Walter Fischer’s idea of narrative paradigm is that he regards almost all types of communication as a story, and that communication could and should be viewed as narrative. Fisher defines narration as “symbolic actions-words and/or deeds-that have sequence and meaning for those who live, create, or interpret them.” One of the key aspects of Fischer’s narrative paradigm is that in communicating and telling a good story you must connect with your audience as well as make sure it can strike a chord to make them relate. This made me think of the movie Rocky. The movie is a fictional account of a boxer who is past his prime, not highly intelligent, and seems to be stuck in a life that is going no where, until out of no where he is given a shot at the boxing championship title. The movie follows this Cinderella story as he starts to win his hometown city of Philadelphia on his side and against all odds he gives the current boxing champion, Apollo, the longest and most difficult fight of his career. The story focuses on the determination and big heart of Rocky, which I believe makes it such a great story as it connects to the audience in their desire to root for an underdog as well as their desire to hope and dream that such possible opportunities could arrive for them.
The concept of narrative paradigm, atheoretical framework that views narrative as the basis of all human communication, reminds me of the Bible I was given as a child. It was very short and had a lot of colorful pictures. It was only a few pages long but served as a “Bible” for me until I was old enough to get a bigger, more complete version. This Bible was functional in its message, because it conveyed to a young child the general message of the Bible through different wording and a very different delivery than than the actual Bible. At six years old, the main themes of God’s love, his son Jesus, and the most infamous stories of the Bible were still clear to me, and actually probably would not have been had I consulted the actual Bible. Not only was the content of my miniature Bible still the same as that of my parents (just in a more relevant and condensed way), but the language was also modified for the vocabulary of a young child. This same idea is also relevant to the many translations of the Bible. While most believe that the King James version is the most “accurate,” it actually seems that the same messages, for the most part, are being conveyed in the other translations as well, because the content isn’t really changing, but the delivery is. The words are edited in a way that is more understandable to today’s readers, but within limits that still maintain the basic themes of each story.
This chapter is about the Narrative Paradigm proposed by Walter Fisher. In order to understand narrative paradigm, we have to know what is narration and paradigm. Narration is defined as symbolic actions that have sequence and meaning for those who live, create and interpret them. Paradigm is a universal model that calls for people to view events through a common interpretive lens, or in other words, a conceptual framework. One important way to evaluate narration is narrative rationality, which consists of narrative coherence and narrative fidelity. In the movie Forrest Gump, we can fully understand what narrative rationality is. The whole movie is about the narration of the main character Gump’s life experience. Firstly, the whole story is tightly constructed. From Gump’s birth to his wedding, the movie narrated almost the whole life of Gump, which gives the internal consistency to the story. What’s more, in the movie, Gump’s life is related to a series of very famous historical events such as the Vietnam War and the IPO of Apple. Because of all these historical events embedded in the story, this movie is more likely to strike a responsive chord. With the narrative coherence and fidelity, this movie is regarded as one of the best movies in 20th century.
Walter Fisher defines narrative paradigm as “a theoretical framework that views narrative as the basis of all human condition (312).” This communications theory combines how possible the story sounds to the hearer as well as if the story rings true to the hearer. Fisher believes this theory is important because defines all humans as story tellers and it can analysis many different types of communication.One example that really highlights what is not narrative paradigm in someone’s eyes to begin with and then logic and continued adding to the story convinces the hearer of the story. In the show “Castle,” Richard Castle is an author working with the police to help solve murders and is always offering crazy theories that he thinks would be interesting in his books. His theories usually help in the solving of the crime. In this scene, Castle has offered a crazy theory that no one believes, but once he has done research and has evidence, the officers believe his crazy story. Starting at time 52 seconds, the viewer can see narrative fidelity and narrative coherence taking Castle’s story from a crazy theory to narrative paradigm.
Walter Fisher defines the narrative paradigm as “a theoretical framework that views narrative as the basis of all human communication” (213). The narrative paradigm consists of five main assumptions. Additionally, narrative rationality is used to determine the value of the story that is being told. Narrative paradigm and narrative rationality are demonstrated in the movie “Definitely, Maybe.” In this movie, Maya asks her father, Will Hayes, to tell the story of how he met her mother. Will and Maya’s mother are recently divorced. Maya does not tell her father at first, but she asks him to tell the story because she wants him to figure out what he wants in life because he is not happy. The majority of the movie is a narration of Will’s life and past relationships, however, he decides to change all the names of his past girlfriends in order to trick Maya. Throughout the movie, Maya uses narrative rationality in order to determine who her real mother is in the story. The fifth assumption states, “the world is a set of stories from which we choose, and thus constantly re-create, our lives” (213). After telling the story to Maya, Will is able to re-evaluate and re-create his life; he is able to decide who is important to him by telling and listening to his own story. “Definitely, Maybe” is a clear example of narrative paradigm because the entire movie is a narrative of Will’s past relationships.
