Narratives in a nutshell: capturing the communicative effects of topoi in political research

Abstract

In this article we argue that the study of topoi can enrich our analysis of political discourses. We first introduce the rhetorical tool of the topos and explain how it relates to political narrative. To illustrate the role of topoi in communicative action, we draw on a research project on citizens’ conceptions of fairness, reciprocity and solidarity in the European Union, based on focus group discussions. From the transcripts of these focus groups we select and analyze a range of topoi that participants resorted to. We characterize some topoi as ‘universal’ as they occurred frequently across countries and sociodemographic groups. Others seemed to be more specific to certain countries or scenarios. We suggest that as ‘narratives in a nutshell’, topoi can offer speakers an alternative to storylines with chronological ordering but also a nucleus from which more complex narrative structures can emerge.