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A forerunner to functionalist approaches of tellability can be found in Aristotle’s discussion on what kind of events a drama should imitate. Aristotle recommends portraying events that produce emotions such as pity or fear; events with the greatest “cathartic” effect are those whose development, even though causally connected, are unexpected by the audience. However, such considerations are related only to a specific genre of dramatic representation and cannot be incorporated as such into a general theory of tellability.
In their pioneering article published in 1967, Labov & Waletzky stated that the formal properties of narrative should always be related to the functions they fulfill in narrative communication. “Labov’s great credit,” notes Bruner, “is to have recognized that narrative structures have two components: ‘what happened and why it is worth telling’”.
By stressing narrative performance (→ Performativity), they addressed questions left out of account by the structuralists, showing that narratives which serve only to recapitulate experience “may be considered empty or pointless,” but that they also serve “an additional function of personal interest determined by a stimulus in the social context in which the narrative occurs”. The authors showed that “most narratives are so designed as to emphasize the strange and unusual character of the situation” because a “simple sequence of complication and result” does not necessarily suffice to indicate the relative importance of the events told or the “point” of the story.This led them to single out phrases and words that contribute to fulfilling this contextual function, those parts of narrative being named “evaluation devices”.
They showed that evaluations can appear in various forms, such as direct statements bearing on the unusual nature or significance of certain incidents, lexical intensifiers, suspensions, repetitions, judgments, etc.
Although the study of tellability has its roots in the analysis of conversational storytelling (→ Conversational Narration - Oral Narration), the concept was quickly broadened to include all kinds of narratives. Pratt played a significant role in expanding the pragmatic approach developed by Labov & Waletzky to literary narratives. Stressing the context-dependency of narrative left out of account by the structuralists, she demonstrates the pertinence of point for “artificial” narratives. Furthermore, in applying Grice’s Cooperative Principle to literary discourse, she showed that the maxim of “relevance” can be associated with the notions of “evaluation” and “point” (the unusual, the amusing, the terrifying, etc.).
Given the importance of situation of discourse, context, and cultural conventions in the degree of tellability a story might possess, Polanyi emphasized that “stories, whether fictional or non-fictional, formal and oft-told, or spontaneously generated, can have as their point only culturally salient material generally agreed upon by members of the producer’s culture to be self-evidently important and true”.For Polanyi, instead of “how” people structure their stories in order to make them interesting, tellability raises the more basic question of “What is worth telling, to whom and under what circumstances?”. She further contended that the point of a story “may change in the course of the narration” and that it is subject to negotiation. She developed a simple methodology for “identifying and investigating beliefs about the world held by members of a particular culture” by analyzing the negotiation between participants “about what is to be taken as the point of the story.
Ryan (1991) postulates that in addition to the features focused on by traditional pragmatic studies on tellability (evaluation devices and unusualness of facts placed in the speech situation), it is possible to articulate a purely semantic and formal conceptualization of tellability. For her, the fabula is a network of embedded narratives that can be both actual and virtual. A character’s goal might be actualized as successful, but its tellability depends on the fact that, virtually, it might have been unsuccessful. Ryan concludes that “some events make better stories than others because they project a wider variety of forking paths on the narrative map”.
Recently, the connection between narrativity and tellability has received more attention. Herman has linked the degree of narrativity to the degree to which expectations regarding the storyline are violated, the former aspect being closely related to tellability.
More extreme is the position of Fludernik, who grounds her conception of narrativity in “experientiality”: “For the narrator the experientiality of the story resides not merely in the events themselves but in their emotional significance and exemplary nature. The events become tellable precisely because they have started to mean something to the narrator on an emotional level. It is this conjunction of experience reviewed, reorganized, and evaluated (‘point’) that constitutes narrativity”.On the other hand, Sternberg has grounded his conception of narrativity in suspense, curiosity, and surprise which contribute to “the three universal narrative effects/interests/dynamics,” asserting that they necessarily rely on the interplay between the temporalities of actional and discursive sequences. Following his position, narrative interest may well be an appropriate term for tellability when the concept embraces both story and discourse instead of trying to single out only the discourse-independent features of tellability.
Ochs & Capps (2001) distinguished two different poles in conversational narratives. The first is identified with highly tellable accounts and generally involves a single active teller with a passive audience. This corresponds to the prototypical narrative studied by Labov & Waletzky that involves, for example, a near-death experience. In such cases, the story conveys a clear point and is more or less detachable from its context of realization. The second pole can be exemplified by a moderately tellable story which is embedded in surrounding discourse and activity, is co-constructed by several active co-tellers, and conveys an uncertain fluid moral stance. This approach draws attention to conversational narratives with a low degree of tellability in which “partners are grilled about their day’s activity and reel out what happened reluctantly, without bothering to dress up the events as particularly important”. The authors insist on the fact that conversation “creates an opportunity to launch a personal narrative whose storyline is not resolved”. They argue that the point of a story and its relative tellability are not always characteristics found by the narrator in the potential story before it is performed, but rather variables that must be factored in during the process of narrating, involving several co-narrators cooperating in construction of the storyline.
