First Take: Sometimes called the “story-telling” situation, the conditions surrounding the moment when an informant (or what in journalism is called the “source,” interviewee, or subject) is spoken to. Sometimes also referring to the information given in a back-story.

Deeper: It is true that journalists typically pepper their reports with abbreviated signals synopsizing the telling situation (as in “I saw Captain Thompson as he emerged from the tent,” or “she leaned back in her office chair on the twelfth floor of the CBS building”), and so forth.

However, these conditions–while cast as a “given” of the report–are not usually subject to sufficient examination. Originally a term from the study of grammar, the phrase is now used, especially in Anthropology, folklore studies, and oral History, actually to refer to the complexities that shape the story that emerges. In theory, this would include the time and place, the context, and perhaps even the emotional state or intent of the speaker or interviewer. In other words, the telling occasion is the thing that we more typically “gather up” as a cumulative effect of facts leading into, during, and out of the interview. And if we do, we can realize that these conditions carry many assumptions about the context, the importance of the speaker, and so on; what remains less under examination, is the interpersonal exchange (e.g. is the subject fearful or intimidated; has difference–of gender or age)–affected the testimony gathered. (See in particular the discussion of William Finnegan in Chapter 5.)