VAKKI Publications (Dec 2020)
Applying the Narrative Dimensions Model
Abstract
The relatively recent surge of interest in narratives other than the prototypical narrative of personal experience has furthered the domain of linguistically-oriented narrative research in many important ways. However, it has also led to a dispersion of relevant information on the diversity of narrative genres and an insecurity of what should – and should not – be considered as narrative. In order to solve these issue, in a recent article, I proposed the Narrative Dimensions Model, in which I discern two three-dimensional clusters. The first revolves around the narrator and contains the dimensions of ownership, authorship and tellership, while the second focuses on the narrated events and consists of the dimensions of frequency, time and evaluation. Importantly, this model has not been ‘tested’ yet on real-life narratives and it has thus far not been shown how to apply the Narrative Dimensions Model to authentic stories in which narrators may mix, switch to, or oscillate between different genres to differing extents. The application of this model to the ‘messy’ business of real-life storytelling is exactly the purpose of this paper. In particular, I draw on stories told by famous business leaders during interviews or presentations that are available online via YouTube and I analyze the multi-dimensional nature of these authentic narratives, after which I position them in the Narrative Dimensions Model. Finally, I conclude this article by discussing the implications of using this six-dimensional approach to (non-prototypical) narratives.
