Abstract Three claims are advocated in this article. Firstly, the article suggests that there is no relevant “sameness approach,” which would advise reading fiction and non-fiction similarly. Secondly, it argues that both fiction and non-fiction exhibit multiple functions and cannot be reduced to the binary setting of informing or entertaining. Thirdly, it suggests that the continuity thesis does not imply sameness. By applying the fundamental logical distinction between necessary and sufficient conditions, one can accept major similarities between the resources of reading fiction and non-fiction without ever presuming their sameness. These claims are considered by first revisiting the histories of narratology and the narrative social research and then discussing M. A. K. Halliday’s systemic-functional language theory.

Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film

Sameness, difference, or continuity?

A Tale of Two Capitalisms: Sacred Economics in Nineteenth-Century Britain

/pdf/the-storm-still-echoes-suspense-and-ambivalence-as-a-way-of-c9o0g82dtq.pdf

The Storm Still Echoes: Suspense and Ambivalence as a Way of Life

Over the last two decades, the advent of new narrative media has forced many in the field of narratology to grapple with the continuing questions and adjustments raised by such unconventional forms of story-telling. Among the leaders in this charge, Marie-Laure Ryan has worked to delineate the ramifications of new media, largely spawned from computer technology, on narrative theory.1 However, in her essay "Cyberage Narratology" which appears in David Herman's Narratologies: New Perspectives on Narrative Analysis, Ryan reverses this issue. Instead of asking how new technologies and narrative genres might necessitate "the broadening of the scope of narratology," here, Ryan seeks "to survey what computers can teach us about traditional forms of narrative" (115). Specifically, Ryan proposes applying four computer metaphors to narratological contexts. Among these four metaphors, Ryan suggests the metaphor of "morphing" may help define the changing nature of a narrator's voice throughout a text because the metaphor allows for "flexibility" within the discussion of the narrator's ontology (137). In this essay, I will further explore Ryan's morphing metaphor, specifically fo cusing on its usefulness as a method of discerning and describing the process of shifting textual voices within third-person narratives. I will examine this question from three perspectives. First, I propose that describing voice with a morphing metaphor has the potential to add specificity to ongoing discussions surrounding the nature of free indirect discourse because it introduces the possibility of identifying a transitional process of voice between narrator and character, while also illustrating, through visual terminology, the varying fluctuations between two speaking agents.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/25609363.pdf

The Morphing Metaphor and the Question of Narrative Voice

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Although there is a rich literature on place and home within gerontology, few studies have considered how place acts as identity markers for older African Americans. Since narratives and stories represent ways of expressing self and identity through ordered talk, they offer an interesting way to consider how people age biographically such as through links between place and self. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS We analyzed small stories (i.e., stories that can appear as snippets of talk immersed within a larger narrative) from five African Americans (three women, two men, ages 78-93 years) to better understand "place" in the context of their lives. RESULTS Overall, place in participants' small stories was linked to the African American oral tradition and, for some, the Great Migration (1915-1970) from south to north. Place identity in the small stories therefore went beyond fond reminisce and instead became a type of resistance to dominant narratives of place. DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS Studying small stories can therefore be an important tool in better understanding deeply personal experiences of place for under-represented elders.

Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film

Citations

Sameness, difference, or continuity?

A Tale of Two Capitalisms: Sacred Economics in Nineteenth-Century Britain

The Storm Still Echoes: Suspense and Ambivalence as a Way of Life

The Morphing Metaphor and the Question of Narrative Voice

“Place” in the Small Stories of African American Elders: A Narrative Case Study

Related Papers (5)

Narrative discourse : an essay in method

Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative

Morphology of the folktale

The rhetoric of fiction

An Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narrative