Cover not available
Article published In:
Narrative Inquiry
Vol. 27:1 (2017) ► pp.24–46

Tellability, frame and silence

The emergence of internment memory

| University of Helsinki, Folklore Studies / LIVINGMEMORIES-project

On the basis of the September 1944 Moscow Armistice agreement between Finland, the Soviet Union and the UK, the Finnish government was obliged to intern German and Hungarian citizens in Finland. Applying the concepts of “tellability” and “frame”, I examine how individuals (most of them children of German fathers and Finnish mothers) who were interned as minors and young people in Finland in 1944–1946 describe silence and the rupture of silence. In order to understand the interaction and dynamics between individuals’ remembering and public memory, I analyze oral history interviews of ex-internees in relation to public discussion. I argue that bringing together viewpoints of narrative analysis, oral history research and memory studies facilitates understanding of the link between the individual, private and public dimensions of memory construction. Furthermore, I suggest that the analytical concepts of tellability and frame are highly useful in understanding why some experiences and events of the past are narrated and remembered while others are forgotten or silenced.

Keywords: tellability, frame, oral history, memory studies, internment, the Second World War
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • History of the internment
  • Silence, tellability and frames
  • Explaining the silence
  • Rupturing of the silence
  • Conclusions
  • Research materials
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References


This article is currently available as a sample article.

Published online: 3 August 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ni.27.1.02sav
References

