Narrative Revisited: Telling a story in the age of new media(199 Pragmatics & Beyond New Series)

The volume examines the role of narratives in old and new media. Its ten contributions firstly center on the various forms and functions narratives assume in computer-mediated environments, e.g. websites, weblogs, message boards, etc. In this light, past and present approaches to the description of narratives are presented and reevaluated based on their ability to capture the conceptual and methodological exigencies of new media. Secondly, the volume sheds new light upon the multimodal composition of new media narratives which typically feature multiple co-occurring semiotic modes such as speech, sound, text, static or moving images. In this vein, each paper explores a wide array of authentic examples from text genres as diverse as political speeches, real-time narratives and contemporary feature films. Its wide scope should not only appeal to linguists interested in the discursive and pragmatic dimension of narratives but also to scholars and students in other scientific disciplines.

Table of Contents:
1. Acknowledgments; 2. Introduction. Narrative revisited: Telling a story in the age of new media (by Hoffmann, Christian R.); 3. Contextual constraints in CMC narratives (by Bazzanella, Carla); 4. The role of electronics in the perception of everyday narratives (by Hubler, Axel); 5. "Audacious, brilliant!! What a strike!": Live text commentaries on the Internet as real-time narratives (by Jucker, Andreas H.); 6. Once upon a blog ... Storytelling in weblogs (by Eisenlauer, Volker); 7. "Neeed to put his out there (my story)": Narratives in message boards (by Arendholz, Jenny); 8. Narrative sequences in political discourse: Forms and functions in speeches and hypertext frameworks (by Schubert, Christoph); 9. Small stories in political discourse: The public self goes private (by Fetzer, Anita); 10. Unpacking narrative in a hypermedia 'artedventure' for children (by Stenglin, Maree); 11. Chain and choice in filmic narrative: An analysis of multimodal narrative construction in The Fountain (by Tseng, Chiaoi); 12. Film discourse cohesion (by Janney, Richard W.); 13. Person index; 14. Subject index

Review :
Ethnographers, social scientists and sociolinguists will undoubtedly benefit from these coherent investigations. [...] This Narrative Revisited is arguably the most important book on narratives and storytelling published in English during 2010. It will lead students in linguistics and sociology of the media in new directions. The major strength of this collected volume is that it brings together various studies on narratives that, on the one hand, occur in internet environments such as on-line commentaries, weblogs, web-games, message boards, websites and, on the other, exploit different semiotic modes, i.e. not only written discourse but also sound and image, as in political speeches, web-games and films. The authors, mainly drawing on text linguistic concepts, attempt thorough descriptions of narrative performances in digital and multimodal environments. Thus, the book at hand is a very significant contribution to the rapidly evolving research in CMC and in (new) media discourse in general. [...] My overall evaluation is that this collection of papers is a first-class volume highly recommended to all people with research desiderata in relation to CMC and (new) media discourse. Narrative Revisited, a volume in honour of Wolfram Bublitz, offers a much needed snapshot of the multiple forms and transformations of narrative in media environments. [...] A wealth of further interesting insights into narratives in new media is offered to the reader. This collection may serve as a good introduction to linguistic and compositional structure and communicative functions of new media narratives as well as analytical changes and modifications to linguistic narrative theory. [...] The book also offers a rich set of comparisons and contrasts between the narrative in old and new media so that what is new can be found by assessing the old. This collection will satisfy those looking for an understanding of contemporary trends in narratives, that is, understanding how exactly stories enter the digital realm and how the classic approaches to the analysis of narratives can be adapted to meet the socio-technological needs of digital narration. [...] In my opinion, all the papers help to achieve the editor’s two objectives related to the description of narratives in new media environments and the theoretical and empirical analysis of multimodal narratives. I would like to add that this fascinating and intelligent book should appeal to a wider audience than just those interested in narratives, and although it would not be suitable as a textbook, its many insights into different approaches and viewpoints on storytelling would be of interest and use to any teacher of narrative.