Showing papers on "Narrative structure published in 2010"

A Narrative Policy Framework: Clear Enough to Be Wrong?

Abstract: Narratives are increasingly subject to empirical study in a wide variety of disciplines. However, in public policy, narratives are thought of almost exclusively as a poststructural concept outside the realm of empirical study. In this paper, after reviewing the major literature on narratives, we argue that policy narratives can be studied using systematic empirical approaches and introduce a “Narrative Policy Framework” (NPF) for elaboration and empirical testing. The NPF defines narrative structure and narrative content. We then discuss narrative at the micro level of analysis and examine how narratives impact individual attitudes and hence aggregate public opinion. Similarly, we examine strategies for the studying of group and elite behavior using the NPF. We conclude with seven hypotheses for researchers interested in elaborating the framework.

Revisiting the Narrative Turns

Abstract: This article reconsiders (self-)critically the constitution of the scholarly phenomenon called the ‘narrative turn’. Based on the intellectual autobiographical experiences of the author, it is argued that the turn may be understood as having proceeded in three successive phases: as an interest in narrative theory and research; as recognition of narrative inquiry as a field; and as an explicit identity concept. In order to resist straightforward chronology, it is suggested that instead of one fixed narrative turn, we should talk about at least four different turns with different agendas and attitudes toward narrative: firstly, the turn in literary theory in the 1960s; the turn in historiography following literary narratology; the turn in social sciences from the 1980s onwards; and finally a more broadly cultural and societal turn to narration. There is no simple plotline or causal chain between these layers; instead they tend to receive locally idiosyncratic articulations. Understanding the different agend...

Chinatown transformed: Ideology, power, and resources in narrative place-making

Abstract: Combining textual, visual, and ethnographic approaches to discourse, this article examines a variety of resources employed in the narrative construction of Washington, DC’s Chinatown in a billboard advertisement that de-ethnicizes the neighborhood. Analysis of the linguistic resources of narrative structure, comparative reference, and lexical cohesion reveals how the gentrification of Chinatown is constructed as a positive transformation driven by a corporation. Further, the visual juxtaposition of text with photos and graphics appropriates the community voice and infuses it with corporate identity. This ideological multimodal construction of the transformation of Chinatown is finally actualized in its durable material form and strategic spatial emplacement. Incorporating ethnographic observation and an interview, this article illustrates how the symbolic power of narrative in place-making is interdependent on the economic power of its producer to propagate ideological discourse in the material world.

Narratology: An Introduction

Abstract: This book is a standard work for modern narrative theory. It provides a terminological and theoretical system of reference for future research. The author explains and discusses in detail problems of communication structure and entities of a narrative work, point of view, the relationship between narrator's text and character's text, narrativity and eventfulness, and narrative transformations of happenings. The book outlines a theory of narration and analyses central narratological categories such as fiction, mimesis, author, reader, narrator etc. A detailed bibliography and glossary of narratological terms make this book a compendium of narrative theory which is of relevance for scholars and students of all literary disciplines.

Telling Stories: Language, Narrative, and Social Life

Abstract: IntroductionDeborah Schiffrin and Anna De Fina 1. Where Should I Begin? William Labov, University of Pennsylvania 2. The Remediation of Storytelling: Narrative Performance on Early Commercial Sound RecordingsRichard Bauman, Indiana University 3. Narrative, Culture, and MindJerome Bruner, New York University 4. Positioning as a Metagrammar for Discursive Story LinesRom Harre, London School of Economics and Political Science/Georgetown University 5. "Ay Ay Vienen Estos Juarenos": On the Positioning of Selves through Code Switching by Second-Generation Immigrant College StudentsAlan D. Hansen, Luke Moissinac, Cristal Renteria, and Eliana Razo 6. A Tripartite Self-Construction Model of IdentityLeor Cohen 7. Narratives of Reputation: Layerings of Social and Spatial IdentitiesGabriella Modan and Amy Shuman 8. Identity Building through Narratives on a Tulu Call-in TV ShowMalavika Shetty 9. Blank Check for Biography? Openness and Ingenuity in the Management of the "Who-Am-I-Question" and What Life Stories Actually May Not Be Good For YouMichael Bamberg 10. Reflection and Self-Disclosure from the Small Stories Perspective: A Study of Identity Claims in Interview and Conversational DataAlexandra Georgakopoulou 11. Negotiating Deviance: Identity, Trajectories and Norms in a Graffitist's Interview NarrativeJarmila Mildorf 12. Interaction and Narrative Structure in DementiaLars Christer Hyden and Linda Orulv 13. Concurrent and Intervening Actions during Storytelling in Family "Ceremonial" DinnersJenny Mandelbaum 14. Truth and Authorship in Textual TrajectoriesIsolda E. Carranza 15. Legitimation and the Heteroglossic Nature of Closing ArgumentsLaura Felton Rosulek 16. Multimodal Storytelling and Identity Construction in Graphic NarrativesDavid Herman 17. The Role of Style Shifting in the Functions and Purposes of Storytelling: Detective Stories in AnimeFumiko Nazikian

