Narrative Theory Research Articles

“I Was Born!”: Personal Experience Narratives and Tree-Ring Marker Years

This essay, co-written by a dendrochronologist (Nick) and a narrative theorist (Erin), considers how these two disciplines can meet to illuminate alternative narratives in tree rings. At the basis of our conversation is a desire to tease apart tree experience and the signification entangled within human practices of storytelling. First, Nick explains recent developments in dendrochronology and critical physical geography (CPG) that call attention to the ways in which tree-ring sciences often naturalize imperial narratives and demand alternative methodologies. Second, Erin dives into the imperial narratives of two case study tree bodies, throwing light upon the human and vegetal stories that these dominant narratives obscure and silence. Third, Nick turns to an experiment in critical participatory action research (CPAR) to suggest an approach to tree-ring dating—material dating—that takes its cues not from imperial histories but from a simultaneous interest in community engagement, anticolonial scholarship, and tree agency and signification. Fourth, Erin explains how material dating, via foregrounding personal experience, stands to produce a narrative more sensitive to a particular tree’s situated experience and better able to foment understanding among tree body viewers for the tree as a living and communicating organism. Finally, Nick and Erin use material dating to produce an alternative narrative for one of our case studies and provide directions for other scholars to replicate our process.

African American Men and Mental Health

African American men face challenges that include internalized negative social identities, marginalization, oppression, systemic racism, invisibility syndrome, targets of violence, murder, and erasure. Social workers may place the population at further risk of harm by using methods influenced solely by Eurocentric values. There is a paucity of peer-reviewed journal articles in the social work literature regarding the mental health of African American men. The literature fails to support social workers in acquiring the clinical skills required to provide services to African American men. This article will provide guidance to improve assessment, diagnosis, and clinician engagement with adult African American male clients. Barriers to the care of this population include the stigma of receiving mental health services, avoidance of vulnerability, medical distrust, clinician bias, no knowledge culturally expressed symptomology of mental illness, and an absence of culturally responsive care. Theories that inform the work with African American men in this article are the social determinants of health theory, intersectional theory, and narrative theory.

Feasibility and Exception--The Grand Narrative Theory in the Myths of Buddhist Sculpture Art

This paper explores the grand narrative, especially in the context of Buddhist sculpture art. It portrays grand narratives as broad, non-falsifiable systems stemming from a collective story, often focusing on universality and macro theories. The paper also highlights the link between grand narratives and myth. The author examines how grand narrative theory applies to Buddhist art, evident in visual forms like Buddha statues, which function as both religious symbols and narrative components. This article mainly consists of two lines of analysis. One line examines the representation of grandeur and narrative in Buddhist sculptures, while the other line examines the changes in the grand narrative of Buddhist sculptures. The former involves the relationship between images and texts, while the latter involves the feasibility of the end of grand narrative as proposed by Jean-François Lyotard’s theory of grand narrative.

The mass person and their speech roles of a simpleton, a buffoon, a mentor in the Russian prose of the 1920s

The scientific review deals with the understanding of the image of the mass person in the literature of the 1920s. The focus of our attention includes both the actual literary texts of the writers of this decade, as well as fundamentally important studies devoted to this problem. Historical-typological and comparative methods are chosen as leading research technologies. They allow us to study the subjective organization of prose works and create a scientific classification of the most representative phenomena in this field. Modern achievements in narrative theory are taken into account. It is widely known that in the revolutionary breakdown of the entire symbolic system of being the ratio of everydayness and non-everydayness has changed. The role of the public dimension increased, human life went out onto the street, the square, and there was a tilt towards the collectivist "we". An ordinary person found their voice and inevitably became, to some extent, a historical "figure". For writers, this person was of interest as a subject of consciousness and a subject of speech. The range of speech roles of the mass person is quite large. There is a simpleton, and a buffoon, and a joker, and a performer, and a cheat, and a singer, and a limited person, and a fool, and a teaching mentor, and a narrow-minded judge. A mass person represents himself/herself in texts in different ways: 1) in the individual lines assigned to him/her by the author, 2) in detailed monologues, and, finally, 3) in prose. In the latter case comically-colored and holistic forms of fantasy-narrative became extremely active: there was a demand for a narrator figure capable of replacing the traditional figure of an "omniscient" narrator close to the author. This narrator completely subordinates the narrative, and the phraseological point of view of the character who initiated the storytelling event begins to dominate the text. The scientific review deals with the works of M.M. Zoshchenko, P.S. Romanov, A.N. Tolstoy, V.Ya. Shishkov, M.Ya. Kozyrev, Y.L. Slezkin. At the same time, attention is paid to such opposite speech reflections of the mass person as a harmless buffoon who turns every thing and every being around themselves into a theater of life, and a severely instructive mentor, distinguished by speech aggression. All these examples show that the traditional "little person" (familiar from previous literature and becoming a "mass person" in new historical conditions and gaining the status of the initiator of storytelling) does not at the same time acquire proper personal development and reveals his or her stereotypicality and shallowness.

