TV 강연프로그램, 에 나타난 자기계발의 서사구조

Abstract

The phenomenon of self-improvement that occurs through various mass media today is not just a fad, rather has been rooted into various cultural contents. This, also, is having a strong influence on the Korean society in general. Self-cultivation becomes a necessary technique of survival in the modern capitalist society which structure is winner-takes-all. This self-cultivation lectures started from publications, to public lectures, and, in the end, spread quickly to the television. In the beginning, celebrities and star lecturers known as motivators, as well as life-coaches and mentors, who consider themselves advisers, did teach about self-cultivation to viewers. What, however, is special about these TV lectures these days is that not only celebrities but also comparatively ordinary and unknown people in the society can engage the audience with various stories and important topics. But even though these ones were not celebrities, they have achieved some degree of success. This fact is the common denominator among these speakers, and has lead to me wondering that: “We may be getting the right motivation messages from self-cultivation lectures.” Especially, these days, lectures contain touching stories and personal success stories when compared with past when stories often focused on knowledges and sharing. Therefore, such change in the character of the lectures has been repeated along with the general social change. And it of starts from wondering about the logic of self-cultivation through the stories of the lecturers. The that aired in KBS1 was popular as a program on self-cultivation which used a variety of stories based on authentic events, even though the speakers were not celebrities or professionals. So, this study selects 80 lectures of the early part of the as a subject of analysis, and tries to find out the narrative structure used in them, and what meaning and value they contain. The purpose of this study is to find out the character and logic of self-cultivation through the lecture series . The lecture on TV is a narrative. For this reason, this study employed Chatman’s narrative theory for analysis. More concretely, the study has focused on the discussion between ‘Events’ created in the structure of storytelling and a causal relationship about the events, and ‘Existents’ which focus on the background and relationship of the characters. Syntagmatic and paradigmatic analysis, which are semiological analyses, are utilized to check into what is the binary opposition value of the root of action/s between the characters. The analysis shows that through the syntagmatic analysis some subjects that imply value for self-cultivation and success are shown. Also, through narrative structure of ‘introduce-development-turn-conclusion’, it is shown that if one exerts effort, one can, by oneself, as is ‘typical of the narratives’, overcome difficult situations or have satisfaction. Second, the paradigmatic analysis shows the distinction between ‘people who overcome voluntary trials’ and ‘people who overcome involuntary trials’ irrespective of whether they made self-choice or not about the difficult situations. In voluntary trials’ subtypes they overcome their feelings of wandering-off by their own self will and overcome their own self discrimination as well as self prejudice. And in involuntary trials’ subtypes, they overcome poverty, overcome family suppression, overcome their self disability and overcome their illness. It is discovered that each of them has a conceptual binary opposition. The whole binary opposition can be seen in ‘Difficult situation vs Overcoming of same’ or ‘Lack vs Satisfaction’. Through the syntagmatic analysis and the paradigmatic analysis, this study draws four aspect of self-cultivation in one’s character. And from the result, it is seen that ‘one’s own choice’ and ‘one’s own sense of responsibility’, are the key message of self-cultivation found in . This means that each speaker personally as an entrepreneur is doing self-cultivation and showing how one surmount social and structural problems to achieve success. As a result, there is a sense of authenticity in the stories of the speakers on and they are understood with a feeling of empathy and motivation. But, the result of the narrative structure is inherently a ‘narrative of a hero’, which means that they always overcome a difficult situation. Besides, they just describe every problem as a personal problem, and never mention extant social or structural problems. In the end, the solution and reward from the stories are social reputations and economic success. In the light of this, the finding of this study points that self-cultivation is something one can achieve for a company or the society, rather than self-cultivation as something one can achieve truly for oneself.