Assignment 1:3: Question 1
Explain why the notion that cultures can be distinguished as either “oral culture” or “written culture” (19) is a mistaken understanding as to how culture works, according to Chamberlin and your reading of Courtney MacNeil’s article “Orality.”
Attempting to understand culture through a binary of oral versus written culture is a reductive approach to an extremely complicated and expansive topic. According to the website Ethnolouge, “of the currently listed 7,111 living languages, 3,995 have a developed writing system.” This data suggests that the fundamentals of communication begin with oral tradition. While this may seem like rudimentary observation, it also implies there cannot be a written language without an oral language. MacNeil states that, “while Western egocentrism encourages the notion of orality as a secondary (and inferior) aesthetic medium, it is important to recall that in many cultures, orality is the dominant art form,” (2007). For cultures that utilize both written and oral exchanges of information Chamberlin observes “speech and writing are so entangled with each other in our various forms and performance of language,” (Chamberlin 2001). Arguably, languages that remain strictly oral do not require a written component to be effective, nor is a written component necessary for preservation.
In the instances of colonial nations such as Canada, the United States, and Australia, it is the erasure of oral cultures that is problematic. Oral stories are the way in which the Indigenous people have preserved their history. These stories passed down through generations are as precious and as detailed as books of faith are to religious groups. Beyond that they are a map, guide, and family tree. “The history of settlement around the world is of displacing other people from their lands, of discounting their livelihoods and destroying their languages” (78). Settlers attempted to eradicate Indigenous culture, and subsequently their oral culture, and then over time institutionalized efforts nearly eradicated the memory of this displacement and with it settler guilt. It was contemporary Indigenous stories, biographies, and first hand accounts that slowly brought to light the atrocities and brutality of colonialism. As Chamberlin states, “history specializes in forgetting” (77).
The oral versus written binary is a foil for the Indigenous versus settler dialogue. Chamberlin describes the settlers facing “the devastating consequences of making Canada their home” (78) in direct conflict with Indigenous groups becoming ”homeless in their homelands” (77). Despite frequent use of the word ‘decolonization’ to describe superficial acknowledgement of Canada’s brutal history, the claim to these homelands (and the way of life entangled with them) of Indigenous peoples are always treated as secondary to settler institutions and way of life. However, he also places the onus on the Indigenous people stating in an interview:
“I hope that there are many aboriginal people who’ll read the book and who’ll reflect on the ways in which they often discount our stories as untrue and credit exclusively their stories as true. And what I hope is that both sides will find some common ground in the area of contradiction in which stories are both true and not true.” (Writers Café, 2003).
Perceived notions of a hierarchy of communication and what constitutes as a civilized, or developed language has poisoned the poetic nuance of oral based cultures. “Chamberlin’s comparison of modern Western academia to the world of Homer’s Penelope drives home his point that there is just as much similarity as there is difference between pre- and post- literate conceptions of orality” (MacNeil 2007). Rather than seeing oral and written cultures as two, disparate categories, we must understand their relationship as fluid and intertwined, neither more developed than the other.
Works Cited:
“J. Edward Chamberlin: If This Is Your Land, Where Are Your Stories? @ The Writer’s Cafe.” J. Edward Chamberlin: If This Is Your Land, Where Are Your Stories?, writerscafe.ca/book_blogs/writers/j-edward-chamberlin_if-this-is-your-land-where-are-your-stories.html.
“How Many Languages in the World Are Unwritten?” Ethnologue, SIL International, 21 Feb. 2019, www.ethnologue.com/enterprise-faq/how-many-languages-world-are-unwritten-0.
Chamberlin, Edward. If This is Your Land, Where are Your Stories? Finding Common Ground. AA. Knopf. Toronto. 2003. Print.
