CHAPTER 24
NARRATIVE PARADIGM
Outline
I. Introduction.
A. For Walter Fisher, storytelling epitomizes human nature.
B. All forms of human communication that seek to affect belief, attitude or action need
to be seen fundamentally as stories.
II. Telling a compelling story
A. Most religious traditions are passed on from generation to generation through the
retelling of stories.
B. American writer Frederick Buechner takes a fresh approach to passing on religious
story.
III. Narration and paradigm: Defining the terms.
A. Fisher defines narration as symbolic actions—words and/or deeds—that have
sequence and meaning for those who live, create, and interpret them.
B. Fisher’s definition of narration is broad.
1. Narration is rooted in time and space.
A. A paradigm is a conceptual framework —a widely shared perceptual filter.
B. Fisher’s narrative paradigm is offered as “the foundation on which a complete
rhetoric needs to be built.”
IV. Paradigm shift: From a rational-world paradigm to a narrative one.
A. According to Fisher, the writings of Plato and Aristotle reflect the early evolution from
a generic to a specific use of logos—from story to statement.
B. As opposed to the abstract discourse of philosophy, rhetoric is practical speech—the
secular combination of pure logic on the one hand and emotional stories that stir up
passions on the other.
C. Fisher sees philosophical and technical discussion as scholars’ standard approach
to knowledge.
D. The rational-world paradigm is the mind-set of the reigning technical experts.
2. We make decisions on the basis of arguments.
4. Rationality is determined by how much we know and how well we argue.
5. The world is a set of logical puzzles that we can solve through rational analysis.
E. The narrative paradigm is built on parallel, yet contrasting, premises.
1. People are essentially storytellers.
2. We make decisions on the basis of good reasons, which vary depending on the
3. History, biography, culture, and character determine what we consider good
reasons.
4. Narrative rationality is determined by the coherence and fidelity of our stories.
5. The world is a set of stories from which we choose, and thus constantly re-
create, our lives.
F. Unlike the rational-world paradigm, the narrative paradigm privileges values,
aesthetic criteria, and commonsense interpretation.
G. We judge stories based on narrative rationality.
V. Narrative rationality: Coherence and fidelity.
A. Fisher believes that everyone applies the same standards of narrative rationality to
stories.
B. The operative principle of narrative rationality is identification rather than
deliberation.
C. The twin tests of a story are narrative coherence and narrative fidelity.
D. Narrative coherence: Does the story hang together?
1. How probable is the story to the hearer?
3. Narrative consistency parallels lines of argument in the rational-world paradigm.
5. Stories hang together when we’re convinced that the narrator hasn’t left out
important details, fudged the facts, or ignored other plausible interpretations.
6. The ultimate test of narrative coherence is whether or not we can count on the
characters to act in a reliable manner.
E. Narrative fidelity: Does the story ring true and humane?
1. Does the story square with the hearer’s experiences?
3. Values set the narrative paradigm’s logic of good reasons apart from the
rational-world paradigm’s logic of reasons.
4. The logic of good reasons centers on five value-related issues.
a. The values embedded in the message.
5. People tend to prefer accounts that fit with what they view as truthful and
humane.
6. There is an ideal audience that identifies the humane values that a good story
embodies.
7. These stories include the timeless “values of truth, the good, beauty, health,
9. Fisher believes the humane virtues of the ideal audience shape our logic of good
reasons.
10. Almost all communication is narrative, and we evaluate it on that basis.
VI. Critique: Does Fisher’s story have coherence and fidelity?
A. Fisher’s theory excels in fulfilling most of the requirements of a good interpretive
theory.
B. He expands our understanding of human nature, is specific about the values we
prefer, and supports his new paradigm with intriguing rhetorical criticism of
significant texts—a classic method of qualitative research.
C. If Fisher is right, when it comes to evaluating coherence and fidelity, people with
ordinary common sense are competent rhetorical critics.