References

Abrams, L.
(2010) Oral History Theory. New York: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Adler, N.
(2002) The Gulag Survivor. Beyond the Soviet System. New Brunswick & London: Transaction Publishers.Google Scholar
Bamberg, M.
(2005) Master Narrative. In D. Herman, M. Jahn & M-L. Ryan (Eds.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Bamberg, M. & Andrews, M.
(Eds.) (2004) Considering Counter Narratives. Narrating, Resisting, Making Sense. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Brockmeier, J.
(2002) Remembering and Forgetting: Narrative as Cultural Memory. Culture & Psychology, 8(1), 15–43. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bruner, J.
(1991) The Narrative Construction of Reality. Critical Inquiry, 181, 1–21. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Connerton, P.
(2008) Seven Types of Forgetting. Memory Studies, 1(1), 59–71.Google Scholar
Douglas, A. & Vogler, T.
(Eds.) (2003) Witness and Memory: The Discourse of Trauma. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Erll, A.
(2011) Memory in Culture. London: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Finlex Data Bank
(2014) Laki korvauksesta eräille internoiduille siviilihenkilöille. Retrieved from: [URL]
Frisch, M.
(1990) A Shared Authority: Essays on the Craft and Meaning in Oral and Public History. Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Goffman, E.
(1974) Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. London: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
Goldstein, D. & Shuman, A.
(2012) The Stigmatized Vernacular: Where Reflexivity Meets Untellability. Journal of Folklore Research, 49(2), 113–126.Google Scholar
Hamilton, P. & Shopes, L.
(2008) Introduction: Building partnership between oral history and memory studies. In P. Hamilton & L. Shopes (Eds.), Oral History and Public Memories (pp. vii–xvii). Philadelphia: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Heimo, A.
(2010) Kapina Sammatissa. Vuoden 1918 paikalliset tulkinnat osana historian yhteiskunnallisen rakentamuisen prosessia. Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society.Google Scholar
(2016) Nordic-Baltic oral history on the move. Oral History, 44(2), 37–46.Google Scholar
Huyssen, A.
(1995) Twilight Memories: Marking Time in a Culture of Amnesia. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Jensen-Eriksen, N.
(2000) Välirauhan väliinputoajat. Suomessa asuneet saksalaiset Valpon varjossa 1944-1947. In H. Saarinen, M. Peltonen & K. Multamäki (Eds.), “Se rakkain kotipolku” – Erkki Kouri ja yleinen historia (pp. 333–354). Helsingin yliopiston julkaisuja 15. Helsinki: Helsingin yliopisto.Google Scholar
(2009) Saksan ja Unkarin kansalaisten sekä heidän puolisoidensa internointi 1944–1947. Helsinki: Kansallisarkisto.Google Scholar
(2010) Valpon internointileirit ja niiden asukkaiden polittinen valvonta vuosina 1944–1947. In L. Westerlund (Ed.), Sotatapahtumia, internointeja ja siirto sodanjälkeisiin oloihin. Kansallisarkiston artikkelikirja / Wars, Internees and the Transition to the Postwar Era. A Book of Articles from the National Archives of Finland (pp. 103–134). Helsinki: The National Archives of Finland. Available online: [URL] (accessed 4/17/2016).
Khevniuk, O. V.
(2004) The History of the Gulag: From Collectivization to the Great Terror. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Kivimäki, V.
(2012) Between Defeat and Victory: Finnish memory culture of the Second World War. Scandinavian Journal of History, 37(4), 482–504. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Koresaar, E. & Joesalu, K.
(2016) Mnemonic turn, post-Soviet memories and “memory shifts” in Estonia. Oral History, 44(2), 47–58.Google Scholar
Kuusisto-Arponen, A.-K. & Savolainen, U.
(2016) The interplay of memory and matter: Narratives of Former Finnish Karelian child evacuees. Oral History, 44(2), 59–68.Google Scholar
Labov, W.
(1972) Language in the inner city. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Levy, D. & Sznaider, N.
(2002) Memory Unbound: The Holocaust and the Formation of Cosmopolitan Memory. European Journal of Social Theory, 5(1), 87–106. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lorenz, F.
(1999) The Unending War. Social Myth, Individual Memory and the Malvinas (Transl. Ozón, G.). In K. L. Rogers & S. Leydesdorff & G. Dawson (Eds.), Trauma. Life Stories of Survivors (pp. 95–112). New Brunswick & London: Transaction Publishers.Google Scholar
Minister, K.
(1991) A Feminist Frame for the Oral History Interview. In S. Berger Gluck & D. Patai (Eds.), Women’s Words: the Feminist Practice of Oral History (pp. 27–42). New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Mishler, E. G.
(2006) Narrative and Identity: The Double Arrow of Time. In A. De Fina, D. Shiffrin & M. Bamberg (Eds.), Discourse and Identity (pp. 30–47). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Määttälä, M.
(2011) Vihollisina vangitut. Internointileirit neuvostosuhteiden välikappaleina 1944–1947. Jyväskylä: Atena Kustannus Oy.Google Scholar
Norrick, Neal R.
(2005) The Dark Side of Tellability. Narrative Inquiry, 15(2), 323–43. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ochs, E. & Capps, L.
(2001) Living Narrative: Creating Lives in Everyday Storytelling. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.Google Scholar
Portelli, A.
(1997) The battle of Valle Giulia: oral history and the art of dialogue. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
(1998) What Makes Oral History Different? In R. Perks & A. Thompson (Eds.), The Oral History Reader (pp. 63–74). London & New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Rigney, A.
(2005) Plenitude, Scarcity and the Circulation of Cultural Memory. Journal of European Studies, 351, 209–226. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Robertson, D.
(2004) A Dictionary of Human Rights. London & New York: Taylor & Francis Group. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rothberg, M.
(2009) Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization. Stanford California: Stanford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sacks, H.
(1992) Lectures on Conversation. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Savolainen, U.
(2017) The Return. Intertextuality of Reminiscing of Karelian Evacuees in Finland. The Journal of American Folklore, 130(516) 166–192. doi: DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schiffrin, D.
(2001) Language and Public Memorial: ‘America’s Concentration Camps’. Discourse & Society, 12(4), 505–534. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Shuman, A.
(2006) Entitlement and Empathy in Personal Narrative. Narrative Inquiry, 16(1), 157–164. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2012) Exploring Narrative Interaction in Multiple Contexts. In J. A. Holstein & J. F. Gubrium (Eds.), Varieties of Narrative Analysis (pp. 125–150). Thousand Oaks: Sage. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Smith, P.
(1995) Democracy on Trial: The Japanese American Evacuation and Relocation in World War II. New York: Simon & Schuster.Google Scholar
Stier, O. B.
(2003) Committed to Memory: Cultural Mediation of the Holocaust. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.Google Scholar
Sturken, M.
(2001) Absent Images of Memory: Remembering and Reenacting the Japanese Internment. In T. Fujitani & G. M. White & L. Yoneyama (Eds.), Perilous Memories: The Asia Pacific War(s) (pp. 34–49). Durham & London: Duke University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Thomson, A.
(1996) Anzac Memories. Putting Popular Memory Theory into Practice in Australia. In R. Perks & A. Thomson (Eds.), The Oral History Reader (pp. 300–310). New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Toker, L.
(2000) Return from the Archipelago. Narratives of Gulag Survivors. Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University press.Google Scholar
Uhlenius, P.
(2010) Internoitujen muistot. Muistelijoiden kokemuskuvan peruspiirteitä. In L. Westerlund (Ed.), Sotatapahtumia, internointeja ja siirto sodanjälkeisiin oloihin. Kansallisarkiston artikkelikirja / Wars, Internees and the Transition to the Postwar Era. A Book of Articles from the National Archives of Finland (pp. 404–427). Helsinki: The National Archives of Finland. Available online: [URL] (accessed 4/17/2016).
van Vree, F.
(2013) Absent Memories. Cultural analysis, 121, 1–17.Google Scholar
Westerlund, L.
(Ed.) (2008a) Sotavangit ja internoidut. Kansallisarkiston artikkelikirja / Prisoner of War and Internees. A Book of Articles by the National Archives. Helsinki: The National Archives of Finland. Available online: [URL] (accessed 4/22/2016).
(2008b) Internment and deportation in WWI and WWII. A comparative study with a special survey of the situation in Finland. In L. Westerlund (Ed.), Sotavangit ja internoidut. Kansallisarkiston artikkelikirja / Prisoner of War and Internees. A Book of Articles by the National Archives (pp. 352–397). Helsinki: The National Archives of Finland. Available online: [URL] (accessed 4/22/2016).
(Ed.) (2010) Sotatapahtumia, internointeja ja siirto sodanjälkeisiin oloihin. Kansallisarkiston artikkelikirja / Wars, Internees and the Transition to the Postwar Era. A Book of Articles from the National Archives of Finland. Helsinki: The National Archives of Finland. Available online: [URL] (accessed 4/17/2016).
Winter, J.
(2010) Thinking about Silence. In E. Ben-Ze’ev & R. Ginio & J. Winter (Eds.), Shadows of War. A Social History of Silence in the Twentieth Century (pp. 3–31). New York: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zur, J.
(1999) Remembering and Forgetting: Guatemalan War Widows’ Forbidden Memories. In K. L. Rogers, S. Leydesdorff & G. Dawson (Eds.), Trauma. Life Stories of Survivors (pp. 45–59). New Brunswick & London: Transaction Publishers.Google Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 9 other publications

