Before proceeding to describe such a phenomenon as narrativity in modern humanities, as well as to identify its characteristics and structures, it is necessary, first of all, to define the very term "narrative".
Narrative - what is it?
There are several versions about the origin of the term, more precisely, several sources from which it could appear.
According to one of them, the name "narrative" originates from the words narrare and gnarus, which in Latin mean "knowing about something" and "expert". The English language also has the word narrative, similar in meaning and sound, which no less fully reflects the essence of the narrative concept. Today, narrative sources can be found in almost all scientific fields: psychology, sociology, philology, philosophy, and even psychiatry. But for the study of such concepts as narrativity, narration, narrative techniques, and others, there is a separate independent direction - narratology. So, it is worth understanding the narrative itself - what is it and what are its functions?
Both etymologicalThe sources proposed above carry a single meaning - the presentation of knowledge, a story. That is, to put it simply, a narrative is a kind of narration about something. However, this concept should not be confused with a simple story. Narrative narrative has individual characteristics and features, which led to the emergence of an independent term.
Narrative and storytelling
How is a narrative different from a simple story? A story is a way of communication, a way of receiving and transmitting factual (qualitative) information. Narrative is the so-called “explaining story”, if we use the terminology of the American philosopher and art critic Arthur Danto (Danto A. Analytical Philosophy of History. M.: Idea-Press, 2002. P. 194).
That is, the narrative is, rather, not an objective, but a subjective narrative. Narrative arises when subjective emotions and assessments of the narrator-narrator are added to an ordinary story. There is a need not only to convey information to the listener, but to impress, interest, make them listen, cause a certain reaction. In other words, the difference between a narrative and an ordinary story or a narrative that states facts is in the involvement of individual narrator's assessments and emotions of each narrator. Or in indicating cause-and-effect relationships and the presence of logical chains between the described events, if we are talking about objective historical or scientific texts.
Narrative example
To finallyto establish the essence of narrative narrative, it is necessary to consider it in practice - in the text. So, narrative - what is it? An example demonstrating the difference between a narrative and a story in this case is the comparison of the following passages: “Yesterday I got my feet wet. I didn't go to work today" and "I got my feet wet yesterday, so I got sick today and didn't go to work." The content of these statements is almost identical. However, only one element changes the essence of the narrative - an attempt to connect both events. The first version of the statement is free from subjective ideas and causal relationships, while in the second they are present and are of key importance. In the original version, it was not indicated why the narrator did not go to work, perhaps it was a day off, or he really felt bad, but for a different reason. However, the second option already reflects the subjective attitude to the message of a certain narrator, who, through his own considerations and appeal to personal experience, analyzed the information and established cause-and-effect relationships, voicing them in his own retelling of the message. The psychological, "human" factor can completely change the meaning of the story if the context provides insufficient information.
Narratives in scientific texts
Nevertheless, not only contextual information, but also the perceiver's own experience (narrator) affects the subjective assimilation of information, the introduction of assessments and emotions. Based on this, the objectivity of the story is reduced, and you canit would be assumed that narrativity is not inherent in all texts, but, for example, it is absent in messages of scientific content. However, this is not quite true. To a greater or lesser extent, narrative features can be found in any messages, since the text contains not only the author and the narrator, who in essence can be different actors, but also the reader or listener, who perceive and interpret the information received in different ways. First of all, of course, this applies to literary texts. However, there are narratives in scientific reports as well. They are present rather in historical, cultural and social contexts and are not an objective reflection of reality, but rather act as an indicator of their multidimensionality. However, they can also influence the formation of causal relationships between historically reliable events or other facts.
Given such a variety of narratives and their abundant presence in texts of various content, science could no longer ignore the phenomenon of narrativity and came to grips with its study. Today, various scientific communities are interested in such a way of knowing the world as storytelling. It has development prospects in it, since the narrative allows you to systematize, streamline, disseminate information, as well as individual humanitarian branches to study human nature.
Discourse and narrative
From all of the above, it follows that the structure of the narrative is ambiguous, its forms are unstable, there are no samples of them in principle, and inDepending on the context of the situation, they are filled with individual content. Therefore, the context or discourse in which this or that narrative is embodied is an important part of its existence.
If we consider the meaning of the word in a broad sense, discourse is speech in principle, language activity and its process. However, in this formulation, the term "discourse" is used to denote a certain context that is necessary when creating any text, as one or another position for the existence of a narrative.
According to the concept of postmodernists, narrative is a discursive reality, which is revealed in it. The French literary theorist and postmodernist Jean-Francois Lyotard called narration one of the possible types of discourse. He sets out his ideas in detail in the monograph "The State of Modernity" (Liotar Jean-Francois. The State of Postmodernity. St. Petersburg: Aletheia, 1998. - 160 p.). Psychologists and philosophers Jens Brockmeier and Rom Harre described the narrative as a “subspecies of discourse”, their concept can also be found in the research work (Brockmeier Jens, Harre Rom. Narrative: problems and promises of one alternative paradigm // Questions of Philosophy. - 2000. - No. 3 - S. 29-42.). Thus, it is obvious that in relation to linguistics and literary criticism, the concepts of "narrative" and "discourse" are inseparable from each other and exist in parallel.
