Narrative as discourse: toward an analytical model for the study of Western representation of the 'other'.

Cao, Qing

Narrative and the representation of the 'other'

We live in a media-saturated contemporary society, narrative constitutes a principal form of discourse in Western media representation of the 'other'. The constant exposure to stories about the cultural 'other' in the mass media contributes significantly to popular perceptions, knowledge, and understanding of non-Western societies. The media rely crucially on storytelling skills in packaging their messages to the audience. All stories are realised linguistically through the operation of narrative, media narrative therefore has become central in the formation of images of the external world. A theoretically informed understanding and methodologically sound analysis of media narrative as an institutionalised discourse is both imperative and timely. Media narrative is defined in this paper as structures of story-telling deployed by media practitioners to present a motivated picture of the world. The paper starts with the discussion of relationships between discourse and representation of the 'other' in Western societies, followed by a brief review of the concept of discourse. It then moves on to delineate a theoretical contour of media narrative through a critical assessment of various narrative theories focusing on Propp, Levi-Strauss and Silverstone. It concludes with an outline of a working model for media narrative that could be applied to the study of Western portrayals of the cultural 'other'.

In the extensive literature on representing the 'other', many scholars such as Hall (1992) argue that constructing an image of the 'other' is an integral part of identity formation of the 'self'. Defining the 'other' in the symbolic world of mass media constitutes a major mode in demarcating cultural boundaries between 'the West and the Rest', whereby cultural and power relations are established, re-enforced and reproduced. Western portrayals of the 'other' are inherently associated with notions of modernity that has become a primary repertoire from which a whole range of discourses about the 'other' are produced. However, modernity 'grand narrative' is realised through constant tellings and retellings of stories in everyday life, typically in reporting international news. The ritualised operation of storytelling is intricately linked to the production of 'the West' and 'non-West' as entities in the symbolic and physical worlds. These constructed though pervasive notions are perpetuated in discourse circulating in socio-political, cultural, economic and historical domains. Yet, as Hall argues (1992:277), the West is an image, or set of images, that condense a range of characteristics into one picture. Such an image functions as a system of representation. The West as an image sums up a set of schematic knowledge imbedded in the notion of modernity.

However, crucially, the West as an image provides the basis for a standard for the notion of 'progress' based on Western experiences of modernity since the fifteenth century. It has consequently become a model of comparison--it allows those who study the cultural 'other' to compare to what extent other societies resemble or differ from this prototype of 'progress'. Effectively, the world is structurally reconfigured in the image of the West along a new alignment. For examples, Japan as an East Asian country has become part of the West while Eastern European countries are seen as in transition from the 'East' to the 'West' in the post-Cold War era. Such a re-classification confirms, consolidates and reinforces 'the West vs. the Rest' dichotomy. These entrenched categories operate to structure knowledge and patterns of thought in talking about the non-Western world. They provide a set of criteria against which other societies are rated and judged applying a whole range of dichotomous discursive clusters such as 'rational/irrational', 'developed/undeveloped', 'modern/primitive' or 'metropolitan/tribal'. Significantly, these clusters are loaded with certain feelings and attitudes. However, it is through the linguistic 'engine' of narrative that daily media stories are transforms into pattered discourses of the cultural 'other'.

Discourse as a representational system

To conceptualise narrative as a mode of discourse, it is important to chart briefly the trajectory of discourse and situate the current study within the context of discourse as social representation. Discourse as a concept is widely used in various disciplines and schools of thought. However, it is conceptually situated in broadly two domains: linguistic and socio-cultural studies. In the linguistic domain, it refers to verbal utterances of greater magnitude than the sentence. It is understood as 'connected speech or writing' or verbal interchange of ideas and extended expression of thought on a subject. Discourse analysis, in this conception, is concerned mainly with complex utterances of a speaker and interactions between two or more speakers, focusing on linguistic rules and conventions governing such utterances.

