Discourse Analysis and Narrative
-
Upload
ancaflorescu -
Category
Documents
-
view
20 -
download
4
description
Transcript of Discourse Analysis and Narrative
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
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