Course:ETEC540/2010WT1/Orality and Literacy/Characteristics of Orality

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Characteristics unique to orality

A list of characteristics unique to primary oral cultures' mode of communication that allow for the preservation and continuation of thought and ideas in the absence of any means of inscription (or any desire to inscribe).

While conceptual thinking is intrinsically abstract, the concepts adopted by oral cultures tend to focus on frames of reference that are a part of everyday life (Ong, 49). For example, these cultures would not define an item by its geometrical shape, like a square, instead they would assign it a name like door, television, picture frame, etc (Ong, 50-51). Unique names are usually reserved for items that are a part of daily life, while other items tend to be grouped together, like 'that small “furry creature”' or 'it is just a “rock”' (Ong, 52).

Language

  • Formulaic (Ong, p. 33) "You know what you can recall."
    • Poetic, profuse with mnemonic devices such as:
      • Rhythm
      • Repetition ("redundancy," by chirographic standards, which could alternatively be framed as "copia." p.39)
      • alliteration
      • assonance
      • patterns
      • epithets & antithesis pairings
      • proverbs
      • sound
      • dynamic
    • A mode of action (p.32)
    • Thematic (p. 34)
    • Situationally toned & framed; presently relevant (p. 49)
      • Oral cultures tend to use concepts in situational, operational frames of reference that are minimally abstract in the sense that they remain close to the living human lifeworld (p. 49)
    • Speech is empathetic or altered to the audience (p. 45)
      • There is a close connection between the knower and the known.
  • Oral language is sometimes agonistically toned - rooted in human life and often struggle.(p.44)
  • Oral language joins people in groups.
  • Oral language fosters personality structures which are more externalized and less introspective as compared to literates (p. 68)
  • Oral language is not solitary but communal.
  • Kinesthetically linked (p. 67)
  • In oral cultures, request for information is interpreted interactively and instead of answering directly, is often and frequently parried(p.68)
  • Interiorization of Writing - (pg. 9)
  • Contextual - Depending on the speaker, place, time, and audience
  • Dynamic - Not Static and is open to change

Words

Have no visual presence.

  • They are sounds
  • There is no means to "look up something." The oral culture, has no text. (although, objects may have functioned as mnemonic devices - ie the blacksmith looks at the hammer and it triggers the memory of the steps required to create a horse shoe; or an Inuit hunter sees an inuksuk and recalls, or learns, the correct direction to go in. Might physical objects, like beads, or instruments have functioned to preserve certain thoughts in a physical, or out of body way before text?)--AnnetteSmith 21:10, 2 October 2010 (UTC)
  • call / recall
  • occurrences / events

Are dynamic Have power.

  • Words are not treated as separate entities (p. 60)
  • Meaning of words are controlled by "direct semantic ratification", by the real-life siuations in which the

word is used here and now (p.46)

  • In Phaedrus,Socrates says that the speaker must know and speak the truth and be able to answer questions and defend his position (Plato)

Have magical potency

  • Names as a kind of words, convey power over things(p.33)
  • very detailed, makes me think of descriptive language and strong verbs

The oral word never exists in a simply verbal context. Bodily activity beyond vocalization is natural and inevitable. (pg. 67) --GordonHigginson 20:01, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

Words have no visual presence but they have emotional meaning. Whether the emotion is positive or negative, it yields a reaction from the audience. --IrisChan 14:39, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Culture

Homeostatic

  • Resists permanence (Ong, p. 32)
    • No way to stop sound and have sound (p. 32)
  • Focused on the present (p. 46)
  • The integrity of the past is subordinate to the integrity of the present (pg 48) -- what is recounted orally in the present may be different than what was said in the past, to meet present needs and circumstances --GordonHigginson 20:01, 3 October 2010 (UTC)
    • Uses past experience to explain the present and aid the future
  • Additive
    • The use of simple grammar in comparison to more elaborate and fixed grammar in written discourse.

Aggregative, harmonizing (p. 38, 73)

  • oral expression carries epithets (eg: brave soldier, beautiful princess) (p.38)
  • lists of details, names, as in genealogies and catalogues
  • Linked to the world of human life (p. 42)

Oral based thought is aggregative, not analytical. The act of encoding an oral line of information and sustaining it over multiple generations is to great a task to allow for close analysis and dissection that might dismantle the whole narrative, losing everything in the process. Writing systems allow people to break up recorded thoughts and store it outside of the mind where we can analyze it, dismantle it, and then reconstruct the narrative again.

Redundancy (p. 39)

In order to ease the burden that recorded thought must place on listeners in purely oral societies, oral discourse must be highly redundant, where literate societies can be far more brief. If you forget what was learned from a book, you can always look it back up again, but this is perhaps not so easy to do in a purely oral society.

