The prefix meta-means "beyond" and is here used to mean "about", and narrative is a story constructed in a sequential fashion. Therefore, a metanarrative is a story about a story, encompassing and explaining other "little stories" within totalizing schemes.
In postmodern philosophy, a metanarrative is an untold story that unifies and totalizes the world, and justifies a culture's power structures. Examples of these stories are nationalisms,religion, and science, to name a few. Metanarratives are not usually told outright, but are reinforced by other more specific narratives told within the culture. In the case of Christianity, the school Nativity play is a good example of this.
In communication and strategic communication, a master narrative (or metanarrative) is a "transhistorical narrative that is deeply embedded in a particular culture."[2] A master narrative is therefore a particular type of narrative, which is defined as a "coherent system of interrelated and sequentially organized stories that share a common rhetorical desire to resolve a conflict by establishing audience expectations according to the known trajectories of its literary and rhetorical form."[2]
No comments:
Post a Comment