Narrative analysis – Hermeneutics & Interactional Approaches

Question 1

Hermeneutic Approach

Answer 1

• Paul Ricoeur
• from the Greek word hermeneuo, which means translate, interpret

Interpretation of narrative = understanding its intersubjective and cultural meaning.

• Intersubjective = understanding in context of the narrator; interpersonal
• Cultural = interpreting within cultural context

About understanding the meaning of a narrative; why narratives are told and how listeners extract, capture, or find meaning

• Includes narrator and listener in analysis
• In pic, narrator in center and listeners around

Question 2

Interactional Approaches To Narratives

Answer 2

Focuses on situation in which narration happens

• Narration as a speech event
• Particular situation and social settings
• Assumption about the purpose of the narrative
• Read it to do homework, curiosity, etc.
• All this has impact on how we understand and manage narrative as form of communication

Question 3

The importance of time in narratives

Answer 3

P. Ricoeur: Time and narrative I - III (books written by Ricoeur)

“The world unfolded by every narrative work is always a temporal world. (…) time becomes human time to the extent that it is organized after the manner of a narrative; narrative, in turn, is meaningful to the extent that it portrays the features of temporal experience.”

• If you want to communicate something that includes a temporal dimension, the best way is to include it through narratives
• Concerns sentences (in linguistic sense; panel system); numbers of impact in terms of time
• Makes it more understandable as a human experience

Question 4

Ricoeur’s concept of threefold mimesis

Answer 4

Mimesis (in R’s sense) = a creative imitation, like metaphor

• Greek word; imitate
• Not mechanical imitation, but metaphorical or creative
• The model of threefold mimesis integrates into the narrative both the narrator’s understanding of the world, which precedes the narration, and the reader’s interpretation of the narrative, which occurs subsequently.
• Structural analysis only focuses on the plot; Riceor’s contribution is that he saw the plot as only ⅓ of the actual narrative

A narrative - as a representation of human temporality - emerges as a result of three distinct imaginary activities (aka 3 distinct mimesis):

1. Pre-figuration (A – B – C – D) Transform world we perceive into sequence of events
2. Con-figuration (D – A – B – C) Transform chain of events into narrative (create a plot)
3. Re-figuration (A – C – D) Listener decodes what they hear into sequence of events and message related to the narrative

Question 5

1. Pre-figuration

Answer 5

(A – B – C – D)
Transform world we perceive into sequence of events

• Seeing the world as a course of events understood in a specific way by the narrator
• To tell a narrative, we have to have an idea that there’s a sequence of events
• • Children don’t see chronological depth; difficult to create stories for them
• • Can’t see chain of events linked together
• Understanding and thinking of the world in terms of chronological ordering
• Narrator must perceive and also must be able to tell about the sequence of events
• Before creating the plot, you must be able to see the course of events
• Creative imitation - so in narrative, we imitate the sequence of events by creative manner; don’t tell in chronological order but we creatively approach it in chronological order

Question 6

2. Con-figuration

Answer 6

(D – A – B – C)
Transform chain of events into narrative (create a plot)

• The actual narrative, in which the course of events is encoded into a text by the narrator (narrative plot)
• Creating the actual narrative; creating the plot
• We know that some sequence of events happened, we realize that to tell it as a narrative, we have to make it interesting and understandable for listeners
• Must invent the plot; why are they narrating the story
• Implicit or explicit

Question 7

3. Re-figuration

Answer 7

(A – C – D)
Listener decodes what they hear into sequence of events and message related to the narrative

• The listener’s or the reader’s interpretation of the narrative as a representation of a particular course of events
• Listener reconstructs the logic of the story and sequence of events
• May perceive story as something quite different from author

Question 8

Interactionist approach

Answer 8

Telling a narrative is a speech event, it is a performance.
* Never happens in a vacuum; always in some social situation

[Speech event] implies certain expectancies about thematic progression, turn taking rules, form and outcome of the interaction as well as constraints on context. (Gumperz: Discourse Strategies, 1982)

