ABSTRACT
When I meet new people I try to speak as little as possible. This is not because I am naturally a shy or passive person. I keep quiet because I want to listen—not only to what my interlocutors have to say, but also to how they say it. The way they tailor past and future, their points of views, the people they mention, the wording they use—all of these and more are cues that help me to get to know them better by listening to their stories. But it is not only individuals who have stories to tell. Our society is permeated with stories told by groups, institutions, firms, families, cities and countries, and other social actors. These stories can vary in content, form, or goals, but the benefits of listening to them remain. This book is about the value of listening to stories. Most of us can appreciate the benefits of being a powerful storyteller, but we tend to underestimate the advantages of being a powerful story-listener. This book seeks to help its readers to improve their story-listening skills by providing a systematic framework for the analysis of the variety of narratives that emerge and proliferate in the social domain, by contrast with the fictional ones that have been the focus of literary analyses.
