I found Courtney MacNeil’s article on orality to be different than anything else I have read about orality. Last semester I took a course on Shakespeare and orality (English 348) and oral culture was labeled as primitive and as a culture that was going to be taken over by print. Reading through MacNeil’s article I was surprised at first to see a change from the view of orality that I am used to. Instead of the association of simplicity with orality, MacNeil’s article presents oral culture as something complex and valuable. Our world has become more literate over time, but reading, writing and speaking through language are not skills humans are born with, rather they are skills that have to be taught and learned over time. Something significant about the way these skills are taught is that they are often taught orally, such as a mother making sounds to her baby in an attempt to have her baby repeat the sounds.
Cultures around the world cannot be labeled as simply “oral” or “literate” because of the undeniable link between orality and literacy. MacNeil’s article refers to J. Edward Chamberlin’s views on orality and literacy to support this argument. The article starts off by pointing out that orality is often wrongfully defined as being a “preference” or “tendency” which leads to orality being thought of as in competition with literacy to survive. Orality being defined this way essentially suggests that it cannot exist alongside literacy. Walter Ong describes orality as either existing without literacy or as existing as something to serve it. But MacNeil’s article points out that with the advance in technology, orality and literacy have come together as equals.
I found MacNeil’s article intriguing because in my past experience with literacy and orality, literacy was constantly labeled as the complexity that destroyed the simplicity of orality. This article instead suggests that literacy and orality are both complex and both necessary in our modern world. MacNeil challenges Ong’s argument that orality is “evanescent” by using facts that deny this such as the truth about audio recordings and text. If orality (sound) is supposed to be temporary and literacy (text) is supposed to be permanent then she asks how can deleted texts and re-playable sound recordings be explained by this view of orality and literacy? Orality and literacy are neither always permanent nor always temporary. Since previous defining factors of orality and literacy do not work within our new age of media, this shows that a culture cannot be defined as one or the other. MacNeil offers a new view of orality that values the complexities of oral culture including the importance of story telling. Of course having the skill to write things down in order to remember them is more convenient than having to remember things off the top of your head, but the way in which you learned this skill was framed by orality. We are born being able to teach and learn through telling and listening to stories. A culture cannot be defined as literate or oral because our world is structured on orality and without it literacy would cease to exist.
After reading MacNeil’s article I wanted to look around and see if I could find anything else representing this new view of orality. I came across a piece by Mike Chaser on the Poetry Foundation’s website. Chaser’s “Orality, Literacy, and the Memorized Poem,” uses an example of the memorization of a poem “Nothing Gold Can Stay” to show that even moments of oral culture (the memorization and reciting of the poem) can be based on written text (the written version of the poem itself). Orality in this piece is given more significance as even though someone may learn something based on print, they have the ability of remembering it for the rest of their life. Robert Frost’s “Nothing Gold Can Stay,” is indeed a piece of literature but it also embodies orality as it can be taught through the stories of those who have remembered it and is therefore more than just words written down on a page.
Works Cited:
Chaser, Mike. “Orality, Literacy, and the Memorized Poem.” Poetry Foundation. Poetry Foundation, 5 Jan. 2015, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/articles/detail/70186. Accessed 16 Sept 2016.
Chiang, Samuel E. Learning From My Own Mistakes They Were Not Hearing. Digital image. Mission Frontiers. 2011-2015 Frontier Ventures, 1 May 2014, http://www.missionfrontiers.org/issue/article/from-the-guest-editor. Accessed 16 Sept 2016.
Frost, Robert. “Nothing Gold Can Stay.” Poets.org. Academy of American Poets, https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/nothing-gold-can-stay. Accessed 16 Sept 2016.
MacNeil, Courtney. “Orality.” The Chicago School of Media Theory. The Chicago School of Media Theory, 2007, https://lucian.uchicago.edu/blogs/mediatheory/keywords/orality/. Accessed 16 Sept 2016.
Hannah Westerman
September 19, 2016 — 10:44 pm
Hey Chloë,
I liked your post! I took that same English 348 class, and had a similar thought process when reading Courtney MacNeil’s article. Orature can not be primitive if it can hold the same, if not more power than literature. The strength and influence of a story is huge, and it can change ones thinking, and arguably grasp attention for a greater period of time. In your opinion, why do you think oral culture are still to this day seen as so primitive? I find that even after studies and in-depth understandings of oral cultures, society still looks upon these stories as silly tales that you might tell your children. I think what’s powerful about story-telling and orature is the endurance of it, that it cannot fully disappear as long as there is someone to tell it. Perhaps racism/eurocentrism is the reason that oral culture is seen in a primitive light? Maybe publication defines worth in literacy/orature?
-Hannah
Chloë Parkin
September 23, 2016 — 9:24 am
Hi Hannah,
Thanks for your comment! To answer your first question I think oral culture is often still perceived as primitive partially because of the high emphasis on literature in our world today such as the high amount of course curriculums involving essay writing and not much else. I agree with you about the view of stories as silly tales. I think there is an association with stories as and fictional elements and it can be hard to get past this and realize that stories actually portray truths. To answer your last questions, I think you definitely have something there and that literature is significant because it brings light to relationships, situations, prejudices, and assumptions but oral story telling can also do this.
samantha myran
September 29, 2016 — 3:37 pm
Hello Chloe
I enjoyed reading your blog post and was particularly interested in your experience that orality and literature are still being taught in a hierarchical nature against one another. My experience differs greatly and surely my chosen major is a factor in this but in my studies I have come to find that the “battle” between orality and literature has not only been a long one but that the opinion that orality has equal relevance and credibility as literature does is not a new one. In the Canadian as well as First Nations context I recall the most important example of this comes from the Delgamuukw v British Columbia case where on appeal the judge stated “The laws of evidence must be adapted in order that [oral] evidence can be accommodated and placed on an equal footing with the types of historical evidence that courts are familiar with, which largely consists of historical documents.” (this appeal was made in 1997) This case has been one of the most influential precedent setting cases in Canadian history for First Nations people’s and also for the stance that orality is just as rational and viable as literature.
Here are some links on the case:
http://indigenousfoundations.arts.ubc.ca/home/culture/oral-traditions.html
http://www.web.uvic.ca/~bthom1/Media/pdfs/abrights/rights.htm
http://scc-csc.lexum.com/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/1569/1/document.do
Look forward to reading more of your blog posts 🙂
Samantha Myran