Chapter 24 discusses about Narration Paradigm. Narration is defined as a symbolic action that has meaning for those who created and interpreted them. Paradigm is a conceptual framework, which serves as a model for the narration to be rational. The rationality of a story depends on the coherence and fidelity of the story. This means that a persuasive story must allow listeners or readers to relate to the story characters’ mindset, and the entire story must appeals towards reason, logic, and morals. An example I have is from a scene from family guy, where the family and Quagmire are in the woods and Quagmire decided to tell a scary story. Quagmire fails to develop the story in a way that it sounds realistic or reasonable. He jumps right into the scene where he thinks it is scary without building the plot for the listeners. As you can tell from the listeners’ faces, they are not entertained by the story, and they look disappointed because they cannot relate to the story characters’ situation and the story is simply naked words that construct no meaning and purpose.
The Narrative Paradigm theory proposes that communication is a type of reporting of events or storytelling. People understand that life included a number of narratives that make up their own experiences. Narration is defined as “symbolic actions– words and/or deeds– that have sequence and meaning for those who live, create, or interpret them.” In this clip from the movie Mean Girls, Regina George demonstrates the Narrative Paradigm theory when talking to Cady. She is telling the story of Janis to give Cady a better idea of why they aren’t friends anymore. She tells Cady that she is going to tell her “something about Janis” and then she continues on to tell the story of how she “couldn’t invite Janis to her birthday party because she was totally a lesbian.”
Narrative Paradigm is a term coined by Walter Fisher who believes that there is no communication of ideas that is purely descriptive or didactic and a theoretical framework that views narrative as the basis of all human communication. This concept is built on five assumptions: 1. People are essentially storytellers; 2. We make decisions on the basis of good reasons, which vary depending on the communication situation, media, and genre; 3. History, biography, culture, and character determine what we consider good reasons; 4. Narrative rationality is determined by the coherence and fidelity of our stories; 5. The world is a set of stories from which we choose, and thus constantly re-create our lives.
There are numerous examples of Narrative Paradigm in the documentary “Truth be told”. This movie tells the story of seven individuals growing up in the Jehovah’s Witnesses religion and their actions throughout the years. One of the seven individuals goes from house to house in numerous wealthier neighborhoods telling others about the Jehovah’s Witnesses in order to educate them and explain to them how to join their organization. Some people just shut the door in his face after he begins to tell them about the reasons of the disturbance and clearly show that they are not interested in becoming Jehovah witnesses themselves.
The communication fails because the individuals’ belief did simply not coincide with the questioned groups’ beliefs. Situations like these or similar situations happen on almost a daily basis and shows that communication can be viewed as narrative.
The concept of the functional perspective of group decision making attempts to explain how a group of people can most effectively work together to achieve the best possible result. It utilizes the fact that one persons mind is not as strong as a group(up to 15 people) of minds. There are four basic steps that are involved in proper group decision making which do not necessarily have to be followed in order. First, Analysis seeks to find the problem which involves figuring out what the nature, extent and probable cause of the issue are. Secondly, Goal Setting finding out what the ideal setting or goal of the group is. Third,Alternatives this is where the group brain storms and comes up with ideas about how to solve the problem. And lastly, Evaluation where it is decided which ideas would actually work and a final decision should be made. When I think of this concept of group decision making I think about a number of groups that I have worked in while I was at Wake Forest, most specifically I think of a group that I worked with for a semester. Occasionally we would come to a stand still when trying to pin point a specific accounting problem. In the beginning we were disorganized about how we went about executing our decision making. But towards the middle of the year(without knowing) we actually began to utilize these four steps fairly closely. Generally the problem and the goal were fairly straight forward so we could almost always skip straight to the third step of alternatives and would go around the table listing all possible solutions and then analyzing which ones would actually work. It is interesting to see that without knowing the actual steps we fell right into this order.
Aristotle is credited with developing the practice of rhetoric, which in his words, allows those who practice it to discover all possible means of persuasion. There are three modern categories of rhetoric today- deliberative, epideictic, and forensic. Deliberative rhetoric seeks to move audiences to future action, epideictic focuses on the present, and forensic is concerned with topics and issues of the past.
Forensic rhetoric is most interesting to me, especially considering how uncertainty of what’s really true and accurate only diminishes as time continues to pass. For instance, in art historical writings, critics and theorists debate back and forth continually over what Jackson Pollock really meant with his abstract-expressionist works. Talks given to this day on the matter by self-anointed experts in the Pollock connoisseurship & authentification fields are just as convincing as they are confusing, stirring up doubt with every assertion made about the artist’s original intentions. Some believe he was expressing his torment brought on by alcoholism; others are sure he was just a mad drunk who slung paint around to take advantage of the rich Hamptons buyers. The fact is that people will believe whoever they want, and the most persuasive forensic rhetoric will create the public opinion.
The documentary, ‘Who The F*&% Is Jackson Pollock,’ discusses this very topic, and features excerpts by Pollock connoisseurs who give their pitch about why a garage-sale discovery can’t possibly be a real Pollock. The speeches are amusing, to say the least…
