In narrative, construal is the first act of selection: what counts as happening, who counts as a participant, and which aspects of the scene are brought into structured presence.
A language’s semiotic ecology provides different affordances for construal, which in turn shape storytelling: pacing, suspense, focus, and even what “matters” in a narrative. Liora’s walk through the forest illustrates this beautifully.
1. Event-Centric vs. Participant-Centric Construal
Languages vary in how they cut experience into events and participants.
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Event-centric languages (like English) foreground actions. The narrative pulse comes from verbs and processes:
Liora stepped lightly over the moss. She paused beside the pool. The surface shimmered.
The emphasis is on what happens. Liora acts; the pool responds; the world unfolds through events. Participants exist largely in relation to the events.
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Participant-centric or distributed-event languages might foreground characters, objects, or relations, giving them inherent dynamism:
Liora, careful and quiet, hovered at the pool’s edge. Its shimmering surface drew her gaze. The forest seemed to lean closer.
Here, participants themselves carry event potential. Events are distributed across characters and things; action is relational rather than solely verb-driven.
2. State vs. Event Continuum
Another crucial aspect of construal is how languages treat states versus events.
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English often sharply separates: events (“run,” “melt”) vs. states (“know,” “belong”).
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Other languages allow a continuum, blending states and events:
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The pool might be “shimmering” (event) and “still” (state) simultaneously.
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Liora’s attention can be both act and state of awareness.
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Narratively, this affects pacing: event-dominated construals accelerate story flow; state-rich construals slow down, invite reflection, or make environments “alive” in subtle ways.
3. Participant Salience and Story Focus
Which entities are foregrounded is a typological choice, not a universal truth.
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In event-centric narratives, participants appear in the service of events: Liora acts, the pool responds.
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In participant-centric narratives, participants are semiotic anchors: the pool, the forest, and Liora each have relational agency.
Liora bent toward the pool. The creature hovered. Moss brushed her hand. The forest held its breath.
Each participant carries potential for action or relational effect, even without verbs explicitly driving the scene.
This construal affects suspense, empathy, and narrative tension: participants can act as semiotic centres even in apparent “stillness.”
4. Construal as Semiotic Ecology
Construal choices are not arbitrary, nor are they reflections of cognition:
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They are affordances built into the language.
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They define what can be foregrounded or backgrounded, what can be event or state, and what counts as a participant.
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They shape the narrative ecology, the space of possible stories.
Both are ecologically coherent in their own systems.
5. Liora in Motion: Practical Illustration
Consider these two construals side by side:
Event-Centric:
Liora knelt beside the pool. The dew on the grass sparkled. A ripple spread across the water as she reached toward it.
Participant-Centric:
Liora, alert and cautious, leaned toward the pool. The water’s surface shimmered. The dew, the moss, and even the hovering light seemed to respond to her presence.
Notice how the same phenomenon is construed differently: events vs. participants, verbs vs. relational texture. Both are systemically licensed by their respective semiotic ecologies.
Next Post
We will turn to Relationality in Narrative: how classification, possession, and connection shape the intelligibility of stories, again using Liora’s adventures as a running illustration.
This will show how narrative coherence is not imposed from outside, but emerges from the language’s relational architecture.
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