p.149 Bateson (1979) went so far as to maintain that humans and other minded
creatures think "in terms of stories"
p.149 Perhaps the most widely known communication researcher in the area of narrative is Walter Fisher.
In 1984, Fisher wrote:
The idea of human beings as storytellers indicates the generic form of all symbol composition;
it holds that symbols are created and communicated ultimately as stories meant to give order to human experience
and to induce others to dwell in them to establish ways of living in common, in communities in which there is sanction for
the story that constitutes one's life. (1984, 6)
p.150 In 1984, Fisher proposed the narrative paradigm, a "theory
of symbolic actions - words and/or deeds - that have sequence and meaning for those who live, create, or interpret them"...
Frentz and Farrell (1976) played a significant role in Fisher's reasoning
p.150 When symbolic acts are placed within the context of an episode
that is a "rule-conforming sequence of symbolic acts generated by two or more actors who are collectively oriented toward
emergent goals" (Frentz and Farrell 1976, 336), then they may be said to have episodic force. Episodic
force specifies "the communicative function of acts within the overall sequential structure of an episode" (Frentz and Farrell
1976, 340). Meaning, then rests not within the individual symbolic acts but within the episode itself.
p.151 For Fisher, "narrative rationality... is an attempt to recapture Aristotle's concept of phronesis,
'practical wisdom' " (1985, 350).
p.157 McNair... writes: "No story can be told, no account of events given, without contextualization around
a set of assumptions, beliefs, and values. This is in the nature of storytelling"
p.158 Hayden White's observations about the writing of history... The events are made
into a story by the suppression or subordination of certain of them and the highlighting of others
p.158 W. A. Gamson (1989), in writing about news, argues:
Facts have no intrinsic meaning. They take on their meaning by being embedded in a frame or story
line that organizes them and gives them coherence, selecting certain ones to emphasize while ignoring others. Think
of news as telling stories about the world rather than as presenting "information," even though the stories, of course, included
factual elements (157)
