U32

2. NARRATIVE TEXTS

2.1. ELEMENTS

1. TEXT & TEXT TYPOLOGY

1.1. TEXT

7 Standards of Textuality

Intertextuality

Texture

1.2. TEXT TYPOLOGY

Function/Purpose

Express an attitude

Inform

Persuade

Create a debate

Type/Mode

Based on

Organised

Genres

Definition & Purpose

Instances

3 Main features

Action, events in time & life in motion which answers the question “what happened?” in order to tell a story, but also to entertain, to inform, to change attitutes/social opinions or to provide an aesthetic experience

Life experiences & is person-oriented by using dialogue & familiar language.

  • Folktales (wonder/tall/realistic tales, fables, legends, myths),
  • Fiction (Contemporary/Science/Realistic/Historical)
  • Mysteries: solving a crime/murder
  • Fantasy: magical creatures, imaginary worlds
  • Fiction: Novels, Short stories, Poetry, Plays, Drama, Comedy?
  • Non-fiction: News stories, Biographies, Reports, Essays

Elements: characters & characterisation, theme, plot, setting

Order of events (inherently chronological)

Narrator's Point of view

Around the plot & characters by using story grammar (the knowledge of how stories are organized with beginning/middle/end)

Narrator

Characters & Characterisation

Theme: story's central idea

Plot: sequence of events

Setting: the enviroment

1st person / 2nd person / 3rd person

Main / Secondary / Juncture characters

Directly stated / Through the use of story elements

Story grammar: structure of narrative

Explicit/ Implicit

Common elements

Characters

Plot

Intention

Omniscient (all-knowing) / Mere observer (limited)

Main character / Secondary character / Invented narrator

Telling / Showing

Round / Flat characters

Direct / Indirect characterisation

Beginning

Middle

End

Problem/Conflict

Series of events/episodes

Resolution

Time

Atmosphere

Space

Imaginary / Familiar

Present/Past/Future

Universal / Specific

One / More

Indoor / Outdoor

Verbal

Internal

Historical

Rhythmic

How the setting affects the characters

Causal

Analogical

2.2. STRUCTURE

Flash-back

"In media res"

Linear development

Chronological: beggining to end

Starts at the end: circumstances leading to it

Backwards & forwards movements

2.3. TEXTUAL FEATURES

Stream of consciousness

Free indirect speech/style

capture a character's thought process realistically, as it occurs

narrating the characters’ thoughts/speech in 3rd person, but with no reporting clauses (unlike in Indirect speech) and including exclamation & questions marks (as in Direct speech). Thus, blurring the boundaries between the character's voice and the narrator's voice

Vocabulary should be understood

Clues in the text

Synonyms

As used in the story context

What the word suggests

in the time of the action

frame of the story

usually in past tense

the story's own pace (slow-down/speed-up)

Text Linguistics

To study/examine how sentences work together to produce coherent text & discourses

Halliday & Hasan (1976)

What distinguishes a text from sth that is not a text. It consists of cohesive relations within & between sentences. The interpretation of some element in the discourse is dependent on that of another. The macrostructure of the text combines with intrasentence structure and intersentence cohesion to provide a text (a fragment of language with texture)

A communicative occurrence which has to meet 7 Standards of Textuality. If any of these is not satifistied, it will not fullfill its function and will not be communicative

De Beaugrande & Dressler (1988)

The factors which make the use of one text dependent on the knowledge of previously encountered texts: how the production & reception of a text depends on the participants' (producer & receiver) knowledge of other texts

Rhetoric

Can be traced back to Acient Greece & Rome, through the Middle Ages up to the present. The main task of traditional rhetoricians was to train public orators on:

formerly studied by:

  • Inventio: the dicovery of ideas
  • Dispositio: the arrangement of ideas
  • Elocutio: the discovery of appropiate expressions

Text

  • "Any instance of living language that plays a role in some context of situation"
    Although it is apparently made of words & sentences, it is really made of meanings. It is a semantic & pragmatic unit, not a linguistic one. Hence, it has to be considered from two perspectives at once, both as product & as process
  • Cohesion
  • Coherence
  • Intentionality
  • Acceptability
  • Informativity
  • Situationality
  • Intertextuality

Historically & structuraly, texts do not occur in isolation, but are connected to other works of the same genres, and to other genres. This influence works in both directions

The relationship btw Texts types & Genres is not straightforward: Genres differ in their external formats , whereas Text types differ/are defined in terms of cognitive categories / communicative functions

Modes of discourse realised through Text types

Argumentative

Narrative

Instrumental

Expository

Descriptive

Communicative functions as Rhetorical strategies

Folktales: traditional stories passed down from generation to generation.

  • Wonder tales: fairy tales with magical creatures &elements
  • Tall tales: exaggerated stories with extraordinary, larger-tahn-live characters & achievements
  • Realistic tales: portray ordinary events / reflect everyday life, social customs, local traditions, etc.
  • Legends: combine/blend historical facts with fictional elements, around an heroic character
  • Myths: cultural or religious narratives that give an explanation to natural phenomena, involving Gods or supernatural creatures
  • Fables: short narratives with animals/inanimate objects as characters with human-like qualities to convey moral lessons/messages

Narratology

Studies what all narratives have in common. It tries to describe the narrative-specific system of rules.

The narrative component of narrative texts can & should be studied without reference to the medium or text type

Point of view

Not the author, but the voice/person who creates the story. It belongs to the narrative world (like the characters) as either an Observant or Participant

To explore the complexities of consciousness by narrating the characters' thoughts as a copy of the thoughts themselves (as they occur in their mind). Reproducing the continuous flow of the characters' mental processes without narrator intervention

Literary devices

  • John thought, "The park looks beautiful today" (DS)
  • John thought that the park looked beautiful that day. (IS)
  • The park looked beautiful that day. (FIS)