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Sociology Research

 

Stephen Jolly (2024)

A graduate of Christ's College, Cambridge, Stephen is a narratologist with a background in sociolinguistics and classical rhetoric. He has attended the Universities of Sussex, King's College, London, and British Columbia, Vancouver where he was a Canadian Commonwealth Scholar and Killam Predoctoral Fellow. A former Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge (2005-17) and St Edmund's College, Cambridge (2017-24), he has also held Fellowships at the Cambridge Judge Business School, RAND Europe, the UK Defence Academy and King's College London. 

Research Interests

Stephen is interested in the social construction of storytelling from both the ethnomethodological and narratological perspectives.

Research Projects

Stephen's research focuses on how people tell stories in attempt to reconcile the methodological tensions that exist between text-based and context-based approaches to narrative analysis/narrative practice, narrative work/narrative environments.

Teaching

Available for teaching.

Publications

"Text or context: Ostman’s theory of persuasion," Journal of Communication Management, 1999

This paper argues that it is possible to make a scientific analysis of the process of persuasion as a function of the language used in any social interaction rather than merely the context in which that interaction takes place. In other words, persuasion is a rhetorical as much as a sociolinguistic phenomenon and persuasive language in itself constitutes a distinct register or style of speech. 

Job Title:
Story-telling in Action: Reconciling Narrative Analysis, Practice, Work and Environments, Supervisor: Prof Darin Weinberg
Photograph of Stephen Jolly
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Study at Cambridge

About the University

Research at Cambridge