Narrative Function Research Articles

Lexical Portrait of an Oral Story: a Corpus Study of Speech of Two Generations of Native Speakers of Russian

The article is devoted to the quantitative and statistical analysis of the vocabulary of the oral stories corpus based on pictures. The subjects were 42 people, monolingual native speakers of the Russian (representatives of 15 families). The purpose of the study is to identify and describe the lexical parameters that distinguish the oral stories of representatives of different generations. An attempt is made to consider the connection of these parameters with the formation of native speakers’ ideas about the lexical structure of the narrative. The following results are obtained. The nature of the stimulus material ensured an approximately equal degree of complexity in the texts of both groups, although the volume of the parents’ active vocabulary significantly exceeded the volume of the children’s vocabulary. At the level of individual texts, both groups use equally diverse vocabulary per unit of text volume. In the children’s stories, the main “plot” vocabulary is quite heterogeneous, while the parents tend to lexical unification of the narrative. In the texts of both groups, local reference and direction of movement are expressed in the same way, which indicates their “basic” narrative function, which does not depend on the age of the subjects. The stories of the parents are also unified in terms of vocabulary, showing the logical structure of the narrative and different types of semantic relations in the text.

Keeping up Appearances

In March 2013, Kim Kardashian gazed out at her millions of Instagram followers with a placid but bloodied face. The stated aim of the selfie was to tease the topic of that week’s episode of Kourtney and Kim Take Miami, a spin-off series of the E! network’s long-running reality programme, Keeping Up with the Kardashians. However, marked with the hashtag ‘#vampirefacial’, the post had another effect: it inaugurated a new beauty trend into the popular consciousness. The vampire facial is an out-patient procedure typically performed by a dermatologist or cosmetic surgeon and promises to rejuvenate the facial skin through a combination of micro-needling and a platelet-rich plasma mask made from the patient’s own blood. (Results are disputed.) This article investigates the enduring association between Kardashian and the vampire facial in the popular imagination. Key to this investigation is the narrative function of blood vis-à-vis the figure of the vampire. When taken together, their corporeal and symbolic dimensions signal the abject, the feminine, the transgressive, the contagious, the vulnerable, the Other – that is, the Gothic. When applied to Kardashian’s glamorous celebrity construction, the bloody vampire facial affirms a comingling of Western Romantic beauty ideals with Gothic tropes. This article explores how Kardashian both upholds and challenges traditional Western beauty standards, and how, specifically, the Gothic signification of the vampire facial works to reveal the cultural tensions and anxieties around Kardashian’s performative beauty.

The trouble with maternal death narratives: Race, representation, and reproduction

ABSTRACTThe high risk of maternal death in Africa has cast a shadow over representations and experiences of pregnancy and childbirth. In the 1980s, amid new awareness of disparities in maternal mortality rates between high and low-income countries, tragic anecdotes of women dying during childbirth emerged as a tool to garner political and economic support for global health interventions aimed at women. While successfully raising public concern and billions of dollars in aid, given that these stories are some of the few stories of African women so widely circulated, it is important to ask: what else does the genre of maternal death narrative do? How might discursive practices around childbirth structure the care offered to African women? What power relations are revealed in this form of knowledge production and promotion? This article examines how maternal death narratives function, circulate, and structure potential solutions to the problem of maternal mortality. In focusing on the pathways to death, women’s bodies are foregrounded as sites of knowledge production over their experiences. I use fieldwork with pregnant and birthing women in southwest Nigeria to explore the ways that women piece together different sources of care in an effort to ensure successful deliveries amidst considerable uncertainty.

Capitalism in Language, and the Digital Era

This paper examines salient features of linguistic capitalism in the digital era, focusing on the dimensions of space, speed, and marketplace. We attempt to reconstruct the linguistic and economic connections of computation and algorithmic or cybernetic capitalism that reinforces global industrialization. We draw on work that discusses the keystone of Google’s success, which is built on three algorithms, PageRank, Adwords, and auto-completion. Auto-completion transforms linguistic materials with little economic value into a potentially profitable economic resource. We discern some semiotic aspects of data-isation and monetization of digital language. In the digital language spaces dominated by algorithmic capitalism as an aspect of informationalism, signs are detached from their narrative function and temporal dimension, while referring only to other signs. We then explore touch on the question of speed and velocity, which define a new linguistic capitalism. Here, ‘fast language’ is a key element in the marketplace of digital language, both as content and as technology. With the current dominance of companies such as Google, such a study is significant, as it sheds light on the economy of language and linguistic capitalism in the current highly pervasive online context.

