Discuss The Importance Of Language Or Voice When Writing The Research Narrative

Discuss The Importance Of Language Or Voice When Writing The Research Narrative

Discuss The Importance Of Language Or Voice When Writing The Research Narrative

The narrative voice, or as it is more commonly known, the point of view (POV), is an essential element in storytelling, as it determines the character with whom the audience will sympathize. It also informs them of the narrator’s perspective and is essential in shaping their understanding of the story’s events.

It allows the reader to view everything from the stance of a character and/or narrator, including their feelings and experiences. The narrative voice is an essential element of the telling as it allows the reader to relate to the character telling the story and understand the motivations and desires of other characters, as well.

Think of POV like a pair of glasses that you give your audience. In order for them to see what you’re seeing clearly, and in the best possible way to experience it, you need to give them the best pair of lenses to do that. Those lenses are the different types of narrative voice.

This post will delve into how to identify different types of narrative voice and which pair of “lenses” would best suit a particular piece of writing.

First Person

In first person point of view, the story is being told from the perspective of the narrator.

Pronouns:

• “I”/ “we”
• “me”/ “us”
• “my”/ “our”

This narrative style is one of the most common POVs in fiction. All events in the story are filtered through the eyes of the narrator and the readers experience the story or account from their perspective. Therefore, it is the type of narrative voice that is able to immediately connect with the audience yet is limited to one perspective and is biased by default.

Best suited for:

Autobiographies (fiction and non-fiction) or personal accounts

Examples:

Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield, J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby.

Siobhan said that I should write something I would want to read myself. Mostly I read books about science and maths. I do not like proper novels. In proper novels people say things like, “I am veined with iron, with silver and with streaks of common mud. I cannot contract into the firm fist which those clench who do not depend on stimulus.” What does this mean? I do not know. Nor does Father. Nor do Siobhan or Mr Jeavons. I have asked them.From The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon

Second Person

In second person point of view, the story is being told from the perspective of the audience.

Pronouns:

• “you”
• “your”

The second person narrative is less frequently used than the first or the third. In this type of perspective, the story is told as though the reader is the character telling the story. Thus, the audience becomes the driving force of the story, immersed into the action instantly. Second person point of view gives the writer a shot at being different in that the tone surprises the reader, and gives them a more personal way of experiencing the story. It is the most difficult to execute among all the types of narratives, but it can be done.

Uses:

Most commonly used in instructional writing, such as recipes and manuals, or any writing requiring a step-by-step procedure; novels.

Examples:

Italo Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night, a Traveler, Edward Packard’s Choose Your Own Adventure series, Jay McInerney’s Bright Lights, Big City and Lorrie Moore’s Self-Help.

Your mother has encountered this condition many times, or conditions like it anyway. So maybe she doesn’t think you’re going to die. Then again, maybe she does. Maybe she fears it. Everyone is going to die, and when a mother like yours sees in a third-born child like you the pain that makes you whimper under her cot the way you do, maybe she feels your death push forward a few decades, take off its dark, dusty headscarf, and settle with open-haired familiarity and a lascivious smile into this, the single mud-walled room she shares with all of her surviving offspring.From How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia by Mohsin Hamin

Third Person

In third person point of view, the story is being told from outside a single character’s perspective.

Pronouns:

• “she”/”he”
• “her”/”his”
• “they”/”it”

The third person narrative is perhaps the most commonly used perspective. It used when the narrator is not a character in the story and is therefore, on the outside looking in. It offers the audience some distance from the characters of the story.