Orality, literacy, and something new?
Is it too obvious to say that we cannot think like people of oral societies? There is something paradigmatically different about the way that we think compared with how they did. There was no way to record things and no concept of recording as we know it. The old were the receptacles of history and proverbs were the keepers of morals and wisdom. Oral societies regarded their history as permanent as we consider ours but “the integrity of the past was subordinate to the integrity of the present” (Ong, p. 47). The political and cultural reality of the present dictated what was remembered, and therefore what happened, in the past. Can we, the literate ever hope to understand the minds of such a people?
Researchers have given us a lot to think about. Ong, referencing Luria’s research in Uzbekistan, stated that “it takes only a moderate degree of literacy to make a tremendous difference in thought processes” (p. 50). I found myself wondering if literate cultures think differently as a whole or does literacy have affects only on the individual level? I was curious as to whether knowledge of literacy conferred benefits to the illiterate of that society.
A few pages later Ong reports that “one value of Luria’s work is that it shows that such passing acquaintanceship with literate organization of knowledge has, at least so far as his cases show, no discernible effect on illiterates. Writing has to be personally interiorized to affect thinking processes” (p. 55). The how and the why are topics for another discussion.
Are there analogous differences today between the thinking of people that can simply read and those that can, and regularly do, navigate the myriad modes of communication and representation available to us in the modern world? Marshall McCluhan writing in 1964 proposed that “we are no more prepared to encounter radio and TV in our literate milieu than the native of Ghana is able to cope with the literacy that takes him out of his collective tribal world and beaches him in individual isolation” (p. 7). Are innumerable new modalities through which we communicate and record thought threatening to isolate those who are simply literate?
Think of the phenomenon of the internet meme. It is a kind of language that the uninitiated are unable to understand. Yes, they can read the words that the meme displays but they are unable to understand it because they are missing the message that the picture is conveying. To understand the meme one has to recognize it as such. Or think about the rise of social media. What effect is this having on our conception of our social interactions? We acquire unprecedented details about people’s lives without having to physically interact. Social ties that in the past would dry up over time without contact can be extended by the passive acknowledgement of the minutiae of their lives that they decide to post. Furthermore, how we exchange, find, analyze, use, and store information has changed. Means of collaboration and the transfer of information are at an all-time high and continue to rise.
Do these new developments constitute a paradigm shift in what literacy is or do we simply need new definitions. If literacy affects thinking on the individual level, perhaps members of this new literate society walk among us.
Ong, Walter. (1982.) Orality and literacy: The technologizing of the word. London: Methuen.
McCluhan, Marshall. (1964.) Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. Retrieved from http://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/mcluhan.mediummessage.pdf
Ong’s book “Orality and Literacy” must be quite the volume. I believe he was cited and even admired in the three other authors I’ve studied so far. That is, Chandler’s essays, Willinsky’s piece on democracy and Baikolo.
I think a paradigm shift is an underestimate of the power of literacy. I think where the confusion lies is that Ong seems to be quite critical of literacy in his work. In fact, some of his writing seems to be passive-aggressive in nature. He states that writing is an unnatural act. But that calling literacy unnatural is like calling music unnatural, which of course it is. He goes on the admire the memory feats of bards and story tellers who were among the illiterate or “pre-logical”. He states that orality is social, that people took great pride to rehearse their rhetoric orality and that literacy as not accepted and not trusted. Does this not sound familiar? Do we see similar concerns with computer technology?
Anyways, getting back on topic, Willinsky, Chandler and Biakolo sing the praises of literacy while citing Ong’s work. Willinsky in part credits the strength of democracy to literacy specifically referring to the Greek’s use of alpha-numeric system that brought knowledge and power to its people. Biakolo credits the entire development of western society to the popularization of literacy in Greek culture. Although Biakolo takes an aside and questions why other societies were not able to flourish despite using the same alpha-numeric characters as the Greeks. I believe he referred to Sumerian culture about 3500 years before the Greeks. I see this as evidence that literacy is responsible for a shift in society as a whole.
Looking through a microscope, they also refer to the affects that literacy has on the individual. Oral cultures and peoples are considered pre-logical. Literate people are considered logical. I believe is was Ong who states that a literate person solves a problem different than a non-literate person. The non-literate lives in the present day. The literate may live in the present day or in a virtual world of literacy. So 1 + 1 = 2 for the literate person. However for the non-literate, 1 + 1 may not equal to two. Whether it does or not depends on the context in which it is used. Literacy affects the individual as well.
