Pathologies in Narrative Structures

2007 ◽  
Vol 60 ◽  
pp. 203-224 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shaun Gallagher
Keyword(s):  
Developmental Process ◽  
Narrative Discourse ◽  
Wide Sense ◽  
Evolutionary Account ◽  
Narrative Structures ◽  
Self Reports ◽  
Narrative Practice ◽  
Plot Structure ◽  
Narrative Framework ◽  
Narrative Understanding

Per Aage Brandt, commenting on a passage from Merlin Donald, suggests that there is ‘a narrative aesthetics built into our mind.’ In Donald, one can find an evolutionary account of this narrative aesthetics. If there is something like an innate narrative disposition, it is also surely the case that there is a process of development involved in narrative practice. In this paper I will assume something closer to the developmental account provided by Jerome Bruner in various works, and Dan Hutto's account of how we learn narrative practices, and I'll refer to this narrative aesthetics as a narrative competency that we come to have through a developmental process. I will take narrative in a wide sense, to include oral and written communications and self-reports on experience. In this regard narrative is more basic than story, and not necessarily characterized by the formal plot structure of a story. A story may be told in many different ways, but always via narrative discourse. Also, having narrative competency includes not just abilities for understanding narratives, but also for narrative understanding, which allows us to form narratives about things, events and other people. To be capable of narrative understanding means to be capable of seeing events in a narrative framework.

Pathologies in Narrative Structures

2007 ◽  
Vol 60 ◽  
pp. 203-224 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shaun Gallagher
Keyword(s):  
Developmental Process ◽  
Narrative Discourse ◽  
Wide Sense ◽  
Evolutionary Account ◽  
Narrative Structures ◽  
Self Reports ◽  
Narrative Practice ◽  
Plot Structure ◽  
Narrative Framework ◽  
Narrative Understanding

Per Aage Brandt, commenting on a passage from Merlin Donald, suggests that there is ‘a narrative aesthetics built into our mind.’ In Donald, one can find an evolutionary account of this narrative aesthetics. If there is something like an innate narrative disposition, it is also surely the case that there is a process of development involved in narrative practice. In this paper I will assume something closer to the developmental account provided by Jerome Bruner in various works, and Dan Hutto's account of how we learn narrative practices, and I'll refer to this narrative aesthetics as a narrative competency that we come to have through a developmental process. I will take narrative in a wide sense, to include oral and written communications and self-reports on experience. In this regard narrative is more basic than story, and not necessarily characterized by the formal plot structure of a story. A story may be told in many different ways, but always via narrative discourse. Also, having narrative competency includes not just abilities for understanding narratives, but also for narrative understanding, which allows us to form narratives about things, events and other people. To be capable of narrative understanding means to be capable of seeing events in a narrative framework.

scholarly journals Narrative Structures in Cross-linguistic Perspective: English, Hobongan, and Daqan

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (5) ◽  
pp. 24
Author(s):  
Marla Perkins
Keyword(s):  
Field Work ◽  
Narrative Discourse ◽  
Partial Report ◽  
Specific Information ◽  
Focus Particles ◽  
Narrative Structures ◽  
Specific Description ◽  
Selection Of

It has been noted (Perkins, 2009; Zwaan 1999; Zwaan and Radvansky, 1998) that causality, character, location, and time are the four main aspects of narrative discourse, even if not attended to in equal ways—for example, in English, character is highly ranked, and the locational/spatial components have often been underestimated. However, this is not a universal ranking. In a partial report on field work conducted in Borneo in 2012-2015, I note typological patterns in stylistic preferences within a selection of short narratives in English, Hobongan, and Daqan (the latter two are Austronesian). The strategies identified in the languages, by which the rankings of the various types of narrative information are foregrounded or backgrounded, include focus particles (Hobongan), specificity of description, or lack thereof (each), what component is most involved in driving the narrative forward (each), and frequency of information given about different components of the narrative (each). For example, English narratives center around a character or characters, and a great deal of specific information is given about such characters. In Hobongan, by contrast, the characters are backgrounded relative to the locational information provided, which is given specific description and is marked repeatedly as the focus of the narrative. In Daqan, still another pattern can be identified, that of a given duration providing the justification for and coherence throughout a narrative. It is suggested that analyses of the stylistics of information in narrative be included in typological categorizations and linguistic descriptions of languages, and that such analyses need, as much as possible, to be informed by an understanding of preferred patterns in different languages.

scholarly journals Challenges and impossibilities of ‘standing alongside’ in an intolerable context: Learning from refugees and volunteers in the Calais camp

2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 223-237 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charlotte Burck ◽  
Gillian Hughes
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Refugee Camp ◽  
The Political ◽  
Liberation Psychology ◽  
Humanitarian Crisis ◽  
Context Learning ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Narrative Practice ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Narrative Framework

