How Do Stories Convince Us? Notes Towards A Rhetoric of Narrative

Abstract

This essay posits the conceptual rudiments of "rhetoric of narrative." Approaching contemporary narrative theory according to the classical trivium, the essay explores what and how stories mean and argue. It focuses on the relevance and value of the rhetorical tradition for illuminating distinctive features of a "rhetoric of narrative," showing how a "rhetoric" of narrative builds upon a "grammar" and a "logic" of narrative. Ultimately the essay posits that narratives can be positioned at some point along a continuum represented by poles roughly characterized as "aesthetic" and "ideological," with propagandistic argument lying at the latter extreme. The chief literary example for applying the conceptual distinctions emerging from our investigations is George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Investigating pragma-rhetorical strategies utilized by American commencement speakers to motivate graduates for managing future opportunities and challenges

“…Evaluation answers the question: "So what?". Coda marks the end of the storytelling discourse (Rodden, 2008;Tindale, 2017;Tracy & Robles, 2013).…”

Stories or Expositive Messages? Comparing Their Effectiveness in Corporate Social Responsibility Communication

“…Expositive (semantic, rational, or nonnarrative) perspectives on communication include “self-evident propositions, demonstrations, proofs, and verbal expressions of certain and probable knowing” (Weick & Browning, 1986, p. 246). Thus, exposition is mainly based on the description (Rodden, 2008) of rational arguments, statistics, numbers, names, and facts (Kaufman, 2003). Expositive messages do not go any deeper into the reality behind those numbers and they avoid emotional connotations as much as possible (Lewis & Sznitman, 2017).…”

The Transcendental Argument of the Novel

“…We may take Nussbaum to be alleging that The Golden Bowl ’s plot and character development is believable, and the quotation illustrates what is not all that uncommon: a vague, undeveloped recognition of the transcendental structure of the argument of a novel. Here is another example: Rodden (2008: 155) says ‘in more didactic novels such as George Orwell's 1984 , we are often aware of a presence arranging and evaluating ideas and characters in building a convincing argument’. I am trying to shed some light on how characters can be ‘arranged’ into an argument (which refers to level (ii))—not, trivially, how the speeches of characters, for example, sometimes overtly state arguments (which refers to level (i)).…”

“…For example, he sees Aldous Huxley's Brave New World as an ‘implicit’ reductio ad absurdum , where the supposition is that society is ‘organized along the lines dictated by hedonistic utilitarianism’ (360). Alternatively, some take certain fictional narratives to exhibit the structure of analogical argument (e.g., Rodden 2008; Hunt 2009; Olmos 2014; and Warner 2016). For instance, Rodden proposes that there is an ‘enthymematic .…”