The Rhetorical Frame Narrative
The Functions of Narrative Rhetoric and the Relative Force of Masterplots
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.52610/rhs.v20i74.60Keywords:
narrative, masterplot, rhetorical criticism, environmental rhetoric, apocalypseAbstract
Taking Walter Fisher’s narrative paradigm as its point of departure, this article discusses and updates a functional perspective on narrative rhetoric. It recounts the understanding of narratives as vital to individuals as well as communities by being vehicles of sense-making, construction of identity and cultural cohesion. The term rhetorical frame narrative is introduced and defined as an overarching cultural narrative (masterplot) that plays a dominant role in the framing of multi-layered rhetorical texts. As a concept, the rhetorical frame narrative gives rhetorical critics of narratives occasion to address internal and intertextual dynamics that may occur within and around texts that draw on multiple masterplots. By way of illustration, the article concludes with an analysis of the apocalyptic frame narrative in biologist Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962) that set an environmental agenda through its remarkable use of narrative rhetoric.
References
Barkun, Michael. “Millenarians and Violence: The Case of the Christian Identity Movement.” Millennium, Messiahs, and Mayhem: Contemporary Apocalyptic Movements, red. Thomas Robbins og Susan J. Palmer, 247-260. New York: Routledge, 1997.
Brummett, Barry. Contemporary Apocalyptic Rhetoric. New York: Praeger, 1991.
Buell, Frederick. From Apocalypse to Way of Life: Environmental Crisis in the American Century. New York: Routledge, 2004.
Buell, Lawrence. The Environmental Imagination: Thoreau, Nature, Writing, and the Formation of American Culture. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1995.
Carr, David. Time, Narrative and History. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986.
Carson, Rachel. Silent Spring. Penguin Classics Edition. London: Penguin, 2000 (1962).
Charland, Maurice. “Constitutive Rhetoric: The Case of the Peuple Québécois.” I Landmark Essays on Rhetorical Criticism, red. Thomas W. Benson, 213-240. California: Routledge, 1995.
Currie, Mark. Postmodern Narrative Theory. New York: Palgrave, 1998.
Davis, Joseph E. “Narrative and Social Movements: The Power of Stories.” I Stories of Change: Narrative and Social Movements, red. Joseph E. Davis, 3-30. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002.
Fine, Gary Alan. “The Storied Group: Social Movements as ‘Bundles of Narratives’.” I Stories of Change: Narrative and Social Movements, red. Joseph E. Davis, 229-246. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002.
Fisher, Walter. Human Narration as Communication: Toward a Philosophy of Reason, Value, and Action. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1987.
Fisher, Walter. ”Narration som paradigme for menneskelig kommunikation – Om offentlig moralsk debat.” Oversat af Esben Bjerggaard Nielsen og Mark Herron, Rhetorica Scandinavica 63 (2013): 7-38.
Garrard, Greg. Ecocriticism. New York: Routledge, 2004.
Gore, Al. En ubekvem sandhed. Dir. Davis Guggenheim. Paramount, 2006.
Hauser, Gerard. Introduction to Rhetorical Theory. 2nd Edition. Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press, 2002.
Hauser, Gerard. Vernacular Voices: The Rhetoric of Publics and Public Spheres. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1999.
Iversen, Stefan. “Narrativ retorik.” Rhetorica Scandinavica 63 (2013): 72-88.
Jasinski, James. Sourcebook on Rhetoric: Key Concepts in Contemporary Rhetorical Studies. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2001.
Kamberelis, George, og Karla Danette Scott. “Other people’s Voices: The Coarticulation of Texts and Subjectivites.” Linguistics and Education 4 (1992): 359-403.
Kirkwood, William G. “Narrative and the Rhetoric of Possibility.” Communication Monographs 59 (1992): 30-47.
Lear, Linda. Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1997.
Lucaites, John L. og Celeste Michelle Condit. “Homo Narrans – Re-Constructing Narrative Theory: A Functional Perspective.” Journal of Communication 35 (1985): 90-108.
McClure, Kevin. “Ressurrecting the Narrative Paradigm: Identification and the Case of Young Earth Creationism.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 39 (2009): 189-211.
McGee, Michael Calvin. “Text, Context, and the Fragmentation of Contemporary Culture.” I Contemporary Rhetorical Theory: A Reader, red. John L. Lucaites, Celeste Michelle Condit og Sally Caudill, 65-78. New York: Guilford Press, 1999.
McIntyre, Alisdair. After Virtue. 3rd Edition. Notre Dame: The University of Notre Dame Press, 2010 (1981).
Moorhead, James H. “Searching for the Millennium in America.” The Princeton Seminary Bulletin 8 (1987): 17-33.
Nielsen, Esben Bjerggaard. “Klima, apokalypse og en topos om sted.” Rhetorica Scandinavica 63 (2013): 39-53.
Obama, Barack. “Text of Obama’s Speech: A More Perfect Union.” Wall Street Journal, 18. marts 2008. http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2008/03/18/text-of-obamas-speech-a-more-perfect-union/ (besøgt 21-02-2015).
O’Leary, Stephen D. Arguing the Apocalypse: A Theory of Millennial Rhetoric. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.
Polletta, Francesca. It Was Like a Fever: Storytelling in Protest and Politics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006.
Polletta, Francesca. “Plotting Protest: Mobilizing Stories in the 1960 Student Sit-Ins.” I Stories of Change: Narrative and Social Movements, red. Joseph E. Davis, 31-51. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002.
Quintilian. The Institutio Oratio of Quintilian. Oversat af H.E. Butler. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966.
Rosengren, Mats. “Doxa och den nya retorikens kunskapssyn.” Rhetorica Scandinavica 8 (1998): 10-17.
Rowland, Robert C. “The Narrative Perspective.” Rhetorical Criticism: Perspectives in Action, red. Jim A. Kuypers, 117-142. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2009.
Rowland, Robert C. “On Limiting the Narrative Paradigm: Thee Case Studies.” Communication Monographs 56.1 (1989): 39-43.
Salmon, Christian. Storytelling: Bewitching the Modern Mind. London: Verso, 2010.
Schechet, Nita. Narrative Fissures: Reading and Rhetoric. Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2005.
Scott, Robert L. “On Viewing Rhetoric as Epistemic.” Central States Speech Journal 18.1 (1967): 9-17.
Stein, Stephen J. “American Millennial Visions: Towards Construction of a New Architecture of American Apocalypticism.” I Imagining the End: Visions of Apocalypse from the Ancient Middle East to Modern America, red. Abbas Amanat og Magnus T. Bernhardsson, 187-211. London: I.B. Tauris, 2002.
Stroud, Scott R. “Multivalent Narratives: Extending the Narrative Paradigm with Insights from Ancient Indian Philosophical Texts.” Western Journal of Communication 66 (2002): 369-393.
Waddell, Craig (red.). And No Birds Sing: Rhetorical Analyses of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2000.
Warnick, Barbara. “The Narrative Paradigm: Another Story.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 73.2 (1987): 172-182.
Zhang, Peter. “Articulation, Poiesis, Occupy Wallstreet, and Human Freedom.” Upubliceret manuskript (Grand Valley State University). Præsenteret ved RSA Research Network i Philadelphia, maj 2012.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Open Access; CC Erkännande-IckeKommersiell-IngaBearbetningar 4.0
