Tema 32i
Tema 32i
Tema 32i
Being ESL teachers, our main aim is that our students develop communicative
competence in a foreign language. Texts are regarded as one of the most important parts
of speech with regard to communication because the main function of texts is to
communicate a message. In our daily life, narrative texts appear as part of our
conversations of friends, relatives and acquaintances in order to tell a story. Therefore
narrative texts occupy a central role in the teaching and learning a foreign language.
Moreover, in order to be able to teach the structure and peculiarities of narrative texts
we first need to know the internal structure of narrative texts, its elements and the
narrative devices.
Our aim in this essay is to offer a broad account in descriptive terms of these notions
and examine how text, context and register relate to each other in a communicative
situation. In order to do so, we will try to give a definition of narrative text along with
its structure. After that we will analyze the main narrative elements which are namely
the narrator, the characters, the theme, the plot and the setting. Then we will analyze the
main literary devices within narrative texts. Finally, we will also consider some
applications that we may use in our class so as to convey the notion of narrative text and
its functionality to our students.
Texts do not appear out of the blue. They occur at a particular time and in a specific
situation. Therefore when analyzing texts, we must also focus on the context. The most
important figures in this field are Malinowski, Firth and Halliday. Malinowski coined
the term “context of situation” which refers to the total environment of a text, including
the verbal environment and the immediate situation in which in which the text was
produced. Moreover, he realized that it is necessary to consider more than the
immediate environment and therefore he coined the term “concept of culture” which
refers to the whole cultural and historical background behind the participants and their
action.
Firth also studied the importance of context in the general understanding of the text. He
states that there are three features of context of the situation which are namely the field
of discourse (the action that is taking place), the tenor of discourse (the nature of the
participants) and the mode of discourse (the function of the text in the context)
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The narrative texts
A narrative text is usually defined as a type of discourse concerned with action, with
events in time and with life in motion which answers the question “What happened?” in
order to tell a story. Narrative is then a recounting of things distant in time and space.
As stated above, the purpose of a narrative text is to entertain, to tell a story, or to
provide an aesthetic literary experience in fiction or real life.
A narrative text is based on life experiences and is person-oriented using dialogue and
familiar language. A narrative text is organized using story grammar which gives
account of interesting events which constitute part of our daily life. A narrative text may
be either fiction or non-fiction. Examples of fiction include realistic fiction, science
fiction, mysteries, folk tales, fairy tales, and myths whereas non-fiction texts include
reports, factual stories, and biographies.
It should be noted that a large number of texts will contain features associated with
more than one type of text. Thus, fiction is literature, with all that this means, and
description is often important in it. In fact, there are certain novels in which narration
may be said to come second to description. This is why works like Virginia Woolf’s
Mrs Dalloway contain virtually no narration of events. On the other hand, poetry can
also be narrative –consider epic poems like Homer’s Iliad or Virgil’s Aeneid or the
famous Beowulf and Cantar del Mío Cid.
We can distinguish two types of narrative elements depending on the type of narrative
text: common elements for all narrative text types and specific elements for literary
texts. We must bear in mind that in current society, narration is always present at
different levels but it is perhaps in the domains of literature that narrative texts have
been analyzed in more detail. Narrative texts contain three main elements: characters,
plot and intention. The element ‘character’ gives coherence to the story and must
undergo transformation changes. Secondly, the ‘plot’ is said to be a sequence of
predictable events which must be altered so as to change the normal story line. Finally,
the concept of ‘intention’ gives sense and orientation to the text. On the other hand,
literary texts are said to have five common elements: narrator, characters vs.
characterization, theme, plot and setting.
Regarding who the narrator is and how much he knows about the story, the narrator
may be a main character, a secondary character or an invented narrator. Often,
secondary characters coincide with being mere observers and an invented narrator is
used by the author to talk explicitly through the story. The narrators can be omniscient,
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“all-knowing”, if they know all the aspects of the plot and may also go into the head of
any character in order to express the characters’ thoughts, desires, feelings and worries
at any particular time. Omniscient narrators can even anticipate actions. By contrast,
non-omniscient narrators are external observers and are objective. The author does not
sweep the entire field of the action but keeps his intention focused on one character and
on that character’s relation to the action.
Narrators may be intrusive, when they intrude in the narrative to voice their own
impressions. These intrusions are often samples of that narrator’s omniscience. Charles
Dickens was very fond of narrators who judged his characters and intruded upon the
narrative. Narrators may also be reliable or unreliable, that is, intentionally misleading.
An example of an unreliable narrator is Stevens, the butler in Kazuo Ishiguro’s The
Remains of the Day, who constantly contradicts himself.
Point of view is also relevant with regard to the mode of the story. Depending on the
intention of the narrator, the mode can be ‘telling’ or ‘showing’. If the narrator reports
actions from his own point of view, we talk about ‘telling’; in contrast, if the narrator
reports actions from an objective point of view, we talk about ‘showing’.