However, discourse has also been extended to the socio-cultural domain in close connection with structuralism and semiotics. This development represents an intellectual enterprise that attempts to transform the inherited habits of thought in relation to the crucial question of where meaning comes from. It challenges the conventional understanding of meaning as coming from 'objects' out there in the world, or in the mind and feelings of individuals. Structuralism takes issues with these presumptions and argues that meaning is in effect the consequences of 'signification'--a practice that makes things mean. This is a constructivist view of discourse that recognises the public and sociocultural character of discourse. Discourse, according to this school of thought, is constructed through language as a representational system, and therefore it is conceptualised beyond the language itself. It moves discourse from the material world of linguistic study to the symbolic world of cultural representation. This revolutionary concept transforms the assumption of the world out there and individual consciousness as sources of signification to the products of signification.

This view of discourse is inherently linked to contributions made by Michel Foucault who conceives discourse as a particular type of social practice. For Foucault (1972), discourse constitutes a 'discursive formation'--discourse signifies ways of systematically producing and organising meaning, and through which generating modes of knowledge. Discursive formations provide rules that justify what counts as truth and knowledge. A major consequence of a Foucaultian conception of discourse involves the issue of reconceptualising culture and society--it sees structured or institutionalised social practice as discursive practice in the sense that all social practices are discursively constructed. The abstract concept of 'language' is deemed as inadequate to explain the socio-cultural, historical and political 'anchoring' of meanings. Discourse is seen as a dynamic social process of meaning production, rather than a simple static system of language. Discourse, thus conceptualised, becomes central to the understanding of culture understood as the process by which meaning is produced, circulated, consumed, reproduced and renegotiated in society. Discourse is conceived as the product of socio-cultural, historical, but in particular institutional formations. Under this general theoretical position, specific discourses such as mass media, medicine, education and even science can be systematically examined and delineated. It is within this socio-cultural domain that discourse is defined and discussed in this paper in relation to media narrative.

Media narrative as dramatis personae

In representing non-Western cultures, the mass media convey meanings through narrativising historical events. As the 'principal storyteller' (Kozloff, 1992:63) or 'modern bard' (Fiske and Hartley, 1982), the mass media do not simply recount events beyond the Western horizon; they interpret and explain them, try to influence the audience to see the non-West world in certain ways. They are producing the discourse of the cultural 'other' through a system of narrative. To define and understand such a system is to specify its 'rules', and to suggest in what way these rules are relevant to the understanding of an entire and specified range of media texts about the 'other'. Literature on narrative theories is extensive even those related to the mass media (Silverstone 1981, 1983, 1984, 1986; Kozloff, 1988, 1992; Ellis, 1982; Hall, 1984; Giles, 1986; Fiske 1987; Chatman, 1978, 1990; Hartley, 1998). However, to address specific concerns of this paper, two foundational narrative theories are critically assessed to lay the foundation of a working model for media narrative analysis.

The first is the concept of dramatis personae (narrative functions) summarised by Russian formalist Vladimir Propp (1968) in his seminal work Morphology of the Folktale. Propp studied Russian folktales and concluded that there is a universal narrative structure in these tales. He defines narrative motifs in terms of their functions, or what he terms as dramatis personae independent of by whom and in what way those functions are fulfilled. Propp sees some narrative functions as fundamental in constructing a tale. These functions (31 dramatis personae in total (1)) are limited and can be classified according to their significance and position in the course of the narrative. The relevance of Propp's dramatis personae lies in the similarities in narrative structure between traditional folktales and contemporary mass media. First, both rely on narrative functions to construct their stories, though the former uses them literally, the latter figuratively. Second, both genres are constructed for public consumption to mediate social meanings through an internal structure. Third, their production of a text, and therefore authorship, is collective. The collective authorship reflects a social construction of cultural meanings generated in these seemingly 'innocent', individualised stories. Finally, both are characterised by a ritualised form of storytelling, because both follow a strict code of conventions dictated largely by traditions. However, modern mass media are far more institutionalised than traditional folktales.

