Narrative

Essential study guides for the future linguist. Narrative is an introduction to the ways we use language to tell stories. It is suitable for advanced level students and beyond. Written with input from the Cambridge English Corpus, it explores texts from a range of genres, mediums and periods, written for different audiences and purposes. This includes examples such as hard news stories, narratives from children and examples from Twitter. Using short activities to help explain analysis methods, this book guides students through major modern issues and concepts. It summarises key concerns and modern findings, while providing inspiration for language investigations and non-examined assessments (NEAs) with research suggestions.

1. Defining narrative: 1.1. Some basics; 1.2. Representation; 1.3. The social aspect of narrative; 2. Written narratives: 2.1. Authors and narrators; 2.2. Point of view; 2.3. Modal grammar; 2.4 Multimodal narratives; 3. Spoken narratives: 3.1. 'Big' and 'small' stories: narrative and identity; 3.2. Co-constructing narratives; 3.3. Stories about place; 4. Reading narratives: 4.1. Reading narratives; 4.2. Deixis and deictic shift theory; 4.3. Intertextuality; 4.4 Reading characters; 5. Narrative genres: 5.1. Narrative and the news; 5.2. Children's narratives; 5.3. Narrative and Twitter; Ideas and answers; References.