John Benjamins Publishing Company
Storytelling on the go
Abstract
In this chapter, I draw on a practice-based heuristic that I have put forward within small stories research so as to discuss breaking news as a narrative genre that is currently carving out a significant place for itself in the everyday storying of people in technologically mediated environments. The heuristic aims at scrutinizing the inter-animations amongst ways of telling, sites and tellers, and of those I will single out three pervasive features of breaking news: the ongoing-ness of tellings that is premised on the requirement for the recency of events; the portability of the stories in different environments (e.g. from online to offline and vice versa); the multiple tellership and co-construction of tellings. On the basis of these features, I address the issue of how the study of breaking news can inform the current thinking around certain longstanding concerns of narrative analysis such as tellability (the story “worth telling”) and reflection (distance) in the telling of the past.
Abstract
In this chapter, I draw on a practice-based heuristic that I have put forward within small stories research so as to discuss breaking news as a narrative genre that is currently carving out a significant place for itself in the everyday storying of people in technologically mediated environments. The heuristic aims at scrutinizing the inter-animations amongst ways of telling, sites and tellers, and of those I will single out three pervasive features of breaking news: the ongoing-ness of tellings that is premised on the requirement for the recency of events; the portability of the stories in different environments (e.g. from online to offline and vice versa); the multiple tellership and co-construction of tellings. On the basis of these features, I address the issue of how the study of breaking news can inform the current thinking around certain longstanding concerns of narrative analysis such as tellability (the story “worth telling”) and reflection (distance) in the telling of the past.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Introduction, or another story of narrative 1
-
Exploring the narrative turns
- Travelling metaphors, transforming concepts 13
- Why narrative is here to stay 43
- To the narrative turn and back 63
- Travelling with narrative 83
- Philosophical underpinnings of the narrative turn in theory and fiction 93
-
Travelling between fiction and non-fiction
- Fact and fiction 121
- Broken or unnatural? 141
- Making sense in autobiography 163
- “Unnatural” narratives? 179
- Storytelling on the go 201
-
Travelling from body to story
- Towards an embodied theory of narrative and storytelling 227
- Fractured narratives 245
- Broken stories 265
-
Concluding reflections
- Twists and turns 287
- List of contributors 303
- Index 307
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Introduction, or another story of narrative 1
-
Exploring the narrative turns
- Travelling metaphors, transforming concepts 13
- Why narrative is here to stay 43
- To the narrative turn and back 63
- Travelling with narrative 83
- Philosophical underpinnings of the narrative turn in theory and fiction 93
-
Travelling between fiction and non-fiction
- Fact and fiction 121
- Broken or unnatural? 141
- Making sense in autobiography 163
- “Unnatural” narratives? 179
- Storytelling on the go 201
-
Travelling from body to story
- Towards an embodied theory of narrative and storytelling 227
- Fractured narratives 245
- Broken stories 265
-
Concluding reflections
- Twists and turns 287
- List of contributors 303
- Index 307