The narrative structure of working cognition: Combining the Theory of Narrative Thought and Conviction Narrative Theory

I have combined two theories of narrative cognition to produce an integrated and more complete theory, called the theory of Narratively Structured Cognition (NSC). The latter is about how incoming information from the internal and external environments is structured by time and causality as the past causing the present, which will cause the future. This structure is narrative in form and is called the working narrative. It is a cognitive mechanism for predicting the future, which is called the expected future. The real future has yet to happen, so it cannot be evaluated for looming threats, but the expected future can be. Detected threats prompt action to delay, diminish, or eliminate them before the future becomes the present and the damage is done. NSC is presented first, followed by a brief comparison of the two earlier theories and how NSC combines them. Then uses for the expanded theory are discussed: The working narrative as the source of the everyday narratives we use for thinking and communication; research on narrative comprehension and use, and similar work; NSC as a foundational backstory for theories about everyday narratives and for other theories that use narrative as a core concept. I close with some very tentative suggestions about using NSC, or parts of it, to provide AI with a conscience.

Belonging in the Borderlands: Narrative, Place-making and Dwelling in Jean d’Arras’s Mélusine

ABSTRACT This article considers the complexities of belonging in Jean d’Arras’s romance of Mélusine, or L’Histoire de Lusignan (1393). Drawing on Laura Bieger’s theory of narrative and belonging, Martin Heidegger’s notion of dwelling, and Gloria Anzaldúa’s border theory, this article analyses the tensions between ownership and belonging as they arise in the early episodes of the text. The links between emplacement, dwelling and belonging, and how these have a productive relationship with narrative are explored. Teasing out these connections further illuminates the political imperative that underpins Jean d’Arras’s production of the text, but also resonates strongly with important issues in our own era of mass migrations and population displacements. This article, therefore, seeks to create deeper understandings of the ways in which belonging can be inscribed or erased.

Comusichiamo. First Language, Life-Soundtracks and Storytelling to Support the Cultural Wellbeing of Migrants Living with Dementia

ABSTRACT This study, located at the intersection of anthropology, ageing, music therapy and dementia, explores the value of music, life-storytelling and first language, to support the cultural identity and wellbeing of people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds living with dementia in Australia. It uses participant observation, the collection of oral histories and ‘life soundtracks’ to co-create a song with older Italian migrants and their families. This paper presents the first case study which informed the development of the music engagement program we call Comusichiamo (let’s make music together). The case study shows that the co-creation of a culturally tailored song, composed and sung in first language, can enhance physical and social engagement, and contribute to the general wellbeing of participants living with dementia, and their carers. Central to the program is the sharing of life history, comprising autobiographic memory, the use of ipsissima verba, the precise words participants employ repeatedly, and ipsissima fabula, the particularistic stories participants narrate frequently. This music engagement program supports a relationship-centred approach to dementia care, drawing on narrative theory and anthropological notions of personhood, and Benenzon’s notion of ‘sound identity’, to support cultural safety, protect personhood, and guard against ‘social death’.

