Fisher's Narrative Paradigm

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    Walter Fisher was truly on to something with his notion of the narrative paradigm. Such an idea is evident in many forms of discourse and literacies. Believing that all “narratives have a rational structure that can be analyzed and evaluated” almost seems like common sense to me (Herrick, 2018, p. 254. He broke the rationality of stories down into two criteria, coherence and fidelity. Coherence of a story is when we question whether or not all internal elements of a story share consistency or hang together. The fidelity which questions a story’s moral consequences in a social context is further broken down into five sub criteria’s, fact, relevance, consequence, consistency, and transcendent issue (Herrick, 2018, p. 254). Fisher categorized argument as a species of narrative, which I’d also have to agree with. Narrative, being an account of connected events, is a large part of what argument is. Even though an argument generally consists of discourse shared between differing views, both sides share points from connected experiences or events. Next time I crack open a novel, watch a movie, or even listen to someone’s story. . .I’d be hard-pressed to not have Walter Fisher’s idea of the paradigm metaphor in the back of my mind.

Reference

Herrick, J. A. (2018). The History and Theory of Rhetoric: An Introduction (6th ed.). Routledge.

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