Dictionary of Media and Communication Studies, 8th edition

Narrative

A B C D E F G H I

JK

L M N O P R S T U V

XYZ

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(see structure of news: reassurance).

In this multi-media age, narratives more than

ever before interact and overlap but for conve-

nience, of analysis and study, they continue to be

classifi ed under the heading of genres, each with

its own narrative rules and traditions, each with

recognizable framing devices. In some genres

the frame is tight, highly restrictive to the point

of being ritualistic. Other genres have ‘fl exible’

framing and off er the potential for change and

development.

soap operas have this potential, situation

comedies (sitcoms) less so, contends Jasper Rees

in the UK Independent, reviewing the second

festival of sitcoms run by the UK’s Channel 4. In

his article ‘Slap ’n’ tickle’, 30 July 1996, Rees says,

‘In a play, events take place which irrepressibly

alter the relationship between the characters.

Whatever happens in a sitcom, you always go

back to square one at the start of a fresh episode;

the idea of stasis is built into the design. No

doubt sooner or later a writer will come along

and create a sitcom which breaks new ground,

though this will depend as much upon external

framing mechanisms such as programming and

popularity as the nature of the genre itself.’

Each genre contains a range of signifiers,

of conventions that audiences recognize and

come to expect while at the same time readily

accepting experiment with those conventions.

Knowledge of the conventions on the part of

audience, and recognition when convention is

fl outed, suggests an active ‘union’ between the

encoder and the decoder. Audience, as it were,

is ‘let in on the act’; and this ‘knowingness’ is an

important part of the enjoyment of narrative

genres. When the hero in a Western chooses not

to wear a gun (a great rarity), audience (because

we are familiar with tradition) recognizes the

salience of this decision. Such recognition could

be said to constitute a form of participation.

We use our familiarity with old ‘routines’ as

a frame for reading this new twist of narrative.

We wonder whether convention will be fl outed

altogether as the story proceeds, or whether the

rules of the genre will be reasserted by the hero

taking up the gun to bring about a resolution to

the story. For a soap opera time is a key element

in the framing process. Th ere are 30-minute slots

to be fi lled, each to conclude with unfi nished

business, preferably dramatic and suspenseful,

while not being so dramatically ‘fi nal’ that the

series cannot continue into an indefi nite future.

Soap narratives need time to bed down, to

unfold, and in their own time they refl ect the

timescales of audience. In some cases, the

Narrative In Narratives in Popular Culture,
Media, and Everyday Life (Sage, 1997) Arthur
Asa Berger defines narrative as ‘a story, and
stories tell about things that have happened or
are happening, to people, animals, aliens from
outer space, insects – whatever. Th at is, a story
contains a sequence of events, which means that
narratives take place within or over, to be more
precise, some kind of time period. This time
period can be very short, as in a nursery tale, or
very long, as in some novels and epics’. As Berger
picturesquely puts it, our lives are ‘immersed in
narratives. Every day we swim in a sea of stories
and tales ... from our earliest days to our deaths’.
The study of communication is very much
concerned with the study of narratives – how
they are put together, what their functions are
and what uses are made of them by those who
read, listen to or watch stories. In the view of
Michel de Certeau in Th e Practice of Everyday
Life (University of California, 1984), narratives
‘articulate our existences’; indeed we as social,
communal animals, are ‘defi ned by stories’ (see
myth).
At the level of denotation, narratives tell us
what happened to whom and in what circum-
stances; at the connotational level we enter
the realm of meaning, of signifi cation: what is
the story really about? Th is applies as much to
news stories as to fi ctional stories; indeed the
news can be classifi ed as a genre, that is a mode
of narrative which conforms (for the most part)
to a set of particular rules.
In 1926 George Herbert Mead (in ‘Th e nature
of aesthetic experience’ in the International
Journal of Ethics, 36) defined two models of
journalism, the information model and the
story model, stating that ‘the reporter is gener-
ally sent out to get a story not the facts’. Th e
storyness theme is taken up by Peter Dahlgren
in his Introduction to Journalism and Popular
Culture (Sage, 1992, edited by Dahlgren and
Colin Sparks). He writes that ‘storytelling ... is
a key link which unites journalism and popular
culture ... narrative is a way of knowing the
world’, and goes on: ‘Journalism offi cially aims
to inform about events in the world – analytical
mode – and does this most often in the story
mode’ which both ‘enhances and delimits the
likely range of meanings.’
Above all, like social rituals generally, the story
mode has the power to bring about a sense of
shared experience and shared values. Th is, it
might be said, is the ‘story’ of news, its conno-
tational function: it is about cohesion-making
as much as it is about information-transmission