Narratives can be implicit & explicit

A narrative can spread without being said “out loud.” We can form world views without them being spoken to us in words.

Human beings naturally learn to understand metaphors and symbols that don’t always have an obvious or literal meaning. This makes narrative formation hard to predict and as much about community building and context as it is about expression.

For example, “dog whistling” refers to the use of coded or suggestive language in political messaging to connect supporters from a particular group without going noticed by others. Some people will understand it, because they participated in the closed conversations in which the meaning formed. But if you weren't in those conversations, you wouldn't understand what it meant simply by looking at the word or the symbol.