Courtney MacNeil, “Orality.” The Chicago School of Media Theory. Uchicagoedublogs. 2007. Web. 19 Feb. 2013.http://lucian.uchicago.edu/blogs/mediatheory/keywords/orality/
Hi Emilia,
You mentioned in your post that some oral languages do not require a written component to be effective, nor is a written component necessary for preservation. In this respect, I’d like to refer to akyns, who traditionally represent performing and literary arts in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan in their way of telling nation’s story. Kazakhstan is my homeland.
Akyns are incredible, versatile, and gifted people. They are improvising poets, singers, composers and musicians at the same time. In other words, they express their improvised stories in the form of poetry-songs under their own musical accompaniment.
Akyns developed their performing manner under the influence of the nomadic lifestyle. They moved between different nomadic groups and communities to connect people, share information, and events. They were social voices and commentators, expressing peoples’ thoughts, concerns, hopes and feelings. Akyns also improvised in respect of well-known folktales, presenting them in the light of contemporary implications, connecting people with their past, present and future. In the past, akyns’ performances could last for many hours and even days.
Some of the modern akyns may write and publish their lyrics and poetry. However, due to the syncretic nature of the akyns’ ways of sharing stories, written expressions of their lyrics lose all the beauty and depth of the original performances as well as improvising components, which make every performance unique and exceptional.
You can read a little more about modern akyns here:
https://www.pri.org/stories/2011-11-14/kyrgyzstans-akyn-poets
and see and listen to one of the performances here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykzKDi2mU1I
Wow! What an incredible history! I love to learn more about such diverse cultures! In writing my piece I was definitely more focused on Canadian/North American Indigenous groups. It seems like what you’ve described with the Akyns overlaps heavily with the modernization of Indigenous Canadian stories. I always think about how in order to write in different Indigenous languages the authors need to use characters derived from english, developed by anthropologists to signal certain sounds not found in the English language. I also ponder the irony, and what is lost in translation. An interesting introduction to Haisla here: https://haisla.ca/community-2/culture/
Hi Emilia,
Great blog post! The first thing that strikes me is when you bring attention to the Chamberlin quote: “history specializes in forgetting.” It reminds me of how poorly Indigenous history was taught in my elementary school, and how the history of colonization was glorified and presented in a purely positive light. I recall my history textbooks containing images of amicable exchanges between Indigenous people and settlers without any mention of the genocide that followed. It was not until I heard stories, oral retellings, of Indigenous people’s stories of colonization and later residential schools that I started to get a full picture of the true history of settlement of so-called Canada. This alone highlights, as you brought up, the hierarchy of written cultures as seen by settler society, and makes sense for the rhetoric of erasure of oral culture post-colonization.
I agree that differentiating the binary of the two cultures is reductive. Even in the age of technology that is dominated by the written word, that word is also spread from person to person orally as communication, ideas, and feelings. We tell each other stories about the news we read, and try to encapsulate a funny video we saw by acting it out to our friends. I agree with MacNeil in that orality is not secondary to literacy, rather I believe that both are essential in today’s society (although not every society on this land has functioned this way throughout history). How do you think that we as a settler nation can aid in the preservation of the oral traditions of Indigenous cultures? As colonizers, I believe it is our duty to help in anyway appropriate, but I do not think we are doing enough.
I could not agree more that not enough is being done. It is incredible to see different Indigenous groups take it upon themselves to restore their languages and record stories and create foundations and webpages dedicated to preservation and education. However, unless you visit a site, or take a class, what little exposure is there? The onus is still on the individual to seek out information.
I personally am all for the renaming of locations in Indigenous languages but apparently that is an unpopular opinion (https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/alberta-calgary-first-nations-stoney-nakoda-canmore-place-names-1.4399941). My generation certainly missed the boat by learning about Indigenous culture in elementary and high school in exchange for, as you mentioned, a glossy hollywood-after-school-special version. Many teachers I know are actively incorporating Indigenous material into their arts/socials/and English classes which is certainly a start. Call me a radical but I think a full Indigenous curriculum should be mandatory throughout all of public school, and probably in Universities as well!