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An Overview of RNT Coding
Root Narrative Theory was developed to explain how individuals and groups can get locked into seemingly un-winnable arguments about abuses of power and how to remedy them.
Learning how to identify one of the four RNT worldviews—securitarian, libertarian, egalitarian, and digniftarian—can be one step toward helping people diagnose where their worldviews are not aligning and develop strategies to overcome these narrative impasses.
This guide is meant to help you sharpen your ability to identify when one of the four major root narratives—or the twelve sub-narratives that make up these worldviews—are in play, so that you can go out into the world and begin using RNT in your own research, analysis, and practice.
To begin identifying root narratives, you first need to know what data your are working with. Whether a political speech, a newspaper article, an award-winning documentary, or an everyday conversation about a political or social issue, you can find root narratives almost everywhere.
When you are analyzing a text, first look for the “codable content” (Simmons, 2020a, p. 9). The codable content corresponds to the parts of the text that convey whichever of the twelve sub-narratives is at play. Identifying the root narrative content of these codable sections will allow you to build a root narrative profile of the text, represented as percentages of the document dedicated to the different root narratives.
According to Simmons (2020a), the purpose of the root narrative profile is to provide “a portrait of the working worldview of the author of the text” (p. 9). It is, in a sense, a diagnostic tool that can help you identify how the author of the text views certain political and social issues, and then, based on that understanding, to develop conflict resolution and peacebuilding strategies that are informed by this analysis.
A few things to keep in mind when analyzing your data:
- Not every text will be 100% codable data. There will likely be whole sentences, and sometimes even whole paragraphs, that don’t seem to be conveying any particular root narrative.
- While sometimes whole sentences and paragraphs will have only one root narrative, it’s also possible to see a combination of any of the twelve sub-narratives in the same sentence or paragraph.
- You will need to decide your unit of analysis. Are you coding sentences? Paragraphs? Are there cases where a specific word is so strong that it can be coded all on its own? Whatever you decide, the most important thing is to choose a system that works for you, and to be consistent with it in all the texts you are analyzing for a particular project.
Identifying the Twelve Sub-Narratives
The best way to develop precision in building a root narrative profile of an author/text is to analyze it for the presence of one of the twelve sub-narratives of the four larger worldviews.
| Securitarian |
| Defense |
| Unity |
| Stability |
| Libertarian |
| Consent |
| Property |
| Merit |
| Egalitarian |
| Reciprocity |
| Nation |
| Accountability |
| Dignitarian |
| Recognition |
| Liberation |
| Inclusion |
Remember, each of these sub-narratives can be typified as some permutation of the following sentence: “The Victim is abused by the Villain.” Thus, there are multiple ways to identify which root narrative a piece of text is conveying. You can identify the victim, you can identify the villain, and/or you can identify the specific abuse of power at work.
| Sub-Narrative | THE SECURITARIAN WORLDVIEW |
| Defense | “Innocent Civilians are threatened by Dangerous Enemies.” |
| Unity | “Innocent Civilians are threatened by Selfish Elites.” |
| Stability | “Innocent Civilians are threatened by the Ignorant Masses.” |
| Sub-Narrative | THE LIBERTARIAN WORLDVIEW |
| Consent | “Rational Citizens are coerced by the Bad King.” |
| Property | “Rational Citizens are coerced by the Ignorant Masses.” |
| Merit | “Rational Citizens are coerced by Dangerous Enemies.” |
| Sub-Narrative | THE EGALITARIAN WORLDVIEW |
| Reciprocity | “The Virtuous People are cheated by the Selfish Elites.” |
| Nation | “The Virtuous People are cheated by Dangerous Enemies.” |
| Accountability | “The Virtuous People are cheated by the Bad King.” |
| Sub-Narrative | THE DIGNITARIAN WORLDVIEW |
| Recognition | “Undaunted Outgroups are disrespected by the Ignorant Masses.” |
| Liberation | “Undaunted Outgroups are disrespected by the Bad King.” |
| Inclusion | “Undaunted Outgroups are disrespected by the Selfish Elites.” |
Coding a Text with RNT
There are multiple ways to use the pithy sentences above to code a text and find its root narrative(s).
You can identify the victim/hero, and see which category they might fall into (i.e., “Innocent Civilians,” “Rational Citizens,” “The Virtuous People,” or “Undaunted Outgroups.)
You can identify the villain (i.e.,”The Bad King,” “The Selfish Elites,” “The Ignorant Masses,” or “Dangerous Enemies”).
Finally, you can identify the specific abuse of power that has taken place. Is there a threat to physical security? A coercion of individual liberties? A cheating of the masses? A disrespect of the so-called “Other”?
Let’s take the following excerpt as an example:
The problem lay buried, unspoken for many years in the minds of American women. It was a strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction, a yearning that women suffered in the middle of the twentieth century in the United States. Each suburban housewife struggled with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night, she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question— ‘Is this all?’
Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (1963)
This quote might initially seem difficult to code, not least beacuse it feels like we’ve been dropped right into the middle of the action. But, just by looking for the victim/hero, antagonist, and abuse of power—both explicit and implicit—we can begin to identify its root narrative.
Who is the victim (who we can also consider our hero)? It’s right there in the first sentence: “American women.” We can notice right away that we have identified a group, rather than an individual, as our victim/hero. As we read through the text, we can see that American women are being positioned as a marginalized group in the United States. Therefore, they are an “Undaunted Outgroup.” So, we are in the presence of a dignitarian narrative.
However, which dignitarian narrative? Recognition? Liberation? Inclusion? We will need to look at the villain and the abuse of power to get a better idea.
Out villain is difficult to identify, because there is no explicit antagonist in this excerpt. Sometimes, a crucial piece of the narrative will be missing. We’ll have to infer based on what other information is available.
So instead, we can look to the abuse of power. Our victim/hero is suffering from “a strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction, a yearning”—but what for? By the end of the paragraph, we have a better idea. Our victim/hero seems to be locked into a routinized life that is bounded by actions revolving around her household, children, and husband. And this life is leaving our victim/hero yearning from something beyond its current boundaries, boundaries that are implied to be in place because of our victim/hero’s membership in an “undaunted outgroup” (i.e., American women).
So, what our victim/hero is suffering from is a lack of inclusion in life beyond the boundaries of the family, a lack of inclusion that is predicated on our victim/hero being a woman.
Thus, even though we don’t have an explicit villain, from the victim/hero and the abuse of power alone, we can begin to understand that we are in presence of an inclusion narrative.
As this example demonstrates, some texts will be easier to code than others. Texts that have a clear victim/hero, villain, and abuse of power will be easier to code than those in which these elements are implicit.
However, once you spend time with texts that demonstrate how these three elements can be figured into many different root narratives, you will begin to develop a sensitivity to the root narratives at play in the world around you.
Now, let’s dive into concrete examples of each of the twelve sub-narratives.
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