This chapter lays the foundational framework for the relation between language, culture, and identity. Through an analogy, it illuminates the developmental parallels between heritage language and the rhizomatic growth of bamboo. Introducing the method of serial narrative ethnography, it underscores the significance of narrative knowing across the lifespan as a means for scientific understanding and the power of multiple stories through voices. It also presents an outline of the book.

The distinction that has become standard between natural language and formal language, which rests on differentiating what is socially evolved and experiential from what is purposefully planned, suggests that a similar emphasis on experientiality may illuminate the distinction between narrative and formal modes of knowing, which figures prominently in this volume. Support for that perspective comes from developments in both narratology and computational linguistics. A key concept from both specialties – and for this volume – is that of ‘scripts’, which indicates how even texts that are explicitly formal may be understood as narratives by experienced readers. An explicit example that illuminates these themes comes from James Clerk Maxwell’s classic paper ‘On Faraday’s Lines of Force’. It juxtaposes narrative and formal modes of representation and displays their relative advantages, suggesting that the development of scientific knowledge often depends on continual feedback between natural narrative and formal analysis.