Narrative Devices Research Articles

Trajectories of support intervention in clinical psychology

The present paper aims to discuss the request of the National Council of Italian Psychologists for a definition of the typical acts of psychologists in the clinical field by commenting on the work of Castelnuovo et al. (2023). In particular, we aim to contribute to the current debate by addressing primarily supportive interventions in the clinical setting, focusing on: (1) defining the supportive intervention among the typical acts of the psychologist; (2) adopting a methodological criterion to distinguish between supportive intervention as a psychological-clinical act and psychotherapeutic intervention; and (3) articulating of the discourse in relation to the adoption of narrative methods in clinical intervention. In particular, in this work we argue that supportive interventions are adopted in critical situations, where dysregulation of psychological functioning processes is assumed, and they use the narrative device by promoting a connection between mental states and an articulation of affects in shared meanings. Instead, psychotherapeutic interventions are adopted in conditions of distress and/or psychopathology and use the narrative device in light of an inverse trajectory of sense, that leads from behaviors and representations to the understanding and transformation of the affective matrix of experience. Thus, supportive intervention may be defined as a process in which the clinical relationship serves as scaffolding for psychic functions in the direction of their development and integration.

“Ful Louder”: Raising the Hue and Cry in the Nun’s Priest’s Tale

ABSTRACT In fourteenth-century England, the hue and cry empowered anyone who could make noise with the opportunity to catalyze legal action. This article investigates Chaucer’s deployment of the hue and cry as a narrative device in the Nun’s Priest’s Tale. The legal ritual of the hue and cry appears twice in the tale, once during a story of a murdered pilgrim Chauntecleer recounts and again during the tale’s infamous chase scene. While the first instance depicts the hue and cry as it was intended in lawbooks—a tool of order-keeping that functions to summon the appropriate authorities—the second instance represents the hue and cry in practice: a loud, chaotic legal ritual capable of instigating violence, but which also demands recognition of embodied vulnerability before the law.

Tracing the Evolution of Reviews and Research Articles in the Biomedical Literature: A Multi-Dimensional Analysis of Abstracts

We previously examined the diachronic shifts in the narrative structure of research articles (RAs) and review manuscripts using abstract corpora from MEDLINE. This study employs Nini’s Multidimensional Analysis Tagger (MAT) on the same datasets to explore five linguistic dimensions (D1–5) in these two sub-genres of biomedical literature, offering insights into evolving writing practices over 30 years. Analyzing a sample exceeding 1.2 million abstracts, we observe a shared reinforcement of an informational, emotionally detached tone (D1) in both RAs and reviews. Additionally, there is a gradual departure from narrative devices (D2), coupled with an increase in context-independent content (D3). Both RAs and reviews maintain low levels of overt persuasion (D4) while shifting focus from abstract content to emphasize author agency and identity. A comparison of linguistic features underlying these dimensions reveals often independent changes in RAs and reviews, with both tending to converge toward standardized stylistic norms.

Use of Cognitive Fatigue as a Narrative Device in Golden Age Detective Fiction: Exploring Agatha Christie’s Selected Works

Use of Cognitive Fatigue as a Narrative Device in Golden Age Detective Fiction: Exploring Agatha Christie’s Selected Works

Cultural Crossroads and Subaltern Realities in Diasporic Discourse: Exploring the Sense of Belonging in Lahiri and Mistry’s Narratives

This study examines the theme of cultural navigation and the sense of belonging in Jhumpa Lahiri's novel The Namesake and Rohinton Mistry's A Fine Balance. Focusing on the Indian diaspora, the study meticulously explores the multifaceted dimensions of subalternity embedded in the characters' experiences of cultural displacement, identity negotiation, and socio-economic adversities. This research paper aims to elucidate the complex dynamics of belonging in a diverse and interconnected global community by conducting a comparative analysis of the many ways in which these narratives portray the journeys of people bridging many cultures. In navigating the complex fabric of two separate cultures, this paper explores the challenges, triumphs, and transformations of the protagonists. It investigates the literary techniques employed by Lahiri and Mistry to portray the psychological and emotional aspects of cultural adaptation, illuminating the characters' changing self-perceptions. It also examines how society and family dynamics shape the identities of the characters, highlighting the conflict between the desire for integration and clinging to one's traditional origins. Through a thematic analysis, this study seeks to uncover the authors' perspectives on cultural hybridity, shedding light on the broader implications for individuals striving to reconcile their heritage with the demands of contemporary life. The study also looks at how the characters' sense of place affects their sense of belonging, examining how the writers employ location as a narrative device to highlight the contrasts between cultures. This comparative approach aims to provide various insights into the ways in which Lahiri and Mistry articulate the multifaceted nature of cultural identity and how it changes over time and contributes to a deeper understanding of the intricate interplay between culture, identity, and belonging in contemporary literature.

