Emma
Louise Parfitt (University of Warwick)
Abstract:
This
article explores whether traditional oral storytelling can be used
to provide insights into the way in which young people of 12-14 years
identify
and understand the language of emotion and behaviour. Following the
preliminary
analysis, I propose that storytelling may trigger sharing
conversations. My
research attempts to extend the social and historical perspectives of
Jack
Zipes, on fairy tales, into a sociological analysis of young
people’s lives
today. I seek to investigate the extent that the storytelling space
offers
potential benefits as a safe place for young people to share emotions
and
experiences, and learn from one another. My research analysis involved
NVivo
coding of one-hour storytelling and focus group sessions, held over
five weeks.
In total, there were six groups of four children, of mixed ethnicity,
gender,
ability, and socio-economic background, from three schools within
Warwickshire.
The results confirmed that the beneficial effects of the storytelling
space
include a safe area for sharing emotions and experiences, and in
general for
supporting young people outside formal learning settings.
Keywords:
Storytelling, Narrative, Sociology of emotion,
Zipes,
Sharing Conversations
Introduction
[A]ll we
sociologists have are
stories. Some come from other people, some from us. What matters is to
understand how and where the stories are produced, which sort of
stories they
are, and how we can put them to intelligent use in theorizing about
social
life. (Silverman 1998: 111)
In Breaking
the Magic Spell and Fairy
Tales and the Art of Subversion, Jack Zipes discusses what
potential
stories have as a vehicle for influencing behaviour
(1979; 1991; 2006).
Zipes summarises the way in which stories, and the creation of
children’s
literature as a genre, have historically been used to influence
children’s
behaviour. He asserts that stories have the power to socialise young
people in
particular ways. The use of moralistic stories, for instance, asserts
pressure
on young people to conform: ‘to cultivate feelings of shame and
to arouse
anxiety in children when they did not conform to a more inhibiting way
of
social conduct’ (Zipes, 2006: 22). Take for example Aesop’s
fable of ‘The Horse
and the Stag’,
The
Horse had the plain entirely
to himself. A Stag intruded into his domain and shared his pasture. The
Horse,
desiring to revenge himself on the stranger, requested a man, if he
were willing,
to help him in punishing the Stag. The man replied, that if the Horse
would
receive a bit in his mouth, and agree to carry him, he would contrive
very
effectual weapons against the Stag. The Horse consented, and allowed
the man to
mount him. From that hour he found that, instead of obtaining revenge
on the
Stag, he had enslaved himself to the service of man.
The moral here being,
‘He who
seeks to injure others often injures only himself’
(Aesop: 1484).
Zipes argues that such
morals and lessons in children’s literature have the potential to
affect young
people’s behaviour by providing them with examples of appropriate
social
conduct.
As part of my
doctoral research,
I am using traditional oral storytelling to explore whether stories can
provide
sociological insights into young people’s lives. I am
particularly interested
in the extent to which stories socialise young people towards socially
approved
forms of emotional and behavioural expression. The purpose of this
article is
to offer some preliminary results on an ongoing project. The concept of
storytelling as a trigger for sharing conversations was one that
emerged during
transcription of the data. In the context of the focus group
discussions, I
define ‘sharing’ as ‘something personal’ that
incorporates ‘private life,
relationships, and emotions’
(Stevenson, 2010).
I am interested in
the way in
which young people identify and understand the language of emotion and
behaviour
in relation to different narrative influences around them. This is
called
narrative learning: ‘learning from, about and through stories,
and learning
through reflecting on the experience of narrating and the narrating of
experience’ (Cortazzi and Jin, 2007: 645).
I am additionally
interested in
whether young people are aware of the conformative or subversive
effects of
narrative influences around them in the form of literature, TV, films,
video-games, music, media, education, the internet and interaction with
other
people like friends and family. In this article, I will elaborate on
how the
storytelling space I created in my research unexpectedly triggered
dialogues of
sharing between young people aged 12 to 14 years, which I have since
sought to
explore in more detail.
Methodology
For five consecutive
weeks, I
worked with six focus groups in collaboration with three schools in the
Warwickshire area. The groups were, as much as possible, of mixed
gender,
ethnicity, ability, and socio-economic background. I was not able to
access as
full a range of students as I would have liked. For example, I wanted
to
balance gender participation but one of the research sites was an
all-girls
school. I began each focus group with ten to fifteen minutes of
traditional storytelling.
