Abstract
This essay argues that narratives or stories are an essential communication mechanism that define the differences between two conflicting groups, especially in asymmetric conflicts. Stories told during conflict resolution experiences are typically assumed to be subjective and emotional versions of reality, but I argue that stories function as arguments. Stories provide a foundation for reasons and are used as evidence to justify positions; this makes them fundamentally argumentative in nature. Interaction data from various Israeli–Palestinian dialogue groups are used to display turns at talk that illustrate the functioning of narratives as arguments during deliberation.
They focus on asymmetric conflicts, which are wars or disagreements between nations engaged in war whose relative military power, resources, and strategies differ significantly. More specifically, they focus on “troubled or distorted relationship between the adversaries” as the base cause of asymmetric conflicts. In such cases, they write that narratives are important because they attach personal experience to broader ideological stances, but also warns that narrative transformation is particularly difficult because of the deeply embedded stories that are a mythical representation of “truth”, and these truths must be confronted for reconciliation or justice to emerge.
The author frames storytelling as a fundamental form of argument by asserting that narratives are not merely subjective or emotional expressions, but structured communication mechanisms used to justify positions and provide evidence for claims. The paper articulates this framing through three mechanisms:
- Evidence and Justification: narratives function as arguments because they interpret evidence to explain a specific version of reality. In this context, personal experiences serve as the “data” or empirical truth that supports a broader political or ideological “claim”.
- Structural Alignment: the author maps storytelling to Toulmin’s model of argumentation. A story provides the data (e.g., a history of expulsion), which supports a claim (e.g., the other side is responsible for suffering), connected by a warrant (the personal experience connecting the history to the claim).
- Presumptive Reasoning: unlike formal logic, storytelling operates as “conversational argument” based on presumptive reasoning. This relies on pragmatics and context to reach conclusions that are statistically defensible to the speaker, even if not logically required.