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Definition

For every word being uttered, and every idea being communicated, there is an author and a receiver. The process of communication happens between these two entities. In a formal narrative, the author is called the narrator. But in an informal narrative like the personal narration in a conversation, the terminology more suitable is that of tellership and tellability.

Tellability is a notion that was first developed in conversational storytelling analysis, but which then proved extensible to all kinds of narrative, referring to features that make a story worth telling, its “noteworthiness.” Tellability (sometimes designated “narratibility”) is dependent on the nature of specific incidents judged by storytellers to be significant or surprising and worthy of being reported in specific contexts, thus conferring a “point” on the story. At issue is the breaching of a canonical development that tends to transform a mere incident into a tellable event. However, tellability may also rely on discourse features, i.e. on the way in which a sequence of incidents is rendered in a narrative.

There have also been other definitions for tellability. Duranti has said that “tellability refers to the significance of the narrated experience and the rhetorical style in which it is related.” He also added that some experience have high tellability and some have low. “Experience recounted as highly reportable (and) in a compelling manner” is considered as highly tellable and “experience recounted as moderately reportable and in an uncoupling manner” is evaluated as having a low tellability.

Tellability has been defined by Herman, in his book Basic elements of narratives, as “that which makes an event or configuration of events relevantly reportable… in a given communication situation.” Another simple definition can be “stories need to have tellability….they need to have a point.”

tell·a·ble

adjective

1. capable of being told.

2. worthy of being told.

Origin:

Tell + -able

Normally, a story is required to have a point, to teach a lesson, to present an interesting experience (a high degree of 'experientiality', as Fludernik 1996 calls it), and to arrange its episodes in an interesting progression. Sketching his project, Branigan says:

I wish to examine how we come to know that something is a narrative and how a narrative is able to make intelligible our experiences and feelings. I will argue that it is more than a way of classifying texts: narrative is a perceptual activity that organizes data into a special pattern which represents and explains experience.