• Both narrators and listeners have expectations about narratives
• First section of narratives is frequently abstract - inform readers what we’re going to tell them; create some expectation to attract attention
• Question/problem/issue for narrator - if they thinks/guess, they wouldn’t be able to fulfill expectancy of listeners; they’ll never start the narrative
• EX: they don’t tell jokes because they don’t think they’ll be funny

The assigned identity to both the narrator and listener has a strong impact on the narrative construction; e.g. long vs. short biographical narratives.
* If we’re perceived as bad guy vs. good guy, we’ll get different reactions

Question 9

Example of Interactionist approach:

The narrative is constructed jointly by the narrator and the listener (researcher)

Answer 9

In biographical narratives respondents ask cooperative questions like:

• Are you following me?
• I’ve just lost the thread…wait…where were we before? - You’ve been talking about…
• Do you remember it? Have you ever been there?

The responses from the listener can have an impact on the resulting narrative (e.g. encouraging or inhibiting)

Narrator asks questions to be sure that the listener understands the story or ideas correctly

Question 10

Storytelling does not occur randomly or evenly across social interactions

Answer 10

Social organization of narrative: a context of elicitation, determines, among other things, when a story is expected, demanded, or disallowed.

Example: stories at court-rooms: not everybody is allowed to tell a story (the accused, witness, attorney).
* Should be giving information; facts; not telling a story

In exams or academic sense, stories usually indicate that they don’t know the answer; suspicious when a student starts telling a story when they should be giving facts/information

Question 11

What is the relation between the ongoing process of producing stories and consuming them?
(4 levels)

Answer 11

1. personal– it concerns the motives people have for telling their tale (You should know, who I am; I have an interesting story to say.)
   * We want to attract attention; convince someone; communicate our experience
2. situational – processes through which people turn themselves into self-indicated social objects I am a narrator and you ought to listen to me.
   * When you’re at camp, there’s always some people that end up telling stories around a campfire; same like family gatherings, etc.
3. organizational – organizational frame of the settings in which stories are generated (psychoanalytic session, TV show, courtroom, research interview…)
   * Courtroom, research, patients sometimes forced to tell stories
4. cultural/historical: historical moment at which a story enters public discourse — the moment of public reception (Plummer, 1994: Telling Sexual Stories)
   * Sexual stories not allowed publicly for a long time
   * Stories of offenders/criminals also not allowed for some time

Question 12

In hermeneutic analysis of narratives, what mimetic level concerns the analysis of plot?

Answer 12

In a hermeneutic analysis of narratives, The second level (con-figuration), is where the plot is created. This is where the narrator would spend the most time constructing the plot and the actual narrative.

However, the third mimetic level (re-figuration) concerns the external analysis of plot. In this level, the listener reconstructs the logic of the story and sequence of events and may perceive the story as something quite different from what the author intended.

Question 13

How to be (methodologically) reflexive in the analysis of narratives?

Answer 13

To be methodologically reflexive while analyzing narratives, the research of such narratives should start with mimesis 3, with exploring of readers’ (incl. analyst’s) understanding and interpretation. We must first understand who are the readers and how they’re understanding the story. Where structural analysis only focuses on the plot, Riceor’s contribution is that he saw the plot as only ⅓ of the actual narrative.

The next step would be understanding the plot of the story and how it relates to the understanding of the narrative, from both the narrator’s and the reader’s points of view.

To properly understand, we must find out about the author’s pre-understanding of the (social) world, and how does that (social) world enter the story. We then might also see who the actors are and the part they play in the story.

Question 14

Why the identity assigned to the narrator before the narration influence the resulting narrative?

Answer 14

The identity of the narrator is important and influences the resulting narrative because narratives are constructed jointly by the narrator and the listener. In many narratives, there’s a back-and-forth with (sometimes) equal contribution from both narrator and reader. The responses from the listener can have an impact on the resulting narrative (e.g. encouraging or inhibiting). And throughout the narrative, a narrator may ask questions to be sure that the listener understands the story or ideas correctly.