Narrative

In non-technical terms, no matter what the context (whether scientific, philosophical, legal, etc) a narrative is a story, an interpretation of some aspect of the world that is historically and culturally grounded and shaped by human personality (per Walter Fisher). Derived from the Latin word, it came into English via the French language and it is used in a number of specialised applications.

Main criticisms of the Narrative Paradigm

The first and most obvious is that not all human discourse takes the form of a story. This page, for example, is not written with human characters and a plot. Although it might be possible to sustain the idea that Fisher, himself, is a character in the narrative of whether his theory will be accepted or not, this sequence of words does not match the normal reader's expectations for a narrative. However, Fisher then argues that the writer(s) of this page have their own narratives and, in offering this information to the reader, the writer(s) are inviting the readers to incorporate this information into their own lives. Secondly, Fisher does not define the relationship between narrative probability or fidelity, nor provide criteria for testing them. In general, he seems to be dismissing traditional philosophical standards of rationality with little to replace it with. Nevertheless, the Paradigm does represent an interesting parallel to the more traditional theories of Semiotics.

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