Orality Newsletter #4 – Janet Stahl February 22, 2008

Here are a few more thoughts about orality and in particular storytelling that we hope will give you some
background about Bible storytelling. Orality and storytelling have close ties. Stories can be communicated in
many modes; written, audio-visual and audio recording and through many art forms; drama, music, painting,
dance. For simplicity sake, I will be referring to the face-to-face oral communication of a story, when I refer to
storytelling in this newsletter. For some, storytelling implies something you do to entertain children and most
likely the content is fiction. At the other extreme, some consider every speech act as a story and all life as a
story.
Instead of looking at story as part of the linguistic genre called narrative that is identified by certain discourse
features and specific uses of pronouns and verb structures, I find it more helpful to consider stories as an
account of incidents or events the components of which are characters, settings, and plot. Stories that pique our
interest have some tension or conflict or some unpredictable aspect. Using this perspective, Paul’s letter to the
church in Rome is a slice of the story involving Paul as a missionary, who has not yet been to Rome and the
believers who formed the churches in Rome and Phoebe who was sent by Paul to deliver his letter. Paul
addresses the tensions arising from the struggles between the Jewish believers and the non-Jewish believers.
The bigger story involves debates how believers must live concerning circumcision and dietary laws and the
problems believers faced being persecuted by the Romans. The plot of Paul’s letter follows the unfolding story
of God’s interaction with man starting with creation, then sin, to the Law and the life, death and resurrection of
Jesus all of which should lead believers to strive to live in unity under the authority of Jesus, with the help of the
Spirit and assured of the love and care of God. I am sure that there are others who have done a much better job
of summarizing Romans but you get the picture of why the letter is part of a story.
So why is this perspective helpful? Our desire is for people to hear the Scriptures and not only understand the
message but also allow the message to impact their lives. And as I wrote in the last newsletter, primarily oral
communicators usually have not had a western education and will most likely think differently than those who
have. Stories seem to be far more universal than abstract concepts, syllogistic arguments or categories of
meaning.
Cognitive scientists and those who work in artificial intelligence say that humans process their experiences and
the world around them in stories or scripts. (See Schank below.) These scripts allow us to anticipate what will
happen next and to decide what an appropriate or successful response would be. The vast majority of the
scripts become so routine that we don’t even have to think about them to carry them out or to be involved, such
as brushing our teeth, making coffee, starting the car, eating in a restaurant. We expand the scripts when we
experience something new so, for example, our grocery store script is expanded the first time we go through the
self-check line. Our mind is then free to focus on the many new, complicated or challenging experiences we face
each day.
Each of these scripts or experiences stimulates images that we label and index in our mind and which can be
recalled when we encounter something that reminds us of the image again. Without the images and labels, we
have no means of recalling a script and the knowledge gained during the experience is lost and cannot inform
any other experience we have. Images can be created from all the five senses, from motion, from verbal cues
as well as concepts and ideas. Personal experiences give a whole array of images to which we can attach labels
for easy recall. We also have the capacity to learn from other people’s experiences but how well we learn and
how readily we can recall what we learn depends on the images that are stimulated during the communication.
Stories that capture our interest stimulate many more images and connections to previous images than do
propositions and abstract concepts, hence stories are much easier to remember than facts and figures and
generalizations or concepts.
When emotions are added to a story, the images we store are enhanced and more easily remembered. Hence a
well told story has the power to captivate our interest and provide a rich array of indices that help us to relate the
story to our lives and to recall the experience.

More to come, Janet

Schank, Roger C. Tell Me A Story; A New Look at Real and Artificial Memory. 1990. Scribners. NY