D. Fisher’s narrative paradigm offers a fresh reworking to Aristotelian analysis.
E. Critics charge that Fisher is overly optimistic when, like Aristotle, he argues that
people have a natural tendency to prefer the true and the just.
1. Fisher grants that evil can overwhelm our tendency to adopt good stories, but
2. Others suggest that narrative rationality implies that good stories cannot go
beyond what people already believe and value, thus denying the rhetoric of
possibility.
Key Names and Terms
Walter Fisher
A professor emeritus at the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of
Southern California who developed the narrative paradigm of communication.
Phatic communication
Communication aimed at maintaining relationship rather than passing information or
saying something new.
Narration
Paradigm
A conceptual framework or worldview; a universal model that calls for people to view
events through a common interpretive lens.
Rational-world paradigm
A scientific or philosophical approach to knowledge that assumes people are logical,
making decisions on the basis of evidence and lines of argument.
Narrative paradigm
A theoretical framework that views narrative as the basis of all human communication.
Narrative rationality
A way of evaluating the worth of stories based on the twin standards of narrative
coherence and narrative fidelity.
Narrative coherence
Internal consistency with characters acting in a reliable fashion; the story hangs
together.
Ideal audience
An actual community existing over time that believes in the values of truth, the good,
beauty, health, wisdom, courage, temperance, justice, harmony, order, communion,
friendship, and oneness with the cosmos.
Principal Changes
The chapter-long illustration has been changed in this edition of A First Look. Previously
the biblical story of Ruth and Boaz (as interpreted by Buechner) was told to illustrate the
Kick-off Questions & Interaction Starters
• What are your favorite stories in TV, movies, and books? Why do you like them so
much? Are they good stories? What does “good” mean?
• How important is logic in a story? When, if ever, are you willing to overlook logical
gaps in order to appreciate the story?
• In what areas of life do you equally weigh the assessment of the Average Jane or
Joe compared to an “expert” or authority figure?
• Is the goodness of a story about the content or the storyteller? Can you separate the
two?
Suggestions for Discussion
What is a paradigm?
Before jumping headlong into Fisher’s theory, you might want to spend some time
shoring up the concept of a paradigm. Without understanding this philosophical notion, the
idea of a paradigm shift (away from rationalism) loses its strength. If a paradigm is one’s view
of the world, a shift in paradigm means seeing the world an entirely different way. It may be of
some value to your students to discuss other historic paradigm shifts (i.e. from a Ptolemaic
view of the Earth as the center of the universe to a Copernican system with the sun as central;
the metamorphosis from an agrarian to industrialized society) in order to grasp the radical
change Fisher is advocating. When I unpack these ideas in class, I start with the accepted or
What is a story?
As the chapter points out, Fisher defines narration very broadly as “symbolic actions—
words and/or deeds—that have sequence and meaning for those who live, create, or interpret
them.” A good place to begin discussion is to ask students to scrutinize this definition of
narration or story and to compare it to their own perceptions. Is there a difference between a
story and a simple sequence or chain of events? Does a story require a specific beginning,
The elegance of Fisher’s narrative paradigm
The broad scope and theoretical elegance of Fisher’s narrative paradigm render it
particularly exciting. Although Human Communication as Narration is a sophisticated, complex
book that engages a wide range of philosophical positions and communication theories,
Fisher’s essential theoretical concepts are refreshingly simple. There are no intricate
Aristotelian syllogisms or Burkeian ratios to untangle; only basic criteria by which all narratives
can be evaluated. Of course any effort to reduce all of human communication to a few key
concepts will contain certain weaknesses and limitations. It is intriguing to me how often
students are less enamored with simplicity than they might have been earlier in the semester,
or than I’d expect them to be. More than once, Fisher’s idea have come under attack in my
A story’s coherence
