Narrative analysis

Question 1

Why study narratives (storytelling)?

Answer 1

• Stories are primary form by which human experience is made meaningful (both retrospectively and prospectively)
• No society can exist without narratives (everyday situational storytelling / myths and other “grand narratives”)
• Narratives provide members of the society with understanding of the world they live in
• Through researching narratives we learn how people in society understand what is going on in their lives

Question 2

What are some examples of narratives?

Answer 2

Personal stories
Comic strips
Jokes
Autobiographies 
Gossip	
Legal testimonies
Historiography
Novels
News reports
Mythology 
Fairy-tales
Retellings of film plots
Organizations’ stores of origin
TV series

Question 3

What are some examples of non-narratives?

Answer 3

• Not all communication is narration (resulting in narratives) – like instructions, descriptions, predictions, lists, explanations, etc.
• Minimal definition of narrative: Narrative is a method of recapitulating past experience by matching a verbal sequence of clauses to the sequence of events which actually occurred (W.Labov)

Reality: A → B → C … X
Speech: A’ → B’ → C’ … X’

• Not all narratives contain unidirectional sequence of events; sometimes events from a more complex temporal chain

Question 4

What’s the difference between story and plot?

Answer 4

Distinction between story and plot (discourse) in the narrative

• Story is the chronological sequence of events “as happened”
• Plot (discourse) is the arrangement of events into a narrative

Story = the entire cave
Narration = movement along the illuminated path
Plot = illuminated places = discourse 

No story unfolding → no plot (no adventure) → no narrative, only description

Question 5

Realist approach

Answer 5

What narratives tell us about society depends on our approach

• A realist approach → narrative is understood as a representation of human experience; invisible as a medium (like biographies, oral history, informants)

Question 6

Constructivist approach

Answer 6

What narratives tell us about society depends on our approach

• A constructivist approach → narrative is understood as a way to discursively act, to construct meaning and impose it on objects and situations (like identity construction)

Question 7

What should we study in narratives?

Three models of narrative inquiry

Answer 7

1. Narrative syntax (structural approach)
2. Narrative semantics (hermeneutic approach)
3. Narrative pragmatics (interactive approach)

Question 8

Narrative syntax

Answer 8

1/3 models of narrative inquiry

• Studying the structure of naturally-occurring personal event narratives (Labov) defined by narrative clauses; studying the functional structure of narratives (Propp, Greimas)

AKA structural approach

Question 9

Narrative semantics

Answer 9

1/3 models of narrative inquiry

• Studying the content of stories that express experiences (like mapping the violation and restoration of the standard course (key/fatal moments)); hermeneutics of a biography (oral history)

AKA hermeneutic approach

Question 10

Narrative pragmatics

Answer 10

1/3 models of narrative inquiry

• Studying the co-constructed performance in interviews of identity stories; mapping interpretive communities through story genres; studying the relations between personal and cultural narratives

AKA interactive approach

Question 11

What narrative most influenced your life?

Answer 11

The narrative that most influenced my life is that of Jesus in the Bible. I grew up in America in a very religious family. We never missed church on Sundays and often had church events during the week. My parents also sent me to a private religious school from Kindergarten through the end of high school. I don’t think there was a single day during that time that I didn’t hear some part of the narrative that comes from the Bible. Even though I have moved away and don’t actively practice religion, my parents and the rest of my family are still devout Christians, and they regularly send pieces of Jesus’ narrative to me in emails, cards, texts, and when speaking on the phone.

MH’s comment:
I would say rather the story of Jesus that is told/written in various narratives, e.g. four Gospels in the New Testament.

Question 12

What are examples of non-narrative communication (texts)?

Answer 12

Non-narrative communication includes things like descriptions, explanations, and instructions. I am very familiar with this type of writing as I have worked as a technical writer and UX writer for a few years now. The goal of technical (and most other non-narrative) writing is to present all information at once, and without any complications of plot or narration. Non-narrative writing presents information as plainly as possible without any room for confusion.

MH’s comment:
But sometimes we need a narrative to know how to interpret a non-narrative text. Examples can be found in the interpretation of law (instructions, how to use it wisely), which abounds with narrative case studies.

Question 13

In researching a career of a famous scientist what approach is more suitable for the narrative analysis: realist or constructivist? Why?

Answer 13

The realist approach would be better for researching the career of a famous scientist because it is more concerned with the events of the human experience rather than the storytelling or narration. The narration, in this case, should be invisible. It merely acts as a medium to present facts, so the reader is not really interested in the way that the writer creates a narrative. Instead, readers are interested in the information behind the narrative.

MH’s comment:
I suggest the constructivist approach since we know the facts about the life of a famous person or we can ask other people around. What we don’t know is how the person interprets her career, how she constructs her identity through narrating her career. But both approaches are possible.