Storytelling

Illustration from Silesian Folk Tales (The Book of Rubezahl)

Folklorists sometimes divide oral tales into two main groups: Märchen and Sagen.[17] These are German terms for which there are no exact English equivalents, however we have approximations:

Märchen, loosely translated as "fairy tale(s)" or little stories, take place in a kind of separate "once-upon-a-time" world of nowhere-in-particular, at an indeterminate time in the past. They are clearly not intended to be understood as true. The stories are full of clearly defined incidents, and peopled by rather flat characters with little or no interior life. When the supernatural occurs, it is presented matter-of-factly, without surprise. Indeed, there is very little effect, generally; bloodcurdling events may take place, but with little call for emotional response from the listener.

Sagen, translated as "legends", are supposed to have actually happened, very often at a particular time and place, and they draw much of their power from this fact. When the supernatural intrudes (as it often does), it does so in an emotionally fraught manner. Ghost and Lovers' Leap stories belong in this category, as do many UFO stories and stories of supernatural beings and events.

Another important examination of orality in human life is Walter J. Ong's Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (1982). Ong studies the distinguishing characteristics of oral traditions, how oral and written cultures interact and condition one another, and how they ultimately influence human epistemology.

The Historian – An Indian artist is painting in sign language, on buckskin, the story of a battle with american soldiers.

See also: Indigenous Storytelling in North America For indigenous cultures of the Americas, storytelling is used as an oral form of language associated with practices and values essential to developing one's identity. This is because everyone in the community can add their own touch and perspective to the narrative collaboratively – both individual and culturally shared perspectives have a place in the co-creation of the story. Oral storytelling in indigenous communities differs from other forms of stories because they are told not only for entertainment, but for teaching values.[30] For example, the Sto:lo community in Canada focuses on reinforcing children's identity by telling stories about the land to explain their roles.[30]

Furthermore, Storytelling is a way to teach younger members of indigenous communities about their culture and their identities. In Donna Eder's study, Navajos were interviewed about storytelling practices that they have had in the past and what changes they want to see in the future. They notice that storytelling makes an impact on the lives of the children of the Navajos. According to some of the Navajos that were interviewed, storytelling is one of many main practices that teaches children the important principles to live a good life.[31] In indigenous communities, stories are a way to pass knowledge on from generation to generation.

For some indigenous people, experience has no separation between the physical world and the spiritual world. Thus, some indigenous people communicate to their children through ritual, storytelling, or dialogue. Community values, learned through storytelling, help to guide future generations and aid in identity formation.[32]

In the Quechua community of Highland Peru, there is no separation between adults and children. This allows for children to learn storytelling through their own interpretations of the given story. Therefore, children in the Quechua community are encouraged to listen to the story that is being told in order to learn about their identity and culture. Sometimes, children are expected to sit quietly and listen actively. This enables them to engage in activities as independent learners.[33]

This teaching practice of storytelling allowed children to formulate ideas based on their own experiences and perspectives. In Navajo communities, for children and adults, storytelling is one of the many effective ways to educate both the young and old about their cultures, identities and history. Storytelling help the Navajos know who they are, where they come from and where they belong.[31]

Storytelling in indigenous cultures is sometimes passed on by oral means in a quiet and relaxing environment, which usually coincides with family or tribal community gatherings and official events such as family occasions, rituals, or ceremonial practices.[34] During the telling of the story, children may act as participants by asking questions, acting out the story, or telling smaller parts of the story.[35] Furthermore, stories are not often told in the same manner twice, resulting in many variations of a single myth. This is because narrators may choose to insert new elements into old stories dependent upon the relationship between the storyteller and the audience, making the story correspond to each unique situation.[36]

Indigenous cultures also use instructional ribbing— a playful form of correcting children's undesirable behavior— in their stories. For example, the Ojibwe (or Chippewa) tribe uses the tale of an owl snatching away misbehaving children. The caregiver will often say, "The owl will come and stick you in his ears if you don't stop crying!" Thus, this form of teasing serves as a tool to correct inappropriate behavior and promote cooperation.[37]

There are various types of stories among many indigenous communities. Communication in Indigenous American communities is rich with stories, myths, philosophies and narratives that serve as a means to exchange information.[38] These stories may be used for coming of age themes, core values, morality, literacy and history. Very often, the stories are used to instruct and teach children about cultural values and lessons.[36] The meaning within the stories is not always explicit, and children are expected to make their own meaning of the stories. In the Lakota Tribe of North America, for example, young girls are often told the story of the White Buffalo Calf Woman, who is a spiritual figure that protects young girls from the whims of men. In the Odawa Tribe, young boys are often told the story of a young man who never took care of his body, and as a result, his feet fail to run when he tries to escape predators. This story serves as an indirect means of encouraging the young boys to take care of their bodies.[39]

