Hybrid Fictionality and Vicarious Narrative Experience

doi:10.1353/NAR.2017.0004

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Hybrid Fictionality and Vicarious Narrative Experience

Journal Article•DOI•

Hybrid Fictionality and Vicarious Narrative Experience

01 Jan 2017-Narrative (The Ohio State University Press)-Vol. 25, Iss: 1, pp 65-82

TL;DR: The authors argue for a point of view focusing more on the narrative dimension of fictionality than on the fictive story content, arguing that the procedures used to present and engage with other minds travel between fictional and non-fictional narratives, and between stories artistically designed and those occurring in conversational or documentary environments.

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Abstract: This article discusses the recent trends in Fictionality Studies and argues for a point of view focusing more on the narrative dimension of fictionality than on the fictive story content. With the analysis of two case studies, where a non-fictional third-person narrator represents the experience of nonfictional protagonists, the authors maintain Fictionality Studies should take into account not just prototypical cases of fictionality but also those that are more hybrid in nature, cases where signposts of fictionality are used locally in narratives that are globally marked as nonfiction. The examples—an interview and an online museum exhibition—show that the employment of fictional modes of mind representation and cognitive attribution occur in conversational and documentary storytelling even if the reference is to the actual world. The results indicate that the procedures used to present and engage with other minds travel between fictional and nonfictional narratives, and between stories artistically designed and those occurring in conversational or documentary environments.

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Journal Article•DOI•

Fictionality, Narrative Modes, and Vicarious Storytelling

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Mari Hatavara, Jarmila Mildorf

22 Sep 2017-Style

TL;DR: For instance, the authors introduced the notion of cross-fictionality to characterize a narrative where the frame of reference is non-fictional but the narrative modes include those that are conventionally regarded as fictional.

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Abstract: One of the key issues in the interplay between artistic and everyday narrative practices is the question whether some modes of telling are specific or exclusive to one or the other Whereas in contemporary narrative studies it is a commonplace to understand everyday oral narratives as a prototype of all narrative forms, the traffic from artistic, fictional narratives toward everyday storytelling has received much less attention However, socionarratology, for example, reminds us of the cultural and conventional basis for all human interaction and narrative sense-making In 1999, David Herman postulated this integrated, narrative-analytical approach which he termed socionarratology, a conceptual model that "situates stories in a constellation of linguistic, cognitive, and contextual factors" (Herman 219) Matti Hyvarinen ("Expectations and Experientiality"), drawing on the idea of socionarratology, points out how the expected in the form of generic models and cultural scripts shapes both literary and everyday narratives Yet, he has also concluded that there might, after all, be significant differences in literary and everyday narratives especially when it comes to mind reading or mind attribution (Hyvarinen, "Mind Reading" 238) Jarmila Mildorf ("Thought Presentation") showed how storytellers may circumvent the problems surrounding mind attribution in everyday storytelling by resorting to other, more indirect means of thought presentation, such as constructed dialogue Fictionality, understood--among other things--as specific ways to represent minds in narratives also outside of fiction, clearly needs to be further studied The signposts of fictionality are usually understood to include paratextual signals, the synchronic relation between story and discourse, the dissociation of the author and the narrator, and the representation of thought and consciousness (Cohn, "Signposts" 800; Grishakova 65) To offer a rough outline, one could say that fictionality studies today emphasize either paratextuality (eg, Walsh, The Rhetoric), authors and their communicative intentions (eg, Nielsen and Phelan), or narrative modes of consciousness representation; our approach falls into the last category (Hatavara and Mildorf) Since the last category is the only one to do with narrative discourse modes per se, that is what our article concentrates on in the effort to study the traffic from the fictional to the everyday in narrative means of mind representation We understand fictionality as a conglomeration of narrative discourse modes characteristic of generic fiction but not confined to it This partly follows and extends the tradition of discourse-narratological studies on fictionality Even though this tradition searched for "fiction-specific" narrative modes (Cohn, Distinction 2; "Signposts" 779), it is worth noticing that the possibility of expanding fictional modes beyond fiction was recognized from an early stage on Dorrit Cohn pointed out almost thirty years ago that narratology was unaware "of the places where its findings are specific to the fictional domain and need to be modified before they can apply to neighboring narrative precincts" (Cohn, "Signposts" 800) Using a life story interview as our test case we identify signposts of fictionality, analyze how they function in a nonfictional environment and try to point out issues requiring further theoretical modification In order to account for cognitive and contextual as well as linguistic factors of stories, and to do justice to the nature of life story interviews both as personal testimony and as a semiotic object, we introduce the term cross-fictionality to characterize a narrative where the frame of reference is nonfictional but the narrative modes include those that are conventionally regarded as fictional Therefore, cross-fictionality denotes narrative features that are characteristic of fiction but are also able to cross to other narrative environments …

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23 citations

Journal Article•DOI•

Real fictions: Fictionality, factuality and narrative strategies in contemporary storytelling

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Sam Browse¹, Alison Gibbons¹, Mari Hatavara•Institutions (1)

Sheffield Hallam University¹

16 Oct 2019-Narrative Inquiry

21 citations

Cites background from "Hybrid Fictionality and Vicarious N..."

