Narrative modeling and its implications for cultural practices

Abstract Paul Cobley stated that the semiotics of narrative should not be conflated with narratology. This statement becomes a starting point for an inquiry into the semiotics of narrative by looking at the concept of narrative signs and its future as a new theory of narrative. Narrative signs embedding semiotic processes convey the meaning of narrative in the areas of the prelinguistic, the linguistic, and the extralinguistic by way of signs, models, and semiosis. What is more, the concept of narrative modeling for Cobley enables further inquiry into cultural activity through the act of narration for transvaluation. In this regard, a new theory of narrative involves time, emotion, abduction, and the dialogic self, leading to the narrative-related ideas of cognition, identity, and human subjectivity. Based on Peirce’s semiotics and a biosemiotic approach, narrative modeling makes human beings participate in sign activity, that is, cultural activity through dialogic interaction between culture and nature. Consequently, this paper proposes that the study of the mysterious narrative through narrative modeling is geared to seeing how it affects humans and also how they see and make a world through various cultural practices.