A narrative is some kind of retelling, often in words (though it is possible to mime a story), of something that happened (a story). The narrative is not the story itself but rather the telling of the story -- which is why it is so often used in phrases such as "written narrative," "oral narrative," etc. While a story just is a sequence of events, a narrative recounts those events, perhaps leaving some occurrences out because they are from some perspective insignificant, and perhaps emphasizing others. In a series of events, a car crash takes a split second. A narrative account, however, might be almost entirely about the crash itself and the few seconds leading up to it. Narratives thus shape history (the series of events, the story of what happened).
In the other definition A narrative is a story that is created in a constructive format (as a work of speech, writing, song, film, television, video games, photography or theatre) that describes a sequence of fictional or non-fictional events. The word derives from the Latin verb narrare, "to recount", and is related to the adjective gnarus, "knowing" or "skilled".[1] Ultimately its origin is found in the Proto-Indo-European root gnō-, "to know".[2]
The word "story" may be used as a synonym of "narrative", but can also be used to refer to the sequence of events described in a narrative. A narrative can also be told by a character within a larger narrative. An important part of narration is the narrative mode, the set of methods used to communicate the narrative through a process narration.
Along with exposition, argumentation and description, narration, broadly defined, is one of four rhetorical modes of discourse. More narrowly defined, it is the fiction-writing mode whereby the narrator communicates directly to the reader.
Stories are an important aspect of culture. Many works of art and most works of literature tell stories; indeed, most of the humanities involve stories. Owen Flanagan of Duke University, a leading consciousness researcher, writes that “Evidence strongly suggests that humans in all cultures come to cast their own identity in some sort of narrative form. We are inveterate storytellers” (Consciousness Reconsidered 198).
Stories are of ancient origin, existing in ancient Egyptian, ancient Greek, Chinese and Indian culture. Stories are also a ubiquitous component of human communication, used as parables and examples to illustrate points. Storytelling was probably one of the earliest forms of entertainment. Narrative may also refer to psychological processes in self-identity, memory and meaning-making.
A assuming that every narrative begins with an Orientation will be unproductive when it comes to producing a gripping detective story which usually begins with the Complication (a crime). We can adapt Halliday’s notion of register to this challenge, differentiating each variable as follows:
1 Field: While its topics are potentially limitless, every narrative creates a “possible world,” peopled by characters and their actions and reactions. Students need to learn to create and resolve a world of (problematic) experience for one or more characters.
2 Tenor: We animate the relationships of these characters and their world and evaluate the significance of what happens for them (and for readers). Students need to learn how to evaluate experience and to position their readers to respond with feelings such as empathy, suspense, judgment, and humor.
3 Mode: We compose a text that coheres with itself and with its context. Students need to learn to produce texts that create and sustain the conditions for their interpretation. In written narratives, the reader needs to build the context for interpretation by means of language alone. In multimodal texts, this is achieved through different mechanisms, such as layout and editing.
In an educational environment register needs to be co-articulated with the “ways of knowing” relevant to particular disciplines. With narrative, for example, the three register variables can be productively connected to both narrative and film theory. These theories increasingly shape the epistemologies of school English. In the case of narrative, understandings about fields of experience should take young learners into new understandings of “plot,” “characterization,” and “setting”; tenor should enable them to work with “point of view” (often called “focalization”); and mode should introduce them to the semiotic organization of written, spoken, and multimodal narratives. In short, a discipline-specific model of register allows us to connect text production and discussion about text to the epistemological demands of schooling. We are now in a position to turn our attention to a more detailed exploration of what register offers the study of narrative semiotics.
The activities occurring early in Nicole’s narrative include the following:
1 Princess A gather is introduced walking through the woods;
2 a witch jumps out and drinks some liquid and then screams;
3 the witch turns into a beautiful lady like the princess and drops a note for her to read;
4 the (real) princess picks up the note that informs her about what she has to do to regain herbeauty;
5 Princess A gather looks into a lake and finds herself looking at the face of a witch.
At an abstract level, however, narrative experience is a field of transformation and this can be realized verbally or visually (or multi modally, as in a movie).
Nicole uses time clauses, phrases, and conjunctions in Theme position to give temporal coherence to her narrative. For example:
Many years ago when the world was full of magic
One day
Presently
Just as ..
When...
The cohesive devices used by the writer are related to but different from those used by the animator. Nevertheless, choices have to be made if the artist is to create a coherent text. Teachers and students need a meta language for exploring these and the resources of mode have proved.
Publisher byM.Karni Hajiri
English Teacher.
English Teacher.
