Narratives in (digital) political discourse

Call for a Special Issue (Autumn 2026)

Editorial committee: Melissa Martin-Kemel (Lyon 3 Jean Moulin University), Bérengère Lafiandra (Lyon 3 Jean Moulin University), Alma-Pierre Bonnet (Lyon 3 Jean Moulin University).

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Operating within the fields of narratology, political studies and discourse analysis, this special issue of Elad Silda aims to contribute to our understanding of how narratives frame the political debate today. As “one verbal technique for recapitulating past experience” (Labov & Waletzky 1967: 13), narratives constitute a cognitive activity (De Fina & Georgakopoulou, 2012: 5) that is partly subjective and may have an emotional (Reisigl 2021) and persuasive (Polletta 2006) effect on the story recipient. This perlocutionary effect of the narrative format makes it highly relevant to the study of political discourse.

Scholars have long recognised the special relationship between narratives and politics (De Fina 2017; Seargeant 2020). Atkins and Finlayson (2012) explain that, over the past 40 years, narratives have become ubiquitous in political rhetoric. Shenhav (2006) defines a “political narrative” as “one that emerges from a formal political forum, such as a parliament, a cabinet, party meetings or political demonstrations, or as narrative produced by politicians and public officials in the course of their duties”. De Fina (2017) claims that there are two main trends for the study of such narratives, and these will constitute the main axes of the special issue, though other approaches can be envisaged:

  • One trend is interested in the “master narratives” underpinning political discourse, which reveal the “overarching structures that underlie and organize discourse and interpretation” (De Fina 2017). These narratives influence the way our brains interpret political issues and thus frame the way we perceive reality (Seargeant 2020). Political debate can thus be envisaged as a battle of narratives (Spencer and Oppermann, 2020) in which the ultimate goal is to effectively “control the narrative”. Papers dealing with the construction of such narratives, with ways of assessing their influence, or with specific methodologies for their study as well as the integration of the concept of narrative into existing discourse analysis frameworks, as proposed by Forchtner (2020) for instance, are welcome. The analysis of narrative boundaries (Cordero and Frei 2024) and the creation of discursive identities, by celebrating the in-group and denigrating the out-group (Wodak 2015), are also of great interest to this issue.

  • The other approach deals with political narratives as “a set of everyday discourse practices” (De Fina 2017: 233), or anecdotes, which are favoured in political discourse today because they are “seen as representing a non-argumentative, more common-sense and therefore more grassroots inspired mode of conveying political views” (Ibid: 239). We invite contributors to discuss the discursive and emotional influence of such narratives on political communication in general but also on the construction of a powerful ethos for leaders who can depict themselves as caring about the lives of other people, or as having overcome difficulties – and learned from them – and thus as being entitled to the status of hero/ leader/ guide of a community.

In addition, many linguists (Wehling 2016; Richardson 2004; Reddy 1993; Palmer 1981) have contributed to our understanding of how narratives in political discourse make use of metaphors that shape both thought and communication in the political realm. Their works are fundamental for anyone interested in the intersection between linguistics, cognitive science, and political science, which is why all these topics may be addressed as well. In their classic study Metaphors We Live By (1980) Lakoff and Johnson highlighted how metaphors structure our understanding of complex political concepts. A generation later, Charteris-Black (2005; 2007) analyzed how political figures resort to metaphorical language to influence voters by “telling the right story”. Thus, proposals may wish to examine how metaphors nurture narratives in political discourse in salient examples of “master narratives”, “scenarios” (Musolff 2016), “anecdotes”, and political life-writing (memoir and biography) in the Internet age.

This special issue intends to question the persuasive power of narratives in political discourse and we therefore welcome theoretical as well as methodological proposals, but also case studies (UK and US 2024 elections, European elections, populist discourses in Spain, Italy, Germany, Turkey, China, etc.), which will broaden our understanding of this holistic and ubiquitous rhetorical device, and how it might constitute an important conveyor of political ideologies, often unnoticed or underestimated because of the narrative format. As a linguistic oriented journal, special attention will be given to the construction of the corpus, the theoretical framework and the methodology applied. Multimodal approaches and studies on digital communication will be particularly appreciated.

