Narrative Discourse Performance Analysis

Narrative therapy is guided by the idea that people’s lives have dominant storylines and people get stuck in problem-saturated stories (Morgan, 2000). When these dominant storylines begin to emerge, individuals will remember events that support the storyline, and forget events that don’t (Kelley, 2011, p. 317). The Brice family’s problem-saturated story when they presented to therapy

The aim of the study was to investigate the effectiveness of narrative chaining on memory. A total of 59 participants aged 10-69 years old took part in this experiment. They were chosen using convenience sampling and were split randomly into two independent groups. Participants had 30 seconds to memorise a list of words, either using maintenance rehearsal or narrative chaining to do so and then they were asked to write down as many words as possible after 2 minutes. Participants in the experimental group who used narrative chaining remembered a mean of 9.93 words out of 16 words with a mean percentage of 62% of words recalled. Participants in the control group who used maintenance rehearsal remembered a mean of 9.17 words

“By telling stories, you objectify your own experience. You separate it from yourself. You pin down certain truths. You make up others. You start sometimes with an incident that truly happened, like the night in the shit field, and you carry it forward by inventing incidents that did not in fact occur but

By telling stories, you objectify your own experience. You separate it from yourself. You pin down certain truths. You make up others. You start sometimes with an incident that truly happened, like the night in the shit field, and you carry it forward by inventing incidents that did not in fact occur but that nonetheless help to clarify and explain. (O’Brien 152)

The narrative perspective helps us discover the underlying moral of the story– that is its argument about how we ought to and ought not to believe or behave (Sellnow 2017). Part of the narrative perspective is the viewer’s narrative rationality which refers to the assessment of good reasons used to persuade masses of the moral (Sellnow 2017). Another element in this perspective is its coherence defined as plausibility. Often times viewers will better agree with a moral whose story is believable and characters relatable. And the more believable and relatable the more the story resonates and that connects to its fidelity or the degree to which the values in a story ring true (Sellnow 2017). Under a narrative lens several different aspects are examined such as the actions and conditions that create the active and static events, the setting, characters that based on their depth are either round or flat. With predictable characters being flat and the unpredictable round.

In this rhetorical narrative I explain a time when I successfully communicated, and had a rhetorical success. My story starts off at the beginning with an exciting start to get the reader interested, and then goes into detail about one of the characters after the beginning of the story. Although the story is structured in almost chronological order it goes off on some tangents to explain the background of some characters. The story takes a deeper look into people’s reactions and the consequences associated with those reactions. As the story gets deeper and deeper it starts to get away from the action that takes place in the beginning, and starts to become more about the thoughts of the narrator as he prepares for his consequences. The story

All of the participants were treated and there was no omitted information. The participants also did not abandon the study. The problems of missing values were evaluated and adequately addressed. The limitation of the study includes gender and sample size. The researchers discussed the weaknesses with solutions for future studies. The researchers recommend replicating this study using a larger sample size that includes females. They consider that these changes would increase the significance of the results. The findings are discussed and interpreted.

The use of narrative perspective

A story may depend on the structure of the book and how well it flows from page to page, but yet it strictly depends on the word choice and how effective the author is able to apply rhetorical devices. Stories such as A Separate Piece, A&P, and The Man I Killed, is able to effectively portray the character’s emotion, thoughts, and the intent of their actions. The authors use heroic, rhetorical strategies to reveal Tim, Gene and Sammy’s struggle to overcome their own selfless desires and ignorance toward the consequences, resulting with each protagonist’s life lesson.

In writing this paper, I revised my narrative essay by adding foreshadowing, changing some tense, and deleting unnecessary sentences. I found that these changes made my paper a higher college read.

A narrative essay “describes events that people want to share with readers”. Some events may include a traumatic event, a life-lesson learned, or a triumph, the options are limitless. A narrative must have a beginning, middle, and end to reach the reader and not confuse them. Metaphors and other parts of speech are often used to allow the reader to get an accurate understanding of what the author is trying to pursue. The objective of a narrative is to tell one story with a purpose, not a list of stories to connect to the main story, or else the reader will be confused

It is also assumed that the act of telling a story can provide insight into past, present and future events (Espinoza, 1997). By going through this process, individuals can find the importance of certain events and assign roles to people who are a part of their story. This act can allow a client to find new meaning and understanding to their reality (Espinoza, 1997). Not only is a

Narrative therapy is one of the post-modern therapies used today. Narrative therapy helps individuals identify their values, skills, and knowledge they have to effectively face problems in their lives. The key ideas of narrative therapy are: people’s stories give meaning to their lives, stories are shaped by emotional themes, a person’s story shapes his/her personality, people seek counseling when their stories do not match their lived experiences, and people who have less social power benefit greatly from Narrative Counseling. The concern is with meaning making and there is an emphasis on mindfulness and positive psychology. The process of Narrative therapy starts in the initial stage exploring the client’s issues. It then transitions into the insight stage to a deeper understanding of the issues. The insight stage is followed by the action stage, where the client and therapist work to change the story and therefore change the outcome. Lastly, there is the termination phase.

Wambaugh, Nessler and Wright (2012) conducted a multiple baseline design with six participants to examine the effects of M-RET in PWA. This modified approach utilized procedural discourse and personal recounts, rather than narrative discourse. All participants had experienced a single stroke according to medical records, were between the ages of 46 and 70, ranged from 19 and 96 months post onset of stroke and had significant word retrieval difficulties. The experimental design included probing of two sets of procedural discourse items and a personal recount condition. Baseline was continued until the probed skills were stable. Then, treatment was applied. There were three contexts to which treatment was provided: 1) discourse production in response to a set of 10 pictures, 2) discourse

The short story is a concise form of narrative prose that is usually simpler and more direct compared to longer works of fiction such as novels. Therefore, because of their short length, short stories rely on many forms of literary devices to convey the idea of a uniform theme seen throughout the script. This theme is illustrated by using characteristics that are developed throughout the story such as, plot, setting and characters. The three main components are developed throughout the story in order to guide the reader to the underlying theme, which is necessary as a short story lacking a theme also lacks meaning or purpose.