narration

Language

2022

We explain what a narrative is, its origin, elements, types and characteristics. Also, examples of different forms of storytelling.

Narratives can be both written and spoken.

What is storytelling?

A narrative is the verbal development of a series of events, related in an orderly and specific way, whether real or not. A narrative can be a story, a tale, an anecdote and many other more specific terms, between which there can and usually are technical distinctions.

The act of narrating is one of the oldest and most essential of the species. human, which distinguishes us from animals. It is one of the oldest uses of the language and it is possible that they are also narratives prehistoric art found in cave walls.

Among the first forms of narration are mythological or cosmogonic stories with which the ancients explained to later generations some natural phenomena or they answered the difficult question of what is humanity and where it is going.

More recently they also include national stories and the History national, the journalism and, above all, to the literature. Of course, the place of storytelling has changed significantly in our civilization, but it continues to occupy a central space in the way we conceive of stories. communities.

On the other hand, narrating is one of the basic functions of verbal language. A narrative allows us to refer to others what has happened to us, or even what we have heard about what happened to others. The Russian linguist Roman Jackobson (1896-1982) called this the "narrative function of language."

Characteristics of the narration

In very broad strokes, a narrative is characterized by:

  • Evoke a series of events, real or not, through the use of verbal language, to inform or entertain the receiver.
  • It presents a narrator who is in charge of spinning the story, and who may or may not be part of the plot, and ones characters that are related by him and that eventually intervene in the form of dialogues.
  • It occupies a space of weather real (duration), but it also contains an evoked time (story time) that can be longer or shorter.
  • It evokes actions or events that occur to the characters, whose ordering or way of presenting them may vary to generate suspense, surprise, humor, etc.
  • It always has verisimilitude, that is, similar to the truth, even in cases where fantastic events are told. In other words, what is told must always be narrated as if it were true, when it is and when it is not.

Narrative elements

Any possible story form consists of the following narrative elements:

  • Storyteller. The voice that tells the story, and that is not necessarily the same as the author. It may be that of one of the characters (protagonist narrator), or that of someone who observed the events or who knows them in some way (witness narrator), whether or not he is involved in them; or simply that of a kind of entity that knows everything and tells everything (omniscient narrator). Depending on it, the narrator will be able to tell the story in the first person verbal (I) or in the third person (he / she / them). In some cases, particularly experimental, you can also go to the second (you).
  • Characters. A story contains characters, which are the actors who carry it forward, doing things, saying things or also happening to them. They are fictional entities that exist only within the story, even when they have similarities or have been modeled after a person real. Characters can be protagonists (who the story happens to and often tell), antagonists (who oppose the protagonists), and witnesses (who simply witness the story).
  • Actions. Everything that is told, that is, the plot, which occurs by scenes and episodes and unravels as the narrative unfolds. There can be no narration without actions in any case, and as a whole, the actions make up the plot.
  • Space. The place where events occur in the narration, and that can play a more or less important role in it, either by giving it context or simply allowing it.
  • Weather. The amount of time the story takes, either to develop its scenes or basic actions, or the historical moment in which it is inserted, giving the reader a certain historical context.
  • Plot. The totality of the anecdotes that make up the story, articulated on the basis of three great moments (according to Aristotle): the beginning, the complication and the end.

Types of narration

The narratives can be of many types, depending on their content. Among them, we can identify the following:

  • Literary narratives. Those that are told for the mere purpose of telling them and enjoying their development, either for fun, because they propose novel ideas or because they pose a compelling fiction. They are the type of stories that make up the literary narrative: the novels, the stories, the Chronicles, etc.
  • Journalistic narratives. Those that, instead of fiction, are committed to the recomposition of events that occurred in real life, aspiring to the highest possible criterion of objectivity.
  • Playful narrations. Like the jokes, riddles, tongue twisters and other pseudopoetic forms whose value is not so much in what is narrated, but in what this arouses between who tells the story and who listens to it. They are part of popular culture.
  • Everyday narratives. Those that we articulate daily to tell anecdotes, relate events to third parties, share gossip, even explain directions. They are ephemeral and generally have a practical purpose.

Examples of narratives

Some examples of different types of narration can be:

  • "A good steak", short story by American writer Jack London.
  • "The fox and the grapes", fable of the ancient Greek narrator Aesop.
  • "Chronicle of a leak", journalistic chronicle of Carmen M. Cáceres in the New York Times.
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