Resurrecting the Narrative Paradigm: Identification and the Case of Young Earth Creationism

Barack Obama weaves a sequence of his personal story rhetorically to evoke American national ethos, with a special emphasis on American values making them an integral part of his memoirs, especially his The Audacity of Hope (2006). This paper interrogates why he narrates the story of typical American values in his political memoir in general and ascertain them in a dedicated section titled ‘Values’ in particular to explore the implicit dimensions of his storytelling. Form the theoretical parameters of Walter R Fisher’s ‘narrative paradigm’ this paper contends that, by way of recognizing (assimilating or internalizing) typical American values, Obama prepares a ground for Fisher’s ‘narrative rationality’ to identify himself with American character and American people, and thereby evokes American national ethos to assume a statesmanship.

When arrested by the authorities, celebrities always insist that they use drugs to work, just as users, just trying, because of the work environment, deliberately targeted by the police or BNN, police engineering, they are framed. Jefri Nichol was one of the celebrities who made such a statement. The purpose of the study was to assess the rationality of Jefri Nichol's drug-related narrative. The study used Walter R. Fisher's Narrative Paradigm and Barbara O'Keefe's Theory of Message-Making Logic. Methodologically, research is an interpretive paradigm with case study methods. The subject of his research was Jefri Nichol and his statements in the media as his object. The results of the study showed that Jefri Nichol's was inconsistent. Before the case, Jefri Nichol knew the negative impact of drugs on his life and career. After being caught in the narrative, drug use is just trial and error because of work. During the examination of the police, the court, and undergoing rehabilitation, Jefri Nichol produced a narrative of victimhood in which the final motive was the reduction of punishment, image, existence, and economy. Keywords: Narrative Paradigm, Celebrity, drug users

While narrative is studied in any number of fields as a form of discourse, only in communication studies has it been claimed that all forms of discourse can be viewed as types of narrative. One way of testing such an all‐encompassing interpretation of narrative is to apply the assumptions of the narrative paradigm to works that traditionalists would not consider to be stories. This essay applies the principles of narrative probability and fidelity to three works—a book attacking religious fundamentalism, a short film attacking Pat Robertson and an allegorical science fiction novel that retells the story of Job—in order to test the paradigm. If all rhetoric can be understood through the narrative paradigm, then the paradigm should be equally applicable to all three works. The analysis of the works, however, reveals that narrative approaches are of little use when applied to discourse that does not tell a story. Additionally, the standards for narrative rationality are difficult to apply and inapplicable to...

Courses: Communication Theory, Persuasion, Argument Objective: Students will identify the parts of Walter Fisher's narrative paradigm and analyze the narrative rationality of urban legends.

This essay critically analyzes the recent work of Walter. Fisher on the “narrative paradigm.”; While Fisher's work has undeniable value, the implications of it have not been completely considered. This essay proposes three limitations on the narrative paradigm. First, Fisher's definition of narrative is too broad, encompassing nearly all discourse. Using Fisher's example of The Fate of the Earth, a case is built for the claim that a more limited definition of narrative is needed. Second, the view that there is an independent standard of narrative rationality that can be distinguished from the “rational world paradigm”; is considered and rejected. Finally, the claim that the proper role of the expert in the public sphere is that of story teller is also considered and rejected.

In this article, the narrative paradigm is applied to the documented life of Tiger Woods, viewing his story as sports folklore and public moral argument, asking, what patterns exist in his narrative? What values? And how can the narrative of Tiger Woods be described in terms of narrative rationality? Looked at as a mythic hero, Tiger feathers the line between fantasy and reality and has gone through the requisite rituals of violation and reconstruction. Accordingly, the duplicity in his character revealed through scandal, and the fallibility of his superhuman image exposed through injury give him something to overcome. As long as he redeems himself each time he falls the conditions of the mythic hero are kept intact. However, implicit in his story is the notion that ends can justify means as he has overcome scandal, criticism of his training methods, and criticism of his character throughout his career.

This conceptual paper argues the need for narrative preparedness, understood as the ability to engage and empathize with peoples’ stories and the values they encode, assess them based on the universe in which people live, and acknowledge the narrative rationality of each story – even when it conflicts with the rationality of science. Expanding ‘health preparedness’ to encompass ‘narrative preparedness’ complements the ideals of patient centeredness, which are sometimes betrayed when implemented into concrete decisions because the rationality of science that underpins medical practice fails to make sense of patients’ stories. We outline the central tenets of narrative preparedness and demonstrate its relevance by discussing various responses to mainstream discourses on COVID-19 as a case in point. We discuss and further develop Fisher’s narrative paradigm, which provides a model that complements traditional, scientific rationality with attention to narrative rationality and a radical democratic ground for health political critique. Applying the narrative paradigm to authentic examples of vaccine hesitancy and anti-vaccination demonstrates how closer attention to the way narratives are assessed by different constituencies might help us mitigate some of the sources of resistance and misunderstanding that continue to plague public communication about important medical issues such as pandemics. Health authorities must acknowledge and engage with the stories people believe in and their reasons for doing so. The crucial question for the success of health policy interventions is not only ‘what are the facts’ but ‘how do these facts make sense to people, and why.’ To be prepared for the next pandemic, health professionals must learn to engage with people’s stories and the processes by which they come to be understood and assessed differently by various constituencies.