Submissions should include an abstract (300 to 500 words, excluding references) as well as a short biography and should be sent to:

Key dates:

Submission of abstract: 15 October 2025

Notification of acceptance: 30 October 2025

First version: 1 March 2026

Reviewing process: 30 April 2026

Final version: 30 September 2026

Publication: November 2026

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The journal ELAD – SILDA, Studies in Linguistics and Discourse Analysis, is intended as a forum for linguistics and discourse analysis from a multilingual perspective, based on the use of authentic data, especially corpora. It is an Open Access journal of linguistics, published by the Centre d’Études Linguistiques – Corpus, Discours et Sociétés of the Université Jean Moulin Lyon 3. It publishes original research articles in the field of linguistics and discourse analysis, after a process of double-blind peer-review.

For more information on the Aims & Scope, please refer to: https://publications-prairial.fr/elad-silda/index.php?id=984.

Language: English is favoured, but other languages can be used (Elad-Silda accepts articles in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Russian, Spanish and Ukrainian).

Bibliography

Atkins, J., & Finlayson, A. (2012, May 31). Show – don’t tell: Political rhetoric is increasingly anecdotal but not particularly artful. British Politics and Policy at LSE. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/show-dont-tell-political-speech-anecdotes/Charteris-Black, J. (2005). Politicians and Rhetoric: The Persuasive Power of Metaphor. Palgrave Macmillan.

Charteris-Black, J. (2007). The Communication of Leadership: The Design of Leadership Style. Routledge.

De Fina, A. (2017). Narrative Analysis. In The Routledge Handbook of Language and Politics (Ruth Wodak and Bernhard Forchtner, pp. 233–246). Routledge.

De Fina, A., & Georgakopoulou, A. (2011). Analyzing Narrative: Discourse and Sociolinguistic Perspectives (1st ed.). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139051255

Forchtner, B. (2020). Critique, Habermas and narrative (genre): the discourse-historical approach in critical discourse studies. Critical Discourse Studies, 18(3), 314–331. https://doi.org/10.1080/17405904.2020.1803093

Gabriel, Y. (2015). Narratives and Stories in Organizational Life. In A. De Fina & A. Georgakopoulou (Eds.), The Handbook of Narrative Analysis (1st ed., pp. 273–292). Wiley. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118458204.ch14

Johnson, M. (1987). The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination, and Reason. University of Chicago Press.

Labov, W., & Waletzky, J. (1997). Narrative Analysis: Oral Versions of Personal Experience1. Journal of Narrative and Life History, 7(1–4), 3–38. https://doi.org/10.1075/jnlh.7.02nar

Lakoff, G. (2002). Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think. University of Chicago Press.

Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors We Live By. University of Chicago Press.

Musolff, A. (2016). Political Metaphor Analysis. Bloomsbury.

Palmer, F. R. (1981). Semantics. Cambridge University Press.

Polletta, F. (2006). It Was Like a Fever: Storytelling in Protest and Politics. University of Chicago Press.

Reddy, M. J. (1993). The conduit metaphor: A case of frame conflict in our language about language. In A. Ortony (Ed.), Metaphor and Thought (2nd ed., pp. 164-201). Cambridge University Press. (Original work published in 1979)

Reisigl, M. (2021). ‘“‘Narrative!’” I can’t hear that anymore’. A linguistic critique of an overstretched umbrella term in cultural and social science studies, discussed with the example of the discourse on climate change. Critical Discourse Studies, 18(3), 368–386. https://doi.org/10.1080/17405904.2020.1822897

Richardson John E., (2004). (Mis)Representing Islam: The Racism and Rhetoric of British Broadsheet Newspapers, Amsterdam, John Benjamins.

Seargeant, P. (2020). The Art of Political Storytelling: Why Stories Win Votes in Post-truth Politics. Bloomsbury Academic.

Shenhav, S. R. (2006). Political Narratives and Political Reality. International Political Science Review, 27(3), 245–262. https://doi.org/10.1177/0192512106064474

Spencer, A., & Oppermann, K. (2020). Narrative genres of Brexit: The Leave campaign and the success of romance. Journal of European Public Policy, 27(5), 666–684. https://doi.org/10.1080/13501763.2019.1662828

Wehling, E. (2016). Politisches Framing: Wie eine Nation sich ihr Denken einredet – und daraus Politik macht. Herbert von Halem Verlag.

Wodak, R. (2020). The Politics of Fear: The Shameless Normalization of Far-right Discourse (2nd edition). Sage Publications Ltd.

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