According to Ochs and Capps а highly tellable account is defined as having “one active teller, relatively detached from surrounding talk and activity, linear, temporal and causal organization, and (having) certain, constant moral stance.” With regards to this, it can be understood that women narratives lack these qualities in general. Yet, the notions of tellership for a woman, gives enough space to the tellership of others and even for multiple narratives. In the same way, a woman’s notion of tellability is not governed by what is considered reliable by a male controlled society, but by her own rules of beliefs and equality.
Another interesting development of the notion by Ochs & Capps is their reflection on “untold stories.” Here, tellability serves to explain negatively what cannot be narrated due to a selective memory that filters experience, childhood amnesia or trauma, i.e. events that “remain inaccessible for narration because they are too painful”. In a related development, Norrick has defined what he calls the “dark side of tellability,” exploring the untellable in stories that are too personal, for instance, or too embarrassing or obscene to be told. He concludes: “Tellability is, then, a two-sided notion: Some events bear too little significance to reach the lower-bounding threshold of tellability, while others are so intimate (or frightening) that they lie on the dark side of tellability”. Instead of understanding tellability as a “two-sided notion,” however, it would be more appropriate to separate these two notions as radically different definitions of tellability and distinguish strictly between what is worthy of being narrated and what is accessible to narration. Both phenomena are highly context-sensitive, the latter depending specifically on psychological and cultural conditions (such as psychic resistance or taboos).
S.I. Hayakawa relates tellability to offering the potential of identification and empathy. Hayakawa distinguishes identification by self-recognition and identification for wish-fulfillment:
There are two kinds of identification which a reader may make with characters in a story. First, he may recognize in the story-character a more or less realistic representation of himself. (For example, the story-character is shown misunderstood by his parents, while the reader, because of the vividness of the narrative, recognizes his own experiences in those of the story-character.) Secondly, the reader may find, by identifying himself with the story-character, the fulfillment of his own desires. (For example, the reader may be poor, not very handsome, and not popular with girls, but he may find symbolic satisfaction in identifying himself with a story-character who is represented as rich, handsome, and madly sought after by hundreds of beautiful women.) It is not easy to draw hard-and-fast lines between these two kinds of identification, but basically the former kind (which we may call "identification by self-recognition") rests upon the similarity of the reader's experiences with those of the story-character, while the latter kind ("identification for wish-fulfillment") rests upon the dissimilarity between the reader's dull life and the story-character's interesting life. Many (perhaps most) stories engage (or seek to engage) the reader's identification by both means.
Through certain examples mentioned, it can be said that differences do arise between the stories presented by males and females. “ Men‘s stories depict a world where solitary men pit themselves against the other (this may be another men or it may be a machine or circumstances generally), while women‘s stories depict a world where people are enmeshed in relationships and are part of a wider community.” In other words, a tellable story for females would focus on relationships and people, whilst men usually speak about conflicts and power.
Generally, women are found to be capable of delivering drama into their narratives, but also selecting ordinary, but highly tellable topics. On the other hand, they are also found to have the tendency of raising topics which are usually regarded as irrelevant to the male narratives. Women narratives can be considered as “narratives of the community” as compared to the “narratives of contest” practiced by men.
Tellability does not solely depend on how important or dramatic an event is, but also the rhetorical style of which it is told. For example, women usually speak through the use of questions in order to involve the other person in the narrative. This can be seen in various examples mentioned by Ochs and Capps. It is usually used to increase questions in order to persuade the interlocutors to involve themselves in the story.
Moreover, usually women narratives have a pattern. In other words, the story has a beginning, middle and an end. Their stories also hold narrative clauses and uses direct speech in order to make their conversation more interesting and catching. Male narrators also use this method along with females to “bring their characters to life by using direct speech, position their characters In time and space, and communicate the tell ability of their stories through evaluative devices of various kinds.”
An additional method used commonly by females, is the use of pauses and silences. One example which can be illustrated to prove this is the conversation shown by Ochs and Capps between the students and Mrs. Collins. The silence of the students indicate the authority that their teacher has over them. However, with regards to men, brief responses and silences can be a sign of strong authority as in the case of Jon while responding to Marie’s narrative.
“To recount something in a compelling manner” is the success of tellership. This is proved by Ochs and Capps. Some narrators tell their story with “negative effect markers“ such as“bo:y” and “WOW.”. With such markers, the listener is able to get emotionally influenced by the narrative and make evaluative reactions. Rhetorical use is equally powerful, building up a suspense until the end of the narrative. Another rhetorical technique is also used whereby self-absorption becomes captivating for the listener and greatly increases the tellership. However, some narrators use the method of linear narrative to enhance the value of the tellership.
A story must be tellable. It should also consist of narrative clauses and have an order of which the events are being told. However, this essay has proven that these aspects differ with gender. The tellability and tellership are two factors which are determined by the level of understanding of the interlocutors. They both are variable, however the theory that women as tellers and listeners have a different view when compared to men regarding these two dimensions of narration holds true in majority of occasions.
LITERATURE
1. Jahn, Manfred. 2005. Narratology: A Guide to the Theory of Narrative. English Department, University of Cologne.
2. http://wikis.sub.uni-hamburg.de/lhn/index.php/Tellability
3. http://michaelzyskind363.qwriting.qc.cuny.edu/response-two/
4. NarrativeDiscourse-AnEssayInMethod.pdf
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