There were eight students in each storytelling group, which I then
divided into
groups of four for the focus group discussion (six focus groups of four
young
people in total, Fig. 1).
My methods and
analysis consider
a range of contextual variables, which potentially shape the outcomes.
These
include the stories themselves, the impact of the storytellers, focus
group
questions, the storytelling space, individual perspectives and
interaction
amongst the students, the role of the researcher, and wider narratives,
which
the students are aware of that interact with the groups’ process
of
meaning-making (for instance, literature, TV, films, video-games,
music, media,
education, and the internet).
Figure 1:
Storytelling Groups
I provided three
storytellers—English
and Theatre Studies students from The University of Warwick—with
paper copies
of folk tales,1 which were selected
on general themes such
as
family, love, and transformations, following the results of a pilot
study in
May 2012. The storytellers were instructed to perform each story as
they wished
as long as it was from memory. Each of the three schools received the
same
stories in the same order from week one to week five, which included
two
contrasting stories in week three. For consistency, the same
storyteller
returned to each school. However, when Michelle dropped out after week
three,
her school then received Alex in week four and Miriam in week five
(note that
the order of the stories remained the same, with the exception of week
three in
one school where Miriam overlooked the second contrasting story). After
the
performance, the storyteller left the room so that only the young
people and I
were present. Each group had a sheet of nine questions to initiate
group
conversation while I moved between the groups to facilitate this.
Overall, I
collected fifteen hours of focus group discussion, plus eight hours of
initial
and final interviews, which I am still in the process of transcribing
(Parfitt
2013f).
From experience
gained through
the pilot project, I expected the students to talk about emotions
during their
process of meaning-making. The focus group questions were designed to
facilitate conversation, which touched on emotions and behaviour
without
guiding them towards a specific outcome (Appendix 1). The
stories’
and
storytellers’ role was primarily aimed at creating a safe space
within the
school for conversations to occur.
The students had the
choice to
share what they wished to in the group. I informed each student in the
initial
interviews that I was interested in their opinions, and that there were
no
right or wrong responses or viewpoints. At times, I would prompt an
individual
to elaborate, but with the option to decline to do so if they wished.
As expected, there
were
differences in the storytellers’ performance styles. I hope to
illustrate this
with some extracts from the Crescent Moon Bear (Estés 1992)
performed
differently in all three schools in week two,
[Alex tells the story
in a calm
even voice throughout] out of the corner of his eye he sees this young,
scared,
dewy-eyed, young lady. Obviously his first reaction is one of
aggression, he
doesn’t know what she is doing here, why she came up this
mountain, a fight or
flight scenario. The first thing the lady does is explain about her
husband.
She explains how she needs one hair from his throat in order to save
their
marriage and home life. The bear didn’t know what to think at
first, then she
took pity on the lady (Parfitt 2013b)
[Michelle uses
physical actions,
and tone, during her performance] the woman was terrified but she did
not move
at all, the bear [raises her voice:] roared again it was so loud that
it gave
her shivers up her spine. But then she was determined to get this white
hair
from the crescent moon bear. That’s why she did not move at all.
So when the
bear pulled out his claws [raises her hands like claws] as though he
was going
to grab her—he could crush her, he could eat her—she
pleaded, [change of tone:]
please Crescent Moon Bear! (Parfitt 2013c)
[Miriam uses word
emphasis and
change of tone] It looked up, and up, until it was looking right into
the eyes
of the woman. She was so scared. Her feet were [emphasis:] rooted to
the ground
and she was trembling, she thought, I [emphasis:] can’t run away.
I need to get
the hair to help my husband. I can’t [emphasis:] run away from
this bear. The
bear looked at her and the bear [emphasis:] roared and she could see
right down
its throat it was so close. She didn’t run away. She [emphasis:]
fell to her
[emphasis:] knees [tone change:] and pleaded with the bear, please,
please
Crescent Moon Bear, please help me! (Parfitt 2013d)
These differences in
performance
style may well have some influence on the students’ process of
meaning-making.
Later analysis will involve some deconstruction of the stories relating
to
their emotional and behavioural content. This will encompass various
layers
including: the initial text provided to each storyteller, the
storytellers’
interpretation and performance of this text, and the students’
differing
interpretations.
