Harriet Katz writes about story
as an element of law student professional development. In that context, she
argues that effective communication—for her that means communication with law
students; to us that means communication between educators—requires an ability
to truly listen to and not pre-judge others; we need to see things from other people’s perspective. Stories are
particularly good at helping us see and hear things from another’s point of
view.
As part of her discussion, she
points out that stories contain many people: not just characters but also the
narrators and audiences. The narrators, in turn, make choices about which
stories to tell and which details within those stories to reveal to the
audience.
This got me thinking about a
difference between stories (i.e., narrative discourse) and arguments (i.e.,
rhetorical discourse).
In the study of rhetoric, the
communication event is said to contain three elements: the speaker (the rhetor),
the message, and the audience. Of the three components, the first (the speaker)
and the last (the audience) are people and, hence, they comprise the social
relations within the communication event.
In a narrative there is the narrator
(corresponding to the speaker), the story (corresponding to the message), and
the audience. Here too, like rhetorical discourse, the narrator and the
audience are people who comprise a social relationship within the event. But
there are other people involved, too: specifically the characters within the story.
Therefore, there are additional social relations between the narrator and the story
characters, as well as between the audience and the story characters.
Although I have yet to spin out
the implications of the different social relations between rhetorical and
narrative discourse, I suspect they will have some impact on using story in
educational professional development.
citation: Harriet N. Katz. “Stories and Students:
Mentoring Professional Development.” Journal
of Legal Education 60.4 (May 2011): 675-686.