Heroes and Villains: Cultural Narratives, Mass Opinions, and Climate Change

Abstract: Findings indicate that while cultural content does not appear to influence opinions about climate change, narrative structure plays a powerful role in shaping opinion. Specifically, findings show that the vehicle through which narrative structure persuades is the hero character. Examining eleven climate change opinion related variables, as positive affect for the hero increases so too do respondent preferences and beliefs in direction specified by the cultural narrative treatments.

Coherence and Narrative Structure in Personal Accounts of Stressful Experiences

Abstract: Narrative coherence is an important concept in studies of how people come to understand and cope with negative or stressful events in their lives. In three studies we compare two approaches to the measurement of narrative coherence: the percentage of cognitive words and a holistic definition based on criteria indexing the degree to which a story produces an integrated mental representation in its audience. Story-like song lyrics (n = 36) contained fewer cognitive words and more past tense verbs than non-story songs. Personal narratives (n = 35) produced by individuals asked to tell a story had fewer cognitive words compared to narratives written in response to a traditional expressive writing prompt. Compared to narratives about positive experiences, negative accounts contained more cognitive words and these were associated with more words denoting negative emotions (n = 66). We conclude that cognitive words indicate a search for meaning that precedes the development of narrative coherence.

Investigating narrative in mobile games for seniors

Abstract: Narratives are an intimate part of our lives. Based on beha-vioral research suggesting that older adults tend to process text better at discourse level, this study investigates the im-pact of narrative structure on the enjoyment level of older game players. Two variations of a casual memory mobile game were built, one with a narrative and the other one without. Nineteen senior citizens, differentiated according to their play orientation, play-tested the games. Results show that embedding narratives in mobile games enhances the play experience of older adults, irrespective of their play style. This may have implications both for game developers and for seniors' acceptance of casual games.

Does narrative writing instruction enhance the benefits of expressive writing

Abstract: We examined whether instructing participants to write in a narrative fashion about stressful life events would produce superior physical and psychological health benefits relative to standard expressive writing instructions that do not specify the essay's structure. Undergraduates (N=101) were randomly assigned to engage in two, 20-minute narrative writing, standard expressive writing, or control writing tasks. Follow-up data were obtained one month later. The essays of the narrative writing group evidenced higher levels of narrative structure than did those of the expressive writing group. Greater narrative structure was associated with mental health gains, and self-rated emotionality of the essays was associated with lesser perceived stress at follow-up. In addition, the narrative and expressive writing groups reported lower levels of perceived stress and depressive symptoms relative to controls but did not differ from each other with regard to these outcomes. Health care utilization at follow-...

