Story Practice, Transformative Narrative and Discourse

Wikibooks describes discourse as 'the use of living language'. (http://www.wikibooks.org/.)

Here are some others:

• the totality of codified linguistic usages attached to a given type of social practice. Eg: legal discourse, medical discourse, religious discourse.(www.revue-texto.net/Reperes/Glossaires/Glossaire_en.html)
• a coherent piece of spoken and/or written language in a specific context. A discourse may be a whole text (for example, a personal letter or an entire conversation), or it may be part of a text that conveys related meanings (for example, several exchanges, within a dialogue ...)  (tki.org.nz/r/language/curriculum/german/glossary_e.php)
• a contiguous stretch of language comprising more than one sentence (text) or utterance (speech). (portal.bibliotekivest.no/terminology.htm)
• utterances or text larger than a sentence; sequences of sentences and interchange and their relation to social interaction, dominance, and collaboration (www1.appstate.edu/~mcgowant/3610glos.htm)

All of these definitions go some way to explaining why we need to be mindful of discourse in story practice. Discourse describes both the narrative and how it is told. Because a narrative requires a receiver, it is also about the discourse that goes on for him or her (each one, because there will most likely be many).

We all make the mistake of thinking that the story is truth, and that there is only one way to interpret it. This way of thinking, as flawed as it is, gets us through the day. We can't go around examining all sides of everything we hear - we have to get on with our lives, so we hear something, make a decision about it, and move on.

In story practice, we cannot do this. In order to truly appreciate it, we have to understand and accept its discourse - its way of telling - otherwise we cannot come close to appreciating the story, or the transformation that has occurred, is occurring, or will occur behind it.

Unfortunately, schools (and societies) are not geared to training us to understanding the marvelous workings of discourse. This is because educators, and societies themselves on the whole, are more in the business of telling, persuading, or straight out forcing, us to act in particular ways. They don't want us to analyse the discourse too much. Political speeches are all discourse and no substance - people love hearing them because they can side with the person they want, and find plenty of reasons to shoot holes in the other's arguments. We all know that politicians lie, but that doesn't stop millions of people from enjoying the discourse.

The discourse of story practice is a little bit more muddy, because applied stories must reflect and describe the uniqueness of the protagonists, the situations in which they find themselves, their reflections on these situations, and the actions they take. Of course, if the same protagonist provides several narratives, we will usually find similarities in their discourse, and their style, but in story practice we might find a million stories by a million people, and each one involves a rethink.

Above all of these stories, story practice is developing its own discourse; one that has been artificially arrived at in order to integrate the stories into a 'genre' or 'kind of literature'. It would be sad indeed if this discourse became a template or prototype that could simply be followed. Stories would become more stylised and less unique, which goes against everything story practice stands for.

Respect for a transformative narrative must involve an understanding of, and an appreciation for, the particular discourse that provides the nuts and bolts that underpin it.

Story practitioners who are not the protagonists in the stories have an extra responsibility, to ensure the discourse is faithful to the individual as much as it is faithful to the genre of story practice.

Reflection, story practice and transformation

In my last blog post I talked about how important it is to be reflective. I didn't go into why it is important - that is part of a much larger dissertation that forms the Transformative Narrative Project.

In story practice, reflection comes to life through expression. My argument is that through this expression comes transformation. Or is it more that reflection, expression and transformation are all necessary components of meaningful change, as well as a meaningful narrative about that change?

Reflection, it could be argued, is the core element in story practice. Through reflection we can notice those 'punctuation points' in our lives that lead to change, we can notice where the changes have manifested themselves and where they have led us. To exemplify: if a man changes jobs several times in his life, moving from one to the next without much thought, and in each role does the work he does without much effort, chances are he will not have felt the need to reflect too often. Imagine he comes home each day to a loving family, food on the table, clean sheets on the bed and his favourite shows on the TV - life would seem pretty good, wouldn't it? Besides the fact that this is a stereotype and few people will ever have this fairytale-inspired existence, reflection may be a redundant activity. But who really wants this life, even if they can have it?

Chances are this man, if he does exist, will end up knocking on my door at 40-something saying he feels unfulfilled and can't work out why. He may, by that time, be in the midst of career crisis, possibly with an anxiety-related illness.

Now imagine if you can that same man, reflecting on his life, what he had done well, what he had not done so well. What if he allowed himself to examine his hopes and dreams, taken some steps towards them, even failing in the process? Imagine that man putting himself into some risky situations to test his level of skill or endurance - what would he be doing differently by age 40-something do you think?

Story practice is about seeing your life as a narrative, a personal story that contains good bits and bad bits, times of success and times of failure, of health and of sickness, or good and bad relationships. It is more than just the detail; it is your interpretation of the detail that is important. More than that, it is your expression of this interpretation that makes it real. Once you have made it real, 'on the page', on show some way or another, you can transform your story and your life.

Reflection - an essential component of story practice

Most university students these days are asked to engage in a form of reflective practice as an assessable component of their work. In days gone by, this was the domain of the Social Work and Psychology Departments, but now, everyone from Engineers to Business Management students are being asked to reflect on their study and work activities.

Some adults actually engage in reflective activities quite comfortably: these activities include writing journals, movement and dance, drawing and painting 'without rules'.

Students are often asked to reflect on the work-based activities that form part of the course in which they are enrolled. These include internships, placements, and Industry Based Learning (IBL). While there are slight differences between all these activities, essentially they each involve a form of on-the-job training that compliments the theoretical, classroom-based studies.

Over the years I have taught students in wide-ranging settings, from Secondary Education, TAFE and Uni to adult education. As I teach mainly career and work-related subjects, invariably lessons include one or more on 'how to engage in reflective practice'. I have market hundreds of assignments over the years, and I can say that most people do not do this part very well at all. I have some grounds for blaming our education system for avoiding this less-scientific-rational activity that is output rather than outcome or results based. Apart from the 'airy-fairy' label, it is something many other teachers avoid wherever possible, because they find it so hard to assess. Some questions I have been asked include, 'Do you assess a student for honesty, higher level self-awareness or grammatical accuracy?' 'Does a student who digs deeper into his psyche and uncovers the muck and mire obtain bonus points over a student whose life appears to have been one everlasting bed of roses?' I have even been handed the genderist comment, 'Boys are disadvantaged in this kind of activity. Males just don't DO reflection very well!'

Reflection essentially means looking inside yourself and expressing what you find, to yourself and maybe to others. There is some anxiety around this. A lot of the problem stems from constraints placed on us by our own societies. Most of us love to read or hear stories about relationship breakdowns, financial failures, mental fragility, monumental mistakes and the like, but this has to be in a particular context. In the weekend papers or a Nicholas Sparks box-of-tissues novel, we expect to have our emotions torn asunder as we grapple with the things that make us human. But, when it comes to expressing these same emotions from a personal perspective, we are completely clueless!

Of course, there is also the issue that there are right places and wrong places to be reflective: imagine a job interview where the applicant discusses a mistake she made that cost the company a small fortune - no matter how much she has learned from this episode, you can pretty well guarantee she won't be on the list of finalists. In so many ways, we are taught to bury our failings, our weaknesses, and along with these a large chunk of ourselves. So it is no wonder that teachers and students alike baulk at the idea of reflection. And it is no wonder that as people we walk around as ghosts of ourselves - after all, it is only through reflection that we can feel truly alive?

So, what is reflection, how does it make us feel alive, and why is it an essential part of story practice? (stay tuned, more coming soon ...)