SEPTEMBER 10, 2018 (Walter Fisher)

SEPTEMBER 10, 2018 BLOG POST
"Narration as Human Communication" By Walter R. Fisher

Fisher's essay was interesting on many different levels, and I believe it was operating with pretenses in sociology and philosophy as he spent quite a bit of time discussing the human narrative experience and also what this experience means for the public. In one of many definitions aimed to help readers understand the significance of the narrative structure, Fisher writes, " The meaning and significance of life in all its social dimensions require the recognition of its narrative structure" (377). He suggests here that employing a narrative mode of consciousness, as the human rational human experience, holds a great deal of weight, that is, in order to derive meaning or significance from life we must recognize the narrative structure of life.

The idea of deriving meaning and significance from life makes me think of Kenneth Burke, who postulated that man is a "symbol-using" being. Burke, a rhetorical theorist, argued that humans use symbols to communicate and create them for meaning-making. Symbols like words, for example, hold meaning for us and allow us a somewhat flexible medium for the development of language, communication, and in many ways, the narrative social experience.

Human communication  and decision-making must be in argumentative form, Fisher's paradigm, follows the tradition of Aristotle's theory, what he calls The Rational World Paradigm, which surmises that humans are rational beings, that communication and decision-making are forms of argument, and that the world is filled with puzzles that can be solved through logic. But the specification that being rational is being learned is perhaps, in my opinion, the most important aspect of this ancient paradigm. Rationality comes from knowledge.

Fisher proposes another metaphor to represent human beings, what he calls homo narrans. He argues that narration is the master metaphor and follows Burke's definition of man as "symbol-employing." If I understand this master metaphor correctly, Fisher is suggesting that because every element of the human experience is subjective in the narrative, this metaphor becomes a type of lens we can look through to understand our own conceptions on a spectrum of logic and truth. This is a philosophical dilemma that Fisher proposes, but it seems sensical enough in terms of what implications follow the narrative experience through the social, political, theological, or other forms of the human experience that would engage decision-making or communication.

He writes, "The materials of the narrative paradigm are symbols, signs of consubstantiation, and good reasons, the communicative expressions of social reality" (383). Fisher indicates here that the narrative paradigm, his alternative view that human communication is in argumentative form, depends on human use of symbols to generate meaning, a similarity in substance or essence, and logical reasoning. This is Fisher's equation for understanding the narrative paradigm.

It seems important to note that the narrative experience is rooted in perspective, which has limitations for communication and the social world we occupy.

Towards that later part of the essay, he addresses public moral argument, which he argues has an underlying persuasive element. He discusses attributes of the most effective argumentative public moralist by suggesting that this individual acts as a counselor, and shares his/her narrative experience with the public using rationality and logic. In response, the public uses a specific set of criteria to determine what belief they choose to accept based on what these counselors argue. This can either inspire the public to action or inspire them to inaction. Fisher writes, "... public-social knowledge is to be found in the stories that we tell one another... to observe not only our differences, but also our commonalities, and in such observation we might be able to reform the notion of 'public'" (393).