Narrative in philology
Much attention to narrative and narrative techniques was paid to philological sciences: linguistics, literary criticism. In linguistics, this term, as alreadymentioned above, is studied together with the term "discourse". In literary criticism, it refers rather to postmodern concepts. Scientists J. Brockmeyer and R. Harre in their treatise “Narrative: Problems and Promises of an Alternative Paradigm” proposed to understand it as a way of ordering knowledge and giving meaning to experience. According to them, narrative is a guide to storytelling. That is, a set of certain linguistic, psychological and cultural structures, knowing which, you can compose an interesting story in which the mood and message of the narrator will be clearly guessed.
Narrative in literature is essential for literary texts. Since a complex chain of interpretations is realized here, starting from the point of view of the author and ending with the perception of the reader / listener. When creating a text, the author puts certain information into it, which, having passed a long text path and reaching the reader, can completely change or be interpreted differently. In order to correctly decipher the author's intentions, it is necessary to take into account the presence of other characters, the author himself and the narrator, who themselves are separate narrators and narrators, that is, narrators and perceivers. Perception becomes more complicated if the text is dramatic in nature, since drama is one of the genres of literature. Then the interpretation is distorted even more, passing through the presentation of it by the actor, who also brings his emotional and psychological characteristics into the narrative.
However, it is precisely this ambiguity thatthe ability to fill the message with different meanings, leave the reader ground for reflection and is an important part of fiction.
The narrative method in psychology and psychiatry
The term "narrative psychology" belongs to the American cognitive psychologist and educator Jerome Bruner. He and forensic psychologist Theodore Sarbin can rightfully be considered the founders of this humanitarian industry.
According to the theory of J. Bruner, life is a series of narrations and subjective perceptions of certain stories, the purpose of the narrative is to subjectify the world. T. Sarbin is of the opinion that facts and fiction are combined in narratives that determine the experience of a particular person.
The essence of the narrative method in psychology is the recognition of a person and his deep problems and fears through the analysis of his stories about them and their own lives. Narratives are inseparable from society and cultural context, because it is in them that they are formed. Narrative in psychology for a person has two practical meanings: firstly, it opens up opportunities for self-identification and self-knowledge by creating, comprehending and speaking various stories, and secondly, it is a way of self-presentation, thanks to such a story about oneself.
Psychotherapy also uses a narrative approach. It was developed by Australian psychologist Michael White and New Zealand psychotherapist David Epston. Its essence is to create certain circumstances around the patient (client), the basis for creating his own story,with the involvement of certain people and the commission of certain actions. And if narrative psychology is considered more of a theoretical branch, then in psychotherapy the narrative approach already demonstrates its practical application.
Thus, it is clear that the narrative concept has been successfully used in almost any field that studies human nature.
Narrative in politics
There is an understanding of narrative narrative in political activity. However, the term "political narrative" carries a negative connotation rather than a positive one. In diplomacy, narrativity is understood as deliberate deception, concealment of true intentions. Narrative story implies the deliberate concealment of some facts and true intentions, perhaps the substitution of the thesis and the use of euphemisms to make the text harmonious and avoid specifics. As mentioned above, the difference between a narrative and an ordinary story is the desire to make people listen, to impress, which is typical for the speech of modern politicians.
Narrative visualization
As far as the visualization of narratives is concerned, this is a rather difficult question. According to some scientists, for example, the theorist and practitioner of narrative psychology J. Bruner, a visual narrative is not a reality dressed in a textual form, but a structured and ordered speech inside the narrator. He called this process a certain way of constructing and establishing reality. Indeed, notThe "literal" linguistic shell forms a narrative, and a consistently stated and logically correct text. Thus, you can visualize the narrative by voicing it: telling it orally or writing it in the form of a structured text message.
Narrative in historiography
Actually, the historical narrative is what laid the foundation for the formation and study of narratives in other areas of the humanities. The term "narrative" itself was borrowed from historiography, where the concept of "narrative history" existed. Its meaning was to consider historical events not in their logical sequence, but through the prism of context and interpretation. Interpretation is key to the very essence of narrative and narration.
Historical narrative - what is it? This is a story from the source, not a critical presentation, but an objective one. First of all, historical texts can be attributed to narrative sources: treatises, chronicles, some folklore and liturgical texts. Narrative sources are those texts and messages in which there are narrative narratives. However, according to J. Brockmeyer and R. Harre, still not all texts are narratives and meet the “concept of storytelling.”
There are several misconceptions about historical narrative, caused by the fact that some "stories", such as autobiographical texts, are based only on facts, while others have either already been retold or modified. Thus, their veracity is reduced, but the reality does not change, onlyattitude towards it of each individual narrator. The context remains the same, but each narrator connects it in his own way with the events described, extracting important, in his opinion, situations, weaving them into the outline of the story.
As for specifically autobiographical texts, there is another problem here: the author's desire to draw attention to his person and activities, which means the possibility of providing knowingly false information or distorting the truth in his own favor.
Summing up, we can say that narrative techniques, one way or another, have found application in most of the humanities that study the nature of the human person and his environment. Narratives are inseparable from subjective human assessments, just as a person is inseparable from society, in which his individual life experience is formed, and hence his own opinion and subjective view of the world around him.
Summarizing the above information, we can formulate the following definition of a narrative: a narrative is a structured logical story that reflects an individual perception of reality, and it is also a way of organizing subjective experience, an attempt at self-identification and self-presentation of a person.
