Narrative Gravity: Conversation, Cognition, Culture

ISBN-13: 9780415307352 / Angielski / Twarda / 2003 / 440 str.

Bhaya Rukmini;Rukmini; Rukmini Bhaya Nair

Opis

Narrative Gravity explores the anti-foundationalist, anti-essentialist idea that our stories make us up, rather than we make up our stories. The cognitive scientist Daniel C. Dennett has suggested that human beings tell stories as compulsively as beavers build dams or birds nests. Our basic identities are conferred on us by the myriad takes we hear and narrate throughout our lifetimes. All selves are centres of narrative gravity. But even if it is true that we are born to weave stories, why is it that we are so programmed? This title attempts to answer this question by carrying the important but embryonic notion that stories are obsessive self-constructions, to its logical conclusion. The book argues that narrative - a universal form found in every known human culture - functions as a species of natural theory. This is a foundational text for students of linguistics, philosophy and literary theory. It should also appeal to the general reader interested in the psychology and sociology of language and cultural cognition.

Spis treści

Introduction: First Conversational Steps 1 Chapter 1 Structural Simplicities The Grammar and Context of Narrative (Guru: Labov) Chapter 2 Force, Fiction, Fit and Felicity Narrative as a Speech Act (Gurus: Austin, Searle) Chapter 3 Performatives, Perlocutions, Pretence Deconstruction and the Narrative Speech Act (Gurus: de Man, Derrida) Chapter 4 Cooperative Conventions Implied Meanings in Narrative (Guru: Grice) Chapter 5 Rationality and Relevance Mental Codes and Cultural Memes in Narrative (Guru: Dennett) Chapter 6 Turns at Talk Ethnomethodological Analysis of Narrative Chapter 7 Self, State and Solidarity The Politics of Narrative Chapter 8 Explaining Enigmas from Evidence The Cause of Narrative, Conclusion: Final Narrative Sutras

O autorze

Rukmini Bhaya Nair is Professor of Linguistics and English at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. Her previous publications include Lying on the Postcolonial Couch: The Idea of Indifference (2002), Translation, Text and Theory: The Paradigm of India (ed: 2002) and Technobrat: Culture in a Cybernetic Classroom (1997).