...The rhetorical trend has been continued more recently by Nielsen, Phelan, and Walsh (2015), Phelan (2017), and Zetterberg Gjerlevsen (2016a, 2017, 2018)....
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...How to Make Iser: The Fictive and the Imaginary (1993) Herman: Storytelling and the Sciences of the Mind (2011) Gibbons: ‘Fictionality and Ontology’ (2014) Spolsky: Contracts of Fiction (2015) Kukkonen: [in Kukkonen and Nielsen] ‘Fictionality, Cognition and Ryan: Avatars of Story (2006), ‘Transfictionality across Media’ (2008) Zipfel: ‘Fiction across Media’ (2014) (1998) Ryan: ‘Fiction, NonFactuals, and the Principle of Minimal Departure’ (1980), Fictional Worlds, Articificial Intelligence, and Narrative Theory (1991) Lewis: ‘Truth in Fiction’ (1983) Harshaw (Hrushovski): ‘Fictionality and Frames of Reference’ (1984) Narrative’ (1990), Fiction & Diction (1993) Löschnigg: ‘Narratological Categories and the (Non-)Distinction between Factual and Fictional Narratives’ (1999) Fludernik: ‘Fiction vs Non-Fiction’ (2001), ‘The Fiction of the Rise of Fictionality’ (2018) Hatavara and Mildorf: ‘Hybrid Fictionality and The Rhetoric of Fictionality (2007) Nielsen: ‘Natural Authors, Unnatural Narration’ (2010), ‘Unnatural Authors, Impersonal Voices, Real Author, and Non-Communicative Narration’ (2011) and [in Kukkonen and Nielsen] ‘Fictionality, Cognition and Exceptionality’ (2018) Nielsen, Phelan, and Walsh: ‘Ten Theses about Fictionality’ Believe (2015) Exceptionality’ (2018)...
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...Nielsen is also committed to this approach, though he spreads his allegiances between rhetorical and unnatural narratology (2010, 2011; Kukkonen & Nielsen, 2018)....
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...Through his focus on textuality and imaginative construction, Iser’s work is reception-oriented and stands as a significant precursor of recent attempts to develop a cognitive account of fictionality (Gibbons, 2014; Kukkonen & Nielsen, 2018)....
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...In speaking of a “fiction effect”, Prince anticipates more recent debates which revision markers or “signposts” of fictionality instead as “fictionalizing strategies” (cf. Iversen & Nielsen, 2016; Hatavara & Mildorf, 2017a)....
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Journal Article•DOI•

Fictionality as Rhetoric: A Distinctive Research Paradigm

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Richard Walsh

01 Jan 2019-Style

18 citations

Journal Article•DOI•

Narrative as Social Action: A Narratological Approach to Story, Discourse and Positioning in Political Storytelling.

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Samuli Björninen, Mari Hatavara, Maria Mäkelä

29 Jan 2020-International Journal of Social Research Methodology

TL;DR: This article argued that the narratological story-disconnection is a form of social action and argued that narrative should be viewed as a social action, rather than as an analytical process.

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Abstract: Many sociologists have called for analytical rigor in the study of narrative while maintaining that narrative should be viewed as a form of social action. We argue that the narratological story-dis...

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16 citations

Cites background from "Hybrid Fictionality and Vicarious N..."

...Hatavara and Mildorf (2017a, 2017b) have demonstrated that such narrative modes mixing the voices of a teller and another person frequently occur in documentary and interview settings....
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...Whereas personal stories are often used to justify minority opinions in political argumentation (Polletta & Lee, 2006), the studies so far suggest that the rhetorical purposes and effects of telling stories of vicarious experience are multifarious (Hatavara & Mildorf, 2017b, p. 405)....
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Journal Article•DOI•

Why There Are No One-to-One Correspondences among Fictionality, Narrative, and Techniques: A Response to Mari Hatavara and Jarmila Mildorf

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James Phelan, Henrik Skov Nielsen

01 Jan 2017-Narrative

TL;DR: The authors argue that the presence in a text of techniques conventionally associated with fiction gives that text a hybrid or fictional status, and they also find the large discursive territory covered by their notion of fictionality to be a theoretical advantage rather than disadvantage.

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Abstract: In this essay we respond to Mari Hatavara’s and Jarmila Mildorf ’s critical engagement with our “Ten Theses about Fictionality.” We explain why we find our rhetorical approach to fictionality more persuasive than their approach; more specifically, we explain why we disagree with their claims that fictionality entails narrative and that the presence in a text of techniques conventionally associated with fiction gives that text a hybrid or fictional status. We also explain why we find the large discursive territory covered by our notion of fictionality to be a theoretical advantage rather than disadvantage.

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10 citations

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References

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Journal Article•DOI•

Actual Minds, Possible Worlds.

[...]

Nancy Mergler, Ronald Schleifer, Jerome S. Bruner

01 Dec 1986-Mln

8,601 citations

Journal Article•DOI•

The Narrative Construction of Reality

[...]