The point of view refers to the relation the narrator keeps with the story, the most
common types of point of view is third person singular and first person. Narration in
third person singular is the most usual form. It offers and impersonal point of view
about the story. The narrator can have an omniscient or a non-omniscient point of view.
Third person narrators are not characters in the story and often choose, and give
prominence to, the point of view afforded by one particular character, a point of view
from which all events can be known. Thus, character and narrative voice are
interconnected.
The first person singular is used when the narrator is a character in the story and talks in
first person singular. His knowledge on the story will depend on he being the main
character or an internal observer. If he is an important participant in the story, he will
tell the story from his own point of view. Consider the first lines of Charlotte Brontë’s
Jane Eyre: “There was no possibility of taking a walk that day…” This is an example of
a first person narration, made from the point of view of a character in the action, who
speaks from the “I” present in that narration. The reader experiences the feelings and
thoughts of the protagonist, her actions and her deepest feelings.
An author may choose to use not only one narrator but multiple narrators, as in Mary
Shelley’s Frankenstein. Frankenstein is an interesting account of what at the time was a
very innovative use of three concentric layers of narration: it starts with Walton, then
Victor Frankenstein, it moves on to the monster’s own story and closes the narration
with Walton.
Other two main literary devices concerning the narrator are those of ‘stream of
consciousness’ and ‘free indirect style’ by means of which the narrator reports the
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character’s thoughts or speech. Regarding the ‘stream of consciousness’, we must say it
is an ambiguous form of narration in which the characters’s thoughts are introduced in
an immediate manner, literally as a copy of the thoughts itself, rather than a ‘reported
thought’. This way of reporting what the character was thinking is quite complex. On
the other hand, the ‘free indirect style’ is used when the narrator reports the characters’s
thoughts or speech directly, that is, with no accompanying reporting clause (i.e. He said)
as in direct speech. These two devices approach the mind of characters by getting fused
with them and not by standing outside the character.
According to the way participants are characterized or introduced in the plot, characters
are classified into round characters and flat characters. Round characters have the
characteristic of being complex and they usually surprise the reader ‘in a convincing
way’ and evolve through the narrative. The plot is organized around them, their
feelings, thoughts, conflicts, and life in general. They are presented as individuals which
have real existence and they attract all the narrator’s attention. On the other hand, flat
characters have no complexity of ‘personality’, cannot surprise the reader and do not
evolve through the narrative. They are presented as stereotypes, representing
conventional attitudes or ideas about human behaviour. At the ‘flat’ end of the scale we
would have caricatures, like Mrs Sparsit in Dicken’s Hard Times; and at the ‘round’ end
of the scale we would have for example Angel Glare in Tess of the D’Urbervilles.
Theme
The theme is the central idea of the story. Characters play a crucial role for the theme
because they usually embody the themes of the narration. Finding a major theme which
is important in a characters’ life will help readers relate the person they are studying to
the big issues in the world in which they exist.
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Plot
The plot is the sequence of events and it is defined as the story grammar. In fact, the
plot is causally related to actions which, as single episodes, merely add up to a loosely
knit story. The event may be ordered in different ways. Thus the story telling may be
chronological if it follow a linear development or reverted if it goes back and forth by
means of flashbacks or foreshadowings.
Setting
The setting of a story is defined as the environment of the action as constituted by time,
space and atmosphere. With respect to ‘space’, some stories are set in faraway lands or
imaginary places, others are set in familiar places. It may also be a universal place (the
Universe, the ocean) or a specific place (London). Regarding number, the action may
take place in only one setting (inside a cabin during all the film) or in more places
(different cities like James Bond’s films). Moreover, we may find indoor scenes (a
palace) or outdoor (a football pitch). Finally, the place may have a symbolic meaning
(love stories in Paris; ghost stories in English castles).
Regarding ‘time reference’, a story can be set in the present (in 21 st century), past (in
1795), or the future (in year 2100). We can distinguish between the time of the action
(Viking Age, Victorian Age) and the internal time frame of the story (one day in James
Joyce’s Ulises).
Another important element in the setting of a story is the atmosphere, that is, the general
effect or feeling produced by the theme, the characters, the place… of the story. For
instance, the atmosphere produced in Edgar Allan Poe’s stories by the strange doings of
some characters, mistery places, a dark and gloomy setting.
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Narrative texts normally feature structural cohesion. Cohesion is a set of linguistic
resources that every language has for linking one part of a text to another, in order to
communicate the meaning and intention of the encoder. Cohesion is used in order to
enhance coherence, but also for reasons of economy. The overall cohesion of a text and
the structuring parts of it relies on several resources, which can be divided into
semantic, grammatical and lexical categories.
