get started all right so walter fisher the narrative paradigm now the narrative paradigm is different from other things that you've covered so far the classical method is really very much about um the tools the redder has chosen to use in order to try and craft some measure of uh of conviction all right when we ship shift shifted over to toolman toolman gave us the uh the toolman analysis which taught us to look for sort of the the kind of linchpin the undergirding of the structures of assumption and and values that we have to bring to a message to help make it make sense now let's see if it'll let me do it okay we'll see no promises all right so walter fisher narrative paradigm basically when you look at toolman undergrading structures fischer is the first time that we're going to take a fairly significant different tack entirely even with fischer what you what you get with fischer is largely that sort of sense of logos and how is the the pathos and ethos which is what goes into making a warrant how are those really helping things make sense okay that's valuable but it's still pretty much right in the lines of of what you've been doing before this one this one is new so fischer is saying i want you to think about messages in a way that is different from the way you have usually generally thought about messages so the wall walter fisher's narrative paradigm start basically by getting a sense of what goes into it right the basic assumptions that lie behind it first of all fisher says that people are by nature they tell stories it's what they do um that's the first way you make sense of the world and it's the best way that you know for making senses making sense of how the world functions and how the world works so it's only natural he would say that stories are sort of at the heart of what we do when we start trying to shape our perspectives our convictions our our beliefs about the world and about how things interact and function so basically people are storytellers by nature and we use those stories to explain to explore the world around us to see how we should come to understand the world around us so stories become a way of thinking a way of figuring things out a way of giving reasons and doing things that's the nature of stories that giving reasons should start waving a flag in your mind okay if stories are ways of giving reasons then stories are ways of doing rhetoric because rhetoric remember is a set of reasons it's in the memes that lead to our convictions if stories can give us a reason for doing things then stories are in fact building convictions that's the world of rhetoric one of the things that fisher does is he says now look at this this way of looking at the world as if it were stories we want to set that in contrast to looking at the world through what he calls the rational world paradigm the rational world he sets in distinction in competition to the narrative paradigm all right the rational world is basically that world of science of thought of reflection that is is rooted in um heavy rational thought and it assumes basically that people are going to make decisions like computers make decisions by gathering data and going with with whatever data is the strongest that's the rational world paradigm now if that looks a lot like that kind of enlightenment scientific mentality there's a reason okay that's exactly what what it is that fisher is trying to to step in and say hey that way of thinking about the world as valuable and powerful as it is leave some things out and what it leaves out is the sort of stuff we find in the narrative paradigm paradigm of course is just an overarching uh model that we we use to think or frame that we used to think about something in the narrative approach is basically um it's not about thinking rationally through things it's about weaving together the thoughts and feelings that people have in other words it's experiential it's about how we come to encounter the world and it assumes that stories are at the foundation of that understanding of the world so when we set them up and we say the rational world versus the narrative paradigm basically in the rational world we have to assume that people are essentially thinkers that's what we do we we basically come to our decisions by applying just our intellect in the narrative paradigm people are not thinkers so much as they're myth makers they're storytellers they weave together some kind of set of events and characters that show us something and it's that showing that's crucial so we we discover basically through our narratives not by sitting down and thinking it through and figuring it all out in the rational world paradigm basically we think of people as making decisions based on evidence that shows up for them now when that evidence shows up we we find ourselves in a situation where the the evidence is what leads us to the conclusion all right in the narrative paradigm it's not the evidence okay in the narrative paradigm what fisher wants to emphasize is that people make decisions based on a sense of what makes good sense it's the sense of good sense is what he calls it something that he lumps together into the category of good reasons okay and that just means the kinds of reasons that resonate that lead us somewhere now if you're thinking again about enthymemes then you are exactly right to be thinking about enthymemes at this point because that's what good reasons are good reasons are those those those um that evidence that doesn't lead to a scientific conclusion that's exactly what it is that fisher is getting at here is getting at the sorts of things that don't that they're not going to lead us to knowledge they're going to lead us to understanding the world better and responding to it they're going to lead us to our beliefs our convictions in the rational world basically the course of the argument and it's always an argument in the in the rational world it's always a set of of evidences that lead somewhere in the course of the um of the classical world paradigm i mean in the rational world paradigm basically this exchange of ideas what is this go away all right this exchange of ideas is rooted in the argument telling okay the argument giving it's the giving of the kind of evidence that leads to one specific place all right in the rational world paradigm so back at it alright so let's see if we can put this together quickly people are essentially thinkers versus storytellers people make decisions based on evidence versus people making decisions based on enthymemes basically the sort of of good sense about how the world functions and how it works and in the rational world basically there is this situation this circumstance that will determine basically our analysis of the situation determines how we are going to argue how we're going to give evidence whereas in the narrative paradigm what shapes our perspective is what shapes our point of view is essentially our background our current perspective comes out of our history out of our personality out of the