Stories and Storytelling: a World of Stories

Roland Barthes asserts that stories are universal and can be told in all media. From the earliest oral traditions to today's multimedia extravaganzas, the importance of storytelling remains paramount. As storytelling creatures, humans are shaped through their stories as “man is in his actions and practice, as well as in his fictions, essentially a story-telling animal” (MacIntyre). Storytelling is the art of conveying ideas, experiences and emotions through narratives. Through its evolution from an oral form to written, visual, and digital forms, storytelling has always been a fundamental method of communication for humans. Storytelling represents a nexus between culture studies, literature, and linguistics, as not only does it reflect cultural identities and values but also makes use of linguistic structures and literary techniques to convey complex narratives that shape our understanding of the world.