It is interesting because narrative texts are very attractive for the public and in a course of science communication some professors recommended me to use them. However, they probably have more befits to the public that only being attractive.
Do you know about studies or methods to evaluate this?
Hola Isai,
First, I know this is not exactly what you look for, but it may help anyways because it is actually my own experience. I often pass/buy this book to my doctoral students: http://www.amazon.com/Clases-literatura-Berkeley-Spanish-Edition/dp/6071128714
I see the problem of "Communication in Science" as one part of a larger problem: "the Communication of Ideas". Cortazar described in this book (implicitly or explicitly) several methods to approach the problem of communicating ideas. Clarity, text lenght, writting process, the power of grammar, etc. I've found this book has the power to teach young scientists to communicate in a very effective and friendly way by making them to think/reason about it.
Second, narrative long texts are fun and instructive (for me) IF they are well written. But most Editorials normally tend to compress them to their minimal expression in order to save time, space and costs. However, today, with so many electronic literature, space is less and less important. I enjoy working with the long narrative style of naturalists like Darwin, D'Orbigny, Humboldt, etc. but that kind of style is almost impossible to publish now for a normal scientist, even in a book.
I hope this helps. If possible, please give us an example of the "narrative texts" you were reading, so we can have a better idea. I will be expectant of what other people have to say about your interesting question.
Abrazos
Thank you very much for the book Alejandro, I will read it. I am sure it will help me a lot to improve my writing, because I am also interested on writing narratives for communicate science, but I need to learn a lot about narratives.
About the example. One that I like very much is “Crabs on the island”, by Anatoly Dneprov (http://www.arvindguptatoys.com/arvindgupta/15r.pdf). It is a tale that talk about Darwin’s evolution theory. Other example is the book “Microbe hunters” by Paul de Kruif, I think this book is also very good.
This two examples are different because the first one is fiction and the second one not, it has real experiences. However, both are narrative and I think that they can communicate science to the public. But, how we can evaluate that? And what other benefits can bring this kind of texts to science communication? Are some questions that come to my mind.
Thank you again.
The first texts I read on the narratives of science were written by Jerome Bruner (Narrative of Science; The Narrative Construal of Reality). You find find them as chapters in his book The Culture of Education. In my minds they are still inspiring.
The curiosity about Charles Berg's words (I thank him very much) led me to these links:
http://www.semiootika.ee/sygiskool/tekstid/bruner.pdf
http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~wlabov/L470/Bruner_1991.pdf
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