Narratives can be shared to express the values or morals among family, relatives, or people who are considered part of the close-knit community. Many stories in indigenous American communities all have a "surface" story, that entails knowing certain information and clues to unlocking the metaphors in the story. The underlying message of the story being told, can be understood and interpreted with clues that hint to a certain interpretation.[40] In order to make meaning from these stories, elders in the Sto:lo community for example, emphasize the importance in learning how to listen, since it requires the senses to bring one's heart and mind together.[40] For instance, a way in which children learn about the metaphors significant for the society they live in, is by listening to their elders and participating in rituals where they respect one another.[41]

Some people also make a case for different narrative forms being classified as storytelling in the contemporary world. For example, digital storytelling, online and dice-and-paper-based role-playing games. In traditional role-playing games, storytelling is done by the person who controls the environment and the non-playing fictional characters, and moves the story elements along for the players as they interact with the storyteller. The game is advanced by mainly verbal interactions, with dice roll determining random events in the fictional universe, where the players interact with each other and the storyteller. This type of game has many genres, such as sci-fi and fantasy, as well as alternate-reality worlds based on the current reality, but with different setting and beings such as werewolves, aliens, daemons, or hidden societies. These oral-based role-playing games were very popular in the 1990s among circles of youth in many countries before computer and console-based online MMORPG's took their place. Despite the prevalence of computer-based MMORPGs, the dice-and-paper RPG still has a dedicated following.

Stories in indigenous cultures encompass a variety of values. These values include an emphasis on individual responsibility, concern for the environment and communal welfare.[42]

Stories are based on values passed down by older generations to shape the foundation of the community.[43] Storytelling is used as a bridge for knowledge and understanding allowing the values of "self" and "community" to connect and be learned as a whole. Storytelling in the Navajo community for example allows for community values to be learned at different times and places for different learners. Stories are told from the perspective of other people, animals, or the natural elements of the earth.[44] In this way, children learn to value their place in the world as a person in relation to others. Typically, stories are used as an informal learning tool in Indigenous American communities, and can act as an alternative method for reprimanding children's bad behavior. In this way, stories are non-confrontational, which allows the child to discover for themselves what they did wrong and what they can do to adjust the behavior.[45]

Parents in the Arizona Tewa community, for example, teach morals to their children through traditional narratives.[46] Lessons focus on several topics including historical or "sacred" stories or more domestic disputes. Through storytelling, the Tewa community emphasizes the traditional wisdom of the ancestors and the importance of collective as well as individual identities. Indigenous communities teach children valuable skills and morals through the actions of good or mischievous stock characters while also allowing room for children to make meaning for themselves. By not being given every element of the story, children rely on their own experiences and not formal teaching from adults to fill in the gaps.[47]

When children listen to stories, they periodically vocalize their ongoing attention and accept the extended turn of the storyteller. The emphasis on attentiveness to surrounding events and the importance of oral tradition in indigenous communities teaches children the skill of keen attention. For example, Children of the Tohono O'odham American Indian community who engaged in more cultural practices were able to recall the events in a verbally presented story better than those who did not engage in cultural practices.[48] Body movements and gestures help to communicate values and keep stories alive for future generations.[49] Elders, parents and grandparents are typically involved in teaching the children the cultural ways, along with history, community values and teachings of the land.[50]

Children in indigenous communities can also learn from the underlying message of a story. For example, in a nahuatl community near Mexico City, stories about ahuaques or hostile water dwelling spirits that guard over the bodies of water, contain morals about respecting the environment. If the protagonist of a story, who has accidentally broken something that belongs to the ahuaque, does not replace it or give back in some way to the ahuaque, the protagonist dies.[51] In this way, storytelling serves as a way to teach what the community values, such as valuing the environment.

Storytelling also serves to deliver a particular message during spiritual and ceremonial functions. In the ceremonial use of storytelling, the unity building theme of the message becomes more important than the time, place and characters of the message. Once the message is delivered, the story is finished. As cycles of the tale are told and retold, story units can recombine, showing various outcomes for a person's actions.[52]

The art of narrative is, by definition, an aesthetic enterprise, and there are a number of artistic elements that typically interact in well-developed stories. Such elements include the essential idea of narrative structure with identifiable beginnings, middles, and endings, or exposition-development-climax-resolution-denouement, normally constructed into coherent plot lines; a strong focus on temporality, which includes retention of the past, attention to present action and protention/future anticipation; a substantial focus on characters and characterization which is "arguably the most important single component of the novel";[65] a given heterogloss of different voices dialogically at play – "the sound of the human voice, or many voices, speaking in a variety of accents, rhythms and registers";[66] possesses a narrator or narrator-like voice, which by definition "addresses" and "interacts with" reading audiences (see Reader Response theory); communicates with a Wayne Booth-esque rhetorical thrust, a dialectic process of interpretation, which is at times beneath the surface, conditioning a plotted narrative, and at other times much more visible, "arguing" for and against various positions; relies substantially on now-standard aesthetic figuration, particularly including the use of metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche and irony (see Hayden White, Metahistory for expansion of this idea); is often enmeshed in intertextuality, with copious connections, references, allusions, similarities, parallels, etc. to other literatures; and commonly demonstrates an effort toward bildungsroman, a description of identity development with an effort to evince becoming in character and community.