This article describes the experience of setting up a psychosocial and therapeutic support project in the French Calais refugee camp, by a group of family therapists and clinical psychologists from the United Kingdom. This came about in response to reports of a humanitarian crisis unfolding on our doorstep, with the British government’s lack of support for the growing numbers of refugees gathering along the UK border with France. The project involved working alongside other agencies in the camp to provide psychosocial and resilience-based therapeutic support to unaccompanied young people, women, children and their families and also to many volunteers in the camp. The process of setting up the work is described, as well as the challenges and dilemmas of offering an intervention in extremely unsafe and insanitary conditions, where for most the experience of trauma was ongoing. The project was informed by systemic–narrative practice and community/liberation psychology, which incorporate the political and social context. A narrative framework offered a way of drawing on people’s strengths and resources, rooted in their cultural and social histories and helping them connect with preferred identities, which we found to be essential in the context of ongoing crisis.

scholarly journals Experimental Development Of A Focalization Mechanism In An Integrated Narrative Generation System

2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 177-188 ◽  
Author(s):  
Taisuke Akimoto ◽  
Takashi Ogata
Keyword(s):  
Basic Function ◽  
Narrative Discourse ◽  
Generation System ◽  
Experimental Development ◽  
Narrative Generation ◽  
Narrative Structures ◽  
Experimental Implementation ◽  
Study Designs ◽  
Constituent Elements ◽  
Conceptual Research

Abstract “Focalization” is a narrative discourse technique that produces different narrative structures based on choosing unique perspectives from which to present a story. This study designs a focalization mechanism and presents an experimental implementation. The proposed system functions as part of our integrated narrative generation system (INGS). In addition, the approach computationally extends the conceptual research of focalization by Genette to techniques for narrative generation. We define focalization as a procedure to transform a story structure into discourse structures through the following two steps: 1) restricting the scope of story information perceived from a chosen perspective, and 2) generating a discourse structure based on perceived story information. In particular, we define two types of rules for restricting the perception scope based on: a) objective perceptible possibility of constituent elements in a story and b) situations or states in which constituent elements in a story are positioned. Based on the experimentally implemented system, we present generated examples from a story using different focalization types. Through analysis, we show that the basic function of the focalization mechanism was achieved by the aforementioned rules.

Self and Other: The Limits of Narrative Understanding

2007 ◽  
Vol 60 ◽  
pp. 179-201 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dan Zahavi
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Narrative Approach ◽  
Narrative Construction ◽  
Discursive Practices ◽  
Fundamental Notion ◽  
Self And Other ◽  
Narrative Structures ◽  
Popular View ◽  
Train Of Thought ◽  
Narrative Understanding

If the self—as a popular view has it—is a narrative construction, if it arises out of discursive practices, it is reasonable to assume that the best possible avenue to self-understanding will be provided by those very narratives. If I want to know what it means to be a self, I should look closely at the stories that I and others tell about myself, since these stories constitute who I am. In the following I wish to question this train of thought. I will argue that we need to operate with a more primitive and fundamental notion of self; a notion of self that cannot be captured in terms of narrative structures. In a parallel move, I will argue that there is a crucial dimension of what it means to be other that is equally missed by the narrative approach. I will consequently defend the view that there are limits to the kind of understanding of self and others that narratives can provide.

Methodological and Substantive Remarks on Myth, Memory and History in the Construction of a European Community

2005 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 255-271 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bo Stråth
Keyword(s):  
Critical Approach ◽  
The Past ◽  
Narrative Structures ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
One Step ◽  
Critical Scrutiny ◽  
Hayden White ◽  
Narrative Framework ◽  
The Way

Over the last decades, a shift has occurred in the methodology of academic historiography, from an earlier focus on the quality of the sources towards the narrative framework of the history. The point in the new approach is that the sources are interpreted and put together into a narration. In the earlier approach, there was a kind of myopic source criticism, which stopped at the sources and never really questioned the way in which they were put together into a narration. The way in which this composition is made is as biased as the sources on which the narration is based. For this reason, critical scrutiny must move one step forward, instead of halting at the sources. The path-breaking Metahistory by Hayden White in 1973 demonstrated, in a provocative way, the bias in narrative structures. He moved the focus from the sources as such, towards the manner in which they were employed. When the book was published, it was generally rejected and marginalized by the historians’ craft. Today, it is no exaggeration to say that, even if it is not generally recognized, at least it is widely accepted. Metahistory alluded, of course, to metaphysics. White's conclusion was that history is basically ideology. History is not the past per se, nor, as Ranke argued, is it wie es eigentlich gewesen, but a reflection on the past from the present. This methodological shift does not deny the continued importance of a critical approach to the sources and does not reject the existence of events and facts. Methodological rules of how to evaluate sources critically are still valid. The events and the facts based on the events can be documented. No serious historian founding his or her work on sources would deny the fact that, for instance, the Holocaust really did occur.

