Defense Date

5-7-2025

Graduation Date

Summer 8-8-2025

Availability

Immediate Access

Submission Type

dissertation

Degree Name

PhD

Department

Communication and Rhetorical Studies

School

McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts

Committee Chair

Janie Harden Fritz

Committee Member

Inci Sayrak

Committee Member

Erik Garrett

Keywords

narrative, communication ethics, dialogue, MacIntyre, Arnett, Fisher, narrative care, narrative arborist

Abstract

We live in a historical moment when a nuanced understanding of narrative as both ground and story is essential. In examining the work of two primary scholarly voices working with narrative and operating from a communicative lens, Walter R. Fisher and Ronald C. Arnett, this project lays a theoretical foundation for understanding the dialogic interplay of narrative as story and narrative as ground. Through tracing Fisher's and Arnett's contrasting interpretations of the work of Alasdair MacIntyre, a preeminent neo-Thomistic philosopher whose work has significantly contributed to the study of ethics and narrative construction of human rationality, coordinates related to telling good stories and caring for narrative structures begin to emerge. This dissertation begins with exploring our current historical moment in relation to these themes. Chapter 2 provides a philosophical picture of Alasdair MacIntyre and his world, drawing specific connections to themes that have influenced the study of narrative. Chapter 3 unpacks Walter Fisher's understanding of the narrative paradigm and his recasting of human rationality in the mold of "homo narrans." Chapter 4 works toward understanding the importance of dialogic scholarship and communication ethics in Arnett's approach to narrative as publicly told moral stories, practices, and communities that buy into those stories and practices. Finally, Chapter 5 begins to navigate coordinates for caring for narrative structures, recognizing their importance as ground underneath communicators' feet and the story-centered nature of human rationality.

Language

English

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