Narrative analysis is applied to episodes of interaction generated by coupled production systems controlling the activity of different processing units. Formal analysis of such coupled systems, conceived of as models of institutionalized social action, has shown that they generate context‐free languages of interaction. This note suggests that narrative analysis of interaction strings in such languages has limited analytical utility: it offers neither a method to discriminate between well‐formed and malformed strings of interaction nor a procedure to induce the underlying generative rule structure from a corpus of well‐formed interaction strings. Therefore, the narrative method holds little promise as a technique to examine the routinized activity composing a social institution.
Generating narratives from simple action structures
Reprints and Corporate Permissions
Please note: Selecting permissions does not provide access to the full text of the article, please see our help page How do I view content?
To request a reprint or corporate permissions for this article, please click on the relevant link below:
Academic Permissions
Please note: Selecting permissions does not provide access to the full text of the article, please see our help page How do I view content?
Obtain permissions instantly via Rightslink by clicking on the button below:
If you are unable to obtain permissions via Rightslink, please complete and submit this Permissions form. For more information, please visit our Permissions help page.
Related research
People also read lists articles that other readers of this article have read.
Recommended articles lists articles that we recommend and is powered by our AI driven recommendation engine.
Cited by lists all citing articles based on Crossref citations.
Articles with the Crossref icon will open in a new tab.