How to analyze identification in storytelling?

Abstract: This thesis examines the use of storytelling in advertising from a rhetorical perspective. Specifically, stories told in IKEA’s recent advertising campaign Där livet händer (Where life happens) will be analyzed. The purpose is to propose a way in which to analyze identification in storytelling. Departing from a Burkean perspective, building on Black’s concept of the second persona and Burke’s dramatism, this thesis puts forth the argument that IKEA successfully tells stories about an implied audience – “the Swede” – to which an actual audience – Swedish consumers – can rhetorically identify. Through close textual analysis of IKEA’s storytelling, this thesis concludes that the use of rhetorical devices – specifically metonymies understood as idiomatic tokens orientated toward a Swedish Weltanschauung – may have a successful rhetorical effect upon Swedish consumers by process of identification.