„To jest weryfikacja rzeczywistości”. Narracja drugoosobowa w fantastyce naukowej

The article contains an analysis of the function of second-person narrative in selected works of science fiction. This experimental type of narrative is characterised by a tendency to blur the line between the fictional and non-fictional worlds and to strengthen the reader’s empathic attitude. As the article shows, the combination of the possibility of deepening the psychological images of fictional characters with the complication of the ontological hierarchy of worlds and undermining their stability leads to interesting effects. Among them, the most promising seems the potential for strengthening the meanings that result from the confrontation of subjective worlds with the fictional worlds, understood as arenas for the characters’ actions.

LINGUO-STYLISTIC CHARACTERISTICS OF THE NOVEL UNDER THE PEELING CEILING BY GORAN PETROVIĆ

The subject of the paper is the linguistic and stylistic features of the novel Under the Peeling Ceiling by Goran Petrović. The aim is to learn: (1) linguistic means used to shape discourse and (2) stylistic specificities of the novel. Linguistic features are considered on: (1) morphological and (2) lexical level. Each of the mentioned language levels has certain stylistic specificities. The results of the analysis showed that, on the morphological level, it is important to consider the use of: (1) verb tenses and their narrative functions (perfect, as well as present and future and with a transposed, preterite meaning) and (2) adjectives (with the syntactic function of attribute and noun part of the predicate), and with the squeeze value of the epithet. The specificity of the novel on the lexical level is shown by the use of expressive lexis (onymic lexis, creations, loanwords, deverbative nouns, diminutives/ hypocoristics, exclamations, pejoratives). The aforementioned language features formed the style of Goran Petrović's narration in the novel Under the peeling ceiling.

Interpretitve principles of stage implementation of Frank Marten’s Oratorio “The Magic Potion” in the Theater St. Gallen

Relevance of the study. Among the stylistic diversity of composer and vocal practice of the 20th century, which has been thoroughly studied in domestic musicology, the practitioner finds several little-known personalities of the music culture of Western Europe. Amid such names lies the figure of the Swiss composer Frank Martin (1890–1974). He is the author of oratorios Golgotha, In terra pax, Requiem, orchestral and chamber works. His works came from a period of active innovation and experimentation in music. The composer's writing is marked by the synthesis of dodecaphony and the classical functional tonality' system.
 The analysis of the embodiment of contemporary oratorio-opera on the stage is always of particular interest for contemporary interpretation. This also applies to the staging of F. Martin's works, which are not widely known, and therefore have not been studied at all. Thus, the relevance of the topic lies in the conceptualization of F. Martin's insufficiently explored oratory work, which deserves to be introduced into the scientific circulation of domestic musicology and the study of staging.
 Main objective(s) of the study is to substantiate the concept F. Marten’s «The magic potion» in the aspects of genre-stylistic and performing tasks of its stage realization.
 The object of study is F. Martin's vocal and choral works; its subject is the stylistic principles of the oratorio-opera The Magic Potion in the aspect of performing tasks of its stage realization.
 The methodology. Research methods are determined by the material and subject of research: historical — reveals the features of the context of socio-cultural life of Switzerland in the war and postwar years; biographical — contains information about the life and work of the composer; function and structure method — helps to determine the intonation structure of the work through the functions of i m t; stylistic — reveals the specifics of the artist's thinking «as an artistic unity» (according to S. Skrebkov).
 Results and conclusions. Using the original source of the medieval epic — the legend of Tristan and Isolde, — the composer sharpened the conflict of literary model (Joseph Bédier, Roman de Tristan et Iseut), taking the narrative into a more realistic channel that is focused on the feelings of the heroes. Following the tradition of ancient tragedies, in which the choir played the role of the engine of the plot, the composer transferred the function of narrative to an ensemble of twelve voices, part of which are the main characters of the plot. F. Martin designed The Magic Potion as a secular oratorio, without the ability to perform music as a grand opera, but did not exclude the possibility of a stage embodiment where the main characters would be portrayed by soloists that don't belong to the choir. An in-depth analysis of one of the contemporary stage performances of the St. Gallen creative team has shown current trends in contemporary vocal performance.
 Opera as a form of art attracts both the public and engaged composers and performers around the world. The contemporary opera genre demands particular challenges for composers, performers and producers, as well as opera intendants. The study of the complex genre structure of the work not only in the aspect of musicological analysis by the score, but also in the aspects of its stage embodiment (that is, the performing version of the oratory score) constitutes a scientific relevance and significance of the researched topic.

