COMM 386: Narratives, politics, PoMo and buzzwords

Here's a fun game anyone can play. How many times do you catch the punditocracy talking about the "narrative" of a campaign? Here's Howard Kurtz of The Washington Post: "[Sarah Palin] has mounted an assault on the narrative of this election ..."

And here's Peggy Noonan, a former speechwriter for President Reagan who writes a very interesting conservative column for The Wall Street Journal, who she didn't know the TV mike was on when she said: "[Is Palin] [t]he most qualified? No. I think they went for this, excuse me, political bullshit about narratives."

Let's keep looking for this buzzword. It's trendy. It sounds postmodern (or "PoMo," if you really, really like buzzwords). It has its origins in marketing. Or not.

Here's what a considerably more humble commentator said about political narratives back in January.

And here's what an British writer I never heard of before has to say about it:

Narrative’ is a marketing buzzword, and it still has some leverage because it has only been doing the rounds for a few years.

It is a response to people’s growing resistance to marketing of all kinds. They are exposed to subtle and clever messages almost all the time they breathe: they don’t trust slogans, they ignore advertisements – but they do listen to stories.

It's by David Boyle, a freelance author who stood for Parliament on the Liberal Democrats' ticket. Let's try out the idea. Let's read Boyle's column "In search of a political narrative" and see if it fits what's happening on this side of the pond.