Course:ETEC540/2009WT1/Orality and Literacy/Characteristics of Orality/Repetition page

Orality and Repetition

One of the characteristics of Orality involves the use of Repetition for multiple purposes, minimally for dramatic effect, to make a “point” to heighten the emotional content and impact of what is being communicated and of course as mnemonic device to assist the Orator in remembering what is to be said.

'Repetition' is actually part of the “form” or Orality, although not a form in the Platonic sense.

Repetition as used here…. can be at least partially defined as any sort of patterned, intentionally repeated oral phenomenon, used to emphasize, vary or create specific meanings within the oral communication.

Repetition can be presented in a multiplicity of oral forms, [including repetition of movement and gesture] of words, of phrases and of sounds. Repetition can also include the deliberate omission or absence of some phenomenon, such as the Repetition of an interval of silence… these are deliberate mechanisms built into the communication specifically to drive or manipulate the audience into expecting something. That is, they are anticipating the next sound, movement or word. These expectations in particularly brilliant orations can be used to work to confuse or surprise, by deliberately causing the audience to expect a certain word, statement or sound and to have those expectations ripped out from under them, so to speak….

Through Repetition….Time itself is arrested, stopped or meted out in a specific fashion that we [the listeners] in both oral and literature based cultures have come to expect.An expectation, that the skilled orator or gifted speaker will manipulate within the verbal artistry of their speech.Silence between words creates a kind of deceptive cadence,where a word, sound or phrase is implied…and then not spoken. There is a kind of verbal architecture in all orality,sounds and words are used to create a kind of oral mimesis, they construct a kind of choreographic vocabulary which builds, in brick by brick fashion, a pattern of words and sounds into a coherent form, seen as a totality, a formal oral structure. Repetition creates patterns, patterns convey order and it is this order implicit in the “structure” of the oral communication that helps to create and to convey Meaning [including psychological meanings and emotions]. This use of Repetition….is particularly useful in both orality and in writing, and is a critical component to epics like the Iliad and the Odyssey and other great works that [many believe] originated within an oral culture. --

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