Windows to the polemics against the so-called Jews and Jezebel in Revelation: insights from historical and co(n)textual analysis

Abstract: 1 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 2 ABBREVIATIONS 8 PART ONE: ON THE PRELIMINARIES 11 CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION TO THESIS 11 1. THE POLEMIC IN REVELATION UNDER STUDY 11 2. A HISTORICAL AND CO(N)TEXTUAL APPROACH TO POLEMIC 17 2.1 A methodological framework: Socio-historical co(n)texts in polemic 17 2.2 Chapter outline and accompanying issues 29 3. ABOUT DATING REVELATION 39 3.1 Internal evidence for dating Revelation 41 3.2 External evidence to dating Revelation 56 4 LIMITATIONS AND STRENGTHS OF THE THESIS 59 CHAPTER TWO: NARRATIVE STRUCTURE AND HISTORICAL ANCHORAGE 63 1. THE STRUCTURE OF THE ‘VISION NARRATIVE’ (REV 4-22) 63 1.1. Broad structure of the vision narrative section 63 1.2. Structure of the major insert section I (12:1-15:4) 67 1.3. Structure of the final section F (19:11-22:21) 67 1.4. Three-and-a-half-year periods and the beast from the abyss-sea 72 1.5. Close relationships between the three woes 76 2. A HISTORICAL TEMPLATE FOR THE WOES 78 2.1. The Jewish war as template for the first two woes 79 2.2. Titus as the beast from the abyss-sea 83 2.3. The ‘now’ in Rev 17:8 and dating of the visions 86 3. CONCLUSION 88

Toward a Computational Model of Narrative

Abstract: Narratives structure our understanding of the world and of ourselves. They exploit the shared cognitive structures of human motivations, goals, actions, events, and outcomes. We report on a computational model that is motivated by results in neural computation and captures fine-grained, context sensitive information about human goals, processes, actions, policies, and outcomes. We describe the use of the model in the context of a pilot system that is able to interpret simple stories and narrative fragments in the domain of international politics and economics. We identify problems with the pilot system and outline extensions required to incorporate several crucial dimensions of narrative structure.

Using narrative as a bridge: linking language processing models with real-life communication.

Abstract: In chronic aphasia, maximizing generalization of improved language abilities from clinical tasks to everyday communication can require the same systematic planning process as the early stages of therapy, often drawing on additional areas of knowledge and successes from other clinical populations. The use of narrative structure is shown here to be a useful framework for building on the developments within sentence processing impairments in aphasia and creating a bridge to more real-life language tasks. An intervention based on narrative structure is described with two people with different language profiles and at different stages of the chronic aphasia spectrum. The insights gained in assessing language ability, underpinning intervention, and capturing therapeutic changes are demonstrated.

Understanding the Book of Mormon: A Reader's Guide

Abstract: Mark Twain once derided the Book of Mormon as "chloroform in print." Long and complicated, written in the language of the King James version of the Bible, it boggles the minds of many. Yet it is unquestionably one of the most influential books ever written. With over 140 million copies in print, it is a central text of one of the largest and fastest-growing faiths in the world. And, Grant Hardy shows, it's far from the coma-inducing doorstop caricatured by Twain. In Understanding the Book of Mormon, Hardy focuses on the work's narrative structure. Unlike virtually all other recent world scriptures, it is presented as an integrated narrative rather than a series of doctrinal expositions, moral injunctions, or devotional hymns. Hardy takes readers through the characters, events, and ideas, as he explores the story and its messages. He identifies the book's literary techniques, such as characterization, embedded documents, allusions, and parallel narratives. Whether Joseph Smith is regarded as author or translator, it's noteworthy that he never speaks in his own voice; rather, he mediates nearly everything through the narrators Nephi, Mormon, and Moroni. Hardy shows how each has a distinctive voice, and all are woven into an integral whole. As with any scripture, the contending views of the Book of Mormon can seem irreconcilable. For believers, it is an actual historical document, transmitted from ancient America. For nonbelievers, it is the work of a nineteenth-century farmer from upstate New York. Hardy transcends this intractable conflict by offering a literary approach, one appropriate to both history and fiction. Regardless of whether readers are interested in American history, literature, comparative religion, or even salvation, he writes, the book can best be read if we examine the text on its own terms.