Grammatical cohesion
The concept of cohesion accounts for the essential semantic relations whereby any story
is enabled to function as text. It is within grammatical cohesion that we find different
types of relations: substitution, ellipsis, conjunction and reference.
Substitution is the replacement of one item by another. We may find three different
types of substitution which are defined in grammatical terms rather than semantically:
nominal (one, ones, same), verbal (do), and clausal (so, not). Ellipsis is the omission of
a grammatical item to achieve grammatical cohesion. It is ‘something left unsaid’ but
understood nevertheless. There are two types: nominal (Mary ate three portions and
Jane just two) and verbal (She brought some biscuits, and Cristine some fruit).
Conjunction is a relationship which indicates how the subsequent sentence or clause
should be linked to the preceding or the following sentence or parts of sentence. This is
usually achieved by the use of conjunctions. Frequently occurring relationships are
addition, causality and temporality.
Semantic cohesion
The semantic cohesion within a text is based on reference. There are certain elements in
every language that have this characteristic. The main items that encourage semantic
cohesion in English are personal pronouns, demonstratives, comparatives and some
adverbials. As we would expect in a narrative involving a sequence of events, time
adverbials play a considerable role. The course of the narrative depends as much on
place-sequences as on time-sequences: by, until, near can be both space or time adjuncts
giving cohesion to a text. Reference is the relation between an element of the text and
something else by reference to which it is interpreted in the given instance. Something
enters into the discourse a second time (See how they eat! =where ‘they’ may be three
children, four horses, etc).
Lexical cohesion
Lexical cohesion does not deal with grammatical or semantic connections but with
connections based on the words used. It is achieved by selection of vocabulary, using
semantically close items. There are two types of lexical cohesion: reiteration and
collocation. On the one hand, Reiteration is a form of lexical cohesion which can
involve exact repetition of a lexical item, a general word replacing the original, a
synonym, a subjective replacement or subordinate, or an ‘elegant’ variation, which is
more vivid or stylish. On the other hand, collocation is any pair of lexical items that
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stand to each other in some recognizable lexico-semantic relation. They are a sequence
of words or terms which co-occur more often than would be expected by chance
Graphological devices
Apart from these main literary devices there are also other minor devices such as
graphological resources, we are mainly dealing with visual devices as we make
reference to orthography, punctuation, headings, foot notes, tables of contents and
indexes.
Style
In narrative texts, style refers to the ways in which everything is presented. A neutral
style can be adopted in which the linguistic choices are not marked by any connotation
to the items previously used. An informal style will be used to reflect the encoder’s
view of the relationship between him/her and the receiver. A formal style can be used to
show respect to the audience, it is characterized by a more precise choice of lexical
items, and less use of idiomatic English. There are also other styles used in narrations
such as the evocative style used to raise emotional responses in the receiver, a
persuasive style whose aim is to influence the receiver into accepting the encoder’s
point of view, a technical style used when the audience and encoder an exact
knowledge of the subject.
Conclusion
The learning of English as a second language has as its main aim the gaining of
communicative competence, which is the ability to use language correctly and
appropriately to accomplish communication goals. In this respect, narrative texts are a
central element in communicative competence and in the acquisition of a second
language since they are used in their everyday life and in the oral and written level in
order to tell a story. Therefore we must to this issue the importance it deserves and work
with our students in order to help them acquire a grasp of the structure and components
of narrative texts to be able to communicate in the European framework we are living in
nowadays.
In class, we should present all these notions surrounding textual structure concentrating
in real uses. By exploring natural language use in authentic environments, learners gain
a greater appreciation and understanding of the discourse patterns associated with a
given genre or speech event as well as the sociolinguistic factors that contribute to
linguistic variation across settings and contexts. Thus our students will be acquainted
with a proper knowledge of how they are using a language and the most appropriate
forms of using it according to each specific context. We should also teach the students
some basic rules that govern its use, so that they may reflect and obtain a reasoned
explanation of the points we previously studied. The production and comprehension of
oral and written texts is envisaged from earlier stages of ESO in the use of simple texts
about everyday life or any specific topic, up to higher stages of Bachillerato in which
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we move towards more complex texts, which help students be more communicatively
competent.
Bibliography
Pérez Rodríguez, Eva María & Prieto Arranz, José Igor. Commenting on Texts. Literature,
History, the Media. Palma: Universitat de les Illes Balears, Servei de Publicacions, 2006.
Scholes, R. and R. Kellogg. 1966. The Nature of Narrative. New York. Oxford University
Press.
Halliday, M.A.K. 1975. Explorations in the Functions of Language. London: Edward Arnold.
Halliday, M.A. K. and R. Hasan. 1990 Language, context and text: Aspects of language in a
social-semiotic perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Celce-Murcia, M,. & Olshtain, E. (2000). Discourse and context in language teaching. New
York: Cambridge University Press.