Aromas of knowledge, networks of scent: tracing the olfactory imagination of a 17th-century Ottoman traveler

ABSTRACT Standing in as a monumental work of Ottoman first-person prose that is without precedent, the Seyāḥatnāme (“Book of Travels”), at once a travelogue as well as a literary composition, is an ideal source for conducting a sensate history of Ottoman-Islamic society in the 17th century. Using characteristic flair and imagination, its author Evliyā Çelebi relates a number of fantastical anecdotes where scent plays a key narrative purpose, once in the context of conversing with the sacred dead in a dream, and on three occasions during visits to the caves of various Islamicate religious figures from the past. This paper will analyze these anecdotes to determine the narrative functions of scent in the text and in doing so tease out how olfaction was implicated in the Ottoman religious and social imaginary.

Audio Describing Sound – What Sounds are Described and How?

Given that the aural meaning-making channels are the main channels that people with sight loss have access to when processing audiovisual products, it is striking that hardly any research has been done on how dialogues, music, and sound effects are integrated in audio description (AD). A possible explanation is the lack of conceptual, theoretical, and methodological frameworks to systematically analyse sound. In the present article we study whether insights from film studies, multimodality research and audionarratology can be used to study sound in AD. After an overview of the state of the art, we present a case study that was carried out within the context of two master’s dissertations and for which an analytical framework for sound descriptions was designed and tested on different scenes from the Flemish film Loft (Van Looy, 2008). In addition to testing the validity of the framework, we wanted to obtain some concrete insights into what types of sounds were described and what narrative position and functions they occupied. On the one hand, the analysis shows AD usually renders the sounds that are the most prominent and most easily recognized. On the other hand, the analysis also shows that although the framework for the analysis clearly has its merits and can provide valuable insights, determining the narrative functions of sounds remains difficult. Therefore, the article ends with various new research questions and a clear plea for more research in this uncharted territory. Lay Summary When people with sight loss listen to an audiovisual product like a film or series, they mainly follow the story based on the sounds, such as dialogues, music, sound effects and the audio description track. It is, therefore, surprising that researchers have not paid a lot of attention to understanding how sounds complement the audio description in telling the story. One reason may be that researchers lack the necessary methods and theory to study sounds scientifically. In this paper, we try to develop this knowledge, by combining insights from different disciplines, such as film studies, multimodality research and audionarratology to create a framework for sound analysis in AD. Together with two Master students, we applied the framework to a case study, namely the analysis of the Flemish film Loft, directed by Erik Van Looy in 2008. The aim of this project was to test the methods we propose for this analysis. But we also wanted to find out what types of sounds are usually audio described and what their narrative contribution is - how they help build the story that is told in the film. Our analysis shows that AD usually renders the sounds that are the most prominent and most easily recognized. The analysis also shows that it is difficult to understand the narrative contribution of sounds, though, with the current scientific frameworks that we have. Therefore, the article ends with various new research questions and a clear plea for more research in this domain.

Feasts, Food and Fall of the Aristocratic Jia Family in Honglou meng

Abstract Drawing upon food studies, this paper undertakes an analysis of the narrative functions of feasts and food in the novel Honglou meng (A Dream of Red Mansions, or The Story of the Stone). These alimentary elements play a vital role in the social bonds between the Jia family and other elite groups, disclosing the complex distribution of power within the Jia household and displaying internal financial issues and the external threats that have exacerbated the fall of this aristocratic family, manifesting the familial and dynastical trajectories from glory to crisis within the novel.