The Coming into Being of Literature: How J. M. Coetzee's Diary of a Bad Year Thinks through the Novel

Abstract: J. M. Coetzee’s Diary of a Bad Year begins with a statement about the origins of the state that is also a statement about literature. Every account of the origins of the state starts from the premise that “we”—not we the readers but some generic we so wide as to exclude no one—participate in its coming into being. But the fact is that the only “we” we know—ourselves and the people close to us—are born into the state; and our forebears too were born into the state as far back as we can trace. The state is always there before we are. (3) Coetzee, linking the “we” of readership to the “we” of citizenship (af! rming the connection before denying it), here commences a prolonged consideration of the relationship between reader and text, author and tradition, genre and its delimitations, all via a disquisition on the state. 1 The passage not only launches a book-long rethinking of the many presumptions about power relations that have clustered around the idea of the modern state and the master-slave dialectic, but it also gives clues about how to read a book whose narrative structure and visual layout explicitly defy, reform, and to some degree reinvent the realist novel. It makes sense that Coetzee would use political theory as a platform for probing literary form and, by extension, genre. “Forms are the abstract of social relationships,” Franco Moretti has written, “so, formal analysis is in its own modest way an analysis of power” (66). One of the most pressing questions posed by Diary of a Bad Year pertains to the problem of the novel genre generally: what it is and is not, how readers “create” texts and their meanings, how literary tradition and genre typologies are constructed and passed down, the plasticity of narrative form, whether the pressure of historical precedent can be evaded, and so on. In what follows, I discuss how these questions are examined obliquely through political opining, even as the printed page—segmented by lines and asterisks throughout—offers its own mute, running input. Diary of a Bad Year builds upon a series of experimental works (Elizabeth Costello and Slow Man) in both tone and theme but does more than any of Coetzee’s previous works to examine how the “coming into being” of a work of ! ction happens. In style, expository thinking, and

Narrative competence among hearing-impaired and normal-hearing children: analytical cross-sectional study

Abstract: CONTEXT AND OBJECTIVE: Oral narrative is a means of language development assessment. However, standardized data for deaf patients are scarce. The aim here was to compare the use of narrative competence between hearing-impaired and normal-hearing children. DESIGN AND SETTING: Analytical cross-sectional study at the Department of Speech-Language and Hearing Sciences, Universidade Federal de Sao Paulo. METHODS: Twenty-one moderately to profoundly bilaterally hearing-impaired children (cases) and 21 normal-hearing children without language abnormalities (controls), matched according to sex, age, schooling level and school type, were studied. A board showing pictures in a temporally logical sequence was presented to each child, to elicit a narrative, and the child's performance relating to narrative structure and cohesion was measured. The frequencies of variables, their associations (Mann-Whitney test) and their 95% confidence intervals was analyzed. RESULTS: The deaf subjects showed poorer performance regarding narrative structure, use of connectives, cohesion measurements and general punctuation (P < 0.05). There were no differences in the number of propositions elaborated or in referent specification between the two groups. The deaf children produced a higher proportion of orientation-related propositions (P = 0.001) and lower proportions of propositions relating to complicating actions (P = 0.015) and character reactions (P = 0.005). CONCLUSION: Hearing-impaired children have abnormalities in different aspects of language, involving form, content and use, in relation to their normal-hearing peers. Narrative competence was also associated with the children's ages and the school type.

Mastering authority: J.M. Coetzee’s Diary of a Bad Year

Abstract: J.M. Coetzee’s fiction has, from its inception, parodied language which claims to speak as the public use of reason. Diary of a Bad Year departs from this position to some degree by offering a series of public reflections on the times; however, these reflections are embedded within a narrative structure which disallows us from taking them at face value. Such narrative framing raises the question of authority: not only the authority of the reflections themselves, but the authority of the voice and the voice in the text. The relationship between fiction and the public sphere is such that fiction foregrounds the problem of authority in public discourse and seeks to capture the position of authority through heightened forms of mimesis and self‐consciousness.

Where Do We Go From Here? Readers' Responses to Interactive Fiction Narrative Structures, Reading Pleasure and the Impact of Interface Design

Abstract: Interactive fiction has excited huge interest amongst scholars and experimental artists since the pioneering work of Michael Joyce in the 1980s. However, it has not reached out to a wide community of writers and readers, largely because of the twin problems of poor reader engagement with fractured narrative structures, and the heavy cognitive demands of the interfaces used by hyper-writers. This article reports upon an empirical study of readers’ responses to a range of interactive fictions, a study which aimed to uncover in detail the key factors affecting readers’ experience of this narrative form. On the basis of the study’s findings, it is argued that interactive fiction can offer an enjoyable reading experience, if core issues around narrative structure and interface design are addressed by writers. The article suggests guidelines for writers, based on the findings of the empirical study.

