psychonarration

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/ˌsaɪkoʊnærəˈeɪʃən/

noun

A narrative technique used by a narrator to represent a character's consciousness or inner thoughts, often characterized by smooth transitions between the narrator's own commentary and transcriptions of the character's internal mental states.

Scrabble 25

Meanings

nounpsychonarration (countable and uncountable, plural psychonarrations)

plural psychonarrations

  1. countableuncountablehuman sciencesA narrative technique used by a narrator to represent a character's consciousness or inner thoughts, often characterized by smooth transitions between the narrator's own commentary and transcriptions of the character's internal mental states.

    Lawrence's psychonarrations of nonverbal states differ from Joyce's and Woolf's inner monologues of verbal thought.

    2005, Charles Michael Burack, D. H. Lawrence’s Language of Sacred Experience: The Transfiguration of the Reader, Palgrave Macmillan New York, →ISBN
    1 more example

    In examining the linguistic relationship between narrated monologue, psychonarration, and quoted monologue, Cohn identifies the distinctive grammatical features which differentiate narrated monologue from the other two modes: tense and person separate it from quoted monologue, the absence of mental verbs (the equivalent in the realm of thought, of inquit phrases in speech) such as "he thought" (and the resulting grammatical independence) separates it from psychonarration.

    1998, Adre Marshall, The Turn Of The Mind: Constituting Consciousness in Henry James, Bloomsbury Academic, →ISBN, page 67

Origin

  1. Latinnarrātiō“narrative, narration”
  2. Ancient Greekψυχή“mind, soul”
  3. Englishpsychonarration

From psycho- (“mind”) + narration, from Ancient Greek ψυχή (psukhḗ, “mind, soul”) and Latin narrātiō (“narrative, narration”).

Full word history & related roots →
Cite this entry
APA

psychonarration. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/psychonarration

MLA

“psychonarration.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/psychonarration. Accessed November 3, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “psychonarration,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/psychonarration.

Source: psychonarration on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.