Policing the Borribles: conjunctural crisis and moral panic in children’s literature

ABSTRACT Michael de Larrabeiti’s controversial series of novels for youth (published in 1975, 1981, and 1986) about the Borribles, children who grow feral and live in anarchic communities in London, were influential for the urban fantasy genre. The novels describe a fictional fantasy subculture but nevertheless engage with issues of the rise of a law-and-order society in the U.K. in the 1970s and police harassment of black youth. Drawing from the work of the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, the paper argues that the trilogy represents an imaginary political solution, grounded in anticapitalist, antiauthority, and antiracist ethics, to the conjunctural crisis of the 1970s and the rise of Thatcherism. The paper reads the structure of feeling of Borrible culture and argues how its narrative functions through a series of displacements to engage with racist police tactics, anarchist squats, and anticapitalist and antiwork ethics.

The Representation and Narrative Function of the Language of the Saracens in French Medieval Literature (13th-14th Centuries)

In French medieval literature, the Saracens are recurring characters that authors represent in different ways. Of all the characteristics used to describe them, however, their language does not seem to have attracted much interest. While this characteristic is addressed less frequently than others (such as anthroponymy or religion), language remains, nonetheless, a significant feature that takes many forms. This article aims to give a first overview of how the language of the Saracens is described and its narrative function. This research will examine the small number of texts that explicitly represent the Saracen language.

Joseph Campbell, Shiʿism, and the Karbala Narrative

ABSTRACT While Islam, like any major religion, should have its own mythos, the idea that Islam has myth has met with resistance. This paper utilizes the ideas of Joseph Campbell to argue that Islam does have mythos, through a study of the Karbala narrative, the story of the martyrdom of al-Husayn ibn ʿAli (d. 61 AH/680 CE), which is particularly central to Shiʿism. This narrative closely parallels Campbell’s archetypal framework of the monomyth. Using Campbell’s definitions of myth, it shows how the Karbala narrative functions as mythos rather than as history, although usually understood as the latter. The narrative of Karbala emerges from the human psyche, as a rich example of Campbell’s cross-cultural mythic structure known as the ‘hero’s journey’. While Shiʿis argue that the Karbala narrative persists because it is spiritually and cosmologically central, this archetypal structure offers a psychological explanation for why the Karbala narrative continues to be compelling. Second, Campbell expressed concerns over the sustainability of mythos in modernity, and mythos in Islam; this paper shows how the Karbala mythos persists despite the challenges of modernity. Lastly, this paper models an approach to exploring mythos in Islam which can be applied to other Islamic narratives.

Художественное своеобразие произведений Л. И. Чебодаевой для детей

The article, for the first time in the Khakass literary criticism, considers L. I. Chebodaeva’s literary work, which has not previously become a subject of scientific study. The aim is to identify the features of the artistic originality of L. Chebodaeva’s works for children. The scientific novelty is due to the introduction into scientific circulation of works addressed to children as an important material for the scientific study of the modern literary process of Khakassia. The article proves that animalistic images in L. Chebodaeva’s fairy tales, composed as fairy tales - dialogues, are a means of moral teaching, condemnation of human vices. The paper substantiates the use of a literary device in the stories - the boy Ayolka’s dream, the image of the hero-narrator grandfather Amon and the functions of fairy-tale narration. As a result, it has been revealed that, performing disciplinary, educational and aesthetic functions, L. Chebodaeva’s works have such an artistic form that is accessible to children’s perception; they introduce children of primary and secondary school age to the spiritual and moral values and traditions of the Khakass people, nature and wildlife of their native land, beauty and expressiveness of the artistic word and are focused on the formation of a highly moral person who honors their people, land, native language, national traditions, etc.

Captions as Suturing in Hybrid Memoirs

This essay studies the role that captions play in the interaction between photographs and text in hybrid memoirs. Rarely studied, captions can nevertheless be seen as fundamental transitory spaces where visual information and textual information are first confronted with each other before further connections can possibly be established by the main text. But even if captions can sometimes be seen as “secondary text,” offering basic and factual information about the photographs they are attached to, they can also have their own original narrative function. In what W. J. T. Mitchell calls the “suturing of discourse and representation,” captions may challenge readers’ or viewers’ expectations, especially in an autobiographical context where their main purpose is normally to confirm and enhance the referential content of the photograph.