Be sure that your students are clear about Fisher’s use of the word “probable” to
describe narrative coherence. It seems not to be referencing the mathematics of statistical
likelihood, but rather a general freedom from inconsistency or contradiction. For coherence to
be established, we must determine that, given the nature of the plot and the characters, the
action develops in a manner that is internally consistent. Strictly speaking, the improbable can
be coherent, so long as it fits organically within the world of the story. Many stories, in fact,
include improbable yet coherent events (and if we didn’t accept that, no one could appreciate
a story about elves, a dwarf, and some talking trees helping hobbits take an evil magic ring to
the only place it could be destroyed). Remember that, for Fisher, the essence of “probability”
Narrative fidelity
To clarify the concept of “fidelity,” be sure your students understand that the term
refers directly to “the truthfulness of the story” or “the ‘truth qualities’ of the story, the degree
to which it accords with the logic of good reasons: the soundness of its reasoning and the
value of its values” (Human Communication as Narration, p. 88). In short, fidelity seems
The ideal audience
The concept of the ideal audience deserves discussion. You may wish to discuss with
students how Warnick’s critique complicates this notion. In addition, it is important to consider
culture. Fisher’s optimistic position that people, when confronted by “the better part of
themselves,” find humane values more persuasive may not be entirely convincing to your
students. How do we factor culture into the ideal audience—in other words, are seemingly
universal humane values relative and dependent on time and place? As Fisher suggests, his
notion of an ideal audience or permanent public resembles the construct of the “universal
audience” that Chaim Perelman and Lucy Olbrechts-Tyteca develop in The New Rhetoric, trans.
The complication of culturally relevant values
When scrutinizing the purported universality of Fisher’s humane values, students may
wish to draw on their knowledge of other communication theorists. The work of Geertz and
Pacanowsky (ch. 19) ”strongly suggests that stories are culturally specific”, and perhaps the
standards by which we judge narratives also vary from culture to culture. Fisher’s list of eternal
values—truth, the good, beauty, health, and so forth—may not be as universal as he suggests.
Is it presumptuous of Fisher to proclaim that his logic is universal? Is he privileging
contemporary Western values? A simple look at cinema worldwide may quickly dismiss any
notions that we are all drawn to the same stories or that the forms of storytelling don’t have
Does a story need to reinforce comfortable values?
The chapter raises the criticism—attributed to William Kirkwood—that Fisher’s standard
of narrative fidelity “implies that good stories cannot and perhaps should not go beyond what
people already believe and value.” If, in fact, the process of “ringing true” tends to reinforce or
depend upon comfortable values and perspectives held by audiences, rather than challenging
tale—the experiences of her older sister and her soldier lover—actually ended anticlimactically
when both characters suffered tragic, random deaths in the beginning battles of World War II.
Since her readers would be uncomfortable with the truthful story, which would do nothing to
reinforce their conventional beliefs about romance, heroism, and human endurance, the
narrator admits to altering the account so that the two lovers are reunited in the end:
What sense or hope or satisfaction could a reader draw from such an account?
Who would want to believe that they never met again, never fulfilled their love?
Who would want to believe that, except in the service of the bleakest realism? . . . I
that a narrative theory emphasizing what rings true for audiences works against—or at least
does not account for—stories that dramatically alter readers’ perspectives. On the other hand,
one could argue that McEwan’s artistic decision to feature the narrator’s private confession
demonstrates the opposite point—that readers are willing to be challenged by a last-minute
revelation that undermines the familiar, “feel–good” plot components they have just read and
no doubt appreciated. The fact that Atonement was short-listed for the prestigious Booker
Prize suggests that, in this case at least, many readers admired McEwan’s tough-minded
encounters a top secret “asset,” a human/amphibious creature with whom she forms a bond.