Films That Move Us: Moments of Narrative Impact in an Animated Short Film

Abstract: This article investigates the effects of films on an audience, using an interdisciplinary empirical approach connecting film analysis and psychophysiological measurement. It discusses the animated short film Father and Daughter (2000) directed by Michael Dudok de Wit. The features of the film that are relevant to the reception process, the so-called moments of narrative impact, are determined on the basis of Wuss’s analytical film model. The model postulates that films can be described as a combination of different kinds of narrative structures that predetermine the reception, which is conceptualized as a process of problem solving. This article defines five moments of narrative impact. Three of these moments establish the main conflict and its possible solution while the other two combine reoccurring motives, the socalled topic lines. Heart rate and skin conductance reactions were examined for thirty participants. The results of heart rate measurements demonstrate a clear significance for a combination of topic lines. The establishment of the central conflict also evokes significant reactions.

Narrative Structures in Burmese Folk Tales

Abstract: URL Reviewed Editors Web ISSN Thomas. M. TEHAN. 2016. Review of Narrative Structures in Burmese Folk Tales, by Soe Marlar Lwin. Journal of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society 9:iv-viii http://hdl.handle.net/1885/107251 Received 03/08/16, revised text accepted 15/08/16, published September 2016 Editor-In-Chief Dr Mark Alves | Managing Eds. Dr Nathan Hill, Dr Sigrid Lew, Dr Paul Sidwell http://jseals.org 1836-6821

"To Make a Novel": The Construction of a Critical Readership in Ian McEwan's Atonement

Abstract: Much of the critical response to Ian McEwan's novel Atonement has focused on the metafictional elements of the work's narrative structure, as well as Briony Tallis's revelation in the final pages that she in fact authored the text. Critics have asked whether the novel earns this epilogue or whether it is an abrupt rendering of a straightforward realist narrative into what David Lodge has called a "postmodernist metafiction" (87). Brian Finney counters readers who find that the ending "inappropriately resorts to a modish self-referentiality" (69) by asserting that the text's narrative structure actually supports Briony's final admission from the first page. He argues, "I read this novel as a work of fiction that is from beginning to end concerned with the making of fiction" (69). Of Briony's engagement with fiction, he states: She attempts to use fiction to correct the errors that fiction caused her to commit. But the chasm that separates the world of the living from that of fictional invention ensures that at best her fictional reparation will act as an attempt at atoning for a past that she cannot reverse. Atonement, then, is concerned with the dangers of entering a fictional world and the compensations and limitations which that world can offer its readers and writers. (69) Briony's attempts to make amends for her crime through fiction will inevitably fail; in fact, this seems to be the point. Although atonement is only possible through the act of writing, the result of that writing remains limited by the restrictions of fiction. To put it simply, fiction cannot absolve or undo transgressions that have taken place in the real world. Although I agree with Finney's observations about these implications of fiction and their application within Atonement, his reading does not account for the fact that Briony is herself a fictional construct. The "reality" that she renders as fiction is not a material reality; it exists only within the pages of the novel. McEwan's move to reveal Briony as the author makes transparent another narrative aspect that the novel explores: the relationship of the reader to the text. For if Atonement is a novel concerned with the "making of fiction," it is also a novel concerned with the reading of fiction, as well as the reading of experience. Briony's crime has been widely read as one of literary imagination, but it is also one of poor reading comprehension. Nevertheless, the adult Briony has learned the value of reading, and she constructs a narrative that continually reminds the reader of this crucial role. In this sense, McEwan positions Atonement against earlier narrative models that were also concerned with the author-reader relationship, specifically the 18th-century novel and the modernist novel. In his critique of the reader's role, McEwan presents an implicit argument about the ethical responsibility for readers of contemporary fiction. Readers hold the final power of interpretation, judgment, and atonement; to meet these aims, they must maintain a stance toward the text that involves both critical assessment and empathetic identification. As we will see, both tasks prove necessary for readers of Atonement. By emphasizing the reader's role in this novel, and, in particular, the reader's position to grant or withhold the atonement that Briony seeks, my discussion speaks to broader debates within reader response criticism over whether (and how) meaning can be fixed within a text. Since the ascent of deconstructionist criticism asserting that all texts are inherently relative and decentered--a notion embodied in Roland Barthes's radical claim that "The birth of the reader must come at the death of the Author" (150)--reader response critics have had to reconsider certain foundational aspects of their theory. Who is "the reader" of a text in light of postmodern and poststructuralist theory? Do signs embedded within a text point toward a "correct" reading, or do individual readers determine anew their own authoritative meaning? …