The storytelling
sessions
occurred in two classrooms and one library. I changed these three
spaces by
moving the desks aside and pulling chairs towards where the storyteller
sat.
The aim of this was to separate the storytelling space, as far as
possible,
from the school system where work is viewed as a process of rewards.
My research is a type
of
intervention: I am creating a space
within the school where the usual rules do not apply regarding
behaviour and
emotion. These rules are replaced by those of the storytelling space.
However,
since my research was taking place within the school, I was viewed as a
figure
of authority. I exercised some authority when conducting the focus
groups, but
I discovered that the students viewed me as an outsider and were
willing to
share and discuss things that bothered them about the school in my
presence,
occasionally checking that no one from the school would hear the
recordings,
which then reassured them they were safe to do so.
These
variables—the stories, the
storytellers, focus group questions, storytelling space, individual
perspectives and interaction amongst the students, the role of the
researcher,
and wider narratives, which the students are aware of—work
together to shape
the process of meaning-making in the focus groups.
A diverse range of
fields,
including literature, anthropology, education and psychology, informed
my use
of storytelling as a methodology by demonstrating the importance of
narrative
and its potential uses. My initial interest came from SunWolf and
Frey’s work
which demonstrated that listening to fairy tales reduced anxiety in
college
students after 9/11 (2001). I then expanded my reading to include many
areas
related to storytelling and narratives, like psychology. Bettelheim
theorised,
through the deconstruction of fairy tales, that stories support
positive
psychological health outcomes by providing young people with a safe way
of
fantasying and resolving inner issues as they adapt to their social
environment
(1976: 66). His work, however, is preoccupied with a male, adult
interpretation
of fairy tales. I did not find any analysis in the interpretation of
these
stories from a young person’s perspective, which led me to
conclude that such
ideas, as well as being adult-centric, remained theoretical.
Sarbin’s work
on the narrative
analysis of life histories highlights the importance of an
individual’s
self-narratives in the formation of identity and the benefits of
narrative as a
tool to explore individual experience, because of the rich
psychological
insights it uncovers (1986). In addition, Bruner discusses how
narratives aid
individuals in constructing their reality—as inner reasoning
interacts with the
social environment. This process of meaning-making and communication is
an
important aspect of identity formation contributing to debates in
psychology
and education where interactions between school and the broader society
are
considered important in the socialisation of young people (1991; 1996;
Goodwin
2006).
To explore whether
narratives can
provide sociological insights into young people’s lives, I
decided to use
stories in the form of storytelling. In communication studies, SunWolf
has
explored Native American, Sufi, and African storytelling traditions and
their
functions: illustrating that exposure to stories benefits individuals
as a way
of learning. The influence of stories on young people and what is
learnt and
communicated through story in different ways is therefore important in
terms of
education (1999: 62). In many traditional Native American cultures, for
example, fables are conveyed in place of directly advising someone how
to act,
because it is the story and the individual’s interpretation of it
that provides
the appropriate moral and behavioural lessons held by the community
(SunWolf
1999: 51; 2004). Other research demonstrates that improvements in
education and
language ability could be linked to narrative exposure (Clark and
Rossiter,
2008; Cortazzi and Jin, 2007; Isbell et
al. 2004).
Listening to and
sharing stories
(personal or otherwise) has further potential health benefits. There is
extensive literature about the positive health effects of narratives,
including
writing therapy. SunWolf also
reflects on listening to storytelling, as well as sharing stories, in
the
context of the health care system (2005; 2008).
For the purposes of
my research,
I am interested in what conversations have been triggered by the
storytelling
space and what other narratives connected to emotion and behaviour that
the
young people refer to in their conversations. Therefore, I designed the
focus
groups to create the space to go off topic while as a facilitator I
moved
between groups giving them a degree of privacy at regular intervals. I
left the
responsibility to answer the questions to the group whilst occasionally
enquiring what they had been discussing in relation to different
questions.
That the influence of
narratives
is recognised in health care research, made me interested in whether
stories
support emotional and behavioural learning. This influenced my research
because
I wanted to use a deductive and inductive approach to see first what
narratives
young people linked to the stories, if any, and what they shared in the
groups
in terms of emotion and behaviour, which I felt would allow the
planning of
further research based on what the focus groups revealed.