The importance of dramatis personae lies in what they do to advance the narrative rather than what they are. They constitute the fundamental components of a story because as constant elements in a story they are independent of how and by whom they are fulfilled. A hungry child in Africa, a protesting woman in Afghanistan, or an 'insurgent' in Iraq, for example, could perform these character roles, so do abstract notions such as the market, technology or liberalism. By identifying these dramatis personae, internal structures of media narrative could be de-constructed. Character roles are normally defined in terms of a 'sphere of actions'; that is, dramatis personae such as villain, hero, or acquisition of a magical agent often dominate a sphere of actions. For instance, a villain fights, opposes or crushes the hero and commits an act of villainy. Though caution is required in generalising Propp's structural analysis, media portrayals of the cultural 'other' demonstrate a high level of resemblance to these Proppian character roles. In the generally negative portrayal of the 'third world', for example, African political leaders often invoke the image of a 'villain'' who 'victimises' his own people.

The transformative effect of narrative in cultural meanings, values, and ideologies is recognised by theorists such as Hall (1984, 1997), Levi-Strauss (1964, 1977, 1995), Barthes (1977, 1993), Fiske (1987), and Fiske and Hartley (1978). Proppian morphology of dramatis personae has been applied to contemporary television and films by scholars like Silverstone (1981, 1984) and Wollen (1982). According to Fiske (1987:137), most popular television narratives conform more or less to a Proppian structure: 'At times the conformity is astonishing in its precision ... but in general the structure underlines the typical television narrative with remarkable consistence.' On the evidence of Propp and his successors, Fiske (1987:138) claims that there appears to be something close to a universal structure of popular narrative, or a narrative equivalent of langue of which individual stories are transformations or paroles. However, limitations exist in Propp's structuralist theories (Bremond, 1970; Hymes, 1975) (2). One is his almost exclusive interest in internal narrative structures without relating them to wider social contexts in which they are imbedded. Another is the betrayal in Proppian morphology of the dynamic richness of folktale narrative, and therefore denies its complexity.

This is particularly true in contemporary media narrative that becomes increasingly polysemous to accommodate diverse audience groups and the demand for entertainment (Newcomb, 1982; Fiske, 1987; Hartley 1992; Silverstone, 1994). Propp's framework tends to impose a premature closure on the story. However, any story is unlikely to be a simple linear structure and any method of analysis must recognise that narrative can be complex both chronologically and in terms of character roles. Obviously, media narratives are far more complex in both structure and meaning. In mediating meanings in a complex contemporary society, media narrative is necessarily imbued with ambivalence, ambiguities and contradictions, even within a single television programme or a tabloid story. It is for this reason that Propp's framework requires a substantial modification if it is to be applied effectively to modern media narrative to enable the inclusion of a wider range of variants. However, before I introduce narrative causality to remedy Propp's deficiency, we need to examine the second narrative theory that informs the present study--Levi-Strauss' conception of narrative as the representation of a binary opposition. Levi-Strauss opens up the Proppian narrative morphology to its crucial socio-cultural contexts.

Media narrative as a binary representation

Alan Dundes (1968), in his discussion of structural analysis of folklore, summarises two types of structuralist approaches to narrative: syntagmatic and paradigmatic analysis. The former is represented by Propp as discussed above, and the latter is represented by Levi-Strauss (1963, 1964, and 1973) who seeks to describe the underlying pattern of narrative as a priori binary principle of opposition. Levi-Strauss believes that linear sequential structure is only the apparent or manifest content of narrative whereas the paradigmatic or schematic structure is the more important latent content. Therefore, the task of narrative analysis is to see through the superficial linear structure to the true underlying paradigmatic pattern in narrative. An important difference between these two approaches is the concern with context crucial in contemporary media narrative. Propp's syntagmatic analysis tends to deal with narrative structure in isolation from its socio-cultural context, while Levi-Strauss attempts to relate the paradigms he finds in myth to the world at large. This extension of narrative not only links a media story to a wider external context but also explains the often-neglected aspect of underlying causes of Western representation of the 'other'. This is because Levi-Strauss defines 'myth' constructed in narrative as 'machines for the suppression of time'. Such 'myth' attempts to resolve fundamental contradictions of human existence by translating the disorder of empirical experience into the order of systematic structures through narrative.

