Abstract
The aim of this chapter is to describe narrative components such as narration, focalization, narrative situations, narrative time, tenses, moods, proposition, fictional space, chronotopes, characters, and discourse—and their reflection in advertising—to frame an analytical plane on how they can be used in advertising researches. In this context, the fundamental concepts of narratology are defined in separate headings and related concepts are shown. In addition, how those concepts are reflected in ads is shown and the study tries to explain what points the researchers can focus on. In the conclusion of the study, some points about the future of advertising and narrative in the digital age are mentioned.
TopIntroduction
Narratology is uttered as the theory of the narrative structures. A narrative theorician is called someone who dissects the components of the narration concept in order to study a structure or reveal a structural description and later tries to determine the functions and relations. They make distinction among almost all theories on narration, the story and the discourse. Two kinds of narratology come out here. The first one is discourse narratology that analyses the stylistic preferences on the tone which determines the form or the realization of a narrative text. In addition to this, discourse narratology takes an interest in pragmatical characteristics which provide contextuality for the text or the performance within the context of social and cultural frame of an act. In contrast to discourse narratology, story narratology focuses on the actual units which organize flow of events and themes around directive elements and chain of events and emplot it. Advertisement is accepted as a type of narrative and positioned collaterally (Jahn, 2012, pp. 43-47; Currie, 2010, pp. 33-35; Ryan, 2009; Huisman, 2009; Yılmaz, Çakır & Resuloğlu, 2017). However, when the path of narrative theory is followed, it is seen that the researchers concentrate especially on literary narratives. There is no systematic study on advertising narrative.
The aim of this study, as part of the project produced with such concern, is to describe narrative components, their reflection in advertising and to frame an analytical plane how they can be used in advertising researches. In this context, the fundamental concepts of narratology such as narration, focalization, narrative situations, narrative time, tenses, moods, proposition, fictional space, chronotopes, characters, and discourse are defined in separate headings, related concepts are shown. In addition, how those concepts are reflected in ads and it's tried to explain what points the researchers can focus on. The nucleus of the study is the doctoral dissertation titled “Mental Reconstruction of the World through Narrative” (Yılmaz, 2014). The same nucleus was used in another previous study (Yılmaz, Çakır & Resuloğlu, 2017).
Key Terms in this Chapter
Advertising Narrative: It expresses the way the ad tells the story. Advertising narrative may be possible for an ad to contain its narrative components, but narrative advertising components are different from other narrative types.
Narrative Levels: Narrative levels (also referred to as diegetic levels) is an analytic notion whose purpose is to describe the relations among the plurality of narrating instances within a narrative, and more specifically the vertical relations between narrating instances ( Coste& Pier, 2009 ).
Chronotope: Time and space is a different issue, the thing here is space which reflects the time. While time shapes in flesh and bones via chronotope, space is given a meaning by time and history in the same way.
Augmented Reality: The term which defines combined reality which is possible with applications in devices such as specially produced glasses, or smart phones, tablet and formed with intertwinement of reality and visual reality.
Narrator: The person who fulfills the narrative action.
Proposition: Proposition has a meaning close to the theme, path, and governing idea, yet, relatively, itis a concept whose limits are definite and that is suitable to the structural types of the narratives. It reflects a sentence of judgment presented to the audience by a narrative.
Narrative Components: Each of the parts that make a story possible: Plot, focalization, narrative situation, narrative tenses, modes, proposition, chronotope, fictional space, characters, narrative discourse, etc.