people we've shared the past with and when we've heard them tell their stories about life that's the kind of thing that builds up our sense of what we would consider to be a good reason what counts as good reasons is largely based upon my history now obviously the broader my history the broader my set of experiences the better i will be able to be in terms of incorporating and including new visions new perspectives new points of view about what makes up the the set of good reasons so in the rational world basically rationality makes logical connections between data points not surprising sounds very much like science of course it does whereas in the narrative paradigm what we call rationality or what we say makes sense is a process of figuring out two qualities and these two qualities are really essential to fisher and we will be back to them in some depth in a few minutes but the basically uh the basic qualities are coherence and fidelity so he says that's how we're going to make judgments we determine whether or not something makes sense based on its coherence and its fidelity all right now coherence to what and fidelity to what okay we're gonna unpack that but those are the key ideas about how you make sense um in the rational world you make sense by essentially making logical connections between data in the narrative world we make sense of the world by by measuring out the coherence and the fidelity that's present in the stories we're responding to in the rational world basically it's observation analysis it's the scientific method it's the scientific model that's essentially how we do it in the narrative world fisher says we discover the world by basically being shaped by the stories that we hear that's how we decide what's important and what's not important it's basically comes out of the kinds of stories we decide we're going to listen to and pay attention to so that's the nature of the um the paradigm the narrative paradigm that uh fisher is going to offer to us now we have to put this in the context of the pres course because of course this is a class in rhetorical criticism and that means essentially that rhetoric is what we're about it's what we're after rhetoric is the artistic use of language to build human convictions within the memes all right that's what we do in rhetoric and that's what we study as rhetorical critics so that's the definition we want to hold in mind as we begin to think okay now if we're going to picture a communication event an artifact hold the artifacts you're working with in mind think about it this way each artifact you've got has told you a story now it's not i mean each of your artifacts may have a story in there somewhere where they tell you about you know there was this person once and they had this kind of experience that's not what we mean we don't mean the stories that are inserted into the artifacts what fisher wants you to do is he wants you to think of all of rhetoric the entire artifact you're looking at as having woven a story for you it's told you something now that telling is what's crucial all right for pearlman when we begin to think of the story as rhetoric now your entire artifact all parts of it constitute a single narrative from fisher's point of view all right this is what fisher wants you to think about and want you to begin to take to your critique of the artifact as story first of all recognize that stories are uniquely human okay i mean as far as we could tell they are uniquely human um you know you can pay an enormous amount of attention to what gorillas do or how chimpanzees um organize themselves or the kinds of of sounds that are made by whales or dolphins or or um or crows for that matter and there's no question these are all beasts that um you know carry a whole lot of intellectual ability around with them okay that said um there is absolutely zero indication that any of these species are out there telling stories to each other there is no sense whatsoever that they are weaving together mythologies or that they are um that they're giving a sense of um you know chosen hierarchic priorities in terms of what a hero looks like and doesn't look like or what advice will do to a community or any of those kinds of things that you get out of good stories right they're just there's there's no indication that's what's going on and there's a great deal of indication that that is not what's going on so as far as we can tell and we've got relatively good evidence on it it could could be toppled but we have relatively good reason to believe um that stories are are uniquely specifically human things we seem to be the only creatures we've ever met that do this so that's something we're going to bring to our idea of rhetoric as artistry another element of critiquing your artifact with this method will be you you have to understand that our stories are going to match our experiences and our values stories are woven in a way that show us that tap into our own experiences our own hierarchies our own values and when that happens those stories are more likely to be persuasive they're more likely to be incorporated into our understanding of what makes a good reason now it doesn't mean you can't be challenged of course you can good stories will always challenge you at some little point of view or some perspective always but they're going to challenge you first by making you aware that they know who you are and and what you respond to so good stories tap into where we already are things that we can already be expected to want or desire or hate and good literature all good literature taps into those kinds of experiences they're actually rather common that is to say they're they're you know they seem to cut across most cultures as we're going to find when we we shift our attention soon to kenneth burke burke is going to talk about the way uh drama the way this sense of story and myth move across cultures and remain remarkably similar no matter which cultural world you're coming from um there's this enormous amount of overlap burke says in our understanding uh of the world through the stories we tell well the fisher kind of taps into that here and he says basically good stories the things that give you good reasons to act they're going to be essentially built in to the the kinds of of experiences and values that you've already established so they're already part of your life they start with agreement and then they move you to say if if you agree with this then you ought to take this step okay so that's how persuasion works in the narrative paradigm it gives you a story that you already kind of like and it kind of resonates with you and you follow that story to a new and unexpected place that's what persuasion is all right now stories that tend to um let's say contradict or disparage or undermine that sense of what's important and valuable to us those stories tend not to be very persuasive so stories that just start out insulting and demeaning the things that we think are important and valuable those tend generally