What Lies Beyond Their Hurting: Representations of Female Pain and Personhood in Animation

The representation of women in art is a fraught one. This article analyzes the relationship American society has to female pain, using four cartoon series as case studies to argue that cultural perceptions around women's suffering are shifting towards viewing women as more than the sum total of their pain. The methodology of this analysis relies on Simone de Beauvoir's Second Sex and Leslie Jamison's "Grand Unified Theory of Female Pain" as a theoretical framework that illuminates cultural manifestations of female pain and the stereotypes that perpetuate these models, specifically applying them to female characters in Avatar: The Legend of Korra, Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure, She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, and Steven Universe. Animation analysis demonstrates how portrayals of women in media have evolved, yet continue to rely on female pain as a plot device for character development and plot progression. This analysis throws into relief the concept of the "post-wounded woman," a modern opposition to the "wounded woman" trope that asserts societal notions of female pain have rendered women's relationship to their emotions full of disadvantage as they must yield control over how they are perceived. Emotions such as rage and anger are deemed impermissible by society because they challenge essentialist notions of the female condition. However, new female archetypes are appearing in animation alongside classical depictions, placing the medium ahead of traditional sexist societal views in this respect.

Feminist Matters: The Politics of Eating in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus

Abstract Using food as a narrative device in her critically acclaimed debut novel Purple Hibiscus (2003), Adichie offers a markedly feminist critique of the legacies of neocolonialism on Africa’s ability to choose its own destiny. Indeed, Adichie’s exploration of food as the locus of hospitality and hostility and the dining table as a fraught and shifting site of power and its contestation yields a commentary on the domestic arena as a metaphor for the national sociopolitical and economic situation. More specifically, Adichie links notions of food control and tyrannical power to prevailing patriarchal systems that expose women and children to violent injustices and to material and spiritual want. She depicts colonial and fundamentalist religious institutions as inimical to women’s participation in political and economic processes.

Między techniką a strategią. Postmodernistyczna dezorientacja widza w „lynchowskim” „Riverdale”

This article focuses on the streaming series Riverdale (Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, 2017–2023) distributed by Netflix. The creators of the series overtly refer to postmodern cinema, especially the works of David Lynch. In doing so, they use various kinds of disorientation techniques, that is, narrative devices that complicate the interpretation of what is presented. The author of the article performed a textual analysis on the 6 available seasons, focusing on demonstrating the correlation between the series and postmodern cinema. Then the various aspects of the series were assigned to the possible techniques of disorientation proposed by Andrzej Zalewski. The purpose of this text is to identify the “Lynchianism” in Riverdale and to demonstrate what techniques of disorientation are used by the creators of this series. A further intention is to resolve whether this is in fact a technique (seen by many as a deriving from ineptitude) or a strategy (resulting from deliberate action). The article attempts to view the contemporary work from a postmodern perspective.

Revelatory Inebriation and Westward Projections: Bolek Polívka’s Father Figures in Mid-2000s Czech Cinema

In the mid-2000s, prominent Czech actor Bolek Polívka played palpably flawed father figures in the films Pupendo (2003) and Something Like Happiness (2005). Polívka’s patresfamilias iterate the tendencies of alcohol consumption and antiheroism common for portrayals of masculinity in Czech texts in these films, which reflect post-communist attitudes about current affairs and perspectives on the former regime. This paper applies theories pertaining to regional literature and national cinemas to explore Polívka’s peculiar roles as father figures responding to local social codes and notions about the West. The analysis assesses Polívka’s select patresfamilias against characters from his prior films as well as familiar figures in the Czech cultural canon, e.g. Josef Švejk. The discussion also proposes an understanding of alcohol use in Pupendo and Something Like Happiness as a narrative device that brings about instances of intimacy and revelation. Polívka’s acting engenders moments of truth that clarify his characters’ stances and align them with narrative developments of both films. In accordance with concentrating on the actor, this paper accounts for the complexity that Polívka’s off-screen persona and local success add to his characters.

