Narrative Analysis

Ochs and Capps (1996) have elaborated on the conception that there are two basic aspects of narrative: temporality and point of view. This echoes the argument of previous scholars (Burke 1973, Goffman 1961, Ricoeur 1988, and Sacks and Jefferson 1992) that a narrative presents a chain of events which is situated in time and space. This embodies Ricoeur’s

68 discussion of how “history and literature share a common referent: the human experience of time, the structures of temporality” (Wood 1991:15). Narrative is “verbalised, visualised, and/or embodied framings of sequences of actual or possible events” (Ochs and Capps 1996:19). In other words, narrative refers to how a text is written, expressed and communicated. It can be considered that the analysis of narrative is actually not only an exploration of the presentation of the “self” and the individual in interactive communication, but also provides a means of engaging with broader fields, leading to the consideration of how are they put to use at the micro-scale of individual lives, and the macro-scale of societies’ and collective communities’ identities and practices in the context of sociological literature.

Figure 5. A model of how “The addresser sends a message to the addressee”55

Film text can be seen as a narrative that implies a verbalised and visualised story. In this sense, it forces us to think about time and space, and reality and imagination together. Now, while going forward to discuss film narrative, let us also link back to the discussion of cinematic semiotics. If we look at cinema as a structural system and code of language/linguistics, cinematic narrative communication is most relevant to a model of verbal communication, drawing upon the work of Jakobson (1987:66, cited in Lothe 2000), which can be understood as a model of how “The addresser sends a message to the addressee” (Figure 5). More specifically, Lothe (2000:15) has given a clear explanation of how, if a message is to be operated, it requires a context “that is sizeable by the addressee and that is either verbal or capable of being verbalised”; a contact that is “a physical channel and psychological connection between the addresser and the addressee, enabling both of them to enter and stay in communication”; and a code that is “a system of norms and rules that is fully or at least partly common to the addresser and the addressee.” In this sense, if we understand the model by narrator, story, and reader instead of addresser, message, and

55

This model draws upon the understandings of Jakobson (1987) and Lothe (2000), but has been adapted by myself.

Message (story) Context

Addresser (narrator) Contact Addressee (reader) Code

69 addressee, we can look clearly at cinematic narrative, as all cinematic storytelling provides narrators to readers with an opportunity for understanding. Reference to another model of Lothe (2000) and Jakobson (1987), called “narrative text” (Figure 6), helps us to take the discussion further. Through this model, it can be seen how a narrative text is written and a film story is told. However, in terms of methodological discussion, two important questions need to be considered: What is a film narrator? and Who is the film author? This is connected with a conception of the difference between the author of a text and the narrator in the text.

Figure 6. A model of “narrative text”

As Ochs and Capps (1996:22) mention, “each telling of a narrative situated in time and space engages only facets of a narrator’s or listener/reader’s selfhood in that it evokes only certain memories, concerns, and expectations.” Bruner (1986, cited in Ochs and Capps 1996) has also argued that narrators construct a dual landscape, one of action and one of consciousness. It is worth noting that the film narrator is very different from the literary narrator. Although the earlier section on textual analysis states that Metz agreed with applying semiotics of linguistic principles to film analysis, cinema looks like a very complex verbalised and visualised narrative, since Chatman (1990:124) comments that “film is not a ‘language’ but another kind of semiotic system with ‘articulations’ of its own”. Several scholars (Bordwell 1985, Rothman 1988, cited in Chatman 1990) believe that film has narration but no narrator. However, I agree with Chatman’s (1990) conception that the film narrator is the filmmaker’s communicative instrument. Drawing upon Chatman (1990:134-135), Figure 7 presents a diagram titled “the multiplexity of the cinematic narrator”, which is the “sum of these and other variables.” Reading this diagram, film stylistics/techniques analysis can be followed through two separate and interacting channels: the auditory channel and visual channel. As can be seen in Figure 7, I have introduced several narrators in semiotic analysis, as indexical codes/signs to express the symbolic meaning in film textual analysis. In this sense, certainly, film narrative analysis overlaps somehow with semiotic analysis in this research.

Implied

author Narrator story narratee

Implied reader

70 Figure 7 The multiplexity of the cinematic narrator (Chatman 1990)

Now let us consider the question: who is the film author, if the film narrator is as complex as is framed in Figure 7? Complex narrator systems could indicate that filmmaking is a complex production process involving “co-operation” and “co-creation” – the author of the script, the producer, the actors, the cinematographer, and so on. However, the director is usually recognised as the main author, since the director has “overall responsibility for according priorities and co-ordinating the activities that are part of the production process, but also functions creatively in relation to the screenplay and the thematics of the film” (Lothe 2000:31). In this sense, the discussion of “author” here in the methodological level could open a window for us to read how auteurist approaches function and guide this research.