Unit 2

story/narrative: any talk representing a sequence of past events and for talk specifically meant to get and keep someone interested in listening to a recounting of events. Storytelling can be of two types:
- Canonical stories (of personal experience - Johnstone): the events recounted are specific, discrete, positive, in chronological order. Personal experience narrative can serve 2 functions: 1. referential clauses have to do with what the story is about: events, characters, settings. 2. Evaluative clauses have to do with why the narrator is telling the story and why the audience should listen to it.
- Low narrativity narratives of: 1. Habitual events; 2. Counterfactual events

Narratology is a theory of narrative qua narrative because it examines what all and only possible narratives have in common. Narrativity depends on the extent to which the text: 1. represents non-trivial, discrete, specific and positive events occurring at diff times and having a meaning in terms of human project; 2. depicts a conflict between two opposites; 3. constitutes a structure with a beginning, a middle and an end; 4. its audience recognized a narrative quality in it thus contributing to the interpretation and development of the text. Low narrativity narratives have a LOW degree of narrativity since the first feature listed above is not fully manifested; they fail to meet the prototype of a canonical story: the events recounted are not discrete, singular, chronological, but overlapping, recurrent, and sometimes not positive/imaginary.

Not all stories have a thesis, not all stories are told to present an argumentative position. Nevertheless, all stories have a point since they are meant to be of interest for the audience or for the storyteller, in other words, they need to meet the tellability requirements. Only argumentative texts have a thesis because they make a claim

The double logic at play in narrative texts is storytelling (narrating) and arguing. Suspension of the narrative means that the narrative action is interrupted by an evaluative commentary because when you are arguing, you are not narrating. In argumentative stories, there are plenty instances of evaluation when the narrative is suspended and the story teller makes his comments on the characters and the events recounted.

Tellability requirements mean that a story has to be worthy of being told, either because it is entertaining or it is told to prove a thesis.

It is in private discourse that minority members can challenge prejudice or refute arguments since they have no direct, easily available access to public discourse. The need to overcome present conditions of inequality arise in ordinary, everyday encounters and illustrate the interactional task of defending one´s social image and rights in one´s capacity of member of a certain social group

responder

Informal argumentation is audience-designed in that it basically aims to get the audience adherence to a thesis. Rhetorical operations and linguistic forms most exploited in conversational, narrative discourse:
Attribution
Represented discourse
Performance features
Argumentative moves

-Story thesis: a proposition that contains a controversial statement and must be backed up.
-Protagonist: the textual subject who is the main agent or patient of most of the narrated actions. If the story is a first person story "Yo" (personal exp), then the story teller becomes both storyteller and protagonist.
-Proponent: the textual subject who voices the arguments in favor of the narrator´s thesis
-Antagonist: textual subject
-Opponent: textual subject who voices the counterargument
-Storyteller: a social actor (a person) who has a situational role in a social encounter
-Audience: situational participant who listens the story
-Stance: the projection of a given image as a character and as storyteller (story-world stance and interactional world stance): "he projects himslef as innocent".
Textual subjects are those who belong to the world of argumentation/inhabit the story world; situational participants belong to the world of interaction.

Mental representations in social memory consisting of structured schemata of general opinions shared by a group.

Narrative elements:
- Characters: the protagonist and antagonist
- Conflict: all stories must be worthiness (tellability requirements). Present the conflict in abstract terms, for ex. "the clash between radicalism and liberalism"
- Narrated actions: events in a temporal sequence

-Direct discourse representation
-Performance features
-Lexical choices, attribution
Through these evaluative devices, the storyteller constructs a subject position or image for the textual participants/subjects.

Argumentation shapes the plot in the sense that storytellers omit or highlight events that prove their point.

Storytellers evaluate and they intervene interpretations. Evaluation can reveal the stance of the storyteller and why the storyteller thinks the story is worth telling

Lexical choices, adverbs, adjectives
intesifiers
negation
Quantifiers

In stories of personal experience through discourse representation and performance features (intonation, voice quality, body movement).

Stories can be at the service of challenging prejudice. Storytellers, through the use of evaluative resources such as discourse representation, performance features, argumentative moves, and appeal to socially shared values to make their discourse sound REASONABLE, can transform negative socially shared opinions (PREJUDICE) that eventually justify unfair treatment in their groups.

resp

Low narrativity narratives are narratives that fail to meet the characteristics of canonical stories. The events recounted in low narrativity narratives are not discrete or singular, but overlapping, generalized, recurrent, and some are imaginary, not positive. Narratives of counterfactual events are strategically used for argumentation since they serve as justifications for the real and the storyteller can back up his claim by resorting to irreality.

storytelling and arguing blend, intersect or alternate. One type of intersection is argumentation by a proponent who is not the narrator, but a character

the deployment of rhetorical operations in the dynamics of face-to-face interaction discourse shown to be a key mechanism for the construction of a stance in the story-world and a stance in the interactional world of the storytelling

The proponent´s standpoint. A proponent can defend a standpoint by establishing relations among propositions (analogy, cause-consequence, opposition, concession)