The
Potential Benefits of a Storytelling Space
Although I am in the
early stages
of research, analysis of my initial findings suggests that the creation
of a
storytelling space in schools may trigger young people to share
information
about events and experiences in their personal lives. I decided to
examine what
prompted or triggered these discussions, which involved looking at the
content
of the conversations that preceded sharing.
The storytelling
performance in
week one told the story of MacCodram.
MacCodram is a Scottish story about a
group of children who are turned to seals by their step-mother. The
nature of
the curse allows them to remove their seal skins and dance on the beach
one day
a year in human form. On one of these occasions, when the children have
grown
into young men and women, a fisherman steals one of the pelts and makes
the
woman his wife. Years later his wife finds her pelt and returns to the
sea
(MacIntyre, 2013).In
the following conversation
the group had been spontaneously comparing the story they had just
heard, MacCodram, to Disney’s The
Little Mermaid when I (RES) asked
them a question,
RES
Yes, you’ve got a witch who
puts a spell on somebody. Why do you think witches are always portrayed
in that
way?
Felicity Cause
they’re witches
RES
In Snow White you’ve got an
evil step-mum
Mary
And you’ve got the witch who gives
her the apple
Heidi
People always, whenever they’ve
got a step-mum they’re always seen to be evil
Felicity My
step-mum isn’t evil! My step-dad
is but my step-mum isn’t
Mary
You have a step-dad and a
step-mum?
Felicity Well
I haven’t got a step-dad no more
[pause]. He dumped me.
(Parfitt
2013a lines.
288-296)
There are three
issues to
consider when looking at what triggered Felicity to share this
information
about her step-dad. Firstly, did the person that spoke prior to
Felicity (in
this case Mary) ask a direct question or impart information that
triggered
Felicity to share? In this instance, Felicity said ‘Well I
haven’t got a
step-dad no more [pause]. He dumped me’ in direct response to
Mary asking
Felicity a question. Therefore, Felicity’s statement could be a
result of
social interaction in response to the storytelling space that has been
created
by the research.
Secondly, I observed
which words
Felicity used prior to her comment about no longer having a step-father
to see
if her use of language might indicate a progression of thought from one
idea to
the next. The preceding comment Felicity made was ‘My step-mum
isn’t evil! My
step-dad is but my step-mum isn’t’. Felicity’s words
not only link to her
sharing statement, but are in direct response to Heidi saying that
stories
always portray step-mums as ‘evil.’ This could also be
classed as social
interaction in response to the storytelling and focus group context.
Thirdly, I considered
which words
might have led to the group discussing step-parents. Heidi, Mary, Olive
and
Felicity were talking about witches when I joined their conversation. I
listened to what they were saying and summarised that in both The Little Mermaid and MacCodram
‘you’ve got a witch who puts a
spell on somebody’. However, I then linked this to Snow
White’s step-mum
because in the story of MacCodram,
the sea-witch was also the children’s step-mother. This drew a
response from
Heidi about step-mother stereotypes and as a result Felicity shared her
experience
with her step-dad, if only briefly. Although I triggered the
conversation by
using the words ‘witch’ and ‘step-mum’, I did
this in response to what the
group was talking about, and the story of MacCodram
which they had just heard. Since the fairy tales in the study were
devised,
sociological research has shown a change in the nature of families
(Hughes
1991; Suanet et al. 2013). The
group’s conversation indicates that awareness of previous
narrative stereotypes
remains.
Looking at another
example with
the same group, I entered the conversation when the group decided they
had
finished the focus group questions. I prompted them to return to a
question,
RES
So what were you talking
about, about the characters? Did you relate to one of the characters
more than
the others?
Mary
I guess you could say the children
because we’re children, if your mum left you’d be pretty
upset. I kind of know
how they would have felt
Heidi
It’s harsh when parents split up
because then they try and make up rumours about each other and then
they try to
get the child to stay with either one or the other
(Parfitt
2013a lines.
314-319)
First, Mary relates
to the
children in the story on an emotional level ‘I kind of know how
they would have
felt’ and this prompts Heidi to share some personal experience.
Second, Heidi’s
prior comment was unrelated to the sharing conversation, she had
previously
said, ‘I think that this is probably the best group that
we’ve been put in’
(Parfitt 2013a lines.
300-301).
