Figure 29 The six textsorts - from GINs to PINs, DEAR

From within, and often revealing, the present perspective -	DESCRIPTION As ‘done’ from now, in the interview’, about ‘always’]	Allegedly eternal qualities of entities, persons, landscapes, systems, contexts   – no movement/ no history, no events
‘Global’ or ‘partial’ - From within, and revealing, the present perspective -	EVALUATION [As done from ‘now’, about the alleged ‘point’ or significance of the ‘event sequence’]	The ‘moral’ of a particular story (PIN or Report) or (in case of a “global” evaluation) the ‘moral’ of the biographical account as a whole, ultimately of the whole life
Present perspective	ARGUMENTATION [As done from ‘now’, about ‘issues’]	Theorising, attitude-pronouncing, position-taking, arguing ….
‘Thin Cord’ of bare events	REPORT [done from now, conveying a  then]	Experience-distant, little or no emotional involvement, bare police report in ‘cold fact’ terms, as if an ‘outsider’, like a BDC ‘story about’
Pseudo-PINs	GINs (and TINs) And Condensed Situations [done from now, about frequent thens]	Generic incident narrative – “the way things always happen(ed)” Typical incident narrative – “imagined-average vignette” Condensed Situation – one image, event, feeling, but a narrative fails to emerge
Episodic (one  incident) Epic (many incidents) About-PINs – can be turned into in-PINs	PARTICULAR INCIDENT NARRATIVE (PINs) About-PINs told from a mostly now-perspective In-PINs with part re- living of original experience, partly ‘done’ from the then-perspective	“So there we are, at the bar…, a Saturday evening…he said…she said…I did…I’m  thinking… I’m  feeling….. I can see it right now… It’s very strange…..Then what happened was… Afterwards I felt…. Quite a critical moment, because….”
Indicate MIXED TEXTSORTS with dominant component first : e.g. “REP/arg”

* = The ‘action’ in question is that related in the Central Event Sequence (see QRI p.254) which can be narratively recounted in thin REPORT and/or rich PIN form.

Types of narrative: REPORTs… and GINs….. and about-PINs….and in-PINs  all can be seen to be on a spectrum of thin-ness and rich-ness of  (i) particular incident detail and (ii) apparent emotional closeness / distance.

ARGUMENTATION … and… EVALUATION lie on a spectrum of relative detachment from a REP/PIN account .

Only DESCRIPTION does not lie on a spectrum. [Perhaps a GIN or TIN could be seen as a way of doing ‘Description’ in the form of a non-particularising narrative?].