Narrative competence among hearing-impaired and normal-hearing children: analytical cross-sectional study Competência narrativa em crianças deficientes auditivas e ouvintes: estudo transversal analítico

Abstract: CONTEXT AND OBJECTIVE: Oral narrative is a means of language development assessment. However, standardized data for deaf patients are scarce. The aim here was to compare the use of narrative competence between hearing-impaired and normal-hearing children. DESIGN AND SETTING: Analytical cross-sectional study at the Department of Speech-Language and Hearing Sciences, Universidade Federal de Sao Paulo. METHODS: Twenty-one moderately to profoundly bilaterally hearing-impaired children (cases) and 21 normal-hearing children without language abnormalities (controls), matched according to sex, age, schooling level and school type, were studied. A board showing pictures in a temporally logical sequence was presented to each child, to elicit a narrative, and the child’s performance relating to narrative structure and cohesion was measured. The frequencies of variables, their associations (Mann-Whitney test) and their 95% confidence intervals was analyzed. RESULTS: The deaf subjects showed poorer performance regarding narrative structure, use of connectives, cohesion measurements and general punctuation (P ≤ 0.05). There were no differences in the number of propositions elaborated or in referent specification between the two groups. The deaf children produced a higher proportion of orientation-related propositions (P = 0.001) and lower proportions of propositions relating to complicating actions (P = 0.015) and character reactions (P = 0.005). CONCLUSION: Hearing-impaired children have abnormalities in different aspects of language, involving form, content and use, in relation to their normal-hearing peers. Narrative competence was also associated with the children’s ages and the school type.

Domestic Narratives in the Transatlantic Community: Elizabeth Gaskell and Louisa May Alcott

Abstract: My thesis investigates the processes of reciprocal, transatlantic literary exchange between Britain and the United States in the nineteenth century. While these specific transnational relations have received much critical attention in recent years, I extend current theoretical frameworks by focusing on how women‘s domestic fiction operates as a currency for literal and ideological interchanges between Britain and the United States. Concentrating primarily upon Elizabeth Gaskell‘s and Louisa May Alcott‘s fictions, I trace how they operate as 'transatlantic domestic narratives‘. I use this term to refer to the mobility of their material texts as they circulate within a transatlantic community, and also to articulate the generic narrative tropes on which their domestic fictions rely. I explore, therefore, how the rhetoric of domesticity – as transmitted through the transatlantic domestic narrative – becomes a shared medium through which specific localised concerns can be articulated and circulated within a transatlantic arena. Focusing on four domestic tropes which were common on both sides of the Atlantic – home, the worker, the nurse, and the witch – I illustrate how both Gaskell and Alcott mobilise these four narrative structures in order to contribute to local and transnational debates in which national, literary and gendered identities are created and contested. Both authors‘ fictions, I demonstrate, exemplify, and have a significant impact upon, a transatlantic literary marketplace.

