our conception of narrative is rooted in the notion that the narrative mode of thought isfundamental to human cognition (Bruner, 1990). That is, we make sense of the social world throughcrafting storied accounts of our participation in it. This cognitive process is key to our ability tounderstand the past and predict future social events (Costabile & Klein, 2008). At the root of thisproposition is a basic assumption about the relationship among language, thought, and socialreality—an assumption that the meaning of words is both relative and arbitrary, all the while servingsome political interest. The stuff of thought is made through our engagement with the world of meanings—our participation in a particular regime of signification. In short, how we think and what we think is rooted in the particular set of meaning-saturated signs and symbols we inherit in a givenpolitical setting.

Every day, the people I meet inspire me. Every day, they make me proud. Every day, they remind me how blessed we are to live in the greatest nation on Earth. (Applause.)

See, our life before moving to Washington was filled with simple joys — Saturdays at soccer games, Sundays at Grandma’s house, and a date night for Barack and me was either dinner or a movie, because as an exhausted mom, I couldn’t stay awake for both. (Laughter.)

And the truth is, I loved the life we had built for our girls, and I deeply loved the man I had built that life with — and I didn’t want that to change if he became President. (Applause.) I loved Barack just the way he was.

Those are the values that Barack and I — and so many of you — are trying to pass on to our own children. That’s who we are.

That’s how he brought our economy from the brink of collapse to creating jobs again — jobs you can raise a family on, good jobs right here in the United States of America. (Applause.)

And he believes that women are more than capable of making our own choices about our bodies and our health care. (Applause.) That’s what my husband stands for. (Applause.)