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Narrative communication is a kind of a detached communication, where the person who is speaking is more involved in what he/she says rather than in the person who he/she is saying it to.
Narrative communication is a way of communicating through telling stories. Narratives can be defined as a symbolic representations of cohesive and coherent events with an identifiable structure, which are bounded in space and time and contain implicit or explicit messages about the topics being addressed. [1] Most often, narratives are used to make sense of a past situation, express an opinion or belief, or teach cultural lessons. This use of narrative communication may be more persuasive and engaging than enumerating facts and statistics because narratives create an experience in which people can live through the storyteller's unique perspective.
The theory of narrative communication was developed by Walter Fischer [2] . A narrative is an account of events over a passage of time shared to one or many listeners. More than a mere story, narratives encompass larger aspects. For example, a story is generally describing or recounting a noteworthy event in someone's life, whereas a narrative for example is not just the event but could describe multiple events to a whole sequence of someone in more detail than just telling one single story about the person.
Narrative Communication Theory has several baseline tenets, including:
At a young age most people were taught to process and explain information by using narratives. They often used this theory to explain the events that have occurred throughout their day. This has allowed for peers to understand others lives through relationships, characters, and the retelling of outcomes from past decisions. [4] with the innovation of technology it has made the usage of storytelling through social media easier when trying to communicate a certain objective. [5]
This concept explains that most of the narratives we use come from our personal experiences. When a friend or family member tells us about their day, and what has gone wrong to what is good, they are telling us how they want us to see them. History shows us that all cultures use some kind of narrative to form stories and dances to tell about their tribes and cultures. Same as family stories that are passed down from generation to generation. Those that are the recipients of these narratives experience transportation which is when they converge with the story by decreased their level of self-awareness while giving full attention to the narrative. They start to understand the narrative as more connected to their own lives, which leads them to focus more on the events that have occurred in the story they are being told. [1] Narratives are also used in conflicts, they are used to make the arguments more personal and sympathetic so that the experiences relates easier with the other person. [6]
This facet of narrative states that professionalism at the work place provides many outlets to produce narratives that express who we are (Alder & Rodmen, 2009 ). In the professional world, we are exposed to different cultures and group norms that shape how we share our narratives. The usage of narratives can be used as a business strategy to build relationships and understand the underlying causes of issues. Narrative communication is also being used in the medical context (called narrative medicine) to help healthcare providers get a more holistic view of their patients' lives, values, and preferences, which can improve the provider-patient relationship [7] and aid in medical decision making. [8]
Persuasion or persuasion arts is an umbrella term for influence. Persuasion can influence a person's beliefs, attitudes, intentions, motivations, or behaviours.
Storytelling is the social and cultural activity of sharing stories, sometimes with improvisation, theatrics or embellishment. Every culture has its own stories or narratives, which are shared as a means of entertainment, education, cultural preservation or instilling moral values. Crucial elements of stories and storytelling include plot, characters and narrative point of view. The term "storytelling" can refer specifically to oral storytelling but also broadly to techniques used in other media to unfold or disclose the narrative of a story.
A narrative, story, or tale is any account of a series of related events or experiences, whether nonfictional or fictional. Narratives can be presented through a sequence of written or spoken words, through still or moving images, or through any combination of these. The word derives from the Latin verb narrare, which is derived from the adjective gnarus. The formal and literary process of constructing a narrative—narration—is one of the four traditional rhetorical modes of discourse, along with argumentation, description, and exposition. This is a somewhat distinct usage from narration in the narrower sense of a commentary used to convey a story. Many additional narrative techniques, particularly literary ones, are used to build and enhance any given story.
Communication design is a mixed discipline between design and information-development concerned with how media communicate with people. A communication design approach is concerned with developing the message and aesthetics in media. It also creates new media channels to ensure the message reaches the target audience. Due to overlapping skills, some designers use graphic design and communication design interchangeably.
Autoethnography is a form of ethnographic research in which a researcher connects personal experiences to wider cultural, political, and social meanings and understandings. It is considered a form of qualitative and/or arts-based research.
Narrative inquiry or narrative analysis emerged as a discipline from within the broader field of qualitative research in the early 20th century, as evidence exists that this method was used in psychology and sociology. Narrative inquiry uses field texts, such as stories, autobiography, journals, field notes, letters, conversations, interviews, family stories, photos, and life experience, as the units of analysis to research and understand the way people create meaning in their lives as narratives.
Narrative paradigm is a communication theory conceptualized by 20th-century communication scholar Walter Fisher. The paradigm claims that all meaningful communication occurs via storytelling or reporting of events. Humans participate as storytellers and observers of narratives. This theory further claims that stories are more persuasive than arguments. Essentially the narrative paradigm helps us to explain how humans are able to understand complex information through narrative.
Organizational storytelling is a concept in management and organization studies. It recognises the special place of narration in human communication, making narration "the foundation of discursive thought and the possibility of acting in common." This follows the narrative paradigm, a view of human communication based on the conception of persons as homo narrans.
Environmental communication is "the dissemination of information and the implementation of communication practices that are related to the environment. In the beginning, environmental communication was a narrow area of communication; however, nowadays, it is a broad field that includes research and practices regarding how different actors interact with regard to topics related to the environment and how cultural products influence society toward environmental issues".
