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Publication details [#62367]

Sibierska, Marta. 2017. Storytelling without telling: The non-linguistic nature of narratives from evolutionary and narratological perspectives. Language & Communication 54 : 47–55.
Publication type
Article in journal
Publication language
English
Place, Publisher
Elsevier

Annotation

By approaching storytelling from a cross-disciplinary viewpoint, this article aims at demonstrating that, contrary to the common assumption, the human ability to tell stories is not confined to the verbal medium. To demonstrate this, the article defines storytelling and offers a set of minimal criteria for a narrative act. Then, it proceeds to distinguish these conditions in diverse semiotic resources – pictorial and gestural – to show that narrating can also transpire non-verbally and with the use of distinct modalities, mainly the visual, but also the vocal-auditory. The article also indicates the directions for further debate of non-verbal narratives in the context of language evolution and the need for evolutionary inquiry on storytelling to have a firm foundation in disciplines like narratology.