Synonyms
Definition
The process of sharing stories with other people generally for the purpose of entertainment, education, and promotion of cultural awareness and societal values.
Introduction
“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...
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
References
Gottschall, J. (2012). The storytelling animal: How stories make us human. Boston/New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Holmes, R. M., Gardner, B., Kohm, K., Bant, C., Ciminello, A., Moedt, K., & Romeo, L. (2017). The relationship between young children’s language abilities, creativity, play, and storytelling. Early Child Development and Care, 1–11.
Le Hunte, B., & Golembiewski, J. A. (2014). Stories have the power to save us: A neurological framework for the imperative to tell stories. Arts and Social Sciences Journal, 5(2), 73–77.
Lipman, D. (1999). Improving your storytelling: Beyond the basics for all who tell stories in work or play. Arkansas: August House Publishers.
McBride, G. (2014). Storytelling, behavior planning, and language evolution in context. Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 1131.
Sherman, J. (2008). Storytelling: An encyclopedia of mythology and folklore. Armonk: M.E. Sharpe.
Sibierska, M. (2017). Storytelling without telling: The non-linguistic nature of narratives from evolutionary and narratological perspectives. Language & Communication, 54, 47–55.
Yoder-Wise, P. S., & Kowalski, K. (2003). The power of storytelling. Nursing Outlook, 51(1), 37–42.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Section Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG
About this entry
Cite this entry
Shialos, M. (2018). Human Storytelling. In: Shackelford, T., Weekes-Shackelford, V. (eds) Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_1074-1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_1074-1
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-16999-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-16999-6
eBook Packages: Springer Reference Behavioral Science and PsychologyReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences