Narrative

Research

An account of events arranged in sequence to carry meaning — spans personal statements, narrative literature reviews, and narrative analysis of interview data.

Sources

1. Merriam-Webster — narrative merriam-webster.com accessed 23 September 2026

Merriam-Webster gives the plain sense, “something that is narrated: story, account”, and the one that has taken over public argument: “a way of presenting or understanding a situation or series of events that reflects and promotes a particular point of view or set of values”. The noun is first recorded in 1567. That second sense is what people mean by “the narrative” in politics or media analysis, and it carries a claim — that the framing is doing persuasive work.

Merriam-Webster is cited as the dictionary of record: where an entry defines a word rather than a position, a dictionary is the primary source for it. The research usage described above is this lexicon’s own reading.

Related terms

• Abbreviation
• Abstract
• Abstraction
• Academic Database
• Analysis
• Annotation

From the AJG lexicon archive (July 2026).