COMM 101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Narrative Inquiry, Media Studies, Dramatic Structure
13 Jun 2018
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Narrative Analysis
The mass media are the major storytellers of our time
People have told stories for millennia, including, and especially stories, like
myths, that help make sense of a chaotic, unpredictable world
Narration—how stories are told
Narrative analysis a tool—to study what a text means, how it means—what
storytelling and visual techniques are sued to convey meaning
Media studies emphasizes that media texts do not have a single, unified
meaning, but have contradictions, and can be read in different ways by different
audiences
Some in media studies pay special attention to the kinds of stories the media tell,
the kinds they tell over and over, and analyze what the cultural consequences
might be of those stories—what kind of ideological work they might be doing—
in other words, narrative shapings convey and reinforce values
⚫ Narrative
⚫ The telling of a sequence of events organized into a story. Shapes the
events, characters, arrangement of time, etc. in very particular ways so as
to invite particular positions towards the story on the part of audiences
Narrative organizes
⚫ Plot (what)
⚫ Characters (who)
⚫ Events (when and how)
⚫ Settings (where)
⚫ Meaning (why, how)
Narrative: a way of organizing spatial and temporal data into a cause-effect
chain of events with a beginning, middle and end that embodies a judgment
about the nature of these events
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Narratives typically have opening that sets the scene and establishes the
characters, establishes a problem, then there is rising action, the climax of the
story, falling action and the denouement
One word you will learn is narrativize—how the media can impose a beginning,
middle and end, heroes and villains, causes and effects, on the events and
processes in the world
Narrative theory helps us understand that stories we see in the media, including
those in the news, are constructed
Narrative theory studies how stories in the media often share certain features,
but particular media tell these stories in particular ways, this includes fiction and
non-fiction forms
even weather reports can be constructed as narratives with bad storms
unleashing their fury and warm fronts or cool fronts coming to the rescue
Ideology--the everyday, "common sense" values, attitudes and beliefs of a
culture, how these values or this common sense seem natural
Involves our understanding of the social world, and how ideas, values and
attitudes are related to the distribution of power in society
Narratives most often organize stories around good versus evil
Structuralist analyses—that cultures have common, universal structures
underlying them despite surface differences
Russian folklorist Vladimir Propp said characters in stories could be reduced to 8
basic roles:
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The hero or character who seeks something, usually initiated by a lack—money,
love, a mother—does not only refer to a male—hero actively carries the event of
the story—
The villain
The donor—who provides an object with magic property—genie who gives a
lamp, person who gives a charm, a ring, etc
The helper—who aids the hero
The princess, or sought-for-person, the reward for the hero and object of the
villains schemes
The father, who rewards the hero
The dispatcher, who send the hero on his way
The false hero
Todorov, Bulgarian linguist—emphasizes that stories start with equilibrium—
where potentially opposing forces are in balance—true in dramas and sitcoms—
the once upon a time moment
Enigma codes—puzzles to be solved that pleasurably delay the storys end
Levi-Strauss argued that a crucial component of all meaning making is the
reliance on binary oppositions, a conflict between two qualities
Think about classic westerns, for example:
Homesteaders v. Native Americans
Christians v. pagans
The domestic v. the savage
The weak v. the strong
The garden v. the wilderness
Inside society v. outside society
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Document Summary
The mass media are the major storytellers of our time. People have told stories for millennia, including, and especially stories, like myths, that help make sense of a chaotic, unpredictable world. Narrative analysis a tool to study what a text means, how it means what storytelling and visual techniques are sued to convey meaning. Media studies emphasizes that media texts do not have a single, unified meaning, but have contradictions, and can be read in different ways by different audiences. The (cid:513)telling(cid:514) of a sequence of events organized into a story. Shapes the events, characters, arrangement of time, etc. in very particular ways so as to invite particular positions towards the (cid:513)story(cid:514) on the part of audiences. Narrative: a way of organizing spatial and temporal data into a cause-effect chain of events with a beginning, middle and end that embodies a judgment about the nature of these events.
