This paper develops a unified framework of a sender-receiver communication game that integrates cheap talk messages and narratives that propose data-generating processes explaining observed outcomes, as in Schwartzstein and Sunderam (2021). The central object is the receiver's inferential rule, which maps language (either a message or a narrative) into mental models of the information environment. We show that the distinct predictions of cheap talk and narrative persuasion arise from different assumptions about these inferential rules. We axiomatize such rules and establish a representation theorem that characterizes how two modes of reasoning, the rationality paradigm and the narrative paradigm, coexist in varying degrees and jointly shape equilibrium outcomes. The framework accommodates a rich set of equilibria, explaining susceptibility to misleading narratives without assuming any preference for them. A key implication is that even a rational receiver in the cheap-talk setting may be vulnerable to persuasion through narratives, and that equilibrium use of messages versus narratives need not vary monotonically with the sender's motives.