To Show or to Tell When Speaking?

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A fundamental tenet of fiction writing is that it is better to show than it is to tell. Dramatically rendering a scene through action, dialogue, and concrete detail immerses a reader in the world of the story or novel in a way that straightforward narration simply cannot. For example, the two sentences, “The breath escaping her quivering blue lips materialized in front of her face like a wraith” and “The air around her was very cold” both communicate the same information, but one allows the reader to actually feel the protagonist’s chill while the other is basically nothing more than a weather report. For drawing a reader into the world of a story rather than merely informing him or her of what that world is like, showing beats telling virtually every time.

To Depict or to Describe?

In a case of life imitating art, or at least reflecting it, a recent study at Erasmus University in Rotterdam suggests that a situational preference for showing over telling may not be confined to writers of fiction. Citing previous research suggesting that “communication behaviors are flexible and sensitive to the current speaking contexts,” the study investigated the role that psychological distance plays in the “use of different communication methods: depiction (i.e., direct speech) and description (i.e., indirect speech) in a narrative context.” Defining depiction as “showing other people what an event looks like, sounds like, or feels like,” and description as “telling others about an event using the knowledge of a language or code,” the research team hypothesized that whenever people tell a story, their decision to use direct speech (a type of depiction) or indirect speech (a type of description) is dependent upon their psychological distance from their intended audience.

In three experiments, the researchers manipulated three dimensions of psychological distance—social distance, temporal distance, and spatial distance—to test their hypothesis. Based on findings in previous studies, that an increase in psychological distance leads people to “a symbolic (e.g., words) over analogical (e.g., pictures)” communication medium, and increases the level of abstractness in their language use, the researchers predicted that “psychological proximity should lead people to use direct speech more compared with psychological distance.”

How Does Psychological Distance Influence Communication Behavior?

In each of the three experiments conducted in the study, participants were shown a 5-minute movie called “One-Minute Time Machine” and then told to imagine a scenario in which they told the story of the movie to “an imagined addressee” who was either psychologically proximal or psychologically distant. In the first experiment, in which social distance was manipulated, half the participants were instructed to imagine retelling the story to a good friend, and the other half were instructed to imagine retelling the story to a stranger. In the second experiment, involving temporal distance, participants were instructed to retell the story of the movie in a video that would be watched by another participant either the following day or six months later, who would, in turn, retell the story based on the narration in the video. In the third experiment, involving spatial distance, participants were told to narrate the story of the movie in a video that would be viewed by another participant either in Rotterdam (spatially proximal) or in Nebraska (spatially distant).

The retellings from each of these experiments were transcribed and segmented into utterances, which were then classified as either direct speech or indirect speech on the basis of point of view, with quotations from the character’s point of view being coded as direct speech, and quotations from the observer’s point of view being coded as indirect speech.

The results of Experiments 1 and 2, focusing on social distance and temporal distance, supported the researchers’ hypothesis that psychological distance has an effect on the use of different communication methods. Participants in both of these experiments “were more likely to use direct speech instead of indirect speech when communicating with psychologically proximal others” demonstrating that they “took recipients’ distance into account when constructing a narration.” Unexpectedly, Experiment 3—spatial distance—did not show a significant difference in the use of direct and indirect speech between the psychologically proximal and distant conditions. The researchers offer a couple of possible explanations for the “puzzling result,” the most compelling of which involves the medium through which participants communicated with their hypothetical recipients. The participants’ narrations of the movie plot were delivered digitally in an online context, not unlike a business meeting or class session held on Zoom. Because the common availability of such digital communication tools makes it possible for us to communicate with spatially distant people in real-time, the researchers speculate that “perceived spatial distance might be attenuated in online contexts” (which would be good news for those of us forced to teach our classes on Zoom).

Whatever the reason for the unexpected result of Experiment 3, the results of the first two experiments suggest that speakers may use direct speech and indirect speech to fulfill different communication functions related to the psychological distance between them and the people they are addressing. “Direct speech,” the researchers conclude, “can be used to reflect the closeness between speakers and recipients, whereas indirect speech is used to reflect the distance,” which is a fact that fiction writers have relied on for as long as people have been writing fiction. The American writer George Saunders compares a short story to a motorcycle ride, with the writer driving the motorcycle and the reader sitting in the side car. “My job as a writer,” he says, “is to keep the distance between motorcycle and sidecar small, so that when I go right, you go right.” Based on the results of this study—or the first two experiments at least—this analogy is not just good advice for fiction writers; it is common practice for speakers in nonfictional daily life.