1.3. CRITICAL LITERACY AS A SEMIOTIC DOMAIN
1.3.1 THE RELEVANCE OF POSTSTRUCTURALISM TO CRITICAL LITERACY
1.3.1.4 NARRATIVE THEORY
Thus far I have examined the relevance of discourse, language and the construction of the subject within a poststructuralist approach to literacy practice. In this section I turn to textual theory as this relates to the concerns of this research, which focuses on the short story using a Critical Literacy approach. I therefore focus on narrative theory, which is necessary towards an understanding of how narratives are constructed. As the object of this study is to produce a critical analysis based on three short stories, using insights from post-structuralism, I examine how narratives are organized and structured using elements from narrative theory. These elements enable an examination of how the narrative is moved forward. In its structure the narrative can be argued to inscribe particular discourses, which are privileged and which propose particular subjectivities in the receiver. The narrative can be described as ' a chain of events in a cause-effect
relationship occurring in time... A narrative begins with one situation; a series of changes occur according to a pattern of causes and effects; finally a situation arises which brings about the end of the narrative.. .Usually the agents of cause and effect are characters' (Bordwell and Thompson in Prinsloo and Criticos, 1991, 132).
With this definition in mind I focus on different narrative theorists and their contribution to narrative theory. The ideas and models presented by these theorists will be used to analyse the short story narratives in chapter four. In this regard the insights provided by Propp (1975), Todorov (1977) and Levi-Strauss (1968) will be drawn upon. These insights are useful for undertaking a critical analysis of the short story texts used in
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Chapter Four and contrast with the 'content-thematic' approach used in the current classroom practice, fostered by the commercial guide.
I begin first with the insights provided by Vladimir Propp17, (in Turner, 1988), the Russian formalist. He chose to analyse the Russian folktale in an attempt to establish a reliable system for their classification. He found that these folktales shared common structural features even though they differed in surface details. He broke down the folktale into what he considered their essential parts, which he called narrative functions (see Appendix 1).
A function consisted of a single action, which was not related to a literal event, but served to describe a particular function that is performed in the overall development of the narrative (Prinsloo, 1991, 134).
In his analysis Propp focuses on both events and characters and categorizes characters in terms of their function (see Appendix 1) within the narrative and the sphere of action they inhabit. In this regard he identifies seven 'character' functions; namely, villains, donors or providers, helpers, the princess and the father, dispatchers, heroes or victims and the false hero. In his analysis of the Russian folktale, Propp arrived at the following four conclusions:
1. Functions of characters serve as stable, constant elements in a tale independent of how and by whom, they are told.
2. The number of functions known to the fairy tale is limited.
3. The sequence of events is always identical.
4. All fairy tales are of one type in regard to structure.
(Prinsloo, 1991, 136).
17 Vladimir Propp's Morphology of the folktale was first published in 1928. He chose to analyse the Russian folktale in an attempt to establish a reliable system for their classification. He ignored the content of the hundred folktales he analysed and concentrated on their latent form and broke them down to what he
This structural outline of the narrative is useful in understanding how the organization of the narrative conveys particular discourses that may be considered dominant whilst marginalizing others. According to the Proppian analysis of Russian folktales, heroes have helpers of one sort or another, for example, people, animals, magic weapons etc.
who, assist or support the hero in his quest or his struggle with the villain and enable the hero to triumph. Villains have helpers in the form of those characters that take advantage of the negative associations connected to the villain and this group represents the other side of the equation. In this regard the hero-villain conflict is indirectly a conflict between two poles, usually good and evil.
What may be deduced from the Proppian model is that 'there is no logic to narratives and that they are constructed according to rules that have not varied greatly over the
centuries. There are heroes and heroines, there are villains and villainesses, there is conflict, there are helpers, there are magic agents or powers that the heroes have and that the villains have' (Berger, 1996, 22).
Also relevant are the ideas put forward by Tzevetan Todorov1 (in Prinsloo and Criticos, 1991) who looks at the overall course of structure in the narrative process. He describes the narrative process as beginning from an initial equilibrium where there is a state of order, of happiness and fulfillment, also described as a state of plenitude. This state is disrupted by an event, crisis or a power resulting in disequilibrium. The course of the
18 Todorov looks at the structure of stories as comprising a process that moves from initial equilibrium where there is a balance of social, psychological or moral elements according to the story genre; a disruption and a new equilibrium or what he calls 'plenitude' when things are satisfactory, peaceful, calm or recognizably normal.
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narrative is subsequently concerned with the attempt to put right the disequilibrium or deal with the disruption and its effects. By the end of the narrative, the disequilibrium is rectified and there is a return to a new state of equilibrium. The second state of
equilibrium or re-equilibrium is an altered one and not the same as the initial one, in that the characters have undergone change. These insights on narrative theory provided by Todorov will be applied in the critical analysis of the short stories in chapter four.
The work of Levi-Strauss also provides insight into the function of cultural mythology, which enabled human beings to negotiate a peace between themselves and their
environments. Levi-Strauss suggests that a feature of mythologies is their dependence upon ' binary oppositions' a two-term conflict. One of the ways in which humans
understand the world is by dividing it into mutually exclusive categories known as binary oppositions which divide and structure our understanding of the world. Binary
oppositions 'provide a way of determining meaning which is the product of the
construction of differences and similarities, placing an object on one side of an opposition rather than on the other' (Turner, 1996, 73). An example of the social construction of gender difference within a patriarchal frame may read as follows:
MALE Strong Rational
FEMALE Weak Emotional
Levi-Strauss saw this perceptual and linguistic concept repeated in the structure and process of narrative in terms of its dependence on conflict and binary oppositions. These insights will be applied in the critical analysis of the short stories when they are explored in terms of the presentation of characters within the narrative and the discourses that are privileged through this presentation (in chapter four).
Thus an understanding of narrative theory enables an examination of how certain narratives favour particular discourses and therefore particular ideologies and when applied to the short story text (in chapter four) it enables an exploration of relations of power that are conveyed by the discourses that underpin them.