向的分析、理解與建構，從文化研究的取向，把握老人長久生命經驗累積的獨特性，以說故事與敘事分析的方法，進行台灣老人生命史的研究，做為理解當代台灣老人生命的基礎，也做為與老人溝通的背景知識，並為當代台灣老人留下集體的生命史料。本研究對140位客觀上年齡達65歲（含）以上，並且主觀上自認為老人者進行說故事式的訪談，經過敘事分析的結果，當代台灣老人的生命建構有下列特性：一、「宿命論」的生命形式；二、生活世界往私有領域撤回的生命傾向；三、平日生活以簡單規律與打發時間為主的生活通象；四、窮困和戰亂的集體記憶；五、生命既在時間之外，又在時間之內的時間意識。

The study is aimed to break down the problem-orientation and pathological approach of conventional analysis, comprehension and construction of old age /elderly. It attempts, from the perspective of cultural studies, to grasp elderly people’s uniqueness from their life long experiences. By using the methods of storytelling and narrative analysis, this study investigates the life histories of Taiwan’s elderly persons and seeks to work as the foundation of understanding contemporary old people in Taiwan. Furthermore, there is also an attempt to preserves the material of collective life history of Taiwan’s elderly. The study conducted storytelling interviews with 140 samples of people who were objectively aged over 65 and subjectively perceived themselves as elderly. According to the result of narrative analysis, the life construction of Taiwanese elderly are consist of: (1) the life style of fatalism, (2) the tendency toward withdrawal and retreating to private sphere, (3) the general phenomenon of leading simple, regular and dawdling life, (4) collective memory of poverty and the turmoil of war, (5) the time consciousness of beyond as well as within time.