[Narrative Argumentation in Political Letters to the Editor]

How and why are narratives used for argumentation in contemporary political letters to the editor? In order to find answers to this question, I examine about 50 letters to the editor from Swiss and German daily newspapers, all of which are related to COVID-19. In all letters, the writer presents an argument by telling a story. It turns out that the story usually serves as a premise for an argument from example in an argumentation with an evaluative standpoint. For the writers, unfolding such a premise as a narrative has the advantage that they can successively convey an evaluation together with the exemplary event. A socio-cultural benefit of such narrative arguments from example might be that they can easily connect the social micro-level with the societal macro-level in political debates.