Abstract
Multidisciplinary research indicates the importance of storytelling in child development, most recently exploring the evolved nature of language and narrative. Many questions remain about how children develop competence within such a vital but highly complex process. The ‘once upon a time’ concept is present within nearly every human language on Earth, indicating what a powerful hold ‘storying’ has over human beings and what a central role it plays within human societies. Sue Lyle proposes that human beings are above all, ‘storytelling animals’. Emergent questions include whether and how current mass-produced storytelling products and interactive media developed by Western technology impact children’s competence in the human ‘storying’ process and, in particular, whether such rapid change should be approached with more reflection and caution than is currently the case. In this article, I will consider the process of child development with respect to language and ‘storying’, the traditional role of stories and ‘make-believe’ in the fabric of children’s lives, how this has changed in the recent past in technologically advancing societies, and how such change may impact children’s learning and development.
Highlights
Multidisciplinary research indicates the importance of storytelling in child development, most recently exploring the evolved nature of language and narrative
Jerome Bruner proposed that human beings are creatures who evolved to critically rely upon sharing symbolic meaning to operate within their world, ‘depending upon the human capacity to internalise language and use its system of signs . . . such a social meaning readiness is a product of our evolutionary past’ (Bruner 1990, p. 69)
He later reflected on the way that human beings understand many, sometimes deceptively similar, aspects of their world very differently, depending on the meanings that they attach to them (Bruner 1996): Humans can do [what] other primate species cannot do
Summary
It has long been observed that parents engage with their infants in ‘protoconversations’. Jarvis (2006)’s child participants added comprehensive make-believe to some of their chasing and catching play, drawn from stories that they had been introduced to both at home and at school, flexibly translating underpinning narratives, such as fear, heroic activity, and salvation into play relating to a wide range of contemporary media heroes and events of the time, such as Beyblades, Robot Wars, Batman, Disney Princesses, and even the primary hero of the English soccer team of that time, David Beckham These children used gesture in parallel with verbalization to communicate meaning, including ‘play face’ (Konner 1972) and play intention signaling (Power 1999), exploring rudimentary non-verbal signaling. Why might this have become an evolved feature via selection within the human species? What function might it fulfill?
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