Introspection and Transformation on Ruskin Bond’s “The Blue Umbrella”

This research paper aims to investigate the reasons behind the popularity of the story’s titular object, “The Blue Umbrella”. The story is set in Garhwal, a town in the Himalayas, where a little girl named Binya discovers a unique umbrella. “The Blue Umbrella” becomes a symbol of attraction and gains popularity in the village as nobody else has an umbrella like Binya’s. The study examines the functions of the Blue Umbrella that trigger emotional changes and explores the thematic components and narrative devices used by Ruskin Bond to enhance its significance. This paper attempts to examine human characters, the value of material possessions, and the impact of small events on rural life. The article will cover several aspects of the Blue Umbrella’s popularity.

The Subtle Substitution of Robots for Humans in Isaac Asimov’s I Robot

I Robot is a collection of nine short stories by science fiction writer Isaac Asimov that imagines the development of humanlike robots with a form of artificial intelligence. The stories originally appeared in science-fiction magazines between 1940 and 1950, the year that they were first published together in book form. Asimov’s treatment of robots as being programmed with ethics rather than as marauding metal monsters was greatly influential in the development of science fiction. This paper explores the substitution of humansfor robots. Isaac Asimov’s stories depict a gradual and often unnoticed replacement of humans by robots in various domains of human activity such as labor, law, politics, religion, and art. Isaac uses three laws of robotics, which are designed to protect humans from harm, as a narrative device to show the paradoxes and dilemmas that arise from the interaction between humans and robots. This paper explores the prevention of human calamities by using robots with specific laws.

Deconstructive Narratives, Decreasing Doublets, Deceptive Cadences, and the Design of Circles: Strategies for Building a Closure in the Arabian Nights

While the beginning of the frame narrative in The Thousand and One Nights has generated many interpretations, its ending has gone almost unnoticed. This article discusses various narrative strategies for constructing an ending. The examples are taken from a corpus of texts consisting of the Arabic collection Alf layla wa-layla (“The Thousand and One Nights”) as it existed in the 9th/15th century and the so-called “orphan stories,” the tales Ḥannā Diyāb (c. 1688 – after 1763) told to Antoine Galland (1646–1715), who published them in expanded form in volumes nine through twelve of his Mille et une nuit[s]. It is argued that The Thousand and One Nights are by no means an arbitrary compilation of stories. On the contrary, they are a carefully crafted literary composition. This is particularly evident in the way of constructing narrative closures which create a feeling of satisfactory completion. This is demonstrated by pointing to narrative devices discovered in literary studies of works of the highest stratum of world literatures. It also advocates studying the work in its original form, the text of which has yet to be reconstructed.

Shakespeare and Adaptation: Reading the Plague

The present paper analyzes Shakespeare’s reading of the contemporary social reality of England, especially London, as a (source) text troubled with plague outbreaks, contagion, dissemination, and enforced quarantines. The numerous references to plague in the language and narrative of the plays reflect how the playwright adapts the traumatic experiences associated with it through allusion, dialogue, metaphor, plot device, and conflation with storytelling itself. From an Adaptation Studies perspective, these references and allusions reveal Shakespeare as a master adapter of not only prior written texts, but also of contemporary events that had a significant impact on the lives of the Elizabethan populace.

“Wake Up!” with Narrative Film Music: Optimizing Narrative Power Through Spike Lee’s Compilation Soundtracks of Popular Music

Filmmaker and director Spike Lee famously features popular music in his films, often incorporating compilation soundtracks that function as sonic narrative devices, sometimes alongside original scores. Through analysis of three of Lee’s films based on true stories—Malcolm X (1992), Crooklyn (1994), and BlacKkKlansman (2018)—and their soundtracks, it is evident that Lee’s use of popular music in his historical films not only situates the works in their respective time periods, but also emphasizes the relevance of each film narrative in American history, both past and present.

The Weather Is Dirty: Jane Austen’s Use of Nature as a Social Agent

ABSTRACT Throughout her works, Jane Austen utilized weather as a powerful natural phenomenon to facilitate plot action through enabling or inhibiting social interactions. The inclusion of the natural world gives indications of how Austen perceived humans in relation to the environment: that people, their plans, and their social interactions were very much at the mercy of nature. This ecocritical analysis of her work extends beyond the picturesque into broader conceptions of her interests in people and their interconnections with each other and with nature, raising the heretofore unspoken idea that Austen perceived nature as having the ability to both enable and interrupt social engagement. Austen’s use of weather to facilitate character action and plot development could be interpreted as a convention of Romanticism, or as counter to Romanticism, as these very same natural events create kinks in plans, deviating from so-called ideal conditions. This article examines the role of weather as a plot device across a selection of Austen’s novels, including Northanger Abby, Sense & Sensibility, Pride & Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, and Persuasion. This article offers further ecocritical analysis of her interests in people and their interconnections with each other and with nature.

