Actantial narrative schema

This is a fundamental universal narrative structure that underlies all texts. There are six key actantial roles or functions arranged in three sets of binary opposition: subject/object; sender/receiver; helper/ opponent. Together the six actants and their organization account for all possible relationships within a story and indeed within the sphere of human action in general:

The role of anti-subject, a variant of the opponent, may also be included within this diagram. These narrative positions may be held by people, places, objects or abstract ideas.

The diagram illustrates in the first place the necessary relationship between a sender and a receiver. This is based on the desire for an object or on an obligation which the sender transmits to the receiver, inducing the latter to pursue it. The function of the sender therefore is to make the receiver do something (faire faire), thereby turning the receiver into a subject.

The relationship between the subject and the object, on the other hand, also based on desire or obligation, is geared to change a state of being (faire etre): its function is to transform a state of deficiency or wanting into one of sufficiency through conjunction with or disjunction from an object. Helper and opponent entertain a subsidiary relationship to the subject, their function being to intervene positively or negatively in the pursuit of the goal. Thus the desire for an object becomes the focal point of the whole scheme. Examples illustrating the different functions are to be found under separate headings for each particular actant.

مواضيع ذات صلة

Embrayage/engagement

Embedding

Ellipsis

Elementary utterance

Dysphoria

Donor

Doing/faire

Disjunction and conjunction

Discursivization

Discursive units

Discursive subject

Discursive level