From text to allegory: ideological turns in Shamel Abatha’s translation of Animal Farm in the socio-political context of Egypt’s Pre-Arab Spring

ABSTRACT The influence of ideology on the process of translation has been one of the most controversial debates among scholars and translators who may undergo multiple challenges due to certain ideological demands, whether they be political, cultural or religious. In the Arab world, the socio-political scene has been dominated by ideological shifts since the outbreak of the Arab Spring. These shifts have influenced Arab scholars and translators in many possible ways, one of which is the reproduction of incisive narratives that not only account for the causes and effects of revolutions that swept different regions in the Arab world but also provoke political reform. In this vein, this article investigates Shamel Abatha’s translation of George Orwell’s Animal Farm (1945) to Arabic. It specifically explores Abatha’s political orientations which result in daring textual manipulations of Orwell’s text before the Arab Spring in Egypt in 2011. Following Mona Baker’s narrative theory, the article demonstrates how Abatha’s target text turns into a socio-political national allegory that embodies critical ideological implications. The corpus consists of selected comparisons between Orwell’s Animal Farm and Abatha’s مزرعة الحيوانات [mazraat alḥywānāt] (2009) to show how translation strategies expound the impact of the latter’s political environment on his translation.

Postsocialism as a Crime

Abstract The decade of the 1990s has become a significant topic of cultural memory in postsocialist countries, including the Czech Republic. One of the most pervasive interpretive frames of this period of recent history, present across various media, is that of “crime.” This article argues that such a framing is supported by the police, an institution with considerable power to shape shared notions about the recent past. The interpretation of the first postsocialist decade as criminal in nature is demonstrated through the example of the Czech true-crime tv series Devadesátky (The Nineties, 2022). The Nineties is analyzed using three key concepts. “Plurimedial networks” help explain how the series became a powerful medium of memory. “Police memorialization” is used to show how the memory of postsocialism is constructed through the motif of crime from the perspective of the police and what its political implications are. “Police culture” provides a source for a critical reflection on police memory, revealing vested interests behind particular narrative representations of reality-based past events such as those depicted in The Nineties.

A Resident Narrative Medicine Curriculum to Promote Professional Identity Development: Story-Based Sessions Grounded in Narrative Learning Theory.

Empathy, reflection, and social connectedness are important skills for physician identity development and are increasingly challenged by burnout. Humanities-based interventions like narrative medicine (NM) are emerging in medical education to promote these skills. Only 17% of such initiatives target graduate medical learners. Furthermore, interventions are inconsistent in approach and theory representation. NM uses story-based learning to promote reflection and group discussion. Inspired by narrative learning theory, we developed NM sessions for residents to foster healthy identity development. Ninety-minute sessions were integrated into curricula for PGY 1-PGY 3 internal medicine-primary care residents at two large academic centers. Sessions involved engagement with a narrative source (stories, poems, art), personal reflection, and group discussion. Topics ranged from burnout to difficult patients. Participants completed anonymous postsession surveys assessing satisfaction, attitudes, and skills. Fifteen sessions occurred from 2021 to 2023, with three to 10 residents per session. Fifty residents completed between one and four sessions, with 68 survey responses (response rate: 88%). Over 95% ranked 4-5 out of 5 for overall impression (n = 67) and personal value (n = 65) of sessions. Sessions were highly enjoyable (M = 4.8), with mean scores of >4 out of 5 for impact on wellness, appreciation of work values, social connectedness, and patient care. NM sessions demonstrated measurable improvements in several domains of professional performance including wellness, job satisfaction, and patient care, while promoting camaraderie and emotion processing. Our materials offer tremendous potential for promoting healthy identity formation.

Experiencing the Craft and Ethical Impact of Young Adult Disability Fiction

Scholars like Ria Cheyne and Sami Schalk have argued that the imaginative and ethical structures of fiction can, if effectively leveraged, provide readers a new orientation to, or understanding of, difference. Advancing recent work that identifies methods to assess the material reception of disability literature, the article demonstrates how general audiences perceive both the craft and ethical import of fiction. Beverly Butler’s 1962 novel Light a Single Candle is one example of young adult literature that has resonated with audiences over time. Literary disability studies and narrative theory clarify the range of storytelling techniques that make the novel compelling: Butler, a blind author herself, carefully creates distances among reader, narrator, and character only to close them; she uses the physical description of blind modality to represent social experience; and she installs characters that model different disability ethics. Systematically analyzing the novel’s online reviews, the article shows that audiences sense Butler’s storytelling techniques in ways that open up spaces for mindful reflection on the nature of impairment and the construction of disability.

