Tellability

Tellability is quality for which a story is told and examined as remarkable with its constructed merit. Ochs and Capps examine tellability as the reason a narrative is told. Namely speakers can transform any instance into a meaningful narrative, but most are tellable due to how they deviate from everyday happenings and the prototypical. A narrative changes dependent on its level of tellability, and these elements are largely contextual. The tellability of a story often parallels the perceived truth of the story.

The tellability of a narrative changes and is dependent on the audience, the content, the narrator, and more. This aspect of tellability directly thinks to Erving Goffman’s concept of Framing in his book Frame Analysis. Framing is the circumstances and tone by which any interaction is made, whether it be more of a sociable or professional frame changes the content of the interaction. According to this certain stories are more significant and appropriate in different social frames in comparison to others. Different frames change the tellability of a story and the means by which that story would be told.

The tellability of a story is influenced by the search for truth within the narrative, and this largely changes the story to reflect that truth to the audience. For a story to be tellable it must be believable to those listening. People are more willing to accept stories as true when they are more factual and not discouraging to their sense of security and comfort. Because of this speakers often have to reframe their narratives in order to have other people believe them, especially in different socio-political circumstances. Amy Shuman studies how narratives change in different contexts, and she specifically does research with asylum seekers. Shuman finds that, for a narrative to be believable, it must have an experience that has been told before, but it also must not be too common or people will see it as unremarkable or even just a copy of another’s personal experience. Because of this, while the narrator may have most control over the telling of the narrative, the believability of it is often up to the empathy and willingness of the audience, and so narratives are often constructed with the thought of the audience in mind. This is similar to the Heisenberg effect, wherein the very act of there being a different audience greatly changes the narrative at hand. Yet truth within a narrative is often not solely reflective of objective truth. Truth is often a reflection of the emotional response of the speaker from their story or it can be honing in on a particular element of the story.

A key aspect of tellability is authenticity. Elinor Ochs and Lisa Capps both examine tellability of a narrative, and they find that the balance of the narrative’s authenticity and aesthetic is what allows for the content to have a believable narrative structure and therefore makes it tellable. Authenticity is the objective truth of the account being detailed in the narrative. Authenticity often takes on a linear structure, as it reflects the cause and effect relationship and temporal sequencing of the events that transpire. The aesthetic quality is the change in the narrative that the speaker adds to it, so that the narrative will feel more genuine in how personal it is. Aesthetic may change the structure by which the story is told so to reflect the emotional response of the narrator as well as highlight the aspect most important to the narrator. A story’s tellability is directly linked to its balance between authenticity and aesthetic, as the story must be both personal and factual in how it presents its truth. Folklorists often find that truth is the means by which tellability is implemented in the story, so tellability is to give an understanding as to whether the truth is an objective or subjective matter.

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