speaking to be stories that won't get a lot of hearing okay so when we begin to think of these qualities of stories they're they're an a special unique human event that they're going to tap into things that we already hold as important and precious and dear and that's going to be how they're going to essentially persuade that's essentially how it's going to have these stories of the sense of uh the narrative will become rhetorical it's going to become rhetorical because when we understand the story we're going to see it tapping into things values that we have and showing us encouraging us to take those values to a new place that's how it will work now in the memes are an essential part of building human convictions that's what rhetoric is about in the narrative paradigm the enthymeme is going to be those parts of the story okay it's going to be that's what you're looking at the the kinds of of remembering is just any line of reasoning that moves us toward a conviction that reinforces a conviction or challenges a conviction or presents a new possible moment of conviction for us all of those those lines of reasoning which will form for us our political our religious our relational our aesthetic sense of the world all of those form our convictions any line of thought that shapes our our beliefs in those areas that's an infamy and in the story in the narrative model in the method you're learning right now the enthymemes are going to be the parts of the story and how those stories interact so that's what you got to figure out that's what you've got to look at that's what you've got to find all right so that raises a really good question and that is of course so you know what are the parts of the story and what do you mean when you say they interact with each other in other words when you get right down to it the question is how do you use this thing all right so now that you've got a sense of the general overall perspective that lies behind the narrative paradigm let's start with the basic parts okay so there are a number of elements of the narrative paradigm and you can think of these as the parts of the story that you want to tap into so what are the parts of the story that you're going to be looking for now again i i encourage you to think of the artifacts that you are working with right now the artifacts that you are thinking about and considering right this moment all right um for your essay 1a think about them and ask yourself okay could i find the these parts of the story it's telling me in the artifact i'm familiar with right now okay first part of the story there's a narrator the narrator is the voice that is telling you this story now remember we're talking about everything from a one-page perfume commercial in a magazine all the way over to you know a state of the union address that runs an hour and a half okay every one of those is going to be telling a story and somewhere in that story there's a narrator that is there is an overarching person some voice that is telling you this story we want to figure out who that voice is now the thing you have to understand is and let's be really clear the narrator is not the corporation that paid for the commercial okay the narrator is not the media in which it appears so if you're looking at uh if you're looking at um you know a page in social media that is maintained for a group of of um you know chihuahua collectors okay and you're gonna go explore how this chihuahua collecting group is is you know uh persuading other people to come join them the narrator isn't the media the narrator is not the corporation that paid for the commercial you have to think in terms of the event this rhetorical artifact being a story and you want to find the narrator within the story not maybe a character in the story or it may be as at any other point in literature it could be somebody who is just removed from the story entirely but in essence what you've got is you've got a situation where there's a voice and that voice is guiding you through this story maybe a character already in the story maybe somebody who's not going to appear anywhere else in the story but you want to identify that narrator's voice set over and against the narrator are the characters the actors okay these are people or anything that acts like a person inside the story okay so these are the people the actors in the story the characters are doing things they're having experiences they're perhaps making comments the characters in the story they're central so that's another element of the story that you have to find a third element in the story what's known as the plot okay the plot is essentially the set of actions it's what happens one after another it is the structure it's it's essentially um the moments where people are moved to do something think in terms of causes and effects because every good story has something that happened and something that caused it to happen all right so think in terms if you if you think about the the plot think in terms of what made what happened here what happened here what made it happen what happened here what's going to come from that okay what were the consequences of that be so causes and effects those are the big ideas passions that are tapped into that's going to be a big key to the story because passions of course are what motivate people to go out and do things and so it's the story um engine is is is this sense of passion and cause and effect and a final and and fourth element to the narrative paradigm is what fisher calls setting the setting is basically anything else in this story that's making it click that's making it powerful all right um what set it up what's not being told in the story but you know it had to have happened to get us here right so we all know movies that open up with somebody who looks down and out and they're riding a train and everything's gray and we know we're eight seconds into the movie and we know this character right here they're they're either having a really bad day or a really bad life and we're we're gonna find out in the next couple of minutes which it is right um so you see the person you can see them have the down cast face and you can see the train writing and you hear the the you know the creaking and the clanking and everything is just kind of flat and monochrome and the person looks down okay we know there's something in this scene that's not being shown to us directly we just are figuring it out because of the way the story works we saw this part of the story we saw these eight seconds we know okay that's what's going on here somebody's had something terrible in their life before this scene opens up okay that's what we mean by prior events what kind of things are being brought to this story from before its beginning okay what kind of expectations can we have about what's going to happen next that's the sort of thing that goes into setting in addition to like actual um descriptions of things that are going around so these are our elements these are the things we have