Allegorization of History in Burial at Sea

The paper titled “Allegorization of History in Burial at Sea” investigates Khushwant Singh's novel as an allegorized history of post-independent India. Published in 2005, Singh's narrative intertwines the lives of fictional characters with historical figures. Using a combination of textual analysis and historical data, this study examines how Singh's portrayal of these characters serves as an allegorical representation of broader historical narratives. By analyzing the allegorical elements within the novel, the study reveals how Singh's fictionalization serves to critique the idealized images of prominent historical figures, such as Jawaharlal Nehru, and the socio-political dynamics of their time. The findings suggest that Singh's work offers a complex re-interpretation of historical events and figures, highlighting the intersection of fiction and history. The significance of this study lies in its contribution to the discourse on the allegorical nature of historical fiction. This research provides a comprehensive analysis of how fictional works can reshape our perceptions of historical reality.

Evolutionary development of mother-child scaffolding for moral comprehension.

This evolutionary developmental study employed an experimental recursive narrative ecological niche, comparing scaffolded mother-child (5-year-old) pairs to unassisted controls as they independently viewed and discussed a realistic fictional family video depicting a father-daughter emotional conflict over the girl's risky behavior, which violated harm/care and fairness/justice moral foundation norms. A microgenetic analysis was conducted on a selected variant pair that demonstrated high adaptive fitness in the niche by employing developmentally advanced cooperative scaffolding tools. The conversational ecosystem phase was characterized by repeated maternal theory-oriented "why" questions and coordinated child causal responses, forming a joint epistemic investigation that facilitated the child's moral understanding of the characters' responsibilities and motives. The pair used quasi-justice procedures to gather evidence, judge, and construct moral attributes for the characters. Their conversational mechanism was supported by mutual mindreading, mental time travel, and empathic communications, as they interacted simultaneously with each other and the story characters. A narrative ecological scaffolding theory emerged, establishing a standard for cooperative epistemic scaffolding between the mother and the child. Future training programs should utilize the Zone of Proximal Development method to instruct similar parent-child pairs.

Revitalising a fading oral culture through innovative animation production: an experiment with Bodo oral narratives

PurposeThe paper aims to explore animation as a medium to revive the oral narrative of the Bodo community. The Bodo oral narratives are crucial for preserving the tribe's traditional values, but modernization is endangering their oral tradition. Transmitting folk culture to youth is crucial for its continuity and knowledge retention. The objective of the study was to examine the use of animation design approach for the transmission of oral narratives to the young generation.Design/methodology/approachThis design exploration involves a case study, field visit, user study, expert interaction for authentication and questionnaire-based survey. The approach integrates the animation design process with a popular myth of the Bodo tribe's musical instrument, Serja. This exploration seeks to visually present a reliable version of the story based on expert advice and published articles using instructional animation technique.FindingsThe positive response in the user survey suggests that the animation design exploration effectively represented the traditional and cultural aspects of the Bodo community. Feedback and comments from the participants have confirmed that animation can enhance the storytelling experience by effectively communicating oral stories.Research limitations/implicationsThe exploration in this research tries to establish a visual representation of the oral narratives of the Bodo community for the younger generation.Practical implicationsThe exploration in this research tries to establish a visual representation of the oral narratives of the Bodo community for the younger generation.Social implicationsBy using the digital medium, indigenous communities can sustain a long-lasting legacy of their oral stories.Originality/valueThe paper acknowledges the authentic essence of Bodo culture, rooted in their oral stories. Furthermore, it effectively captured and conveyed this essence using an animation design approach.

When a Literary Translator Took an Activist Turn: Lin Yutang’s Translation of New Democracy

ABSTRACT Lin Yutang, a world-famous writer and translator, has long been known as an apolitical cultural ambassador. This study reveals, however, that beginning from the early 1940s, Lin turned from apolitical to passionately political and his political activism found expression in translation. This article employs narrative theory to examine how Lin, as an activist translator, reframed Kuomintang-Communist conflict in China when translating Mao Tse-tung’s New Democracy. I argue that Lin’s translation was part of a public opinion warfare aimed to win American aid. Lin rendered Mao’s text in a way that could drive a wedge between Americans and Communists of China. Strategies employed included intentional mistranslation, selective appropriation, disambiguating and repositioning. This study shows that attempts to understand what motivates a translator to turn away from his or her well-beaten path can be theoretically productive.

