Ann Rosenthal Columbus State University . Walter Fisher the Narrative Paradigm. Storytelling may well be one of the earliest forms of social interaction. As our progenitors encountered members of other communities, they probably told tall tales about the slaying of the giant woolly mammoth or related pathos riddled accounts of the saber tooth tiger that got away.
Narratives convey information in an understandable and familiar form.
It is logical that homo sapiens sapiens would instinctively know to look for familiar forms when encountering new phenomena within new contexts. That is certainly one way of learning. Although helpful, it is also limiting. While Fisher was explicating the narrative paradigm and explaining its universal power to interpret communication, the developing Internet was producing dramatic changes in both the types of communication phenomena to be understood and the contexts wherein communication happens. Unfortunately, the metaphor of communication as story could not be applied in many cases, as earlier critics had claimed was true for traditional genres.