Storytelling without telling: The non-linguistic nature of narratives from evolutionary and narratological perspectives

Sibierska, Marta

doi:10.1016/j.langcom.2016.10.005

Cited by 28 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 10 publications

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“…While the thesis that narrative must be considered the product of language is supported by distinguished scholars ( Scalise Sugiyama, 2005 ; Collins, 2013 ), it is equally possible to argue that storytelling is independent from language (for a review, cf. Sibierska, in press ). Boyd (2009 , p. 159), for example, has suggested that “narrative need not involve language.…”

Section: The Narrative Origin Of Languagementioning

confidence: 99%

The Social Brain Is Not Enough: On the Importance of the Ecological Brain for the Origin of Language

Ferretti

2016

Front. Psychol.

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In this paper, I assume that the study of the origin of language is strictly connected to the analysis of the traits that distinguish human language from animal communication. Usually, human language is said to be unique in the animal kingdom because it enables and/or requires intentionality or mindreading. By emphasizing the importance of mindreading, the social brain hypothesis has provided major insights within the origin of language debate. However, as studies on non-human primates have demonstrated that intentional forms of communication are already present in these species to a greater or lesser extent, I maintain that the social brain is a necessary but not a sufficient condition to explain the uniqueness of language. In this paper, I suggest that the distinctive feature of human communication resides in the ability to tell stories, and that the origin of language should be traced with respect to the capacity to produce discourses, rather than phrases or words. As narrative requires the ability to link events distant from one another in space and time, my proposal is that in order to explain the origin of language, we need to appeal to both the social brain and the ecological brain – that is, the cognitive devices which allow us to mentally travel in space and time.

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Section: The Narrative Origin Of Languagementioning

confidence: 99%

The Social Brain Is Not Enough: On the Importance of the Ecological Brain for the Origin of Language

Ferretti

2016

Front. Psychol.

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“…Despite the fact that language is considered the most popular way to tell a story, it is by no means the only modality available, which is evident by nonverbal narratives that are expressed through the use of pictures, facial expressions, body movements, and hand gestures (Sibierska 2017). McBride (2014) proposed that storytelling originated from mimes, long before there was any possibility of telling stories through the use of language, which would use gestures to impart their experience of the hunt.…”

Section: Role In Evolutionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…"Once upon a time" or the less common variant "once there was not" (Sherman 2008, p. 29) probably initiated everyone's favorite story as a kid. There are many definitions of the words story, narrative, and storytelling, and at times they are even used interchangeably; nevertheless, a story is defined as the conceptualization of a sequence of events, a narrative is the concrete means of communicating a story to other people, and storytelling is the process by which narratives are composed, where the conceptualization of the story is turned into a material product, i.e., a narrative through an available medium, e.g., language and other nonverbal mediums such as pictures and miming (Sibierska 2017). Even though there are different types of stories, they can all, more or less, be separated into four main genres: true stories, folklore, fiction and literature, and fairy tales (Sherman 2008, p. 19).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hidden Ovulation

2021

Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science

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“…Żywiczyński, Wacewicz, and Sibierska (2016) note that pantomime is a) communicative, 2) mimetic, 3) non-conventional, 4) motivated, 5) multimodal, and 6) improvised. Two other significant features of pantomime are its universality and open-endedness (Sibierska, 2017). Pantomime games involve both meaning and form of the words.…”

Section: Pantomime Gamesmentioning

confidence: 99%