to take up and understand these are the elements of the narrative paradigm and they will be the sources of your enthymeme so let's look at them summarize them make sure we get them the storyteller the actors now one of the actors might in fact be a storyteller or they may not be a storyteller okay but you've got a narrator you've got characters you've got plot events actions passions causes effects and you've got a setting you've got prior events future expectations okay those four elements get them down read mark and inwardly digest them because i'm about to give you an artifact and i want you to find each of these four elements in that artifact all right i need you to find the four elements there's your story here's a rhetorical artifact that is entirely story okay look at it you gotta find a narrator you have to find character or characters you got to describe the plot and you got to explain the setting to me so i had a quick question professor in this show could the narrator be something like the camera because it's directing what the nobody is there's no camera in this story there is no camera in the story where's the camera it's a good question it's a good question but show me the camera where's the camera in the story where is this camera that you're talking about um would it be i mean obviously wouldn't be in the frame but the the object that's capturing the story you know like as we're seeing that what we're being delivered that is like saying okay might it be that the typewriter that the the word processor the laptop that the novelist used is that the narrator no absolutely not it's a tool for telling the story that the storyteller used but it's not the storyteller right the words leave the world behind because um it's something that he's thinking about as he's standing away from his uh volvo yeah okay so here we go now we're getting something we're saying okay look we don't know who this narrator is but we do know what they are calling us to it's written right there leave the world behind okay so we have some voice so we have a disembodied voice it's sometimes called the divine voice or the omniscient voice okay so there's a voice that has come to us in this story and that has framed it for us that has told us what's about to happen and what's about to happen is a call to leave the world behind the narrator has spoken the narrator has framed it we have an omniscient disembodied voice that is telling us now think about the difference this is a really two great observations here side by side think about the difference between when we think of the camera which is here framing this scene and taking the picture and we think about the disembodied voice speaking do you see the difference between the two the camera is simply this object that is being used to tell the story it's not in the story at all and yet it does frame it yes but remember media the tools being used that's not what the story's about the story is only what's contained in this frame and what this frame implies okay this frame is telling us a drama a story and there's no camera in that story there is a voice a large voice over the entire world telling us that it is time to leave the world behind telling us it's time to go on to something new something different something other all right tell me about the character or characters who is acting here who has taken action who's doing or has done something i'd assume it's a guy standing there just looking away in the distance there he is that's our actor that is the guy who has done or is doing something what do you think this guy is doing what is it that he has accomplished in this story he's left the world behind by going to a remote area it looks like that's exactly what he's done he has obeyed the call of the great divine voice that spoke he has followed through that's exactly right he's the character who has picked up the narrative and embodied it enacted it he did it he's the one who accomplished it but you know what it wasn't just him he had a friend who was this friend he didn't pull this off alone nobody ever pulls anything off alone in a good story the car they always have say again would it be his volvo bingo there's the other character in the story all right you see how this is shaping up we had a narrative voice laying out for us and honestly even if they hadn't put the words leave the world behind up there i think we probably could have figured that out okay we could have gotten that leave the world behind yeah get away from it all that's what this is about okay but we were given a narrative voice saying this is what is essential this is what this story is about and then we were given the characters one man who had set out on the quest and achieved what the voice had called him to do he achieved his calling he left the world behind he and his noble friend the volvo who helped him pull this off all right so what's the plot what are the series of actions what are the accomplishments what's the cause and effect in this story what has been accomplished let's ask it that way what's the first thing that's been accomplished he left the world behind he left the world behind he got out escape you didn't because you're sitting somewhere reading some schmucky magazine or surfing the internet looking at car commercials you did not leave the world behind you are still the stuck schmuck okay you haven't escaped you're still living your petty narrow meaningless life you don't smile like he smiles why because you are small and you are insignificant and you have not heard the call to leave the world behind yet or if you have you haven't had the courage to obey right so you are now put in a position where you as we always are as the audience as we always are when we watch a story we're on the outside of the story and we're seeing people do things that we haven't been able to do yet okay so he's escaped and that escape has resulted in him being free he's gotten away and you know what that means that means that our hero is living a life of leisure he has made it he has succeeded he's pulled it off he doesn't have to work 60 hours a week like you do and i do he has space he has time he has one for himself leisure he and his noble friend volvo have managed to bring themselves where well there it is if we want to go on to that final step what's the setting there it is right there the big beautiful world of being free and not being tied down and having left it all behind that's the story okay one snapshot leave the world behind volvo five words that's the story that is the story that is unfolding in this commercial questions questions here does that story make sense to you um just uh the part there where it's you know the characters or actors or are a person or people you said or anything that acts like a person yeah um so is that like we're relying on personification of this car as the good body that helps him get there or is that you know the implied thing i mean i guess some people might say that a little differently the question you could okay