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Structure of Narrative

Narratives = stories

reports on personal experience, e.g. a car accident

fairytales; folktales; fables;

film

poems and songs




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Narrative analysis:

focuses on the ways in which people make and use stories to interpret the world;

does NOT treat narratives as stories that transmit a set of facts about the world, and is not
primarily interested in whether stories are true or not;

views narratives as social products that are produced by people in the context of specific
social, historical and cultural locations

views narratives as interpretive devices through which people represent themselves and
their worlds to themselves and to others.




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Definitions

Narrative can be characterised by:

Accounts which contain an element of transformation (ie. change over time)

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Accounts containing some kind of action and characters that are brought together in a plot
line.


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narratives have a temporal dimension

characters and actions can be imaginary/fantasy

emplotment is a process through which narratives are produced: many disparate elements
go together to make up one story (eg. digressions, sub-plots etc.)

narratives must have a point (a so what? factor), which often takes the form of a moral
message.


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Structuralist approaches to narrative:

e.g. Propp, 1968 / Labov, 1973



Narratives can take different forms, and Propp (1968) argued that:

The fairytale involves a narrative form that is central to all story-telling



The fairytale is structured not by the nature of the characters but by the function they play
in the plot



The number of possible functions is fairly small.


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Example:
(Using Propps approach)



Most fairytales follow a similar plot line, e.g. A dragon kidnaps the kings daughter



Element
Function
Replacement



Dragon
Evil force
Witch



King
Ruler
Chief



Daughter
Loved one
Wife



Kidnap
Disappearance Vanish


Discourse Schemata and the Structure of Narrative

Van Dijk: story as sequence of structural slots, starting with summary in the headline and
lead, moving to the main story (organized as one or more episodes, each consisting of the
of events, followed by consequences and/or reactions)

Macrostructure reflects and realizes writers and readers cognitive schema for such articles,
a set of pre-formed expectations about structure and content that simplifies information
processing.


Labovs Model

According to Labov, any narrative includes at least two narrative clauses.

A narrative clause is a clause that cannot be moved without changing the order in which
events must be taken to have occurred.

Abstract consists of a clause or two at the beginning of a narrative summarizing the story to
come.

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Orientation in a narrative introduces characters, temporal and physical setting, and

situation.

Complicating action clauses are narrative clauses




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The result or resolution releases the tension and tells what finally happened.

Just before the result or resolution, but also throughout the narrative, are elements that
serve as evaluation.

At the end of the story the teller may announce via a coda that the story is over (e.g. And
that was that)




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Evaluation is the crucial element which transforms a narrative from a report into a story.

This model of story structure was designed for elicited oral narratives.
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Some common openers to spoken stories, narratives would be:

- Ill always remember the time...
- Did I ever tell you about...
- I must tell you about...
- Youll never guess what happened yesterday...
- Have you heard the one about..


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There are also markers for complicating events:

And then/suddenly/ out of the blue...

Next thing we knew...

And as if that wasnt enough...

Then guess what happened...


A fully-formed oral narrative follows six stages:

1. Abstract: What is the story about?

2. Orientation: Who, when where, how?

3. Complicating action: Then what happened?

4. Evaluation: How or why is this interesting?

5. Result / Resolution: What finally happened?

6. Coda