“You gotta know how to tell a story”: Telling, tales, and tellers in American and Israeli narrative events at dinner

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis study explores the degree of cultural diversity in the dinner-table conversation narrative events of eight middle-class Jewish-American and eight Israeli families, matched on family constellation. Conceptualized in terms of a threefold framework of telling, tales, and tellers, the analysis reveals both shared and unshared narrative event properties. Narrative events unfold in both groups in similar patterns with respect to multiple participation in the telling, the prevalence of personal experience tales, and the respect for children's story-telling rights. Yet cultural styles come to the fore in regard to each realm as well as their interrelations. American families locate tales outside the home but close in time, ritualizing recounts of “today”; Israeli families favor tales more distant in time but closer to home. While most narratives foreground individual selves, Israeli families are more likely to recount shared events that center around the family “us” as protagonist. In modes of telling, American families claim access to story ownership through familiarity with the tale, celebrating monologic performances; but in Israeli families, ownership is achievable through polyphonic participation in the telling. (Ethnography of communication, language and culture, conversation analysis, folklore, narrative).