Analisis Media Statement Kasus Lion Air Penerbangan Jt-610 Boeing 737 Max 8 Dengan Pendekatan Storytelling Michael L. Kent

The focus of this study is on how Lion Air managed crisis communication following the Boeing 737 MAX 8 crash of Flight JT-610. The research delves into the use of storytelling in media statements as a strategy for crisis communication during the aftermath of the crash. It outlines Lion Air's goals in sharing information and engaging with the public and media in the midst of this crisis. The study utilizes a qualitative text analysis to scrutinize three specific media statements released during the crisis. By applying Michael L. Kent's storytelling elements, the analysis of the media statements concentrates on factors like emplotment, narrative theory, identification, form, and masterplots. The selected statements cover the immediate aftermath of the crash on October 29, 2018; a subsequent statement on March 13, 2019, addressing broader safety concerns surrounding the Boeing 737 MAX 8; and a final statement on October 26, 2019, summarizing findings from the National Transportation Safety Committee's investigation. The research findings suggest that employing storytelling through straightforward text in media statements, incorporating credible character depiction, structured narrative, empathy, and compelling storytelling, can notably influence an organization's reputation recovery and improvement. Well-crafted and timely media releases are essential as primary information sources for the media, especially in crisis scenarios where prompt and precise information dissemination is critical. This method ensures that information, though disseminated quickly, maintains relevant and impactful storytelling aspects. The study concludes that storytelling, characterized by humanistic, empathetic, and coherent narratives across media statements, can be effectively utilized by Lion Air to uphold consistent and narrative-focused communication with the public through the media.

A visual ethnography of parent-child interactions during ‘story-time’ in Chinese family settings

ABSTRACT Story-time serves as an interactive linguistic tool through which parents encourage their children to share narratives. Grounded in sociocultural and narrative theories, this study employed a visual ethnographic approach to explore how parents perceive and engage in story-time interactions within 33 Chinese families. Data were collected through video recordings of story-time sessions and semi-structured interviews. The findings suggest that story-time may function as a play-based educational tool, fostering positive parent–child relationships and supporting child development through activities such as child-centered reading and role-playing. Parent–child interactions were categorized into two primary types: those involving print-based materials and those centered around oral storytelling. Parents emphasized the importance of respecting their children’s preferences by allowing them to choose stories and by developing effective storytelling techniques to maximize the benefits of family story-time. Through these sessions, parents and children engaged in meaningful interactions that strengthened family bonds and contributed to the children’s holistic development.

S393 Applying Narrative Theory to Raise Community Awareness and Support to Promote Healthy Behaviors and Cancer Screening in Baltimore

S393 Applying Narrative Theory to Raise Community Awareness and Support to Promote Healthy Behaviors and Cancer Screening in Baltimore

Narrative Creativity Training: A Case Study from the US Army

ABSTRACT: Though integral to thinking about causality, narrative—in particular narrative thinking—has been overlooked in traditional approaches to creativity studies and creative problem solving. Emphasizing the intrinsically speculative and causal aspects of narrative, this study investigates the effectiveness of narrative creativity training as a means of fostering innovative problem-solving skills within the US Army. Through two experiments conducted at the US Army Command and General Staff College, this research compares the outcomes of narrative training against conventional associational creativity training. Our results suggest that specifically narrative capacities are cognitively distinct, can be directly trained, and substantially improve problem solving. This research contributes to scholarship on the practical and empirical applications of narrative theory, as well as scholarship in creativity studies and creative problem solving, evincing the specific utility of narrative thinking in addressing complex, open-ended challenges.

The Narrative Function of “Soundscape” in Eileen Chang’s Novels in the Auditory Narrative Perspective——Taking Red Rose and White Rose as an Example

Auditory narrative is the expression and writing related auditory perception in narrative works. Eileen Chang’s Novels embody rich sensory narratives and take the auditory soundscape as a typical narrative. Scholar Fu Xiuyan believes that auscultating the soundscape with auditory narrative theory can “re-listen” to the classics and achieve the purpose of admonishing the “deafness” of literary research. Based on the theory of “auditory narrative” proposed by Fu Xiuyan, this paper selects the soundscape in Eileen Chang’s typical novel Red Rose and White Rose to analyze, and further explores the relationship between Soundscape Construction and Character Creation, Soundscape Cutting and Story Building, as well as Soundscape Contrast and Aesthetic Embodiment, in order to further supplement and enrich the new issues in the new field of Eileen Chang studies.