so that's that's an excellent question an excellent point so let's start with this part absolutely personification is huge in the narrative paradigm lots and lots of things that are out there act okay they are actors in the drama okay as we see here the car is an actor in this drama um could now is that the only way to read this story no absolutely not you might be able to weave a different kind of story okay but here's the issue your story whatever you weave out of this has to reflect the actual story that's in front of you so you might see it differently but if you see it differently you've got to be able to justify and explain the story you are understanding that comes out of this and it has to be consistent you can't name um as an actor things that aren't acting things that aren't accomplishing the call of whatever the the narrator wants you can't name as as plot um characters so you know so don't don't confuse those things but um are is there more than one way to interpret a story absolutely absolutely no question about it if we were to pick this to to um analyze something would we take these four steps as like the root of the analysis you know what are the the narrator the characters the plot and the setting and that would be what we focus on for the analysis well two two things i would say to that one yin the germans would say yeah um yes it's also part of the description okay so this is a if you're if you're choosing the narrative paradigm then your description will to a large degree be a process of talking about this as well now context where did this appear what media did it appear in who's the expected audience you know amount of space and time given to any particular aspect of the story all of that is still in your description but then when you turn and you begin to talk about the plot the setting the characters the narrator um that is you're still describing this event that i'm watching here in front of you still describing the story but while you're describing you're also already analyzing remember also the second thing i would say so yes in short all of what you're doing there really is you know it's it's the it's the soft border um between description and analysis when you do it you're still describing but you have already begun your analysis as well second thing i would i would point out in that regard is hold in mind also you don't identify just each of the individual parts you talk about how they interact because if you give me you know think of any movie you've seen lately if you listed here's the plot here are the characters here was the narrative voice and here's the setting i still wouldn't have very much of an idea about how it worked you know did it did it come off all right or was it kind of a mess or you know what how was that movie oh well to to explain how the movie really worked i need to know how the characters are tied to the plot i need to know how the narrator is tied to the setting like here right those are important things so when we when we hold those two things in mind we're back now to that idea of here's the narrative paradigm right um essentially the narrative paradigm is that world where we're going to let the stories shape our perspectives and it is a process of figuring out the coherence and fidelity of our stories so here is where our analysis will wind down and as we begin to talk about coherence and fidelity we're also doing our interpretation and evaluation so the borders are a little bit messier here in the narrative paradigm it's not quite as sharp and clean and clear i told you we were going to be back to this coherence and fidelity because that's what you're going to make your judgments on your judgments are going to be based on how coherent and how felicitous fidelitous how faithful the story is so let's take a look at those two aspects all right narrative coherence we're going to start with that one sometimes when you look it up you'll find it's called narrative probability same thing narrative coherence narrative probability okay essentially you ask a central question and that is does this story hang together does it seem to be going somewhere does it seem internally consistent okay now you know it would have been very strange in that car commercial if we had been sitting there and all that was going on and he had had his laptop out on the hood of his car would not have matched the story okay something wouldn't have been right about that okay so that's one of the things that we watch for in a story now the story that we just did with the volvo commercial you know it's very tight it's very intense it's very focused and it's it's kind of hard to imagine but i mean if you think about something a little longer say a tv commercial or uh um you know a super bowl commercial they're famous for telling stories um or uh you think about a particular presentation think about again your own artifacts for your essay 1a and 1b um they're weaving a story together too and one of the things we want to ask about that story is how well it coheres how well it just comes together and makes sense does it seem consistent or does do things suddenly change are there sudden you know kind of contrived sort of set up shifts in character or motivation the image here if you're too young to know it the images of the original star wars series this is the final movie when luke and his father darth vader are on this big space station that's blowing up okay one of the reasons that this is such a weird and contrived scene and you gotta remember it's old old right um this movie appeared people had been following this star wars thing for six years and for six years darth vader had been this sort of ultimate galactic bad guy and suddenly in the last 12 minutes of the final scene of the final movie what we expected would be the final movie after six years suddenly darth vader becomes this sentimental old sop who just wants to hold his son's hand i mean as he dies what a blow to crap okay it made the story not hang together it was this sudden twist and turn where an entire character that we had come to hate over six years suddenly turns into something entirely different okay when you get something like that that's a break in coherence right do you see how that makes the story not hang together it sort of shakes you out of the story and you go well huh okay when stories aren't working you get those kinds of events and another element of coherence is this natural causality we look for things that make sense things interact in a way that changes them and is that change something that sort of resonates that coheres within the story does it make sense that's the nature of narrative coherence narrative coherence is that question of whether or not the story hangs together whether it is consistent or whether it's contrived um does it have a coherent sense of causality in short the interaction between the plot and the characters in the setting does it make sense is it consistent with itself now remember coherence is just a question of is the story