ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on Walter Fisher’s influential narrative paradigm, which provides one method of analysing the effectiveness of individual narratives – not in absolute terms, but from the variable perspectives of individuals with different sets of values and priorities. It demonstrates how we assess narratives in practice by applying Fisher’s system of analysis to two separate narratives from the field of language mediation. Fisher’s principle of narrative coherence concerns the internal consistency and integrity of a narrative – how well it hangs together as a story. Structural coherence concerns the internal consistency of a narrative – whether or not it reveals contradictions within itself ‘in form or reasoning’. Characterological coherence assumes that the reliability of any narrative depends to a significant extent on the credibility of its main characters, whether narrators or actors within the narrative. The principle of coherence focuses on the consistency and integrity of the narrative as a whole.