Levi-Strauss' significance for media narrative lies in his attempt to relate narrative structures to fundamental issues faced by the society; that is, to understand narrative not only in terms of what it says but of why it says and by what rules the message is generated. At its deepest level, what cannot be resolved at the everyday level can be resolved in the symbolic world of mass media through narrative. Levi-Strauss contrasts his view of myth as metalinguistic entities with Propp's view of them as linguistic ones. For Levi-Strauss, myths and stories are not just tales, but speak about the world through the patterning of content in their texts:

Let us say, to clarify this thesis, that in a tale a 'king' is not only a king and a 'shepherdess' not only a shepherdess, but that these words and what they signify become tangible means of constructing an intelligible system formed by the oppositions: male/female (with regard to nature) and high/low (with regard to culture) as well as all possible permutations among the six terms' (Levi-Strauss, 1977:142)

Levi-Strauss tries to disclose a hidden 'wide thought' operating as a mythical logic beneath innocent-looking storylines by analysing the system of binary opposition governing narrative structures. For Levi-Strauss, a myth is a story that is a specific and local transformation of a deep structure of opposed concepts important to the culture. Modern mass media as a principal storyteller perform a primary function of constructing myths as 'anxiety reducers' in dealing with the 'other'. It is realised through the media by providing an imaginative way of coping with the 'other', so that it does not become too disruptive or produce cultural anxiety. Representing the non-West 'other' constitutes a symbolic handling of distant societies whose values, traditions and perceptions of the world are significantly different. This socio-cultural conditioning determines largely how media stories about the 'other' are constructed, presented, and understood within the Western culture.

Levi-Straussian paradigmatic approach to narrative complements Propp's syntagmatic one. Any attempt to face the problems of narrative involves moving away from a close concern with its manifest structure and patterns. The search for meaning in a narrative involves therefore leaving the particular, though temporarily, in order to establish the generality according to which that particular becomes possible. The analysis of media narrative thus becomes an analysis of meaning, of language, of myth in Levi-Strauss' sense of the term. Propp's morphological analysis supplements Levi-Strauss' concern with a larger socio-cultural system, its constitution, its basic categories and their interplay. The chronology of narrative is reduced to an enigmatic formula, but one that has a logical coherence of thesis, antithesis and synthesis rather than a defined and precise sequence of elements.

Media narrative: the mythic vs. the mimetic

Combining Proppian and Levi-Straussian narratives in an integrated approach to the mass media, Silverstone (1981, 1984 and 1986) conceives narrative as consisting of the mythic and mimetic and thus provides a bridge between conceptual theories and practical analysis of media narrative as a genre. Following Northrop Frye (1971), Silverstone (1983 and 1984) sees the mythic and mimetic as two different ways of presenting a story. Broadly, the mythic is close to Levi-Straussean notion of myth as a symbolic structure and mediation. Mediation is the dynamic within the mythic between chaos and order, reason and emotion, and past and present. It combines the emotional and the rational to hold back natural and social threats to the existing social structure, and therefore contributes to the security of social and cultural existence. 'In this sense a myth is an uncritical response to a critical situation' (Silverstone, 1981:74). The mythic in media narrative consists of a mixture of myth, folktale and ritual. Structurally the mythic refers to elements of narrative that resemble preliterate storytelling in oral culture that is 'dependent on a categorical logic and a loose but effective chronology' (Silverstone 1984:387). Its communication is restricted by its narrow range of formulae, cliches and stereotypes.

The media mythic narrative grows out of a desire to make sense of the world beyond Western horizon, in order to stem the panic engendered by the unknown of 'the Rest'. In representing this non-Western world, the mass media provide assurance to the society by interpreting events within a shared conceptual map with the audience. Ultimately, the mythic is not to satisfy curiosity but to confirm dominant values through representing the 'other'. Media stories invariably express socio-culturally sanctioned and therefore legitimate views, concerns, and assumptions about the 'other'. In reporting the remote 'others', the West talks primarily to itself--it is a monologue, not a dialogue. However, it does not follow that views presented in the media are necessarily shared by the audience. In claiming 'truth', each version of the 'other' represents certain perceptions circulating in the society, and therefore competes for 'truth' in the symbolic world. The persuasiveness of a media story is determined largely by plausibility--what seems to be 'real'. Meanings produced in a media story depends more on the shared conceptual map in the West than 'realities' in the non-Western world. This is because media stories have to be understood within an existing Western-defined schematic knowledge.