Epistemology and Language of Science Fiction

Background knowledge plays an important role in understanding and appreciating both visual and literary creations. As society becomes more knowledgeable, more mature, technologically more advanced, and more sophisticated, the knowledge required to appreciate arts, including verbal art, increases greatly. In the comprehension of science fiction (SF), equal to reading experience, a substantial degree of background knowledge is needed to perceive the narrative and the plot devices, properly appreciate the informative and the aesthetic aspects of the discourse, and contemplate its consequences. This background knowledge challenging human intellect in SF is based on epistemology – the theory and construction of knowledge and the study of knowledge acquisition addressing cognitive sciences, involving an awareness of certain aspects of reality and seeking to discover what is known and how it is known. Moreover, in its relation to SF, epistemology explains why our minds relate to reality and how these relationships are either valid or invalid. Hence, the results of the present study based on case study, extrapolative and linguostylistic methods of investigation, show that epistemology helps to distinguish between the truth and falsehood as we obtain knowledge from the world around us and, in this case, from such a literary genre as SF.

Exploring Social Realities and Identity Struggles through Content Analysis of Dialogues in La Désintégration by Philippe Faucon

This paper delves into the intricate social realities and identity struggles depicted in the film La Désintégration by Philippe Faucon through a meticulous content analysis of dialogues. This study aims to unveil the underlying sociopolitical themes embedded within the characters' dialogues by employing content analysis as the primary methodology. La Désintégration offers a poignant exploration of issues such as cultural and religious identity, socioeconomic marginalisation, and the process of radicalisation. Through a detailed analysis of selected dialogue excerpts, this paper sheds light on the characters' nuanced interactions and internal conflicts. By engaging with the dialogues as narrative devices, this research contributes to a deeper understanding of how banlieue cinema captures and reflects broader societal concerns. The findings extend the existing discourse on banlieue cinema and highlight the significance of dialogue in conveying the intricate web of social complexities in contemporary societies.

Canary in a Coal Mine: From Mine Safety Technique to Animal Metaphor (Animals Special Issue)

ABSTRACT In the early twentieth-century coal miners used canaries to detect the presence of poisonous gases underground. Miners treasured canaries for their cheer, partnership, and assistance. This safety practice had largely ended in the United States by the middle of the twentieth century, but the phrase ‘canary in a coal mine’ took on an extended life as a metaphor, signaling impending disaster in a variety of situations. The metaphor’s malleability encouraged the inclusion of caged birds as a plot device. Horror and science fiction films like The Birds, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Arrival, and Bird Box use birds to signal invisible, hard-to-explain risks. The coal mine canary therefore became a sentinel for the most troubling social and political anxieties of each era. It signaled people’s worries that they could no longer identify and manage dangers in the modern world, whether those had to do with warfare, the environment, federal surveillance, social media, or epidemics. The birds’ use as a warning symbol, though, took miners’ beloved, sentient animal and turned it instead into a simple, but powerful tool. The coal mine canary’s continued prescence in popular culture also suggests that Americans remain concerned about the viability of new technologies in a rapidly changing world.

Students' Responses to Plot Device of Going/Trapped to Another World Seen in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by Frank L Baum: Reading Interest and Popular Culture Knowledge

This study discusses the plot device of ‘going/trapped to another world’ as seen in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by Frank L. Baum about reading interest and popular culture knowledge by the students’ responses from the English Department Universitas Andalas. It aims to find the correlation between their knowledge and interest in the plot device of ‘going/trapped into another world’ and the popularity of the Isekai genre among them. The result shows that the majority of the respondents were familiar with and interested in the genre, and the genre’s ability to facilitate imaginative escapism, served as coping mechanism from real life challenges, it helps their opinion that the plot device remains popular and relevant in the future with strong confidence in its enduring appeal as relatable experiences become the primary reason for its popularity to stay in the pop culture world.

The (Vi)Kings’ Saga: Mixed Modality as the Key to the Construction of Meaning in Jómsvíkinga saga

Abstract The objective of this article is to analyse the narrative functions of mixed modality in Jómsvíkinga saga, a text that combines elements of different saga genres, primarily the kings’ sagas and the legendary sagas. It is argued here that the mixed modality is not a sign of the early saga’s imperfection, but it serves as a narrative device that contributes to the saga’s capacity to indirectly express commentary on social issues that were current at the time of the saga’s composition.