narrative (adj./n.)

An application of the everyday use of this term, as part of the linguistic study of DISCOURSE, which aims to determine the principles governing the structure of narrative TEXTS. A narrative is seen as a recapitulation of past experience in which language is used to structure a sequence of (real or fictitious) events. The structural study of narrative is known as narratology. Structural elements are proposed, such as those which initiate a narrative (e.g. a summarizing abstract, a story orientation) or those which close it (a closing summary, a narrator’s evaluation). There is a focus on such notions as theme, plot, character, role, and point of view, especially in studies of literary narrative.