Third, my enquiry prompted the conversation but it is worth noting that
my
question was a rephrasing of focus group question four; what would you
do if
you were in the same situation as one of the characters? Comparable to
the
previous example sharing seems to be triggered, in the context of
storytelling
focus groups, by a combination of social interaction and the story.
Talking
about the story of MacCodram made it
possible for the girls to share personal information about their lives.
NVivo
Analysis
NVivo is a
qualitative data
analysis computer software package, which allows a deep level of
analysis on
text based research. Once I had established that a detailed analysis of
field
notes in this way might reveal the processes involved in sharing
conversations,
I used NVivo to mark all sharing conversations for the all-girls school
in
weeks one and two
(Parfitt, 2013a; 2013b).
My selection criteria sought
to identify phrases/conversations that contained personal content
around the
subject of ‘private life, relationships, and emotions’
(Stevenson, 2010).
Using NVivo, I
discovered that
the majority of ‘sharing’ conversations were preceded by me
returning to the
group to ask what they had been speaking about, or picking up on
something they
had just said and asking for someone in the group to elaborate. For
example,
when the group talked about the fisherman’s motivation for taking
the seal skin
and hiding it from his wife, I asked ‘Have there been any
situations in your
life when something like that has happened to you?’ which was a
rephrasing of
focus group question five; can you relate the plot, characters, images
or
places to your life in anyway? I found that the students shared on
eight
occasions in total over the two transcripts, six occasions followed
instances
where I asked them to elaborate, and the remaining two were preceded by
the
focus group questions. Social interaction may therefore be the trigger
in a
storytelling context rather than a list of questions or the
storytelling space
on its own. If further analysis demonstrates that social interaction
causes
people to share more, this is where real potential beneficial effects
could
come from, in terms of the storytelling space. Sharing opinions about
the story
was one of the things the students told me they enjoyed and learnt from
the
most in their final interviews. For example, Olive said, ‘It was
really good I
liked it […] it’s good cause you can listen to everyone
else’s opinion’
(Parfitt, 2013f).
Young people become
adults. How
they are integrated into, or find ways to challenge, prevailing social
rules on
behaviour and emotion is crucial to understanding how society is
reproduced or
transformed. Childhoods are fashioned in a number of diverse ways
determined by
structural components in society, such as home, education, gender,
class,
religion, and ethnicity, in addition to relationships. This has
potential
implications for policymaking since how we understand and classify
youth
governs young people’s rights, such as provision of resources,
being
acknowledged as equal citizens, as well as protective policies in
school,
medicine, and social services. It therefore determines rights and
participation
in society (Mayall 2002: 25-28, 122).
At the outset, I
proposed that
the storytelling space may trigger sharing conversations. Based on a
preliminary assessment of my data, I believe that analysing the
transcripts in
this way has the potential to show beneficial effects of the
storytelling
space, in that it may allow students to share and learn from one
another via
social interaction. This has emerged as an important part in the
process of
working towards my thesis. I will take this further by completing a
similar
analysis of the remaining fifteen hours of transcription.
In addition, it
allows students
to reflect on the influences around them in terms of behaviour and
emotion, in
a way not currently available in the school curriculum. Furthermore, it
provides insights into the conformative and subversive effects of
narrative
influences surrounding young people.
Acknowledgements
Professor Mick Carpenter and Professor Sarah Moss.
The Adam
Smith Institute.
Appendix
Focus Group Questions
Please give everyone a chance to speak. Please
give detailed
examples where possible. For example if you can link a story to your
life state
how and elaborate on it with additional information.
Q1. How would you summarise the plot in your own
words?
Q2. What images, things, or events in the story do
you like
or dislike, and why?
Q3. What other stories do you remember that you
can link to
this one?
Q4. What would you do if you were in the same
situation as
one of the characters?
Q5. Can you relate the plot, characters, images or
places to
your life in anyway?
Q6. What is this story trying to say? What do you
take from
it?
Q7. How do you feel about the story? Or how does
the story
make you feel?
Q8. What conformative/nonconformative elements are
there in
the story?
Q9. Now you’ve had experience of traditional
storytelling
how does it differ from having a story read? Do you prefer a story to
be read or
told, and
why?
Endnotes:
[1]The
fairy
tales were; ‘MacCodram and His Wife’ (MacIntyre);
‘The Crescent Moon Bear’
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