Histories Natural and Unnatural

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Weitzman
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Developmental Process ◽  
Persian Period ◽  
Source Criticism ◽  
Evolutionary Account ◽  
Theory Of Evolution ◽  
Developmental Theories ◽  
Biblical Scholar

This chapter examines nineteenth-century developmental theories that explain the origin of the Jews, including the Documentary Hypothesis formulated by biblical scholar Julius Wellhausen (1844–1918). It considers Wellhausen's use of source criticism to demonstrate the developmental process that transformed the Israelites into the Jews, resulting in a kind of evolutionary account of Jewish origins that spanned several hundred years. It also situates Wellhausen's theory within later developmental theories, such as Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, to better understand what exactly he was arguing about the origin of the Jews. Finally, it discusses Wellhausen's claim that Judaism began in the postexilic/Persian period.

A cross-linguistic perspective on the development of temporal systems

1991 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-92 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard M. Weist ◽  
Hanna Wysocka ◽  
Paula Lyytinen
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Development ◽  
Developmental Process ◽  
Narrative Discourse ◽  
Matching Task ◽  
Older Children ◽  
Event Time ◽  
Comprehension Test ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Temporal Location ◽  
American Children

ABSTRACTThe purpose of this research was to evaluate the development of temporal location within a cross-linguistic experimental design. The research focused on the transition from a temporal system based on absolute temporal relations involving speech time and event time to a more complex system involving relative temporal relationships and reference time. A comprehension test was constructed with problems which were diagnostic of two salient distinctions within each of three temporal systems. The procedure was based on a two-choice sentence–picture matching task. The children who participated were from Poland, the USA and Finland, and there were 12 children at each of the following age levels: 2;6, 3;6, 4;6, 5;6, and 6;6. The Polish and American children solved problems requiring absolute temporal location at 2;6, and the older children eventually solved most of the problems requiring relative location. The Finnish children followed a different pattern taking longer to comprehend both types of problems. A second experiment confirmed the Finnish pattern of development. The results of the comprehension test were compared to observations of conversational and narrative discourse which were the product of two elicitation procedures. The research demonstrates the way in which conceptual development places a universal constraint on the developmental process and how the specific properties of individual languages also have an effect.

Self and Other: The Limits of Narrative Understanding

2007 ◽  
Vol 60 ◽  
pp. 179-202 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dan Zahavi
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Narrative Approach ◽  
Narrative Construction ◽  
Discursive Practices ◽  
Fundamental Notion ◽  
Self And Other ◽  
Narrative Structures ◽  
Popular View ◽  
Train Of Thought ◽  
Narrative Understanding

If the self—as a popular view has it—is a narrative construction, if it arises out of discursive practices, it is reasonable to assume that the best possible avenue to self-understanding will be provided by those very narratives. If I want to know what it means to be a self, I should look closely at the stories that I and others tell about myself, since these stories constitute who I am. In the following I wish to question this train of thought. I will argue that we need to operate with a more primitive and fundamental notion of self; a notion of self that cannot be captured in terms of narrative structures. In a parallel move, I will argue that there is a crucial dimension of what it means to be other that is equally missed by the narrative approach. I will consequently defend the view that there are limits to the kind of understanding of self and others that narratives can provide.

The narrative strategies of retail spaces: a semio-ethnographic approach

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean-Baptiste Welte ◽  
Olivier Badot ◽  
Patrick Hetzel
Keyword(s):  
Point Of View ◽  
Narrative Strategies ◽  
Experiential Marketing ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Practical Point ◽  
Narrative Structures ◽  
Ethnographic Approach ◽  
Narrative Framework ◽  
Practical Implications

Purpose The purpose of this study is to understand how narratives are generated in stores. Design/methodology/approach The study design is based on ethnographies documented in 10 sports stores in the Paris region. The ethnographic method enables a precise and in situ observation of how narratives are structured. Narrative structures develop from the accommodation of the narratives specific to retailers and narratives specific to the customer. Findings The findings of this study identified four main narratives in retail spaces (the serial, the tale, the epic, the legend), each of which is distinguished by the commercial/non-commercial orientation of the narratives and by a superficial/in-depth modification of the narratives produced outside the store. These four narratives are characterized by the vendors’ roles and by the distinct interactions between customers and retail stores. Research limitations/implications The originality of this study is to propose a narrative framework for retail structures. It illustrates the fact that the narrative is not solely a product of experiential marketing, but that it may be found in any retail store. From a practical point of view, it highlights other less costly experiential narrative strategies. Practical implications From a practical point of view, it highlights other less costly experiential narrative strategies. Originality/value The original value of this study is to apply structural semiotics to analyse narratives in the store.

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