Re: narrative

Gordon Wells (gwells who-is-at oise.on.ca)
Thu, 2 May 1996 14:50:07 -0400 (EDT)

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While I agree that there are other modes of discourse through which
identities are formed, I think narrative - as used by Bruner - is more
than post-hoc telling and retelling. Agreat deal of a young child's
experience is mediated by caregivers' narrative accounts of why things
happen as they do, what may happen in the future, etc. In Bruner's 1986
book, the narrative mode is contrasted with the paradigmatic mode, in
rather the same way that Vygotsky contrasts everyday/spontaneous concepts
with scientific concepts and Halliday contrast dynamic and synoptic modes
of construing experience. In the terms of these oppositions (gross
over-simplifications as they may be of the range of modes of discourse),
surely Bruner is right to see the narrative mode as the more important.

Gordon Wells, gwells who-is-at oise.on.ca
OISE, Toronto.

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