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A Blumerian Approach to Storytelling
Author(s) -
Cousineau Matthew J.
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
symbolic interaction
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.874
H-Index - 47
eISSN - 1533-8665
pISSN - 0195-6086
DOI - 10.1002/symb.518
Subject(s) - storytelling , symbolic interactionism , narrative , sociology , construct (python library) , context (archaeology) , epistemology , social psychology , psychology , linguistics , social science , computer science , history , philosophy , archaeology , programming language
Blumer's work on life histories and symbolic interactionism represents an important contribution in the twenty‐first century. I join his work with research on storytelling to build a Blumerian approach to storytelling. This approach holds that social actors use stories to construct subjective meanings, stories exist in some social context, stories are told or written for some audience, a wide range of social processes produce stories, the temporal sequence of storytelling audiences is important, social actors use interactional techniques of showing story preferences, and symbolic structures and narrative linkages are the resources social actors use to compose stories. Future research can continue to develop this approach.