coherent inside itself okay that's the question we're asking here is the plot free of contradictions okay now this doesn't mean of course that you can't have something amazing in there right um if you know anything about literature you know about this willing suspension of disbelief where we go into a movie and we know perfectly well that cars don't fly and there are no wizards and zombies don't eat people we know that that's not real but we can sit down and have a rollicking good story because we are willing to suspend our disbelief so don't think coherence means it's it's or the next element we'll talk about fidelity neither of these mean that that it has to be always factually accurate no of course it's not okay we are perfectly happy with the willing suspension of disbelief okay um so here's another story you're about to be told okay this is a cut a scene from a television commercial or a video commercial that you see online okay it's a zombie who's trying to sell you a phone because it takes such great selfies okay spectacular you know there are no zombies i know there are no zombies we look at this and we get a good laugh out of it okay that's not a break in coherence that is not what we're talking about okay the story stays coherent in itself that's the question we're asking so the presence of things that are fantastical or amazing you know that that one in six trillion chance where you book an airplane you know seat and you go and sit down and discover that your long-lost lover from you know uh junior high school has the seat beside you and suddenly new romance is rekindled and yada yada yada okay that's the kind of stuff we buy in a movie we'll let it happen in a movie but it doesn't happen in real life that's you know that's fine in the story we're okay with it so we're not talking about fantastical things that's not what breaks coherence what breaks coherence is when the the story sets up a kind of expectation and world and universe and then the story violates its own expectations that's a problem with coherence all right so narrative coherence here's what it means does the story hang together is the plot free of contradiction characters and setting are they interacting consistently internally consistent okay or are there contrived sort of sudden shifts in characters or motivation is there a coherent sense of causality in the rules that the story has established okay we're willing to to offer uh uh you know suspend our disbelief but in the end we want the story to give us a world that is coherent okay it's not gonna make sense we're gonna feel weird if we tune into a harry potter movie and they've got cell phones at hogwarts but i don't know why they don't have cell phones at hogwarts but i know they don't and i know i i think it would feel really weird if suddenly they did okay the story sets up certain expectations does it stay consistent with its own expectations or is there an internal contradiction that's the question about coherence does the story cohere does it set up a world where there is internal consistency okay that's the question of narrative fidelity on the other hand that is the next element that we're going to use to make our judgment call so you can see how narrative coherence would be used to make a judgment about the story this artifact told you the story is consistent or inconsistent with itself okay narrative fidelity is going to raise a different set of questions that you can make judgments about that question is different it says does the story told reflect the real experiences in the real world now again we're not upset by zombies or staircases that turn around inside hogwarts or or uh you know time travel or wizards or that one in a zillion chance that sets me up to re-meet my long-lost love from ninth grade okay that kind of stuff we're perfectly willing to bind the story we're okay with that that's not even what we mean by fidelity what we mean is given the situation given the circumstances do people behave in a way suggests your experiences of the real world is the story told in a way that reflects real experiences of the real world in other words sure i've never met a zombie okay but i've certainly been afraid before i've been very afraid i kind of know what that experience is like so when i look at the zombie story the question that comes to my mind is the people who are afraid in there are they afraid in the right way is is that really how people behave when they're experiencing fear okay i certainly know as everybody here knows how it what it's like to be given a task that's really really tough to do okay and you try and you don't quite get there okay and you try some more and you still don't quite get there we all know what that's like and we all know how that feels okay are the characters in the story when they experience disappointment and failure is it real is that actually how disappointment and failure occurs to a human being do they respond the way people respond in the real world situation that's what we mean here okay and we don't care whether they're a witch or a dragon or a you know uh uh you know a time traveler we want to know whether or not they are experiencing the world in the right way are they afraid in the right situation and are they afraid in the right way okay that leads us to the question that we the the probably central question that fisher wants he wants to know is the logic of good reasons present okay the logic of good reasons means there is coherence the story itself inside itself is consistent and there's fidelity when i look at the experience that comes to me through this movie and i see how the people the actors all the actors whether it's a talking car or a you know um or an animated uh cartoon figure are they responding to trouble the way a person responds to trouble are they laughing at things that are funny are they experiencing the world in a way that makes it make sense okay if that's happening then i am experiencing the logic of good reasons i am being given relevance the things i'm being given are relevant and help me move along somewhere okay that's the narrative fidelity that's the issue of narrative fidelity okay this question is the logic of good reasons present that happens when there's fidelity in a story that has coherence the logic of good reasons in other words a good strong sort of if you will meta infamy a sort of overarching infamy is present in this story and that overarching enthymeme that sense that it's okay to move in one direction or another direction that experience is rooted in the fact that the story itself coheres it builds the universe and remains consistent with it and the experiences that i'm being shown in this universe they look like real experiences now obviously some experiences are supposed to be you know slapstick funny um outlandish and we're just supposed to get a hoot out of them and move on that's fine but if a story is giving me reasons to think consider reflect some of those may be funny reasons but the humor has to work in a way that