Narrative and Personhood: A Paradigm for Hoping

Abstract

Narrative theory in recent years has developed as a significant approach in describing, interpreting, critiquing, and envisioning ways of reordering people’s life experiences. This speculation contains several propositions. First, narrative theory proposes that people live an evolving narrative story. That is, building on Crites understanding of “narrative” or “story,” life experience moves in an ordered fashion within the framework of context, time, and space. Second, narrative theory proposes that people think in narrative form, and that their communicative process is inherently narrative. That is, according to Sarbin, people think, perceive, image, make moral choices and engage in discourse according to narrative structures. Third, narrative theory proposes that people have the capacity to reflect their lived narrative. The works of Capps and Lester suggest that this discernment enables people’s seeing alternative directions in lived stories and re-framing stories according to their convictions and values. Fourth, people also participate in constructing and revising their stories throughout their lives.

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