Narrative Inquiry - Narrative Ways of Knowing

Narrative Ways of Knowing

Narrative is a powerful tool in the transfer, or sharing, of knowledge, one that is bound to cognitive issues of memory, constructed memory, and perceived memory. Jerome Bruner discusses this issue in his 1990 book, Acts of Meaning, where he considers the narrative form as a non-neutral rhetorical account that aims at “illocutionary intentions,” or the desire to communicate meaning. This technique might be called “narrative” or defined as a particular branch of storytelling within the narrative method. Bruner’s approach places the narrative in time, to “assume an experience of time” rather than just making reference to historical time.

This narrative approach captures the emotion of the moment described, rendering the event active rather than passive, infused with the latent meaning being communicated by the teller. Two concepts are thus tied to narrative storytelling: memory and notions of time, both as time as found in the past and time as re-lived in the present.

A narrative method accepts the idea that knowledge can be held in stories that can be relayed, stored, and retrieved.