A GROUNDED THEORY APPROACH TO ANALYZING POLITICAL NARRATIVES

• Main Author: Swift, Dylan Joseph
• Other Authors: Paul R. Dokecki
• Format: Others
• Language: en
• Published: VANDERBILT 2009
• Subjects: Community Research and Action
• Online Access: http://etd.library.vanderbilt.edu//available/etd-03242009-154136/

Much ink has been spilled over the question of whether or not there is a culture war going on in the United States between religious conservatives and liberals (Hunter, 1991). This thesis examines the possibility of cultural war through an in-depth investigation of how morality and values affect peoples larger political narratives. Specifically, I use the grounded theory method (Corbin & Strauss, 2008) to develop a theoretical model of how political narratives form and develop. From this analysis, I found that beliefs, values, and emotional sentiments are the three super-ordinate categories from which political narratives take shape. First, I show how these categories, taken together, are the basic building blocks of a persons political narrative at any given time. Second, I show how these categories interact with a persons context to lead to the development of a political narrative across time. After examining the importance of beliefs, values, and emotional sentiments in the general case, I explore two political narratives in extensive detail. Through this exploration I show how these categories combine to create political narrative in specific instances. Finally, I use the information learned through this analysis to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of two prominent theoretical accounts of morality and politics and morality, one offered by Jonathan Haidt (2007), the other by George Lakoff (2002).