Whenever an event is open to divergent interpretations, reporting it involves transforming it.
The selection, retention, reporting and retelling of events routinely involves several kinds of
transformations. All of these involve simplifying events to make them more meaningful in
terms of personal interests, needs and experience. The process is exaggerated where memory
and retelling are involved, but it is already at work in the selectivity involved in the initial
perception of an event.
Contrary to the popular idea that rumours ‘snowball’, beoming more elaborate in the telling,
psychological studies suggest that retelling tends to make accounts shorter, more concise,
more easily grasped and told. There is an increasing tendency to use fewer words. Levelling is
the selective process by which certain details are omitted. However, items of
particular interest to the reporters, which confirm their expectations or help to structure their
reports, do tend to persist.
Sharpening is the reciprocal selective process of levelling. Alongside the loss of some details,
there also tends to be a pointing-up of a limited number of details which caught the
individual’s attention, often including attention-grabbing words. Temporal sharpening
involves a tendency to describe events in the present tense. Movement is often
emphasized or introduced. Items prominent because of their relative size or quantity
tend to be retained. Labels tend to persist. Primacy effects may lead to the
retention of items coming first in a series. Familiar symbols are also likely to be retained.
Explanations may be introduced, especially to produce ‘closure’.
Underlying the selective processes of levelling and sharpening, and of transpositions,
importations and other transformations involved in retellings, Allport and Postman
(1945) argue, is the process of assimilation. This involves the influence of habits, interests and
sentiments on reporters and listeners. Aspects of a story are sharpened or levelled to make
them more consistent with what is seen as the principal theme of the story, thus making the
story more coherent and ‘well-rounded’. Items relevant to the theme may be imported and
those irrelevant to the theme may be omitted. Apparent ‘gaps’ may be filled. And some details
may be changed to make them more consistent.
Daniel Chandler, UWA
December 1995
Levelling
Sharpening
Assimilation
Source