Browsing by Subject "Narration (Rhetoric)"
Now showing 1 - 9 of 9
Results Per Page
Sort Options
Item Conversational narrative: a meta-analysis of narrative analysis(2003) Carbon, Susan Elizabeth; Blyth, Carl S. (Carl Stewart), 1958-This dissertation is a meta-analysis of the narrative analysis methodologies of Labov and Waletzky (1967), Labov (1972, 1997, 2001, 2002), Polanyi (1985) and Ochs and Capps (2001) using data from the Minnesota Corpus (Barnes, 1984) to test the usefulness of these methodologies. Conversational narrative was first a subject of analysis in the late 60's when Labov and Waletzky, working under the influence of structural linguistics, decided that in order to better understand narrative, one must understand its most basic form, which they felt resided in oral versions of personal experience. Since their groundbreaking 1967 study, the field of conversational narrative analysis has been dominated by structural approaches to narrative that seek to define the structural components of a narrative and formulate an analysis based on these components. Only recently with the introduction of Ochs and Capps' methodology in 2001 has an alternative which values both the context and the interactive nature of narrative and seeks to describe the co-participant's influences on narrative been put forth. This meta-analysis suggests that there are positive and negative qualities to each of the methodologies at issue and that different methodologies are more or less appropriate for different types of data. While the structural approaches to conversational narrative suggested by Labov and Polanyi do not provide an adequate means to analyze interactive narratives, Ochs and Capps' methodology requires more extensive ethnographic information than what were available from the Minnesota corpus data. While the Ochs and Capps' approach seems overall to be the best suited for the type of data at issue in the Minnesota corpus, there are also clear benefits to be derived from applying a more structural approach. Specifically, an analysis of a narrative's Non-Storyworld clauses (as defined by Polanyi) seems to provide important insights. Moreover, these clauses can help the analyst address how interlocutors make sense of the relevance of narrative in coversational discourse, something hinted at by both Labov and Polanyi. I suggest that a combination of elements from both structural and ethnographic approaches provides a more complete methodology with which to analyze interactive narrative data.Item Cormac McCarthy's heroes : narrative perspective and morality in the novels of Cormac McCarthy.(2008-10-14T16:44:57Z) Cooper, Lydia R.; Fulton, Joe B., 1962-; English.; Baylor University. Dept. of English.Critics writing on Cormac McCarthy often note the striking paucity of revelations of interior thought in his novels. James Bowers, for instance, claims that few modern writers reject “the Joycean tradition of interiority” as comprehensively as does McCarthy, while Jay Ellis notes “the absence of regular psychologizing” (Bowers 14, Ellis 5). These critics associate the moral bleakness and prevailing mood of despair in the novels with a stylistic absence of revelations of characters’ thoughts, a style consistent with many American naturalist writers. Although McCarthy limits revelations of interior thought, however, he does not eliminate them entirely. The distant, omniscient third-person narrative style typical of McCarthy’s works at times shifts into the limited third person voice, revealing the perspective of a particular character. At times, third-person narration even moves into first-person narration. This striking shift into the close third or first-person point of view most often reveals the thoughts of characters who exhibit moral awareness and ethical behavior. When the narrative shifts to the perspective of immoral characters, that shift draws attention to that immoral character’s humanity, simulating an empathetic response that encourages readers to recognize their shared humanity with even the most despicable representatives of the human race. Shifts in point of view are thus consistently associated with morality, revealing characters’ yearning for community, valuation of life, or commitment to justice and compassion. To date, no one has systematically explored narrative perspective and its connection to morality in McCarthy’s novels. The worldview of McCarthy’s novels is notoriously difficult to identify, since his novels and plays, when placed in conversation with each other, dialogically pit arguments for the self-destructive nature of humankind against arguments for a rather mystical divine providence. This dissertation will explore McCarthy’s range of narrative techniques, focusing on the early Appalachian novels, The Border Trilogy, and The Road, whose styles are representative of the whole corpus, in order to demonstrate how McCarthy privileges ethical behavior and moral attitudes. Revelations of the internal ethical struggles of moral men like John Grady Cole in The Border Trilogy or the father in The Road illuminate their imperfect heroism.Item Effect of story mapping