spoken from heart, unpremeditated, unrehearsed (created by speaker in the telling)
written words detached from occasion and audience
structure=spider's web not linear
individual words have own stories
structure=stories within stories (beginnings without endings)
audience contributes to story
no difference between tribal and family stories
includes positive and negative stories
stories give distance and perspective to deal with experience
stories unite: resist tendency to separate
ongoing process; stories not fixed in time (NOTE: differences between versions of Aunt Susie story)
adapts to changing circumstances, languages
repetition (remember origins, changes, maps of places)
connects people to place (ancestral land), time (past and future), other cultures