The mimetic, on the other hand, refers to the representational aspect of media narrative through fidelity to a perceived world, and commentary and informed voices that offer a guarantee of factuality. The word mythic may have the connotation of falsehood or even distortions of reality in discussing media narrative. However, the mythic has a 'double-edged quality' that serves to express both deep concerns of society and a collective will to sustain the established social structure and order. So the mythic not only has a metaphorical status, it allows for the perception of the 'other' to be shared within a culture. Key functions of the mythic in media narrative consist in the transformation of the 'other'--the unfamiliar, often threatening into one that is both familiar and reassuring with easily understood narrative formulae.

The mythic narrative has two important dimensions: a chronology of events and a logical structure of concrete categories. They combine Propp's syntagmatic and Levi-Strauss' paradigmatic approaches to narrative. The former is diachronic, moving from beginning to end, reflecting the structure of a folktale. The latter is a synchronic system rather than text-specific elements, reflecting the structure of myth. The chronologic defines the level of storytelling that is more or less fixed. It identifies the unity of a particular narrative in terms of its morphology and functioning. Strictly speaking, the logic is not the logic of a media story as such but of the Western culture as a whole of which that story is but an element. It is a logic of the cultural context within which media narrative is embedded. The logic narrative operates to translate specific media stories into the general logic of culture. Therefore, the focus of analysis should not be on the chronologic as such, but meanings generated through structures of the logic. Attention to the logic in any given story extends the examination to external forces shaping a particular representation. The chronologic provides media narrative with momentum; the logic provides it with a base in experience and ontology. One is the narrative of action; the other is classification and justification. Apparently, no media narrative is simply one or the other, but all contain these elements to varying degrees.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

The mythic and the mimetic in narrative are interrelated. The mythic tends to pull the audience/readers towards the fantasy of the 'other', but the mimetic pulls them towards realism. The mythic tells stories beyond the Western world but the mimetic presents argument grounded in 'Western' experiences of modernity as a rational demonstration of the case to be made. It leads the viewer/reader into the real world, appealing to intellect and maintaining a close relationship to empirical reality. In the case of television, it does so with powerful visual images that appears to guarantee fidelity to a seemingly unmediated reality of the 'other'. In general, the mythic appeals to emotion through story, and the mimetic appeals to reason through argument. Based on Silverstone (1986), Figure 1 illustrates the inter-relationship between the mythic and mimetic:

There should be a dialectic rather than unilinear relationship between these terms because this structure combines Propp's chronologic and Levi-Strauss' logic elements in the narrative. The following diagram makes explicit such a relationship and indicates how it operates as a methodological model.

[FIGURE 2 OMITTED]

This model is useful but overtly abstract because it does not address the issue of causality--what causes certain actions or events to happen. In addition, Silverstone gives insufficient attention to social dynamics behind narrative, and therefore lacks a critical edge. This deficiency is evident in Silverstone's own meticulous analysis of a television drama (1981) and a science documentary (1984). To develop a working model for analysing media narrative in portraying the 'other', it is essential that causality be taken as a central category to account for complexities of media narrative.

Causality in media narrative

In reporting the cultural 'other', local narrative is weaved into a larger story that generates meanings--meanings that conform to stereotypical understanding of the non-Western world. The crucial transformative agent in producing meaningful stories is causality in narrative. It is causality that gives life to numerous local narratives that move a story forward along a logical line of argument. Therefore, like chronology (temporality), causality refers to key linkages between different elements in narrative in a relationship of cause and effect. Causality is structured through the arrangement of temporality: what happens before as a cause for what happens after. In representing the 'other' in the media, it is narrative causality that determines largely patterns of perspectives, attitudes and a general level of positivity or negativity of image. Events in the non-Western world acquire meanings only when they are assigned meanings by text producers. Such meanings, as Barthes (1977:94) summarises, is achieved largely through causality as a key component operating between consecution (temporality) and consequence (effect): Everything suggests, indeed, that the mainspring of narrative is precisely the confusion of consecution and consequence, what comes after being read in narrative as what is caused by; in which case narrative would be a systematic application of the logical fallacy denounced by Scholasticism in the formula post hoc, ergo propter hoc--a good motto for Destiny, of which narrative all things considered is no more than the 'language' (3).