This essay explores the implications of the inter‐relationships that exist among the narrative paradigm, children's television, media deregulation, epistemology, and education. Particular attention is paid to the concept of narrative fidelity and the impact of television's “first stories” upon the evolution of that concept in children. Specific implications and recommendations for the preschool and early primary grades are addressed.

This essay examines the 1984 party platforms from the perspective of Fisher's narrative paradigm. In doing so the author evaluates Fisher's logic of good reasons in action within these two partisan constructions of political reality. The work concludes that though these two narratives followed different strategies, they both displayed the internal consistency required by Fisher's perspective as they reflected transcendent values that were both relevant to and consistent with party tradition.

Developmental trajectories of children’s symbolic numerical magnitude processing skills and associated cognitive competencies

Self-awareness implies a self-referentiality that accompanies any event carried out in the waking state and is a condition for the regulation of human behaviour. The key elements in the evolution of self-consciousness and subjectivation are the processes of symbolization and identification which allow the gradual shaping of an identity. In the last decade, and especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, in all social fields there has been a general reorientation from reality to virtual reality, with consequences for the normal process of the identity development. Vulnerable categories, such as children and mentally ill people, are strongly influenced by this shift, with a change in the psychiatric phenomenology.

Development of children’s identity and position processing for letter, digit, and symbol strings: A cross-sectional study of the primary school years

Non-fictional narratives have an open-ended character that projects roles and values to those who participate in them. Narrative participation, in turn, entails narrative assessment and identification processes, through which adherence to values and positions may fail or be achieved. In the analysis of interviews with university students across Turkey, we draw on Fisher’s narrative paradigm to focus on how our participants carry out assessments of narrative credibility. To elucidate narrative coherence and fidelity, we take inspiration from an argumentative-rhetorical perspective, and focus specifically on the relationship among the criteria identified in the literature on narrative assessment. Our study of interviewee evaluations of COVID-19 narratives confirms the use of the coherence criteria, calls into question the fidelity criteria, and highlights the relevance of identification as a basic process for fidelity assessments. We conclude by discussing our limitations and directions for further research.

"This theoretical study, of a qualitative character, proposes to investigate what the relationship between identification and symbolization is in adolescent depression today. The importance of discussing the theme is as a direct result of the alarming observation that, as an illness of epidemic proportions, it does not refer to a natural illness, whose origin is restricted to the individual level, but mainly refers to structural determinations present in society. In this sense, this work addresses the problem of understanding which identification and symbolization processes are present in a culture that has transformed depression among adolescents into a social symptom. In order to develop this, it expresses the main determinations that are present at puberty, discussing the processes of primary and secondary narcissism, the nature of identifications, mechanisms of the capitalist culture of consumption and its relationship with the processes of subjectivation, reflecting on the possibilities and obstacles of the social bond to offer and / or allow symbolization of anxieties and humanizing psychical work."

Empathy deficits and emotional dysregulation are core features of Cluster B personality disorders, often contributing to interpersonal dysfunction and therapeutic resistance. This paper explores the therapeutic potential of guided literary fiction reading—termed Dialectical Bibliotherapy—as a novel adjunct intervention aimed at enhancing affective empathy and emotional literacy in individuals with borderline, narcissistic, histrionic, and antisocial personality traits. Drawing on Reader-Response Theory, the study frames literary fiction not merely as passive entertainment but as an interactive psychological encounter wherein readers engage with complex emotional landscapes and multifaceted character psychologies. The proposed intervention involves structured reading sessions of selected emotionally intense fiction, followed by reflective dialogue modeled after techniques in Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT). The therapeutic reading process aims to scaffold empathic resonance by fostering imaginative identification and symbolic processing in a non-threatening context. This interdisciplinary model draws from psychiatry, narrative theory, and affective neuroscience to argue that literature may serve not only as mirror but as mediator—offering patients the opportunity to safely rehearse empathy and reconfigure emotional scripts. The paper concludes by outlining a pilot framework for clinical application and calls for empirical validation through controlled trials.