Preparing for the deployment of ready-made stories in social interaction

Reflexivity and narrative practices in professional communication

Bibliographic Data

ID11294053
AuthorsGilles Merminod (0000-0002-8447-2800, University of Lausanne , Lausanne , Switzerland, corresponding author)
Year2023
Volume42
Issue6
Pages855-874
Publication date2023-11-27
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueMultilingua (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0167-8507 • E-ISSN: 1613-3684
PublisherWalter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE)
DOI10.1515/multi-2022-0096
OpenAlexW4367311007
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited62

Since the nineties, the idea that narratives are essential for an efficient communication has massively spread in management, marketing and politics, supported by the profuse publication of storytelling guides and criticized by a number of social commentators. Nevertheless, little is known about how reflexive activities specific to professional communication partake in the visibility and solidification of this specific way of conceiving the use of stories. Drawing on semiotic-inspired works in linguistic anthropology, studies on talk-in-interaction and narrative analysis, this article analyzes how reflexive activities contribute to the construction of specific conceptions of what narratives are and what they do in professional communication. To achieve this, the article relies on a single case study that details the kind of ready-made stories and contextualization devices a storytelling guide provides for its readers. The analysis shows that the storytelling guide builds up a cultural model that is both archiving past narrative situations (a model-of action) and potentially generating new narrative situations (a model-for action). By doing so, the storytelling guide not only singles out specific communicative resources but also fuels a metapragmatic model in which accomplished storytellers are at the top of the social structure

Action (physics · Aesthetics · Art · Contextualization · Epistemology · Linguistics · Literature · Narrative · Narrative inquiry · Reflexivity · Semiotics · Social science · Sociology · Storytelling · Discourse Analysis in Language Studies · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition

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Open DOIOpen Access