Textual Integrity and Coherence in the Qur'an: Repetition and Narrative Structure in Surat al-Baqara

Abstract: This study addresses the riddle of al-Baqara‘s internal organization, utilizing new insights from literary theory and Biblical Studies to identify the sura‘s structure and unifying themes. It also explores the possible added value in approaching al-Baqara as a whole compositional unit, as opposed to a conglomeration of isolated verse-groups. The dissertation begins with a historical overview of coherence-related approaches, commencing with the classical naẓmand munāsaba-discourses as observed in the writings of Jāḥiẓ, Bāqillānī, Biqā ī and others, and extending to the modern period and the work of scholars such as Amīn Aḥsan Iṣlāḥī, Abd al-Muta āl alṢa īdī, and Matthias Zahniser. This overview is followed by a discussion of methodology, locating this study within the reader-oriented, synchronic, intertextual approaches, and showing methodological parallels with Biblical Studies. A new reading framework for the sura is developed, utilizing in part some of the theories of the Russian literary theorist and philosopher, Mikhail Bakhtin.

Linguistic spatial classifications of event domains in narratives of crime

Abstract: Structurally, formal definitions of the linguistic narrative minimally require two temporally linked past-timeevents. The role of spacein this definition, basedon spatial lan- guage indicating where events occur, is considered optional and non-structural. However, based on narratives with ah igh frequency of spatial language, recent research has ques- tioned this perspective, suggesting that space is more critical than may be readily apparent. Through an analysis of spatially rich serial criminal narratives, it will be demonstrated that spatial information qualitatively varies relative to narrative events. In particular, statistical classifiers in a supervised machine learning task achieve a 90% accuracy in predicting Pre-Crime, Crime, and Post-Crime events based on spatial (and temporal) information. Overall, these results suggest a deeper spatial organization of discourse, which not only provides practical event resolution possibilities, but also challenges traditional formal linguistic definitions of narrative.

Towards a Typology of the Narrative Modes in Ancient Greek: Text types and narrative structure in Euripidean messenger speeches

Abstract: This chapter aims to make a first step towards a typology of narrative modes in Ancient Greek narrative. Narrative modes are primarily approached as linguistic phenomena in the chapter. The chapter introduces a typology of four distinct narrative modes, and discusses their specific linguistic and narratological properties. The four narrative modes are: the displaced diegetic mode, the immediate diegetic mode, the descriptive mode, and the discursive mode. The textual corpus on which the author's analysis is based consists of the Euripidean messenger speeches. The chapter addresses the relationship between the narrative modes and plot-structure. The narrative modes can be said to function as a bridge between the sentences on the one hand, and the more abstract structure that the text evokes on the other. The function of the narrative modes within the larger organisation of the narrative is demonstrated by an analysis of the messenger speech in Euripides' Andromache . Keywords: Ancient Greek narrative; Andromache ; Euripidean messenger speeches; narrative modes

The physical and emotional threads of the archetypal hero's journey: Proposing common terminology and re-examining the narrative model

Abstract: This article will discuss how, in mainstream film screenplays, the protagonist undergoes both an actual, physical journey and an internal, emotional journey, pulled together by the invisible hand of the screenwriter in order to create the complete narrative experience. Central to the article is an evaluation of how character transformation (arc) is positioned against physical action (plot), arguing that the two can be mapped out as individual yet symbiotic threads of a narrative: the physical and the emotional journeys. After mapping the territory of what is already written on this subject, the works of Joseph Campbell and his 'protege' Christopher Vogler (Clayton 2007: 210) will be drawn together to offer a re-examination of the model of the Hero's Journey. Assessing these two narrative threads (physical and emotional) as both distinct and symbiotic, it will be clear that a special relationship exists between plot and character, where character transformation is encouraged to take place within the frame of the physical action of the plot. The substance of such a transformation, the emotional core of the narrative experience, is what lives on in the audience, 'post-text'; the physical action of a film story may frame emotion, but emotion has the power to break the frame and take on a life of its own.