For this reason, Barthes sees narrative as creating a 'chronological illusion' (1977:99): causality hides behind the seemingly unproblematic chronologic account--what 'happens' in the historical world. In essence, the logic structure accounts for narrative time, not the other way around. Temporality is only a structural category of narrative--it creates causality through the chronologic. It is in this sense that Levi-Strauss argues that the order of chronological succession is absorbed in an atemporal matrix of structure. The importance of causality is broadly recognised as a defining feature of narrative:

A narrative is the semiotic representation of a series of events meaningfully connected in a temporal and causal way. (Onega and Landa, 1996:3)

Plot is a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality. (Foster, 1927:130)

A perceived sequence of non-randomly connected events (Toolan, 1988:7)

Prince (1982:66) emphasises the centrality of causality in the 'realistic' account of the world. Such causality, he argues, is of a different type:

Note also that the causal links established between events may reflect a psychological order (for example, a character's actions are the cause or consequence of his state of mind), a philosophical order (every event exemplifies, say, the theory of universal determinism), a political order, a social one, and so on and so forth (Prince, 1982:67).

A simple formula of causality is 'A occurs because of B', or in Forster's famous example 'The king died and then the queen died of grief' (Forster, 1962:93). It is important to emphasize that causality in media narrative is a motivated textual construction. Olsen (1993:225) argues that the form of narrative is 'neutral on questions of truth, reference, and correspondence with reality'. A narrative is therefore a type of text that creates chronologically ordered causal relationships between events.

Each of Propp's dramatis personae, discussed above, represents one step forward along a chain of causality towards the final conclusion of a story. The causal linkage in a Proppian narrative is performed by dramatis personae--the initial situation creates a Jack that requires a hero who engages in a struggle against a villain assisted by a helper or acquisition of a magical agent, and finally achieves a victory. Propp's dramatis personae represent a sharpening of causality by assigning clear-cut character roles in a strong storyline. The sharpened causality results in a crystallisation of meanings, avoiding any ambiguity or ambivalence. In terms of media portrayal of the 'other', this means a black-and-white picture is offered to the audience. A 'softening' of narrative causality, therefore, indicates a much greyer, or neutral, picture is presented. Both sharpening and softening are narrative strategies employed by image formulators to project specific meanings in the media. To sum up, Proppian causality situates at one end of the continuum, representing a classic black-and-white representation of the world. In reality, however narrative causality is far more complex and not always clear; sometimes it is deliberately made so. Media stories reporting domestic events routinely neutralise controversial issues to allow room for different interpretations, and to accommodate diverse audiences, in contrast to international news reporting that tends to present a more black-and-white picture.

[FIGURE 4 OMITTED]

A working model for media narrative analysis

Based on discussions above, an analytical model for media narrative is in order as outlined in this concluding section. In this model, two types of narrative are contrasted: one represents the Proppian chronological narrative that provides a clear line of causality; the other represents a diametrically different narrative that ruptures causality. The former crystallises the meaning of the story through an essentialist binary representation; the latter obscures the meaning through a non-essentialist multidimensional representation. Between these two extreme forms of narrative structure exists a whole range of media narratives. The figures below illustrate the structure of these two types of narrative:

The narrative structure on the left resembles a Proppian and Levi-Straussian binary portrayal of the world that tends to be applied in reporting the cultural 'other', seen through a Eurocentric dichotomous lens. Embedded in modernity discourses, the mass media are prone to invoking this type of narrative in criticising 'non-liberal' practices by the 'other'. Narrative structure on the right, however, represents an opposite way of representing the 'other'--it complicates and problematises the story to be told and therefore sabotages neat meanings constructed in a Proppian narrative. It refuses to see the world in a black-and-white picture and constantly raptures a 'grand narrative' by dislodging Proppian dramatis personae. Thus, instead of arriving at a final crystallization of meanings in a Proppian narrative, the non-Proppian narrative leads to ambivalence of meanings, leaving the audience to make their own judgement. Images of the 'other' constructed through a Proppian narrative are characterised typically by clear-cut character roles of 'hero' and 'villain'; a non-Proppian narrative tends to present a 'grey' picture and therefore a neutral image. The former assumes to know all the answers to the problems of the 'other'; the latter tends to ask questions, and prompt the audience to think. However, an actual media story will situate at a certain point along this broad spectrum of representation.

