Sorry to take a while getting back to your last response to my first contribution.
First of all, no, I am not saying that storytelling is happening all the time by most people and that to debate the specific nature is unhelpful. (I do think it is true that storytelling is going on all the time and everyone tells stories, consciously or not, but that is another issue I didn't mean to bring up at all in my last commentary).
Nor do I mean we can never be specific, particularly in our own work. I am saying if we are too specific about defining storytelling as a group of professionals, or even as a specialist group of tellers and listeners in a small society like the SfS, and particularly if we do it too soon and too assuredly, then we do run the risk of 'rules' being set up and specialists trying to bamboozle with jargon.
I was referring in my own way, I suppose, to what Mike Dunstan said about contexts. Before we make very specific definitions about what is traditional storytelling so as to understand it as practicing storytellers, we have to know as much as possible about the contexts that already exist for all sorts of storytelling. (I think that's more or less Mike's point).
But what I was mainly trying to say was that listeners (as in the general public, listeners at large, not just those who regularly go to storytelling events, clubs, festivals, etc) already have a definition, an idea of what traditional storytelling is. They don't all have the same idea, or definition, or perception. Some ideas may overlap. Nor do they (listeners...the general public) necessarily have exactly the same ideas as we (revival tellers) do.
In other words: Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.....A story is in the ear of the listener.
Now, if we don't want to alienate potential audiences and potential opportunities for storytelling, if we want storytelling to grow and to thrive (which is ultimately what the whole debate is about, isn't it?), we must respect and use that wider world perception, a perception or collection of definitions that may not be any where near our own. (Or it may be -- we won't know if we don't seek, think, observe and listen.)
As regards your argument about Frankie Armstrong, by all means she sought out specific examples to study and learn from, to create her definition or style, as did others she worked with. But are we really doing that? So far the debate is mostly with revival storytellers. As Frankie pointed out, she suspects there are far fewer tellers in the 'tradition' identified by the academic folklorists who clearly defined singers in the 'tradition' from whom Frankie and other singers did. Where are people getting most of their material? Other revival tellers they hear in clubs and festivals? Traditional tellers they have found doing their own field work but not introduced at all to the wider public? From books in public libraries and shops? From books in specialist libraries and archives, from tape recordings in such collections?
We must be aware of our sources, and one important source is the general public, and an influence on any source it the context of that source.
But another point Frankie made about this, which I'm not sure was caught or understood, was the destructive aspects of the folk song and music and dance revivals, destructive experiences which came from defining tradition too early, or too strictly, or with too narrow an agenda. The various 'factions' in the folk world and the narrowness of vision when it came to setting an agenda or drawing definitions contributed greatly to the weakness of the folk music/song/dance revival. Ewan McColl and others were brilliant -- but human -- and many leaders in the folk revival used personal definitions of what was traditional, used it for personal gain, and ignored the poor impression that made on the public.
Yes, there are loads of folk festivals and folk clubs still in England, but they have declined greatly from the heyday of the 50s-70s. At one time the English Folk Dance and Song Society had hundreds of thousands in its membership...now it's barely in the tens of thousands -- and if the SfS has only a membership of 500 we can't risk alienating a public by internal argument, or the storytelling revival will die after this generation of tellers. ( In America they -- folk festivals and clubs -- have become almost non-existent after attaining heights similar to Britain's. And the general public's perception of what a 'folkie' is (singer, morris dancer, etc) is extremely negative in England. (But, conversely, it's much more positive in Scotland and Ireland.)
'Folkies' I know who have attended SfS debates and conferences etc, (including Frankie) have all commented on the similarity of the storytelling revival (and the trad. storytelling debate) to the song, music and dance revivals. If we become too specific, too narrow in our definition, as they did, the general public will not look at storytelling as the exciting art form with immense potential for society today that it is. Like morris dancing and folk singing, it will become a joke, a cliche, and a special interest for a very small group.
So if we're going to start specific definitions, I say keep the context general. List not what storytellers define as traditional storytelling, but make a list of general perceptions from non-specialists, a list as long and as wide and as diverse as we can. We may not like some of the things on this list and we may not agree with them. But we must not reject them -- we must use them to then become specific in our debate, and then show how they (these generalisations) have links to the specific. Then we will be, and appear to be, inclusive and much more acceptable to that general public.