and story map questions on the story writing performance of students with learning disabilities(Texas Tech University, 2000-05) Li, DaqiStudents with learning disabilities often experience difficulties in writing fluently and using a diversity of words. Because of their inherent processing problems, they cannot process and retrieve information efficiently when completing writing assignments. Traditional writing Instruction and practice have been of limited value to students with learning disabilities. For these students, specific and effective 'writing strategies must be incorporated into Instruction and demonstrated to them through modeling. The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of an Instructional strategy that used the story map technique and story map questions. The two study questions were: (a) What was the effect of story maps and story map questions on the fluency of story writing by students with learning disabilities? (b) What was the effect of this strategy on the diversity of word usage by these students? Four students with learning disabilities in the 4th and 5th grades participated in the study. A multiple probe design was used to examine the changes in the students' writing behaviors through the phases of baseline, intervention, and maintenance. The measurement of fluency was based on counting the number of T-units contained in each story. Diversity of word usage was determined by calculating the type/token ratio. To minimize the potential biases in rating, an independent rater was used to conduct checks for inter-rater agreement. The study also used two raters to conduct procedural reliability checks. The result of the study showed that three of the four students improved writing fluency while the fourth student, who was more fluent than the others prior to the start of the study, did not demonstrate improvement in fluency. Regarding the diversity of word usage, this study did not show significant changes in the students' writing performance. While two students demonstrated a small overall increase during intervention over the baseline condition, the diversity of word usage in the other two students' stories remained relatively unchanged. In addition to these findings, incidental observations revealed that the stories written by all four students contained more story elements during the intervention and maintenance phases than during baseline phases.Item Elementos de lo grotesco en algunas narraciones de Francisco Ayala(Texas Tech University, 1999-12) Zamora, JorgeFrancisco Ayala is a Spanish author who belongs to that generation of writers forced to live in exile following the Spanish Civil War of 1939. Since some of his most important literary work was written while in exile, it was some time before it became available to most of his countrymen. Nevertheles, it was not long afterwards that he was acknowledeged as an extraordinary writer of Spanish fiction. Witness the fact that he has received some of the most prestigious literary awards of Spanish letters, is a member of the Spanish Royal Academy and has often been considered by some of his peers as a veritable candidate for the Nobel Prize of Literature. His narrative work has been the subject of several books and nearly 200 scholarly articles. As witnessed by several of the aforementioned books and articles, Ayala is a master of narrative technique and literary device. One outstanding feature of some of Ayala's works is what is known as the "grotesque." His critics often refer either directly or incidentally to what seems to be this pervasive aspect of some of his narratives. Nevertheless, few if any critics have truly attempted an in-depth study of the grotesque in Ayala's fictions. This study seeks to demónstrate the fundamental importance of the grotesque in stories which appear in the following collections of Ayala's fiction: Historia de Macacos; El as de Bastos; and El jardín de las delicias. In doing so, this study attempts to cali attention to the grotesque as one of the most important elements of many of the narratives of Ayala.Item I hate ta go bringin stories but: an analysis of narrative in natural conversation(Texas Tech University, 1989-05) Fulks, Deborah ANot availableItem Interactive construction of dispute narratives in mediated conflict talk(2008-12) Stewart, Katherine Anne, Ph. D.; Maxwell, Madeline M.In this dissertation, I provide a discourse and narrative analysis of actual conflict talk episodes from mediation sessions that took place in a university conflict resolution center. Specifically, qualitative analytical methods are applied to five videotaped actual mediation sessions to (1) identify examples of the adversarial narrative pattern, pervasive in the literature, and (2) closely analyze the discourse in the cases where a different narrative pattern emerges to understand how these differing patterns are interactively co-constructed by the disputants and mediators. The literature in many fields contains research and theorizing on conflict, narrative, and numerous interaction variables in interpersonal conflict talk. However, the study of actual discourse