Single-dimension vs. multi-dimension

Single-dimension refers to narrative in the classical form of dramatis personae. It involves a clear storyline running through a sphere of actions from beginning to end. Typically, the initial situation signals explicitly an ensuing conflict (struggle) and a final outcome, absorbing all character roles of dramatis personae in a single 'grand narrative'. The cold war reporting is a classic example of a single-dimensional portrayal of the world as an epic struggle between hero (capitalism) and villain (communism). Multi-dimension locates at the opposite end of the continuum--local narratives within a media story do not cohere into a single grand narrative in a linear causality. Each narrative is a self-contained textual unit that generates only localised meanings. Causality operates in a branching-out fashion--separate localised dramatis personae operate within their own sphere of actions. Linear causality is constantly ruptured as the narrative moves the story forward.

In contrast to simplification of a single-dimensional 'grand narrative', a multi-dimensional representation contains inconsistencies, ambiguities and contradictions. The representation of the Chinese post-reform economy is close to a multi-dimensional reporting. In the current global financial crisis and economic slowdown, the Western media present a complex picture of the Chinese economy, weighing carefully different dimensions of the economy and different forces at work. The conclusions they arrive at are varied, localised and extend to a full range of assessment that go beyond simplistic characterisations of 'good' or 'bad', 'positive' or 'negative'--they are complex and meanings are not easy to ascertain. The Chinese economy is an 'epic story' but not a 'grand narrative'. Unlike the cold war 'good vs. evil' portrayal, media narrative of Chinese economy branches out into multi-dimensional storylines that lead to complexities, not simplicities of the reality. Effectively, multi-dimension means localisation of narrative. It aims to investigate a particular issue, not to make a particular point through a particular issue.

Essentialism vs. non-essentialism

In representing non-Western cultures, a media story inevitably constructs cultural identities through narrative, though often implicitly. Essentialism refers to a definition of identity that suggests a clear, fixed and authentic set of characteristics associated with a certain culture. A non-essentialist representation focuses on differences as well as common or shared characteristics (Woodward, 1997:11). A single-dimensional narrative is more likely to move towards an essentialist representation by sweeping generalisations. For instance, East and West (BBC2, 1998) defines China as Oriental despotism, while Mandate of Heaven (ITV, 1991) sees Chinese culture as Oriental benevolence. Both documentaries produce a 'grand narrative' in an essentialist representation through clear-cut character roles of dramatis personae.

There is an associated dimension of essentialism in character representation. An essentialist approach is more likely to simplify, essentialise, or typologise a character and to position him or her in a clear-cut character role in a unified advance towards a final narrative end. A non-essentialist representation tends to complicate, individualise, and contextualise a character so that it is unlikely a character fits neatly into a narrowly defined role of dramatis personae. In some media reporting in recent years, Islam is portrayed in an essentialist manner that highlights violence as an essential part of the Islamic culture. Thus, Islam as a religion is cast in a negative light. Strictly speaking, to essentialise in a media narrative is to straightjacket people or certain practice into Proppian dramatis personae. Dislodging such character roles is the first step to rupture an essentialist representation.

Dislocation, ambiguity, fragmentation and ambivalence

These terms refer to what happens when a linear narrative causality is severed. I limit my definition of dislocation to the domain of dramatis personae at the chronologic level. Dislocation occurs when character roles of dramatis personae are invalidated by the introduction of elements incompatible with such roles, or by the omission of qualifying elements. For example, the Sri Lanka Tamil Tiger leader Prabhakaran is reported as both a 'freedom fighter' (hero) and a 'terrorist' (villain):

To his followers, Vellupillai Prabhakaran was a freedom fighter struggling for Tamil emancipation. To his adversaries he was a secretive megalomaniac with a complete disregard for human life. Under his leadership, the LTTE was branded a terrorist organisation by many countries (BBC, 2009)

The character role of Prabhakaran collapses as soon as dramatis personae of hero and villain are dislodged through a mutual invalidation. This is because Prabhakaran cannot be both a hero and villain in a Proppian black-and-white representation. As discussed earlier, dislocating character roles impacts global development of the narrative because the shattering of an essentialist causality inaugurates a non-Proppian narrative in a branching-out fashion. That is, multiple storylines are launched through the introduction of Prabhakaran as a controversial figure--a story that would move beyond a pure heroism or villainy. Thus, character role dislocation effectively blocks an essentialist representation.