Storytelling festivals typically feature the work of several storytellers and may include workshops for tellers and others who are interested in the art form or other targeted applications of storytelling. Elements of the oral storytelling art form often include the tellers encouragement to have participants co-create an experience by connecting to relatable elements of the story and using techniques of visualization (the seeing of images in the mind's eye), and use vocal and bodily gestures to support understanding. In many ways, the art of storytelling draws upon other art forms such as acting, oral interpretation and Performance Studies.

In 1903, Richard Wyche, a professor of literature at the University of Tennessee created the first organized storytellers league of its kind. It was called The National Story League. Wyche served as its president for 16 years, facilitated storytelling classes, and spurred an interest in the art.

Several other storytelling organizations started in the U.S. during the 1970s. One such organization was the National Association for the Perpetuation and Preservation of Storytelling (NAPPS), now the National Storytelling Network (NSN) and the International Storytelling Center (ISC). NSN is a professional organization that helps to organize resources for tellers and festival planners. The ISC runs the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, TN.[67] Australia followed their American counterparts with the establishment of storytelling guilds in the late 1970s. Australian storytelling today has individuals and groups across the country who meet to share their stories. The UK's Society for Storytelling was founded in 1993, bringing together tellers and listeners, and each year since 2000 has run a National Storytelling Week the first week of February.

Currently, there are dozens of storytelling festivals and hundreds of professional storytellers around the world,[68][69] and an international celebration of the art occurs on World Storytelling Day.

Storytelling has come to have a prominent role in recruiting. The modern recruiting industry started in the 1940s as employers competed for available labor during World War II. Prior to that, employers usually placed newspaper ads telling a story about the kind of person they wanted, including their character and, in many cases, their ethnicity.[71]

Public influence has been part of human civilization since ancient times, but the modern public relations industry traces its roots to a Boston-based PR firm called The Publicity Bureau that opened in 1900.[72] Although a PR firm may not identify its role as storytelling, the firm's task is to control the public narrative about the organization they represent.

Networking has been around since the industrial revolution when businesses recognized the need—and the benefit—of collaborating and trusting a wider range of people.[73] Today, networking is the subject for more than 100,000 books, seminars and online conversations.[73]

Storytelling helps networkers showcase their expertise. “Using examples and stories to teach contacts about expertise, experience, talents, and interests” is one of 8 networking competencies the Association for Talent Development has identified, saying that networkers should “be able to answer the question, ‘What do you do?’ to make expertise visible and memorable.”[74] Business storytelling begins by considering the needs of the audience the networker wishes to reach, asking, "What is it about what I do that my audience is most interested in?" and "What would intrigue them the most?"[16]

Summer school Berlin School of Economics 2013-01

Storytelling practice example (Summer School Berlin School of Economics 2013, European Business and Economics (EBEP)

In the workplace, communicating by using storytelling techniques can be a more compelling and effective route of delivering information than that of using only dry facts.[75][76] Uses include:

Using narrative to manage conflicts

For managers storytelling is an important way of resolving conflicts, addressing issues and facing challenges. Managers may use narrative discourse to deal with conflicts when direct action is inadvisable or impossible.[77]

Using narrative to interpret the past and shape the future

In a group discussion a process of collective narration can help to influence others and unify the group by linking the past to the future. In such discussions, managers transform problems, requests and issues into stories. Jameson calls this collective group construction storybuilding.

Using narrative in the reasoning process

Storytelling plays an important role in reasoning processes and in convincing others. In business meetings, managers and business officials preferred stories to abstract arguments or statistical measures. When situations are complex or dense, narrative discourse helps to resolve conflicts, influences corporate decisions and stabilizes the group.[78]

Storytelling is increasingly being used in advertising in order to build customer loyalty.[79][80] According to Giles Lury, this marketing trend echoes the deeply rooted human need to be entertained.[81] Stories are illustrative, easily memorable and allow companies to create stronger emotional bonds with customers.[81]

A Nielsen study shows consumers want a more personal connection in the way they gather information since human brains are more engaged by storytelling than by the presentation of facts alone. When reading pure data, only the language parts of the brain work to decode the meaning. But when reading a story, both the language parts and those parts of the brain that would be engaged if the events of the story were actually experienced are activated. As a result it easier to remember stories than facts.[82]

Marketing developments incorporating storytelling include the use of the trans-media techniques that originated in the film industry intended to "build a world in which your story can evolve".[83] Examples include Coca-Cola's "Happiness Factory".[84]