Fighting the Devil: On the Non-Obvious Function of One Folk Story of the Oirats of Xinjiang

The article deals with the folk story ulum-i itaɣaɣsan ni (How Argachi managed to burn the devil-girl) published in 1990 in Urumqi in the Old Mongolian script. The story was incorporated into the collection of satirical tales about Argachi, an Oirat folk hero reminiscent of Khoja Nasreddin. Of all the published tales, the story in question highlights the image of the antagonist. While usually an Oirat folklore trickster opposes a rich man, an aristocrat or an official, in this case he deceives a mythological charactera female demon. This narrative largely repeats the Khalkha-Mongol mythological tale included by Vladimir A. Kazakevich (18961937) in the report on his trip in 1925 to the region of the Khalkh-gol river. The researcher provided the narrative recorded in Khalkha with a voluminous commentary, which made it possible to completely reconstruct the context and pragmatic function of a stable narrative. The traditional strategy used to deceive a mythological character dangerous for a person, in case of an undesirable visit to the yurt, is revealed. The strategy is expressed by the world-famous folktale-type AT 1135 Eye Remedy.

A Study on Easter, 1916 from the Perspective of the Ideational Function

Easter, 1916 is a classic work of Irish poet Yeats, describing four leaders in Irish raising and expressing Yeats’ complicated attitudes toward the rebellion. Being different from the traditional view of history, the study interprets the poem by analyzing its clauses from the perspective of functional grammar. It is concluded that a large amount of material process are used to represent the experiences of the characters, which realizes the narrative function of a poem. Relational process, the identifying one particularly, highlights the beliefs of revolutionaries and Yeats’ suspicion of their sacrifice. But finally, the mental, verbal and behavioural processes rebuild his support for the uprising and the nationalism represented by it.

"CAUCASIAN" NARRATIMS OF MODERN "POLITICS OF MEMORY" IN GEORGIA

The purpose of this study is to analyze the Caucasian dimension in the modern Georgian historical politics of memory. The author analyzes the main vectors and trajectories of the development of Caucasian narratives in the modern memorial canon of Georgia. The novelty of the study lies in the analysis of the practices and strategies used by Georgian intellectuals within the framework of the functioning of Caucasian narratives in the modern memorial canon of Georgia as an element of the politics of memory. The article analyzes 1) the role of political elites and the media in the formation of Caucasian narratives in the politics of memory, 2) features of the performative turn in historical politics, 3) Abkhazian and Ossetian narratives as components of the Caucasian politics of memory in modern Georgia. The article shows both the consolidating and conflict potential of the Caucasian dimension in Georgian historical politics. It is assumed that the Caucasian narratives in the modern memorial canon are predominantly symbolic for solving internal political problems, since the real influence of Georgia in the region is minimized by external factors. The results of the study suggest that the Caucasian narratives in the Georgian politics of memory have become an element of the ideological legitimation of the elites and the promotion of the concept of Georgia's special role in the Caucasus.

Merits of Fantastic Literature: A Proposal for Theoretical Framework

The paper attempts to set ground for a comprehensive debate on the merits of non-mimetic (fantastic) literature, tentatively proposing a system of four basic merits — the entertaining/fabulative, the emotional-cognitive, the speculative/extrapolative, and the aesthetic. These merits can also be alternatively viewed as narrative functions, precisely defined presuppositions, agreements between the implied reader and writer as to what literary gratifications are to be expected by the reader from the reading experience. They constitute structural dominants which are well manifested in the texts themselves. The author’s proposals should be read merely as certain initial approximations, albeit hopefully useful ones, capable of inspiring further debate.

Ḥamza versus Rustam: Comparing theḤamzanāmawith theShāhnāma

AbstractThis paper compares theḤamzanāma(Book of Ḥamza) with theShāhnāma(Book of Kings), the two most popular works performed by the storytellers of Safavid Iran (1501–1736), focusing on their heroes, Ḥamza and Rustam, respectively. Following an overview of theḤamzanāmathat helps to identify its main intertexts, themes, and narrative elements: theShāhnāma; the Islamic Alexander tradition; andʿayyārī(trickery); the paper re-examines how Ḥamza is modelled after Rustam by looking at his epithets and narrative functions. It then turns to their differences, which are most discernible in Rustam's epithet used as the name of Ḥamza's enemy, the split between the ideals ofjawānmardī(generosity) andʿayyārī, and Ḥamza's unheroic weaknesses. This latter serves to emphasize God's compassion at his martyrdom while giving storytellers an impetus to continue their performances.