Barbara Johnstone

1. Narrative2. Structuralist narratology3. Personal experience narrative (PEN)4. The development of narrative skill & style5. Narrative research across disciplines6. Current research7. Conclusions

Cadmus slaying the dragonCadmus slaying the dragon

Herakles Herakles attaking a Centaurattaking a Centaur

‘… narrative is present in myth, legend, fables, tales, short stories, epics, history, tragedy, drame [suspense drama], comedy, pantomime, paintings (…), stained-glass windows, movies, local news, conversation. Moreover, in this infinite variety of forms, it is present at all times, in all places, in all societies; indeed, narrative starts with the very history of mankind; there is not, there has never been anywhere, any people without narrative; all classes, all human groups, have their stories, and very often those stories are enjoyed by men of different and even opposite cultural backgrounds (…) Like life itself, it is there, international, transhistorical, transcultural.’

Barthes (1975: 237)

Definition a discourse genre a specific talk in which a sequence of clauses

is matched to a sequence of events (cf. Labov)

talk that represents events in the past ≠‘story’=narrative with a point (everyday parlance)

myth= the sacred (hi)story of creation (cf. Eliade)

= fable, fiction, invention

transformed and enriched in time by each teller, under the influence of different cultures

cf. Claude Lévi-Strauss, Mythologiques (a work of cultural anthropology) ‘traditional narrative around the world, though superficially varied, all deals with a limited number of basic themes’.

- abstract elements of meaning that are expressed in myth: male/femalemineral/ vegetalraw/cooked

cf. Vladimir Propp Morphology of the folktale(1928/1968),

all folktales have the same syntagmatic deep structure

1. Introduction of characters & their original situation;

2. Interdiction addressed to the hero/heroine;

3. Violating ban;

4. The villain;

5. The disaster;

6. The miraculous happy ending.

In the ‘60s, Émile Benveniste made the difference between histoire and discours:

story= the events discourse= the presentation of the events

in a narrative

Ronald Barthes: ‘…the analysis of narrative stops at the analysis of discourse…’

People talk about their past

to share their experiences to justify for something to praise themselves to merely entertain

They make choices as they narrate by using a variety of devices.

They searched for: Invariable semantic deep structure of PEN Surface differences vs. social characteristics of the narrators

Findings: Functions of individual clauses:1. Referential clauses – events, characters, setting 2. Evaluative clauses – the point of the story Functions of a fully developed narrative:

1 abstract

2 orientation3 complicating action4 evaluation5 result or resolution6 coda

Importance: Connected talk is orderly and describable in

terms of its structure and function Like syntax, discourse can be modeled in terms

of - variable surface structure and - invariable deep structure

Reference is not the only function of talk

PEN is context related

New studies => computer generated narrative

Children learn to take other people's perspectives & to provide orientational and evaluative detail

- Variation of strategies - Simple syntax - Fallowing the functions of narrative in

their community => variation in narrative:

* geographic* social class* ethnicity* gender

Narrative rhetoric History as story Research method in education (“narrative

study of lives”) Poststructuralist literary narratology

Interdisciplinary:

rhetoric

communication

educatio

nforeign languages

comparative literaturecomparative literature

psychologypsychology

nursing

nursing

political science

sociology and social work

histo

ry

histo

ry

art

philosophy

marketin

gorganiza

tional b

ehavior

linguistics

ITIT

All the structuralist approaches to myth and literature agree that:a) There are abstract levels on which structures and meanings

are the sameb) Narrative can be separated from the events it is about

Political effects of narrative: storytelling can be used as a resource to dominate others, to express solidarity, for resistance and conflict

Through telling, we construct our experiential worlds

Olga Sutherland Andrea V. BreenStephen P. Lewis

1. Definitions2. Narrative vs. Discursive analysis3. Context4. A case study5. Conclusions

Story = what people say Narrative a way of structuring stories a series of events and their associated meanings for the

teller (cf. Riessman) => (on broad) any written, verbal, and visual forms of expression that construct meaning by establishing sequences of experiences.

a form of social interaction (cultural dependent)

Personal narratives can be analyzed through rhetorical, cultural, historical, political, and performative perspective.

Narrative inquiry focuses on the storyteller (sequencing & temporality)

Discursive forms of inquiry focuses on how narrative structures and the context of storytelling are produced through talk and writing

attention to the context of the storytelling treatment of the micro-details of storytelling

NA treats the entire story as an analytic unit (focus on temporality and sequentiality of events)

DA is more focused on the micro-details (identify the micro-details of language use involved in temporal and sequential ordering of events )

Intended audience in storytelling (predicted by the author, and their role in the story & the story’s listener/reader)

In writing, the narrator orients the reader => anticipated responses from the reader and the socio-cultural context

They searched for: Narrative sequences of autobiographical data (71 websites,

97 accounts containing prose or poems) How the participants to online autobiographical accounts of

non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) construct events and experiences as sequentially linked and temporarily related

The studied levels of language : lexical, grammatical, social and pragmatic

Strategy: discursive-narrative Narrative analytic questions:

how stories are assembled for whom for what purpose

Findings: narrators constituted their experiences as intense and unbearable using a range of discursive practices and

devices : producing contrasting descriptions of emotional states, using figurative language (images, metaphores), vivid or vague

descriptions, and extreme case formulations Involving the potential audithory

people treat narrative conventions (e.g., narrative types, forms) as resources to be used in the course of narration

◦

Importance:

It incorporates analytic concepts from discourse analysis into the narrative analysis

It remembers the importance of analyzing the narrator’s social or interactive orientation

Narrative analysts focus on identifying narratives structures and components

Discursive narrative approach highlights stories’ action-orientation and the way stories are constituted for the occasions of their production

Narrative construction should be situated within social dynamics and context

Johnstone, Barbara. (2003)."Discourse Analysis and Narrative." The Handbook of Discourse Analysis. Schiffrin, Deborah, Deborah Tannen and Heidi E. Hamilton (eds). Blackwell Publishing. at http://www.blackwellreference.com/subscriber/tocnode?id=g9780631205968_chunk_g978063120596833

Sutherland,Olga, & Breen, Andrea V., & Lewis, Stephen P. (2013). “Discursive Narrative Analysis: A Study of Online Autobiographical Accounts of Self-Injury”. The Qualitative Report Volume 18, Article 95, pp.1-17. at

http://www.nova.edu/ssss/QR/QR18/sutherland95.pdf Barthes, Roland & Duisit, Lionel. (1975). ‘An Introduction to the Structural Analysis of

Narratives’ in New Literary History, Vol. 6, No. 2, pp. 237-272. at http://www.uv.es/fores/Barthes_Structural_Narrative.pdf

Eliade, Mircea. (1978). Aspecte ale mitului. Bucureşti: Editura Univers. at

http://monoskop.org/images/5/5a/Eliade_Mircea_Aspecte_ale_mitului_1978.Pdf Lévi-Strauss, Claude. (1955). “The Structural Study of Myth” in American Folklore

Society’s The Journal of American Folklore, Vol.68, No.270, pp.428-444. at http://people.ucsc.edu/~ktellez/levi-strauss.pdf

Propp, Vladimir. (1968). Excerpts from: Vladímir Propp, Morphology of the Folktale. at http://homes.di.unimi.it/~alberti/Mm10/doc/propp.pdf