First session (13:00-15:00) | Back to programme
By Stefan Iversen
The present-day media landscape is saturated with accusatory stories about mistreatment, wrongdoings and breaches of decorum: Accusations against someone's character or ethos seem omnipresent, fueled by and in turn themselves fueling, the shareable and spreadable qualities of digital networked communication. One notable example would be the #metoo-movement. In classical rhetoric, the accusation or kategoria was considered tied to an act of telling a story. In accusing someone for a breach of policy or character, the narrative of how that breach came about was key. This vital connection between accusation and narrative, however, has not been developed by contemporary approaches in narrative theory or rhetorical criticism; works on how narratives negotiate meaning and value have not looked at accusations, and the surprisingly sparse work done on accusations has not looked at the roles played by narratives. Drawing on work done in collaboration with Rebekka Lykke Nørremark, this paper sets out to probe the relationship between accusatory speech acts, the negotiations of values, and the telling of stories, using examples from contemporary public discourse.
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