Covid-19 as a Generator of Pending Narratives: Developing an Empirical Tool to Analyze Narrative Practices in Constructing Futures

Abstract

The article describes the basic elements of the pending narrative and develops them into a tool of qualitative analysis by taking examples from Covid-19-related reports, opinions and editorials in the news. The pending narrative is a powerful story form, persuading the responsible actors in public to take action by stirring up compelling passion for a specific goal. It has a cogency that comes from the threat that if we do not act in the right way now, the continuity of life will be jeopardized. Crises are fertile breeding grounds for pending narratives, and the arrival of the Covid-19 virus is an expressive example of a situation threatening the continuity of human life around the globe. These circumstances feed on the emergence of pending narratives, which translate the unknown, uncertain and frightening future from open, multiple and unpredictable trajectories into more closed, predictable and controllable pathways. In the development of the pending narrative into a tool of qualitative analysis, the article takes influences from narratology, Bamberg’s theory on positioning analysis, Greimas’ narrative semiotics and critical discourse analysis. It proposes that in the analysis of pending narratives we benefit from the separation of three levels. On the first level, pending narratives highlight disorder and the menacing trajectory of the anti-subject, and outline a qualifying trajectory for the subject to overcome the threat. On the second level they persuade the responsible actors and the audience to identify with the qualifying trajectory and to take action or support it. And on the third level they articulate the kind of values, identities and moral order in aid of which the required action is taken.

The impact of emergency remote learning on students in engineering and computer science in the United States: An analysis of four universities

“…However, we used sociocultural theory to help us understand, through different social and cultural contexts, how different students experienced the emergency shift to online learning. Master narratives that had been developed in relation to COVID‐19, even as we were writing our paper, were focused on narratives relating to medical and epidemiological facets of the epidemic, such as the plague originating in Asia and the European methods of fighting plague as the only successful way to end the disease (e.g., Törrönen, 2021; Varlık, 2020). We were unable to find published master narratives relating to education.…”

Stresses of COVID-19 and Expectations for the Future Among Women: A Cross Cultural Analysis According to the Femininity/Masculinity Dimension

“…Several theorists ( Arsenian & Arsenian, 1948 ; Halford & Leonard, 2001 ; Hofstede, 2011 ) suggested that a tough culture - masculine in this case - provides few valued goals and severely restricts access to the pathways through which that goal may be achieved. This type of culture might offer fewer scenarios for the future, or in the words of Törrönen, fewer “pending narratives” ( Törrönen, 2021 ), or strivings, which were found to be associated with life satisfaction ( Emmons, 1986 ). This may be one of the reasons for fewer expectations shared by women in masculine cultures; indeed, the only future expectation associated with masculine societies was for a return to daily activities which were restricted during the pandemic.…”

How Covid-19 restrictions affected young people's well-being and drinking practices: Analyzing interviews with a socio-material approach

“…The Covid-19 pandemic is an example of a disruption that introduced multiple uncertainties and matters of concern to everyday actions. As Covid-19 unsettled our current neoliberal economic, material, political, institutional, and socio-cultural habits and practices, it sent us to build new kinds of actants, relations and assemblages with which we aimed to overcome the difficulties and stabilize new kinds of routines for our everyday lives ( Törrönen, 2021 ).…”

“…After arriving among us, the Covid-19 virus was soon categorized as a global threat to the continuity of human life, menacing the overall foundations and practices of the current neoliberal economic, political, social and cultural arrangements ( Törrönen, 2021 ). In March and April 2020, diverse kinds of restrictions on social proximity around the world were introduced.…”