Jerome S. Bruner¹•Institutions (1)

University of York¹

01 Oct 1991-Critical Inquiry

TL;DR: For instance, the study of mind has focused principally on how man achieves a "true" knowledge of the world as discussed by the authors, that is, how we get a reliable fix on the world, a world that is assumed to be immutable and, as it were, there to be observed.

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Abstract: Surely since the Enlightenment, if not before, the study of mind has centered principally on how man achieves a "true" knowledge of the world. Emphasis in this pursuit has varied, of course: empiricists have concentrated on the mind's interplay with an external world of nature, hoping to find the key in the association of sensations and ideas, while rationalists have looked inward to the powers of mind itself for the principles of right reason. The objective, in either case, has been to discover how we achieve "reality," that is to say, how we get a reliable fix on the world, a world that is, as it were, assumed to be immutable and, as it were, "there to be observed." This quest has, of course, had a profound effect on the development of psychology, and the empiricist and rationalist traditions have dominated our conceptions of how the mind grows and how it gets its grasp on the "real world." Indeed, at midcentury Gestalt theory represented the rationalist wing of this enterprise and American learning theory the empiricist. Both gave accounts of mental development as proceeding in some more or less linear and uniform fashion from an initial incompetence in grasping reality to a final competence, in one case attributing it to the working out of internal processes or mental organization, and in the other to some unspecified principle of reflection by which—whether through reinforcement, association, or conditioning—we came to respond to the world "as it is." There have always been dissidents who

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4,105 citations

"Hybrid Fictionality and Vicarious N..." refers background in this paper

...…two compositional principles collide in the orientation section: Marko’s everyday life, where breach (“pleasant change”) is highlighted over canonicity (“hanging around”), and Marko’s unemployment, where canonicity (working) is highlighted over breach (being unemployed) (see Bruner 1991, 11–13)....
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...Not only do both artistic and conversational stories accompany us from an early age on, at least some of us arguably even think narratively (Bruner 1986, 1991)....
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Journal Article•DOI•

Narrative analysis: Oral versions of personal experience.

[...]

William Labov, Joshua Waletzky¹•Institutions (1)

Harvard University¹

01 Jan 1997-Journal of Narrative and Life History

3,010 citations

Book•

Language in the Inner City: Studies in the Black English Vernacular

[...]

William Labov

01 Jan 1972

TL;DR: In this paper, some sources of reading problems for speakers of the Black English Vernacular are discussed, such as negative attraction and negative conjunctive reading, and the relation of reading failure to peer-group status.

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Abstract: Figures Tables Introduction PART I- THE STRUCTURE OF THE BLACK ENGLISH VERNACULAR 1- Some Sources of Reading Problems for Speakers of the Black English Vernacular 2- Is the Black English Vernacular a Separate System? 3- Contraction, Deletion, and Inherent Variability of the English Copula 4- Negative Attraction and Negative Concord PART II- THE VERNACULAR IN ITS SOCIAL SETTING 5- The Logic of Nonstandard English 6- The Relation of Reading Failure to Peer-group Status 7- The Linguistic Consequences of Being a Lame PART III THE USES OF THE BLACK ENGLISH VERNACULAR 8- Rules for Ritual Insults 9- The Transformation of Experience in Narrative Syntax Bibliography Index

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2,089 citations

Book•

Talking Voices: Repetition, Dialogue, and Imagery in Conversational Discourse

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Deborah Tannen¹•Institutions (1)

Georgetown University¹

01 Jan 1989

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors discuss the role of details and images in creating involvement in conversation and other genres of non-narrative or quasinarrative conversational discourse.

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Abstract: Acknowledgements 1. Introduction Overview of chapters Discourse analysis 2. Involvement in discourse Involvement Sound and sense in discourse Involvement strategies Scenes and music in creating involvement 3. Repetition in conversation: toward a poetics of talk Theoretical implications of repetition Repetition in discourse Functions of repetition in conversation Repetition and variation in conversation Examples of functions of repetition The range of repetition in a segment of conversation Individual and cultural differences Other genres The automaticity of repetition The drive to imitate Conclusion 4. 'Oh talking voice that is so sweet': constructing dialogue in conversation Reported speech and dialogue Dialogue in storytelling Reported criticism in conversation Reported speech is constructed dialogue Constructed dialogue in a conversational narrative Modern Greek stories Brazilian narrative Dialogue in writers' conversation Conclusion 5. Imagining worlds: imagery and detail in conversation and other genres The role of details and images in creating involvement Details in conversation Images and details in narrative Nonnarrative or quasinarrative conversational discourse Rapport through telling details The intimacy of details Spoken literary discourse Written discourse High-involvement writing When details don't work or work for ill Conclusion 6. Involvement strategies in consort: literary non-fiction and political oratory Thinking with feeling Literary non-fiction Speaking and writing with involvement Involvement in political oratory Conclusion 7. Afterword: toward a humanistic linguistics Appendix I. Sources of examples Appendix II. Transcription conventions Notes List of references Author index Subject index.

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1,933 citations