Assessing coherence and fidelity

Abstract

Non-fictional narratives have an open-ended character that projects roles and values to those who participate in them. Narrative participation, in turn, entails narrative assessment and identification processes, through which adherence to values and positions may fail or be achieved. In the analysis of interviews with university students across Turkey, we draw on Fisher’s narrative paradigm to focus on how our participants carry out assessments of narrative credibility. To elucidate narrative coherence and fidelity, we take inspiration from an argumentative-rhetorical perspective, and focus specifically on the relationship among the criteria identified in the literature on narrative assessment. Our study of interviewee evaluations of COVID-19 narratives confirms the use of the coherence criteria, calls into question the fidelity criteria, and highlights the relevance of identification as a basic process for fidelity assessments. We conclude by discussing our limitations and directions for further research.