Narrative Reasoning and Analogy: The Untold Story

Abstract

This article examines the relationship between narrative reasoning, or storytelling, and analogical reasoning. It advances similar goals of contributors to the Applied Legal Storytelling community, but it does so in a different way. Rather than argue for greater respect for storytelling and recognition of its persuasive prowess, it suggests that efforts to elevate storytelling may be further reinforcing a dichotomy that itself is fundamentally flawed. Such efforts to force this dichotomy simultaneously miss an opportunity to champion narrative reasoning from precisely the opposite direction: by exploring just how many, if not most, forms of reasoning actually depend on narrative.