Narrative analysis – Structural & Network approaches

Question 1

Structural approach (Propp, Greimas, Labov)

Answer 1

The structural approach is looking for invariant structures in/of narratives

The invariant structure of fairy tales
A sequence of 31 typical actions (functions within the story; like violation of the prohibition); 7 characters (roles like heroes)

Question 2

Greimas (1966): simplification of narrative morphology

Answer 2

Sequence of 5 functions

   Equilibrium
	     ↓
1. Disequilibrium
	     ↓
2. Hero’s appearance
	     ↓
3. Trial
	     ↓
4. Completion of task
	     ↓
5. Return
     	     ↓
    New equilibrium

Question 3

Actantial model (six actants)

Answer 3

sender → object → receiver
↑
helper → subject ← opponent

Question 4

Labov and Waletzki

Answer 4

Structure of oral narratives of personal experience

• Formal analysis of (oral) narrative
• Narrative clauses vs. free clauses
• Narrative clauses – temporarily ordered with respect to each other; the order of clauses can’t be changed without changing the semantic interpretation (what happened);
• Free clauses – can be rearranged without altering semantic interpretation

Question 5

Narrative clauses

Answer 5

• Narrative clauses – temporarily ordered with respect to each other; the order of clauses can’t be changed without changing the semantic interpretation (what happened);

“And he attacked me
And a friend came in
And she stopped it”

Question 6

Free clauses

Answer 6

• Free clauses – can be rearranged without altering semantic interpretation

“Well, this person had a little too much to drink”

Question 7

Formal analysis of (oral) narrative

6 parts – L&W

Answer 7

• Labov and Waletzki
• The structure of normal form of a narrative:
• ABSTRACT (What was this about?)
• ORIENTATION (Who? What? Where? When? Why?)
• COMPLICATION (Then what happened?)
• EVALUATION (So what?)
• RESULT (What finally happened?)
• CODA (That’s all; moral of the story)

Question 8

Functions of narrative (L&W)

Answer 8

• Labov and Waletzki
• Referential
  Information through the narrator’s recapitulation of experience
• Evaluative
  Communication of meaning of the narrative by establishing some point of personal involvement

Question 9

Network approaches to narratives

Answer 9

1. Roberto Franzosi’s story grammar

• It makes use of simple actantial structure of narratives
• It collects actants and their co-occurrence and displays aggregate data in the form of a simple network

2. Narrative networks

• It visualizes a complex network of actors/actions within a narrative
• Or it combines more narratives into a supra-narrative network

Question 10

Roberto Franzosi’s story grammar

Answer 10

• It makes use of simple actantial structure of narratives
• It collects actants and their co-occurrence and displays aggregate data in the form of a simple network
• “Story grammar” consisting of “semantic triplets”

SUBJECT
[number]
[type]
[organization]
...
↓
ACTION
[time]
[place]
[type]
[number]
[outcome]
...
↓
OBJECT
[number]
[type]
[organization]
...

Question 11

Networks in/of narratives

Answer 11

• It visualizes a complex network of actors/actions within a narrative
• Or it combines more narratives into a supra-narrative network
• The strategy is to consider narrative sequences as networks.
• Elements are treated as nodes which are connected by narrative clauses, represented by arcs

Question 12

Why does the actantial model consist of “actants” not “actors”?

Answer 12

The word “actor” is strongly associated with human beings, and so using that word will automatically create a mental image or understanding that any character in a story is human. The actantial model uses “actants” because the word better describes the entities that play a part in the story (and which may not always be human). For example, a helper may be a talking donkey (like the movie Shrek), and an opponent may be an idea like Fascism (like in the Preamble of the Czechoslovak socialist constitution).

Question 13

Are free clauses important for a narrative or do they present just a narrative “noise”?

Answer 13

Free clauses can be rearranged without altering semantic interpretation in a narrative. They are still very important, but they have no direct relationship to the chronological sequence of events. Rather their purpose is usually to describe the actors, situation, or the narrator’s opinion. The difference between narrative clauses and free clauses is not their structure, but their function. Free clauses are not “noise” because they are important to provide descriptions and evaluations in narratives.

Question 14

What kind of narratives you consider promising for sociologically oriented structural analysis and why?

Answer 14

The most promising kinds of narratives for sociologically oriented analysis would be narrative networks that include analysis of modern or historical narratives about social commentary, events, or times of social change. Narrative networks are complex and allow sociologists to analyze the relationships between certain words and ideas. Words can be extracted from analysis tools and then mapped out to show word frequencies and relationships (like subject and object) between actors in the narratives.