As she and the creature grow closer— and perhaps controversially, fall in love, Elisa ultimately
decides to free him, but in the process, she is shot and falls into the water with him. Her friend,
Giles, who serves as the narrator, describes his story with caution at the start of the film: “If I
The appeal of evil or misguided stories
How does Fisher account for the appeal of a bad story or cheering for a despicable
character? Evil or misguided stories aren’t hard to find, such as David Duke’s racist political
propaganda, D. W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation (a 1915 film that celebrated the Ku Klux Klan),
Senator Joseph McCarthy’s account of the communist infiltration of American politics, or the
anti-Semitic rhetoric of Adolf Hitler in Germany or of neo-Nazi groups today. Fisher would likely
say that these must be considered “bad” stories because they lack fidelity—as he does of
Hitler’s Mein Kampf (Human Communication as Narration, p. 76)—but such an approach
ducks the issue of what they have. Surely we deny their power at our peril; only by
faith-based groups, civil rights organizations, and other groups of local citizens. Media
accounts of the incident clearly show that each group was mobilized behind a narrative they
deemed compelling. But, how can both stories equally meet Fisher’s criteria? Could this case
study help us untangle why people adopt stories that lack fidelity to the values of the ideal
audience?
Some of your students might be fans of Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad, Mad Men, or
Sons of Anarchy. In each case, it would be hard to convince most people that the stories have
fidelity per Fisher’s description. Game of Thrones storylines include brutal violence (especially
against women and marginalized groups), incest, and deception at every level. Few characters
act based on morals that an ideal audience would applaud. Similarly, Breaking Bad’s Walter
White or Mad Men’s Don Draper are not particularly nice guys. Their questionable choices and
Machiavellian tendencies are central to each story arc, but seem to go unchecked throughout
advocate that the viewer perform evil in the “real world,” yet reward the deeds of evil
characters within the context of the story? What sort of narrative rationality guides the
audiences of such narratives? Could it be that we need to develop a narrative rationality of
“bad reasons”?
Sample Application Log
Brian
Over fall break, I saw the movie Quiz Show, which is about a television game show that is
tailored to keep the public’s interest by a scam in which certain contestants know all the
answers before they get asked the questions on the air. The plot of the movie revolves around
two conflicting stories: that of the game show producers, who claim that everyone’s making
money and no one’s getting hurt; and that of the federal investigator, who says that television
to convince people that his story has coherence and, just as important, that his story has
fidelity. That is, the TV viewing public can identify with it because they are the ones being
abused.
Exercises and Activities
Testing the coherence and fidelity of well-known texts
Help students to explore and evaluate Fisher’s twin criteria of coherence and fidelity
through application. Do these concepts adequately explain the power of many of the most
enduring stories of our culture? A provocative test case is William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, a
play most students will have read or seen. In terms of coherence, Hamlet’s behavior seems
anything but. His mood is persistently melancholy, but his actions are consistently
unpredictable. With respect to fidelity, not many of us are able to forge a direct connection
with Hamlet, whose uncle has murdered his father and married his mother, and who learns of
this treachery from an encounter with his father’s ghost. The general theme of revenge that
fills the play will strike a chord with many, but is Hamlet’s bloody solution truly relevant to our
lives? How, in effect, might Fisher account for these apparent problems with his theoretical
categories? Other test cases could be Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice or King Lear
(2017) provoked quite a bit of controversy because the new director Rian Johnson moved it in
several new directions. The portrayal of Luke Skywalker as a broken, old, isolated Jedi was
particularly controversial with fans, who didn’t think the portrayal was consistent with earlier
films—but still others thought his shattered spirit struck a chord of believability and empathy.
Others didn’t like that VIII discarded questions that VII had suggested were important (“Who
are Rey’s parents?”; “Where did Snoke come from?”). At the same time, other viewers
appreciated that the film included more racial diversity and opportunities for women than
other Star Wars films. As I describe these movies, I’m purposefully avoiding the terms
Satire and the narrative paradigm
In class, you might browse to a satirical news site such as The Onion. Look at a few of
the stories. Our guess is that the humor and wit of the satire will turn, to some extent, on a
perceived lack of coherence and/or fidelity in the target of the satire.