brings me to a choice a sense that i can have confidence a conviction that i can have confidence in taking this step in in believing this in thinking or saying or doing what this story wants me to do there are hierarchies of values in stories and those hierarchies of values need to correspond to the hierarchy of values that we have in our real life okay so i'm i'm all for you know being kind and being considerate and being kind and being considerate falls above some things in our hierarchy of values and below other things now you might put being kind and considerate in a different place in your hierarchy of values but i'd lay you nine to five in fact i'd give you better odds than that that if we were to lay out our hierarchy of values you and me they'd look an awful lot alike because we have been raised in the same culture we've been taught the same stories and that's how our values get shaped okay so one of the questions that we can raise as we think about this narrative fidelity and as we're wanting to make decisions about narrative fidelity is we can give our attention to the question of where does that story fall on the hierarchy of appeals okay what does that mean well it means this all right inside the real world we're asking is the logic of good reasons president okay where does the story fall in the hierarchy of appeals means there's a hierarchy a set of powers that come with certain kinds of reasons to move and do things okay those hierarchies are first definition second comparison third consequence fourth expedience and finally authority all right that is all very abstract so let's bring that down and see if we can understand a little better what we're talking about okay so let's say you are out walking one evening and it is late and you're on your way back to your car and suddenly you were approached by somebody who's uh who's got a got a mask and a gun and they say hey i want all your money all right now you being a communication scholar you're not going to just stand there and give them your money you of course are going to have a discussion with them you are going to argue with this person all right so what is the highest and most powerful argument you could offer for someone not to do what they're doing well you give them a definition you define the act that's going on here as right or wrong okay you tell the robber you can't rob me man this is this is think about it what you're doing is immoral it's it's it's wrong what you're doing okay so you can try that line of argument okay that's one space you could go some stories provide you reasons to do things because they show you this is just wrong or this is really right and even though it's hard you have to do it or this is wrong and even though it would be easy you should not do it think about stories that you've heard in your life that work off of those definitions this is right to wrong definitions that's the highest kind of appeal you can make right a story that that sort of puts something into a a camp for you where you you end the story thinking wow it's just wrong too or i could nev i have to do that because that's the right thing to do that's the kind of story we're talking about here maybe you have an artifact that taps into the right and wrong hint if you're going to do any kind of commercial that's not going to be where they tap into right but more complicated stories like a politician's address they might very well tap into definition comparison is the second place you can go you might have the kind of appeal where you turn to the robber and you say you shouldn't rob me i mean how would you like it if somebody did that to you okay now that's a very powerful argument too when we can show that two things are alike that these two things go together and again comparison and also you know conflict that these two things are not alike but at some level if i can show you how this is like something else an analogy if i can bring that home if i have a story that shows me how one thing is like something else i'm very likely to draw conclusions that would be the same about both of them so if you can show me if you tell me a story where you convince me that um you know that so i go and i see hamilton and i see a story where um you can convince me that that just simply having ambition and and going for it and and moving ahead and wanting to get all you can and just be part of the action and and patriotism go together i'm much more likely to think of patriotism and ambition as very very similar things maybe there maybe it's okay to have both right so if you can tell stories that draw things together people will be moved to take a step in that direction all right a third kind of argument that you can offer is consequence you can say to the robber okay so i've tried definition the robber says i don't care okay so then i go well but how would you like if somebody did do you and the robber says yeah well i'd kind of suck but i don't care okay then we try the consequence okay you follow that next level of appeal and you say you know you can't do this you're going to go to jail the consequences of the action so we have stories that tell us about consequences right somebody who sets out to do something and they think it's right and they find out it's not right and then they sort of go ahead and do it anyway and look at what happens to them okay those kinds of consequential stories okay maybe that's the kind of story you're looking at you're looking at a story where if you do a you will get b if you do a you will get b that's the consequence story all right and um you know you can try that so then you go to uh the the robber and you say so you you know you don't want to do this you can go to jail and the robber says yeah you gotta catch me first i don't care okay so so now we're now where are we okay so we've run through the three top kinds of arguments you can make the fourth kind of argument you can make expedience and expedience just is well okay can you get away with it that's all it is can you do it okay can you pull it off that's the kind of argument that falls at the bottom okay can you pull it off well okay you know he's got the gun you don't so at this point you say you know cash check or charge you know you you you have to give in now so expedience is the level of power so let me give you a quick example when the american colonies declared independence from the uh the british crown in 1776 there were all these speeches at parliament we have them and all these speeches many many of them were based on definition they stood up and they said die the colonies have gone astray and insulted the powers that guard them and these powers must now go forth and teach them the error of their ways okay so you have all these british parliamentarians steady i'm saying they did something terribly wrong okay you had comparison speeches going on as well i mean if you're if your daughter at home behaved like the american colonies had what could you possibly do but set them straight okay so there were those