Where: Kromme Nieuwegracht 80, room 1.06 (Ravesteynzaal) – Attendance is free but space is limited. Please, to attend send an e-mail to m.segundoortin@uu.nl *Online: This is a hybrid event. To attend online, please send an e-mail to m.segundoortin@uu.nl Title: Narratives in the head: the…" swapexcerpt="" swaptitle="Read Less"]It is a pleasure for us to invite you all to the next ULTIMA talk, which will be delivered by Francesco Fanti Rovetta (Universität Osnabrück). The details are below: When: October 20th, 13.00 to 14.30 [CEST] Where: Kromme Nieuwegracht 80, room 1.06 (Ravesteynzaal) - Attendance is free but space is limited. Please, to attend send an e-mail to m.segundoortin@uu.nl *Online: This is a hybrid event. To attend online, please send an e-mail to m.segundoortin@uu.nl Title: Narratives in the head: the role of inner speech in autobiographical labour Abstract:  Narratives are fundamental aspects of humans’ identity and autobiography. In recent times, various scholars have downplayed the role of reflection in the creation of narratives in favour of social, material and interactional forms of autobiographical labour, from conversations to journaling, from social media to lifelogging. Concurrently, the notion of narrative thinking, meant to refer to the cognitive processes involved in the creation of mental narratives, has been criticized as underdetermined. Indeed, narrative thinking has been defined on the basis of the content of the thought, but little or no attention has been devoted to the kind of mental imagery which supports it and the different possibilities allowed by each. In this talk I consider recent criticisms to the notion of narrative thinking and I show that they do not apply if we adopt a situated, Neo-Vygotskian view of narrative thinking conducted in inner speech. In doing so, I outline the main candidates for narrative thinking: amodal thought processes, inner speech and imagistic thoughts and consider how they fare in relation to the criticisms moved to the notion of narrative thinking. By drawing on recent research into the cognitive role of linguistically mediated thoughts, I argue narrative thinking in inner speech is endowed with expressive possibilities in terms of abstraction, conceptualization and categorization not available to other formats, that make it the best candidate for narrative thinking. Finally, I argue that, from a situated and Neo-Vygotskian perspective, narrative thinking in inner speech can be seen as continuous with social and interactional forms of autobiographical labour.