Erll, Astrid
2018. Homer: A relational mnemohistory. Memory Studies 11:3 ► pp. 274 ff. DOI logo
Erll, Astrid
2020. Afterword: Memory worlds in times of Corona. Memory Studies 13:5 ► pp. 861 ff. DOI logo
Erll, Astrid & William Hirst
2023. Flashbulb memories. Narrative Inquiry 33:2 ► pp. 398 ff. DOI logo
Malinen, Antti, Pirjo Markkola & Kirsi-Maria Hytönen
2020. CONDUCTING COMMISSIONED RESEARCH. Scandinavian Journal of History 45:2 ► pp. 202 ff. DOI logo
Rajah, Valli, Christopher Thomas, Amy Shlosberg & Sarah P Chu
2023. Enhancing the tellability of death-row exoneree narratives: Exploring the role of rhetoric. Punishment & Society 25:1 ► pp. 122 ff. DOI logo
Savolainen, Ulla
2020. Points and poetics of memory: (Retrospective) justice in oral history interviews of former internees. Memory Studies 13:6 ► pp. 1020 ff. DOI logo
Savolainen, Ulla
2021. Affordances of memorability: Finnish reception of the oppression of Ingrian Finns in the Soviet Union. Memory Studies 14:4 ► pp. 909 ff. DOI logo
Savolainen, Ulla
2022. Memory Ideologies of Two Presents: Aatami Kuortti's Testimonies of the Gulag and Soviet Terror of Ingrian Finns. Poetics Today 43:1 ► pp. 149 ff. DOI logo
Wang, Longlong
2021. Using tellability to analyze entrepreneurial narratives in the classroom. Narrative Inquiry 31:2 ► pp. 381 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 6 april 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.