Agonistically toned

  • Conservative or traditionalist (p. 41)
  • Skills and learning passed orally and by observation with little verbal explanation (p. 43)

Conservative or Traditional

  • "traditional expressions in oral cultures must not be dismantled: it has been hard work getting them together over the generations, and there is nowhere outside the mind to store them." (p.39)
  • repetition of what has been learned over the years (p.41)
  • older generation who have conserved and passed on knowledge are well respected and considered wise.The Wise Old Woman, or Man (p.41)
  • Knowledge is precious (p.41, 79)
  • Inhibition of intellectual experimentation (p.41)

Close to the Human Lifeworld

  • little concern with preserving knowledge of skills as an abstract, self-subsistent corpus (p.43)
  • Knowledge is situated within a context of struggle (echoing the struggles of the Human Lifeworld) (pg 44)
  • An oral culture has no vehicle so neutral as a list (pg 42)

Empathetic

  • The narrator, audience and characters are all bound together in the telling of a narrative (pg 46)(Plato)
  • names are much more than labels and carry greater significance and meaning in oral culture (Ong, pg. 33)

Mnemonic Patterned Thoughts

  • The restriction of words to sounds determines thought processes.
  • Ties sustained thought to communication (pg 34)

The cosmos is an ongoing event where the man at its center (pg 72)

Differences in memory of an oral bard to that of the memorization of texts (location 1195 of 4720 - sorry, using a digital text)

  • the oral bard would need to wait a day or more before retelling a story in order to let the story sink in to his memory. With the memorization of a text, the longer one waits the less one usually recalls. (TSherwood)

Personality structures are more communal and externalized in primary orality. (pg. 68)

Orality unites persons in groups. (pg 68)

The notion of orality is very present in our past and especially pertinent to how it can affect the way people see their worldview even today. The instance of Ong's discussion of sacred texts and the polarities that exist is particularly fascinated with the way orality impacts the human consciousness and the way it shapes our thoughts. (p.175) (IChan) --IrisChan 14:37, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Psychodynamics of Orality

Ong defines certain "psychodynamic" characteristics of thought and communication in primary oral cultures.

Ong's use of the term psychodynamics is not clearly located in one or another of the major theoretical perspectives in the field of psychology that define the term, such as cognitive science or psychoanalysis.

The psychodynamics of orality in Chapter 3 refers to the effects of sound, spoken language, oral discourse and communication in pre-literate societies where there is no exposure to writing of any kind, including outside contact with other literate cultures. Such effects take place on the physical level through perceptions, emotions, and mental states; on the cognitive level through memory and the organization of thinking and knowledge; as well as being expressed through culturally through shared beliefs, customs and meanings that are attached to words in common language use.

--OrenLupo 00:11, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Oral Memorization

Ong believes that oral people had minimal success on verbatim repetition. In addition, narration of oral memories is subject to social pressure, because narrator will narrate what the public can tolerate. (Ong, p66) The following are some ways oral cultures use to aid memorization:

  • The use of metric and formulaic structures to aid memorization (Ong, p58).
Narration was in hexameter lines in Iliad and Odyssey for singers to memorize word for word
  • Tunes added to narratives (Ong, p59)
South Slavic narrative poets remember bards by listening to other performers sing
  • Hand activity is usually associated with the narration (Ong, p66)
Stringed instruments or drums are in the bards; Jews narrates the Talmud with a "forward and backward rocking of the torso.
  • May rely on poetic processes/procedures/structures we no longer find useful today --IrisChan 14:44, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Orality and Physical Behavior/Physical Characteristics

Orality is somatic (66-7), associated with physical behavior (44) or body movement (67). Physical behavior is described as both natural and necessary for oral communication.

Physical behavior is indicative but not limited to body gestures, vocal inflections, facial expressions (47). Motionlessness or stillness is also gesture (67).

A characteristic of oral narrative is the “celebration of physical behavior,” (44) which also includes “enthusiastic description of physical violence” (44). This enthusiasm, in Ong’s opinion, surpasses sensational television and cinema. Oral tradition explores exterior crises, where literary traditions may prefer to focus on interior crises (44).

Interiority of Sound

  • Sound has a special relationship to time...it exists only when it is going out of existence(32)
  • Sounds register the interior structure of whatever produces them.
  • Sound is gathered and incorporated by the hearer from all directions and they are thus the center of an auditory world.
  • The existential nature of interiority as a concept which occurs in human consciousness makes hearing sounds a unique experience for each individual.
  • In oral cultures the experience of sound is felt deeply, has a centering effect, and situates human beings at the center of the universe.

(Ong, 1982: 71-72)

It is in this section of his text that Ong (1982) seems to be making the case that processing sound in the mind and physical interior of the body, in a metacognitive way, results in a very personal and perhaps spiritual experience. He also suggests that this is unlike the experience with any of the other senses or in the world of textual literacy.

--Allen Davidson 8:01, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

Orality requires active thought and complete engagement to fully experience the language and the words shared between individuals. It requires memory to be engaged to recall what was previously said and conveyed to continue the conversation.

Orally Based Thought

  • Happens in mnemonic patterns (p.34)
  • Highly Rhythmically Balanced expression (p.34)- More sophisticated orally patterned thought is more likely to be marked by set expressions in oral cultures
  • Formulaic (p.35)
  • in alliterations and assonances (p.34)



Reference

Ong, W. J. (2002). Orality and literacy: The technologizing of the word. Routledge; New York.

Plato, "Phaedrus" Translated by B. Jowett, (2008) The Project Gutenberg EBook [EBook #1636]http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1636/1636-h/1636-h.htm

--VickiSchrader 17:34, 23 September 2010 (UTC) --ChrisAitken 01:03, 24 September 2010 (UTC) --IreneIwasaki 08:52, 25 September 2010 (UTC) --CathyJung 15:07, 26 September 2010 (UTC)--CathyJung 14:50, 26 September 2010 (UTC)--CathyJung 18:50, 26 September 2010 03:57, 30 September 2010 (UTC) --03:59, 30 September 2010 (UTC) --CamilleMaydonik 03:59, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

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