within conflict events is relatively recent. Little empirical research explicates the situated communicative practices and mechanisms by which interlocutors interactively and emergently construct, resist, reproduce, and transform dispute narratives to produce outcomes consonant with their interests. This study applies microanalytic discourse analysis and narrative theory to examine how dispute narratives are interactively created in conflict talk episodes through work at the utterance level, including the manner in which narratives can be intertextually transformed through the interaction process. The findings herein illuminate the emergent nature of dispute narratives and some of the communicative practices and mechanisms disputants and mediators use to construct them. This study contributes to an understanding of the role of narratives in conflict talk and how narratives can be interactively constructed, co-constructed, challenged, and transformed in the course of a conflict talk event.Item Metamorphosis and the emergence of the feminine: a motif of "Difference" in recent feminist quest fiction(Texas Tech University, 1997-05) Allen, Paula J. SmithThe feminine quest has lately been identified and defined to some extent by feminist scholars who have attempted to differentiate its elements from those of the quest of the masculine hero. This differentiation suggests that there is a tme archetype of the questing hero(ine) that lurks behind the mythological figures previously identified in literature by stmcturalist scholars. The tme archetype would be one that would be equally relevant to both the male and female quest, neither a hero nor a heroine, but a figure in which the two are indistinguishable. It is tme that such a figure cannot exist as long as culture so strongly identifies the nature of a human being with his sexual identification. Because roles are assigned by gender, the imagery of the male and female quests differ from one another. The part of each individual, a self, that is neither male nor female is, therefore, not acknowledged. The implication of the differentiafion in roles in the images that represent archetypes is that the casting of the "type" is informed by a culture that fails to define a part of itself The stories examined in this volume are attempts by their authors to create an image of this part of themselves that culture has suppressed. Because language is the clay that culture uses to create its forms, these stories are invariably reflexive. These authors borrow images and patterns familiar to westem culture and re-invest them with meaning pertinent to the feminine consciousness. Their stories, then, are a re-creation of the human experience. The quest heroine's return is determined by her ability to remake her world to sustain herself and those like her. It is this retum that is questioned most by feminist writers and critics of this century, and that deliberation is the organizing principle of this study.Item Narratives and rhetoric : persuasion in doctors' writings about the summer complaint, 1883-1939(2008-05) Sliter-Hays, Sara Maria; Roberts-Miller, Patricia, 1959-Narratives and Rhetoric: Persuasion in Doctors’ Writings about the Summer Complaint, 1883-1939, is a study of narrative as it is used in scientific writing. This rhetorical analysis follows the historical evolution of a genre as the genre mediates competing scientific, professional, and social forces, changes them, and is changed by them. Despite advances in scientific and medical technology that offered supposedly objective and measurable data and despite doctors’ push for recognition as scientific professionals, doctors’ writing increasingly relied on narrative as a persuasive device in medical articles published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Medical narratives perform pedagogical functions, illustrating both the general course of a disease and variant courses so that practitioners can make better diagnoses when they are faced with similar cases. Medical narratives also shape doctors’ discourse and, through that, the practice of medicine and the formation of the medical profession. Medical narratives maintain ambiguity, perpetuating the need for the skilled human clinician despite the proliferation of more and more sophisticated medical technology. Medical narratives also determine how the various participants in medical decisions--the doctor, the patient, the parent, and the disease itself--are valued and judged. These value judgments determine what medical interventions and cultural systems are deployed to return a patient to health. Medical narratives can be epideictic, reinforcing doctors’ ethos; they can be disciplinary, correcting errant members; and they can be exhortatory, urging doctors toward better ethical practice. Thus, narratives are extremely valuable in medical discourse, and their persistence in doctors’ writing is easily explained.Item Reader participation in the composite novel: Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried and Pam Houston's Waltzing the Cat(Texas Tech University, 2003-08) Vermillion, Matthew KyleNot available