speeches we got to go out and fix america there were consequent speeches of course um you know having insulted the crown they they will now be hung okay so that's you know if we let them do it then think about how uh other colonies are going to act that was another comparison speech that you had but there was one person who stood up and gave an expedient speech it was really telling because what he stood up and did is he said okay look you can carry on here about your highfalutin principles and about you know building a safe home life and all that sort of thing but he said you've got to stop and think for a moment you can't win this war presently we're almost at war with france we've got trouble over with our colonies in the east what they would have called the east the orient right and how are you going to win this war you're going to go over to america and you're going to you're going to do what you're going to send five of our brigades of troops over there we're going to lose three percent of the troops crossing the atlantic ocean we're going to set them down what are they going to do they're going to take new york city and boston and and uh pennsylvania right um pittsburgh in pennsylvania and um when they've done that what will you have nothing you have absolutely nothing because 99 of the americans don't live in those colonies it's going to be eight months after the war is over before they even know there was a war you can't win this war if you take all the population centers you've got nothing if you can't close down the ports the the coast of the colonies is as large if not larger than the coast of the united kingdom ireland and france combined they have too many ports you just there's no way to do this so it won't work that's expedience okay so his recommendation was so you send them a letter and you say congratulations on your new independence how would you like to negotiate a few trade deals and let's keep the trade going and don't worry about what they do with their silly parliaments over there because we can't win the war okay that's a battle i mean that's an argument from expedience maybe you have a story that you're looking at in your artifact that's operating from the level of expedience what can we and can we not pragmatically realistically do here don't talk to me about right and wrong don't compare me to anything just tell me what is it we can do what is it that realistically we can accomplish given the situation we're in that's the that's a question okay the very base line of authority uh um the very baseline of of argument is authority where you go in and you just simply say well um we can't do this because and then you cite some authoritative source that obviously only works if if you share the authority right so you know if you go in and you say well you know the bible says you shouldn't steal um that's great if your robber is is a devout person who wants to follow the dictates of the the sacred jewish or or christian scriptures given that they're robbing you probably you don't share that authority so that's not going to be a very effective argument right so authority that's uh that's the last of the hierarchies of appeals so when you think about narrative fidelity how well does this story cohere to the way the real world is in terms of how things are acting then we look at once we get coherence and we get fidelity that last step of fidelity is okay so what level are we tapping into what is this story asking me to respond to all right where does the story fall on the hierarchy of appeals all right we've got definition we've got comparison we've got consequence and expedience and in some cases authority okay that's what we've got all right this system of doing it this way that's great if we i mean the system of these arguments you know it's great whichever one works okay and maybe they try a certain kind of appeal and it doesn't work but in the end what we want what we need to find out is how these things come together to show us something about the message and what that means is tapping into these appeals we want to know what sort of appeal that story is making because that can at one level help us clarify the values that are being employed or appealed to inside the story and that's the kind of thing you're going to be making judgments about when you use narrative when you use the narrative paradigm all right so summary of narrative fidelity there it is does the story reflect the real kinds of experiences in the real world okay is there logic of good reasons present have i began getting stuff that's really relevant to what the story's asking me to do what kind of hierarchy of values are there here do they sort of correspond with the sort of values that i would expect to see in my real life where does the story fall on the hierarchy of appeals and i want to know that because that's going to help me understand the values that are at the baseline of this message so that's what you're after now story we know what this story is we've gotten our four pieces let's ask the question of coherence is this a coherent story yeah it's a very coherent story i'm told to leave the world behind i see a lot of left behind there okay there's a whole lot of just empty space i don't see any paved roads i see a remarkably clean car to have gotten that far out on unpaved roads but you know there's a little bit of maybe incoherence there i'm gonna let that slide a little bit on the whole what i've got here is a pretty coherent story okay now fidelity does this seem faithful that's what the word fidelity refers to does this seem faithful to the real world well okay kinda i mean sorta i mean yeah for a certain kind of person this would seem like a real appeal right this would be a very strong appeal it's a consequential appeal all right i could get out there too if i had a friend like volvo right so there's this sense of an appeal going on here the kind of person i want to be as the kind of person who has space can live make their own decisions be free yeah all that is appealing to me right here okay now if you're not an outdoors type it it wouldn't appeal to you that's okay i guarantee you volvo's got some commercials for you as well i mean you an urban sophisticated don't care about the bears and bees thing great they'll have a commercial for you as well it'll tell an entirely different story but i guarantee you your best friend volvo will be the one that'll help you live that life too that's what commercials are they're commercials that say here's my product and here's how it's going to help you be whatever you want to be whoever you want to be advertisers are never interested in telling you who you ought to be they're interested in figuring out who you want to be understanding your values and then making their product seem like part of your world seem like part of your values that's what they do that's the story you've been told here all right so in a nutshell there we are that is how the narrative paradigm basically functions any questions that you have