Abstract This article discusses the use of so-called “family narratives” in political discourse by analysing critically the way opposition leaders have resorted to this type of narratives in the United Kingdom. It is argued that family narratives represent a discursive gateway out of the political wilderness and back into contention for national leadership. They enable politicians to convey positive values that serve a three-fold process: the elaboration of a powerful ethos, the modernisation of their party and the rebranding of their party as a caring political organisation. Within a CDA framework, we analyse the relevance of family narratives in political communication and how they help opposition leaders reconnect emotionally with voters, after long spells in the wilderness. This is why we focus specifically on Tony Blair, David Cameron and Keir Starmer. The article also reveals how those narratives are instrumental in a new conception of masculinity and leadership in the UK.

Abstract Due to limitations in data and methodologies, few quantitative analyses have been conducted on large-scale personal narratives. This paper addresses this gap by quantifying the semantic progression of personal narratives on Twitter and examining its relationship with narrative success. Our findings reveal significant variations in the factors influencing the success of personal narratives in politics, entertainment, and sports categories. This study deepens our understanding of the semantic characteristics and success of personal narratives, inspiring further exploration into the influence of the characteristics and success of personal narratives on self-identity.

Historically, there has been a certain resistance among narratologists and other scholars of narrative to the instrumentalization of their insights and findings (Moenandar & O'Connor, 2024, pp. 182-183). Within the field, the discussion of if and how narratology can be 'applied' has mostly centered on whether it is possible to move from "developing general models of narrative"the task that narratology originally set itselfto "proposing tools and justification paths for interpretation"developing, in other words, a 'toolkit' for analyzing and interpreting stories (Korthals Altes, 2014, p. 91). While, as Korthals Altes has argued, those who see the former as narratology's main purpose have tended to have a certain disdain for the latter, narratologists on the whole seem to have shied away even more emphatically from the possibility that narratology could provide methods for the production and improvement of and critical reflection on storytelling practices in various professional fieldswhich nowadays range from, say, scriptwriting to coaching, from marketing to change management. This, however, is changing. Increasingly, there is an interest on the side of those involved in the academic study of narrative to see how the insights and findings of their research could have an impact on narrative practices, and there is a growing number of examples of how this can be done successfully in medicine, education, criminology, marketing, public policy, etc. Even generative artificial intelligencein the form of so-called large language modelshas been discussed as a "computationally intensive form of applied poetics" (Finn, 2024, p. 251). What is still lacking, however, is a real and systematic institutionalization of a feedback loop between general theories of narrative and narrative practices. A lack of, in other words, an applied narratology, a field analogous to e.g. applied psychology or applied linguistics, which has been characterized as "a research project that aims to understand language-related problems identified […] in non-specialist language practice" and as "the theoretical and empirical investigation of real-world prob-

Abstract This paper advances the field of narratives by focusing on the narratives of personal experience disclosed by students with mental health conditions, in particular depression, anxiety and borderline personality disorder, in medical consultations. I draw on sociolinguistic and discourse-analytic approaches to the analysis of narratives in interaction, viewing language as a tool for constructing social reality, and examine the content, structural properties and functions of the stories (Labov & Waletzky, 1967; De Fina & Georgakopoulou, 2011). Engaging in self-disclosure and sharing stories of stressful and traumatic experience in medical consultations allows the students (1) to explain symptoms and interpret causes of their current health problems, (2) manage accountability, and (3) confront and cope with their painful experience and stigma.

Abstract Individuals and groups construct identity through storytelling. Sometimes individuals use these to remember past events and group narratives to foster a sense of belonging. The individual and group interact and build relationships through shared memory. The present paper examines the mediatic representations of individual perceptions of the Holocaust in @eva.stories that evoke, revive, and revitalize Holocaust collective memory. Based on Multimodal Discourse Analysis, we analyzed and organized the findings according to the following communication categories: content, mode, and medium. Using Instagram to enliven Eva’s storytelling creates a unique duality between the audience and the implicit story content‎. Consequently, multimodal storytelling via Instagram bridges the historical past to the present generation. We conclude that the collective memory’s retelling and preservation constantly change due to cultural and political contexts. Consequently, as today’s online environments are a crucial sphere of discourse, online spaces play a role in creating, maintaining, and spreading collective memories.

Abstract Turkey is the largest refugee host country in the world with about 3.5 million registered Syrian refugees. In this study, we explored intergroup relations between Syrian refugees and Turks in Turkey. We focused on how Turkish people perceived Syrian refugees in Turkey and how these two groups interacted daily. We used an adaptation of McAdams’ Life Story Interview and asked questions about Syrian refugees in the Turkish context. Using this open-ended, qualitative interviewing technique allowed us to understand how Turks and Syrians interacted on a daily basis and what shaped Turkish people’s perceptions about refugees. We conducted a narrative analysis based on agency and communion themes. Results showed that age of participant was negatively correlated with communion, whereas education of participant was positively correlated with agency. Agency and communion positively correlated with each other. Narratives reflected a range of reflections Turkish citizens had about the large influx of Syrian refugees.

Abstract Recent work in environmental philosophy has uncoupled the notion of agency from the human domain, arguing that the efficacy of nonhuman entities and processes can also be construed as a form of “agency.” In this paper, we study discursive constructions of nonhuman agency as they appear in a set of interviews revolving around fictional narratives. The participants were asked to read microfiction engaging with the nonhuman perspectives of entities such as a melting glacier or an endangered tree species. The analysis of the interviews centers on “complex” attributions of nonhuman agency – that is, attributions that involve a combination of agencies attributed to the nonhuman. We show that these complex attributions emerge more frequently in discussing the story (what we call the “storytalk”) than elsewhere in the interviews. We also explore the way in which such complex constructions of nonhuman agency challenge widespread assumptions about the natural world.