Hi Stephen,
Interesting idea about considering the nature and inception of memes as analogous to text. Memes, by name, are all about memory and definitely focus on something that retains an idea. The idea of the meme came from Richard Dawkins in his book The Selfish Gene (1976). There he claimed that memes are discrete pieces of memory or ideas that transfer between people. He thought that memes were the cultural equivalent of genes and memes replicate and are transferred between individuals. Memes were also duplicates for each individual.
This really parallels the idea of text as an extension of memory and as way of remembering (recalling) that would be necessary in literate societies. With text, we believe it is unchanging over time. Words do not get shuffled on the page and the meaning of a text doesn’t change. That’s really underlying preconception of text and memes.
However, ironically, most people do not use Dawkins’ concept of meme as discrete pieces of knowledge. Instead it has morphed into a comical, viral, text that self-replicates across the internet. Each person might read a meme in different ways. There’s some memes that might be read as humourous by one audience and offensive as another.
That brings to light a mistake we make about text as memory and the idea of memes generally. Even though text can mean one thing to the writer, it can mean something entirely different to another reader. For example, interpretation has been a serious problem for the Bible, the Koran, the US Constitution or any set of laws. Foucault’s concept of discourse as a web of changing meaning tied to context and power structures serves our understanding of text far better than as memory or the idea of memes.
As for social media being a paradigm shift, I don’t think it has had that effect just yet. It isn’t radically different way or transferring and storing knowledge. It’s just more and faster ways of communicating using text and talk. Hyperlinking though might be a paradigm shift because it destroys the linear nature of reading and makes it more like a web of knowledge. For example, read the Greek mythology section of Wikipedia. It makes you think in an entirely different way about textual connectivity and interaction.
Hello Brian,
What do you think of this? Could it be possible that hyperlinking actually promotes the linearity of literacy? Lets compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges.
Lets say you’re reading an academic journal or paper in print. That journal or paper is full of references and citations linking that work to other people’s research and evidence. So as you are reading the text in a linear fashion, you are interrupted by (Ong, 2011), or even longer citations. If you compare this to the same text that has hyperlinks instead of a citation / reference, could you say that it is a bit less of a distraction without the brackets and named reference? Would it be possibly to justify, at least in part, the statement that hypertext links can be a bit less of a distraction in this light?
As humans, I feel that we are naturally scatterbrained, for lack of a better term. Perhaps hypertext links simply complement what is already a human condition. Ong (citing Plato) mentioned that the codex naturally accommodates the use of page numbers. That lead the way to a table of contents and an index. Both of which didn’t exist in vast numbers for the papyrus roll.
My point is that as a consumer in today’s webbed knowledge society, I do not feel that the linearity of literacy is ruined by hypertext. In particular, I like the ability to read hypertext, then use my mouse wheel to open a link in a new tab and look at it in a time of my choosing. Personally, I feel it more convenient than having to crossreference a list of references at the end of a paper or back of a book. Then have to search it up. If there was a need to do that during my reading, that would be quite a significant side-step from the linearity of reading.
Hello Daniel and Brian.
Interesting points. I think hyperlinking can be described in a linear and a webbed way. Think about actually being on a spider web. We are reading along the same thread and then we change directions at a node. We are still on the same web, following linearly from the past idea but changing the direction of future linearity. I am thinking about those “Choose Your Own Adventure” books from back in the day. It is the same story but there are many different things that you can get out of it.
Perhaps it is not a paradigm shift because whatever direction we chose, we are still on the same plane, the same web, when it comes to acquiring information.
Thanks for the comments.
Interesting example, Stephen, of the spider’s web. But from the author’s point of view, is my reader able to stay with my train of thought among all this jumping around the web within my writing? Could I lose my audience. Isn’t it possible that the reader misses a section of information when taking one of those turns at a node? Many people (mainly adults) don’t appreciate rereading the same writing (say a non fiction) over and over again in the “chose your own adventure’ style of works to get the complete facts. Give it to me straight so I can go on to something else attitude prevails when we are in a hurried society.
Very informative Bryan;
Thank you for this.
Terry
It is very interesting how you mention the meme example. I was thinking of that also. Can we use the example of transition from written knowledge to visual knowledge in our days to compare it to oral culture and its transition to literacy. Yet it seems the medium that is tranmitting the knowledge plays a major role here. For example the smartphone screens are small so we use icons instead of text or the fact that we still lecture using our oral skills to communicate with the audience even though we can write our thoughts and people can read them on their own.
The fact that we need to study technology and its effect on teaching is very important. The main concern must be is whether this technology is preparing students to the future and to live a happy life or not. If we think of the brain as a muscle that needs to be trained, we need to think of the proper training that will prepare it for the race. If memory is a necessity to succeed in the future then we need to focus on memory skills and so on.