Ambiguity refers to the blurring of binary oppositions when no clear-cut character roles are established. Chronological dislocation and logical ambiguity have a dialectic relationship--each is contingent upon the other. However, both function as a fragmentation of meaning through ruptures, localisation and diffusion of meaning. In the case of the Tamil Tiger leader, dislodging Prabhakaran from the Proppian roles produces a considerable degree of ambiguity as a result of the implosion of binary opposition that largely characterises the representation of the cultural 'other'. However, it is precisely the absence of a stereotypical, dichotomous portrayal of a complex situation that opens up extensive revenue to explore this controversial figure through a multi-dimensional narrative structure--his idealism as a leader and his barbarianism as a mass murder, as seen through different eyes on both sides of the Sri Lankan political landscape. Structurally, it is only through the breakdown of a Proppian chronologic narrative that we can enter this vast and often fascinating terrain of 'messy' realities. The overall effect of a non-Proppian narrative is the fragmentation, ambivalence and obscurity of meanings that allow sufficient flexibility to account for 'realities' that do not often fit a neat representation of the non-Western world.

Conclusions

In our increasingly globalised but technology-driven world, the mass media are playing a central role in making sense of ourselves, our environments but crucially changing relationships between the West and the Rest. Yet, the Western media have not made the changes commensurate with the rate of transformation sweeping across the world. This is most evident in the formation and modes of operation of the discourse about the 'other' as a system of representation. The West tends to see in the Rest an idealised or distorted image of itself, and projects onto this image their own aspirations, fears, confidence and desire through a modernity-centred discourse, in particular in its liberal humanist version. Fundamental in the representation of the cultural 'other' is the deep-rooted assumption of a historically inevitable and necessarily 'progressive' character of the Western expansion into the Rest. This underlying assumption underlies the latent structure of media reporting of the non-Western world.

The working model proposed in this paper could contribute to deconstructing or 'debunking' this grand narrative by exposing its internal narrative structures. Based on this conceptual and methodological model, any media story of the 'other' could be subject to a structural narrative analysis. Chronology could be charted at the local (part of the story), global (whole story) and intertextual (groups of stories) levels, depending on patterns of content distribution. The model is particularly useful in delineating overall patterns of media representation on a certain topic, such as women, religion or ethnicity. Nevertheless, such delineation depends on a detailed scrutiny of narrative mechanisms operating at the micro level. However, a larger point made in this paper is to conceptualize narrative as a powerful mode of discourse. It is through the daily ritual of storytelling in the mass media that a broad intercultural relationship is constituted discursively between the West and the Rest at the public level.

In this system of representation, or 'regime of truth' in Foucault's words, the discourse of the 'other' reflects the language used in the mass media that continues to impact the popular sense of 'us' and 'them', their interrelationships and power relations. They continue to operate powerfully across the world in confirming, reinforcing and reproducing often unequal intercultural relations. However, discourse is a symbolic battle that has to be fought to win. No discourse can proclaim a permanent victory. Discourse in this sense is part of a perpetual struggle in the volatile world of symbols and signs, as well as in the physical world where cultural relations are constantly reconfigured in a changing world. Narrative analysis as a form of discursive practice engages us precisely in this broad domain with the shared objective that the globalised world should not only bring us together but harmony, peace and prosperity to all, regardless of faith, colour, race and ethnicity.

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Qing Cao

Liverpool John Moores University

Correspondence to

Dr. Qing Cao

Liverpool John Moores University

q.cao@ljmu.ac.uk

(1) The most important dramatis personae include initial situation, lack, hero, villain, helper, struggle and victory. These dramatis personae will be indicated by italics hereafter.

(2) For a summary of criticism on Propp, see Silverstone (1981).

(3) Italics are added in the original text.