Dramatism, a communication studies theory, was developed by Kenneth Burke as a tool for analyzing human relationships through the use of language. Burke viewed dramatism from the lens of logology, which studies how people's ways of speaking shape their attitudes towards the world. According to this theory, the world is a stage where all the people present are actors and their actions parallel a drama. Burke then correlates dramatism with motivation, saying that people are "motivated" to behave in response to certain situations, similar to how actors in a play are motivated to behave or function. Burke discusses two important ideas – that life is drama, and the ultimate motive of rhetoric is the purging of guilt. Burke recognized guilt as the base of human emotions and motivations for action. As cited in "A Note on Burke on "Motive"", the author recognized the importance of "motive" in Burke's work. In "Kenneth Burke's concept of motives in rhetorical theory", the authors mentioned that Burke believes that guilt, "combined with other constructs, describes the totality of the compelling force within an event which explains why the event took place."
Symbolic convergence theory (SCT) is a communication theory developed by Ernest Bormann proposing that the holding of fantasies in common transforms collections of individuals into cohesive groups. SCT offers an explanation for the appearance of a group's cohesiveness, consisting of shared emotions, motives, and meanings. Through SCT, individuals can build a community or a group consciousness which grows stronger if they share a cluster of fantasy themes. Symbolic convergence theory provides a description of the dynamic tendencies within systems of social interaction that cause communicative practices and forms to evolve. This theory allows theorists and practitioners to anticipate or predict what will happen and explain what did happen. One thing SCT does not do is allow for control of human communication. It attempts to explain how communication can create and sustain group consciousness through the sharing of narratives or fantasies.
In the social sciences, coordinated management of meaning (CMM) provides an understanding of how individuals create, coordinate and manage meanings in their process of communication. Generally, CMM is "how individuals establish rules for creating and interpreting the meaning and how those rules are enmeshed in a conversation where meaning is constantly being coordinated", and where "human communication is viewed as a flexible, open and mutable process evolving in an ongoing joint interaction, which enables movement, shifts and evolving ways with each other". CMM embodies this vision and allows interpersonal connection and open conversation among individuals or groups, and can be applicable across multiple academic fields and social scenarios.
Interpersonal communication is an exchange of information between two or more people. It is also an area of research that seeks to understand how humans use verbal and nonverbal cues to accomplish several personal and relational goals. Communication includes utilizing communication skills within one's surroundings, including physical and psychological spaces. It is essential to see the visual/nonverbal and verbal cues regarding the physical spaces. In the psychological spaces, self-awareness and awareness of the emotions, cultures, and things that are not seen are also significant when communicating.
The theory of narrative identity postulates that individuals form an identity by integrating their life experiences into an internalized, evolving story of the self that provides the individual with a sense of unity and purpose in life. This life narrative integrates one's reconstructed past, perceived present, and imagined future. Furthermore, this narrative is a story – it has characters, episodes, imagery, a setting, plots, and themes and often follows the traditional model of a story, having a beginning, middle, and an end (denouement). Narrative identity is the focus of interdisciplinary research, with deep roots in psychology.
Invitational rhetoric is a theory of rhetoric developed by Sonja K. Foss and Cindy L. Griffin in 1995.
Lilie Chouliaraki is a professor in Media and Communications at the London School of Economics and Political Sciences (LSE). Chouliaraki’s main area of research is the mediation of human vulnerability and suffering. She empirically explores how the media affects our moral and political relationships with distant others in the sense that it affects how we see the vulnerability of other people and how we are asked to feel, think and act toward them.
Quantitative storytelling (QST) is a systematic approach to exploring the many frames potentially legitimate in a scientific study or controversy. QST assumes that, in an interconnected society, multiple frameworks and worldviews are legitimately upheld by different entities and social actors. QST looks critically at models used in evidence-based policy. Such models are often reductionist in that tractability is achieved at the expense of suppressing available evidence. QST suggests corrective approaches to this practice.
Political narrative is a term used in the humanities and political sciences to describe the way in which storytelling can shape fact and impact on understandings of reality. However, political narrative is not only a theoretical concept, it is also a tool employed by political figures in order to construct the perspectives of people within their environment and alter relationships between social groups and individuals. As a result, fiction has the potential to become fact and myths become intertwined into public discourse. Political narrative is impactful in its ability to elicit pathos, allowing the narrative to be influential through the value it provides rather than the truth that is told.
The Goals, Plans, Action theory explains how people use influence over others to accomplish their goals. This theory is prominent in the field of interpersonal communication. The theory is a model for how individuals gain compliance from others. There can be multiple goals related to the need for compliance. These goals are separated into primary and secondary categories. These goals are then translated into plans, both strategic and tactical, and finally carried out in actions. Goals motivate plans, and actions deliver the effort to accomplish goals. The model is rooted in the scientific tradition, with scientific realism, the assumption that “much of the world is patterned, knowable, and objective." The Goals, Plans, Action theory has shown application in academic and personal relationships.
The narrative theory of equilibrium was proposed by Bulgarian narratologist Tzvetan Todorov in 1971. Todorov delineated this theory in an essay entitled The Two Principles of Narrative. The essay claims that all narratives contain the same five formal elements: equilibrium, disruption, recognition, resolution, and new equilibrium.