Introduction À la Narratologie: Action et Narration

Abstract: Francoise Revaz. Introduction a la narratologie: Action et narration. Brussels: Groupe De Boeck, 2009. 224 pp. ISBN 978-2-8011-1601-2. In this introductory work, Francoise Revaz approaches the field of narratology from the dual perspectives of theories of action and of narration, elaborating a framework of narrative categories defined in terms of degrees of narrativity. She then applies that framework to two contemporary examples of narrative production: the novels of the Belgian author Jean-Philippe Toussaint and serialized news reports. Revaz examines how those texts both exploit and subvert traditional narrative strategies, nominating Toussaint's works as an exemplar of the French postmodern novel's "return to narrative" (141), and exploring how serialized news stories narrativize factual news accounts in the desire to capture and sustain their readers' attention. The book begins with a definition of the concepts of action and event. Revaz notes that from a traditional narratological perspective, narrative is defined as the representation of actions or events, yet the distinction between the two is frequently not considered. In the field of analytic philosophy, on the other hand, action and event are considered to be distinct, with action characterized as a motivated, intentional act performed by a human agent, while event is considered to be an uncontrolled phenomenon subject only to a process of cause and effect. Immediately after positing that tidy definition, however, Revaz points out that matters are frequently more complicated. Many human actions are unintentional or simply the result of an external cause. As Revaz observes, discussions of intentionality and premeditation occur regularly in judicial proceedings, where degrees of motivation are central to the interpretation of guilt. She concludes that rather than conceiving of action and event as dichotomous terms, a more useful model would be a continuum with the terms at opposite poles, so that any given human act could fall somewhere on the horizon between action and event. In her second chapter, Revaz reminds us that just as descriptions of action can be nuanced by intentionality and thus become closer to event, so can events be described in ways that bring them closer to action. That occurs frequently in myth and in folktales, and Revaz illustrates her argument with a series of four Swiss folktales in which clouds, storms, and other natural phenomena are described as acting with human-like agency. That process is not limited to the realm of literature, however, and Revaz demonstrates with abundant examples how contemporary journalistic accounts of dramatic natural phenomena often allude to "irrational, even supernatural" explanations, as for example when "Mother Nature" is described as "taking vengeance" in retaliation for human-caused climate change (65). Revaz then turns her attention to the theory of narrative, noting that while narrative is omnipresent, there is no single consensus as to what exactly can be defined as such. She rehearses a variety of debates over the question of what is and what is not narrative, ultimately concluding that while there are no linguistic markers specific to narrative, there are certain semantic properties commonly accepted as indicative of narrative status, namely, a chronological and causally linked representation of actions with an unexpected or atypical development and a transformation between the initial and the final state (100). Just as the dichotomy between action and event can be resolved through the introduction of degrees of intentionality, Revaz suggests leaving behind the binary definitions of narrative posited by classical narratology in favor of a discussion of degrees of narrati vity. Illustrating her points with a variety of examples, she formulates a framework of three narrative categories - chronicle [chronique], account [relation], and narrative [recit] - arranged in terms of increasing levels of narrativity (104-105). …

The Narrative Structures of Glory and Glorification in the Fourth Gospel

Abstract: This article takes part in the reopened discussion of the Johannine δόξα/δοξάζϵιν by interpreting the concept in light of the narrative structures in the Fourth Gospel. On the basis of Aristotle's definition of a whole and complete μῦθος and his distinction between πϵριπτϵια and ἀναγνώρισις it is shown that the main structure in the Johannine narrative concerns humans' recognition of Jesus' identity as son of God. As a consequence of being firmly integrated in this narrative structure, the Johannine concept δόξα/δοξάζϵιν basically denotes divine identity and recognition. Opposing a contemporary trend in Johannine studies it is finally argued that δόξα/δοξάζϵιν in the Fourth Gospel should be understood within the normal narrative sequence.

Visiting doctors' offices: A comparison of Korean and Taiwanese preschool children's narrative development

Abstract: Research Findings: This study aimed to explain age and cultural differences in the narrative development of 3-, 4-, and 5-year-old Korean and Taiwanese children. The participants comprised 140 children of middle-class, two-parent families, half from each cultural group. Children were individually interviewed about their experience of visiting doctors' offices. The measured variables were the total number of clauses, the total number of conjunctions, the total number of internal state terms, and the developmental level of the narrative structure. The results suggested that age was related to all 4 variables. Different narrative skills exhibited different developmental trajectories in the early phase of narrative development. Also, Taiwanese children were more likely to incorporate internal state terms into their narratives than were Korean children. Finally, there appeared to be a developmental leap in Korean 5-year-olds' performance of narrative structures. Compared with Taiwanese children, the developmen...