The Source–path–goal Schema in the Autobiographical Journey Documentary

The source–path–goal schema is one of the most fundamental schemas governing human conceptualizing with regard to sense‐making (Johnson 1993 Johnson, M. 1993. Moral Imagination: Implications of Cognitive Science for Ethics, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]; Turner 1996 Turner, M. 1996. The Literary Mind, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. [Google Scholar]). Literally structuring the concept of the journey (involving a starting point, trajectory and destination), by extension it shapes our understanding of what constitutes a purposeful life (initial problems or ambition, actions, solution or achievement) and story (beginning, middle, end). Hitherto, discussions of this schema have almost exclusively focused on its verbal manifestations. This paper analyses three autobiographical documentaries in which the filmmaker undertakes a journey: Ross McElwee's Sherman's March (1986), Johan van der Keuken's De Grote Vakantie [The Long Holiday] (2001) and Frank Cole's Life Without Death (1999). The paper's aim is double‐edged: to demonstrate the necessity of studying the source–path–goal schema in multimodal, rather than just in purely verbal manifestations; and to show how the source–path–goal schema both enriches and constrains possible interpretations of the three documentaries under consideration. It is moreover claimed that, in the last resort, journey and quest levels are inevitably made subservient to the story level.