Political ‘talk’ often falls into one of two camps. In the first, academic camp, deliberative democrats often write about, well, deliberating. A style of communication that, while having diversified a great deal lately, is often still tied to Habermas’s famous notion of, “the forceless force of the better argument”. In other words, deliberation, or at least ideal deliberation, is a rational procedure emphasizing the giving and taking of reasons. The second, colloquial camp, encompasses the vitriolic partisanship that has overtaken at least American politics. Talking heads and increasingly politicians/representatives themselves engage in the pandering, click baity, sound bite style ‘debate’ that seems to either filter down to citizens or drive them away from politics altogether.

Underappreciated in this political talk category is storytelling. Often left out of ideal deliberation due to it’s ability to manipulate, and out of partisan bickering because it isn’t nearly so sound-bite-able, stories from many points in a democratic system are underanalyzed and undervalued. This project aims to remedy that gap. By leveraging examples from multiple places in our democracy: political campaigns, legislative sessions, ordinary citizens, Supreme Court hearings, and social media platforms, I aim to provide a framework for analyzing political stories that are epistemically productive for contemporary democracies.