Competing narratives
The cartoon humorously raises the very important—and often deadly serious—point that
humans often wage arguments through competing narratives. In doing so, disputants may
marshal alternative narrative rationalities in order to produce the strongest story. A good way
to explore how narrative rationalities may compete is to examine the practice of forensic
rhetoric. A classic case is the O. J. Simpson murder trial of the mid-1990s, which featured the
prosecution’s narrative of a jealous, violent ex-husband versus the defense’s narrative of a
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Fisher’s narrative paradigm give us a way to answer such questions? If not, how might such
theoretical speculation begin? Incidentally, if we’re willing to give up claims of universality, the
concept of the “discourse community” or “interpretative community” offers one way out of the
dilemma. Encourage your students to think about how the interpretation of a story might be so
varied across hearers.
Theory integration
This conversation could easily be parlayed into a review of sorts of previous theories.
Symbolic interactionism and coordinated management of meaning could both be revisited as
each addresses the question of meaning development through interaction. Symbolic
convergence, critical theory of organizations, and communication constitution of organizations
may also be relevant to this discussion by probing how stories might transform group or
organizational culture—in both good and bad ways. Some stories may become marginalizing or
disempowering while others build a sense of cohesiveness. Finally, you could return to
dramatism and reconsider Burke’s pentad as a helpful tool for unpacking motives. I’ve just
Academy Award nominated films
As mentioned above, in 2008 the film version of McEwan’s novel Atonement was in the
running for best picture of the year at the Academy awards. Likely, you or your students will
have seen some or all of the films nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards in a
given year. Based on their read of Fisher, which are the best stories, having both narrative
coherence and fidelity? Even examining the films’ taglines provides interesting source
material. You might ask students who have seen the various films to describe their stories and
let the class evaluate them along Fisher’s criteria. For 2018, the nominee list included The
Shape of Water (“A fairy tale for troubled times”); Darkest Hour (“Never, never, never
surrender”); Dunkirk (“At the point of crisis, at the point of annihilation, survival is victory.”);
Feature film illustrations
The classic film Forrest Gump is a good vehicle for discussing the narrative paradigm.
Have your students attempt to explain the film’s enduring popularity in terms of coherence and
fidelity. How does the narrative establish internal consistency? In what ways does the story
resonate with the lives of the viewers? A more provocative possibility is the tale of the life of
Christ, also known as “the greatest story ever told.” Does Fisher’s narrative rationality help us
to understand its enduring power? Now nearly 2,000 years old, the story shows no sign of
Further Resources
Walter Fisher
Other significant works written by Fisher not mentioned in the chapter include:
Narrative criticism
John F. Cragan and Donald C. Shields, Symbolic Theories in Applied Communication Research:
Bormann, Burke, and Fisher, Hampton Press, New York, 1995, pp. 91-122 & 235-67.
Theoretical and pedagogical considerations
For further information on the concept of the discourse community, see M. Jimmie
Killingsworth, “Discourse Community,” in Encyclopedia of Rhetoric and Composition, Theresa
Enos (ed.), Routledge, New York, 1996, pp. 194-196.
Destiny Brady, “Theory Synthesis: A Narrative Theory for Nursing Pedagogy,” Nursing Research,
Vol. 65, 2016, pp. E77-E78. (Brief abstract is located in article titled “28th Annual
Scientific Sessions Abstracts.”)
Applied contexts of Fisher’s paradigm
Mary Angela Bock and David Alan Schneider, “The Voice of Lived Experience: Mobile Video
Narratives in the Courtroom,” Information, Communication & Society, Vol. 20, 2017,
pp. 335–350
Michael E. Burns, “Recruiting Prospective Students with Stories: How Personal Stories
Influence the Process of Choosing a University,” Communication Quarterly, Vol. 63,
2015, pp. 99-118.
Eileen Hammond, “Lilly Ledbetter Teaches Us a Lesson: 2012 DNC Speech Gives Way to
Public Moral Argument,” Florida Communication Journal, Vol. 41, 2013, pp. 25–37.
Shari Hoppin, “Applying the Narrative Paradigm to the Vaccine Debates,” American
Communication Journal, Vol. 18, 2016, pp. 45–55.