Agneta & Frida - Narrative Intelligence - page 245

CHAPTER 15
Agneta & Frida
Merging web and narrative?
Per Persson, Kristina Höök and Marie Sjölinder
Swedish Institute of Computer Science, Kista
Introduction
One of the basic presumptions within narrative theory in general, and dis-
course psychology in particular, is the notion of a reader constantly striving for
coherence in his or her understanding and experience of a given text (Graesser
et al. 1994; Gernsbacher & Givón 1995; Chatman 1978: 31; Bordwell 1985: 38). 1
Coherence is sought for on many levels of discourse processing. On lower lev-
els, word recognition, grammatical processing and local cohesion are central,
and in visual discourse (like narrative films), object, event and situation recog-
nition are equally important. Higher levels of coherence-making include in-
ferring and constructing temporal relations between segments ('this is a flash-
back') as well as spatial relations ('this event takes place far away from the pre-
vious scene'). In addition, readers create and constantly update models about
characters' mental life (e.g. intentions, beliefs, emotions) and it seems like most
of the causality of a story is present on this level ('X is angry with his wife be-
cause he believed she was unfaithful to him'; 'Y was killed because he knew
too much'). On the basis of such inferences, readers form moral judgments of
actions and characters ('Z is treating her badly'; 'X is a mean person').
During the course of the story readers also create predictive inferences ('the
prince will save her'). At a global level, the gist, theme or morale of the story
will be extracted ('love is stronger than death') and the narrative will be inter-
preted ('Kafka's The Metamorphosis is really about how we try to find ourselves
in an increasingly ungraspable society'). Finally, readers will make aesthetic
judgments about the narrative ('this film really sucks'), speculate about the at-
titudes and objectives of the author ('the director of this film must be politically