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accepted that a narrative is any account of connected events presented to the audi-
ence in a sequence.
When we, like Rankin (
2002
), speak of narratives, we are referring to a story that
can be factual, fi ctitious or somewhere between the two. In this refl ection, narrative
is therefore not only fi ction, as one may think
a priori
. We also consider that,
although their oral or written expressions may be the most frequent types, narratives
can also be transmitted by other systems of symbolic languages, maybe for com-
municative or artistic purposes. However, regardless of the forms they adopt, like
Rankin, we feel that narratives are a
cultural artefact
whose ultimate, those perhaps
not deliberate, purpose is to tell a story. When somebody tells, speaks, talks, explains
or describes themselves or others, they create a narrative. This is regardless of its
realism or form. So, in order for there to be a narrative, it is not indispensable for
there to be fi ction, but rather the desire to express, communicate or transmit infor-
mation. And this, in turn, is the expression and vehicle of culture.
The above leads to the requirement, in any narrative, for it to be possible to struc-
turally distinguish between the story (the
content
or the chain of events and the
beings or the characters and settings) and the discourse (the way in which the con-
tent is expressed) (Chatman
1978
). Propp, when studying the morphologies of sto-
ries, speaks of the 'story' (fable), which is what happens in life in chronological
order, and the 'plot', which is how the creator presents the story to his or her audi-
ence; how it is read, seen or heard (Propp
1968
). This means that narrators can
explain a series of facts by modelling them into the typical structures of different
genres or packaging formats. We can explain the same thing using a format taken
from the journalistic genre (e.g. a news story) or from entertainment (e.g. a piece of
fi ction). We could, to end the clarifi cation, say how we want others to perceive us
and create an identity for ourselves, on the basis of a written text, of photos posted
in a social network or of an audiovisual production. In fact, any manifestation that
someone uses to express themselves contains a story (certain facts or thoughts that
are referred to) and a discourse (a way of telling, which can be verbal, nonverbal,
textual, audiovisual, etc.). In short, practically everything a person does says some-
thing, regardless of the explicit relevance that the narrator seems to give to his or her
work or of the relevance that the receptor admits that it contains.
The aforesaid also leads us to clarify that when we speak of narratives, we should
distinguish not only how these are constructed or produced but also the role that
they play in certain contexts (their function; Threadgold
2005
). In reality, narratives
are, apart from a product, the fundamental mode of human consciousness and self-
consciousness (Rankin
2002
). Narratives forcibly require the development of a
product constructed in a version of time, and out of which emerges other more or
less intentional processes of dialogue and consciousness with our past, present and
future worlds. We represent today what might have happened in the past, and, when
we do so, the current representation reveals notions of the passage of time. From
these concepts of time expressed through narrative, a version of personal identity
eventually emerges. Identity, therefore, is similar to the narrative of the times we
live in. In fact, identity is an expression of the narrative of time itself.
