Response to Orality and Literacy
The opening really said it all for me. I don’t think I can fully understand what it was like without using text. It was however fascinating reading about how text changed what we defined as knowledge and communication. I think we have all had that discussion or thought about how the internet will change how we learn. Look at us right now, some students might graduate with a master’s degree and might never had verbally communicated with another student or professor in that whole time.
Academically, I kept thinking society was less intelligent back then to where we are now. I based that on the lack of knowledge and recall one would have. I understand Ong made reference to this starting on pg.56 but I still feel that memory/recall was everything in that day. However, such topics as “Is Google making us stupid” are being studied to see if the opposite holds true (Carr, 2008). It argues that Google is impairing our ability to think and reason. I could see the leaders of the communities would always be the people with the best memory. If they could recall all their community proverbs they would be considered the most knowledgeable and therefore be the person all others would go to. Ong states on pg.53 that “writing separates the knower from the known and sets up for objectivity”. (Ong ,1982) Believing in that would verify my argument that those who could recall the most knowledge would be the leaders. They would be known for having the most experience as they could recall the most which others would automatically gravitate towards as they would know that person has first hand knowledge of the situation. In my school and assuming in all schools we put a huge emphasis on critical thinking in our learning. We assume the knowledge can quickly be looked up and therefore, lets us teach the students how to innovate that knowledge into different realms.
I’m not sure if it’s because I teach Business Studies but I kept thinking how different that society would have been when they mentioned that everything learned from another was through apprentiship (pg. 42) Today we go on YouTube and we can learn everything from making your grandma’s famous apple pie to creating the next nuclear bomb. Knowledge is transferred so quickly these days. I’m wondering if great ideas or products never saw the light of day because they didn’t have the exposure other lessor idea’s got. Or if there was an earlier version of Albert Einstein but he couldn’t communicate his thoughts effectively so those thoughts or ideas went nowhere. It might have made “Marketing” more important than it is today as Peabody stated on pg. 65 that oral memory differs significantly from textual memory (Peabody, 1975). Somebody’s body language, tone and delivery were key to effectively communicate knowledge to each other.
I’m interested now to see how we use history to plan and predict how to we teach to the new generation!
Carr, N. (2008), Is Google Making Us Stupid?. Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education, 107: 89–94. doi: 10.1111/j.1744-7984.2008.00172.x
Ong, Walter. (1982.) Orality and literacy: The technologizing of the word. London: Methuen
It actually feels impossible to relate to an oral society. I come from an Arabic background and the Arabic language is full of sound. The Koran we read requires us to read it with a specific rhythm in order to make the process of memorizing it easier. Even the way words are written are considered a complete surprise for someone who never read this book before. It seems to ask you to make a conclusion and an interpretation at each stop. As if someone is reading it to you with body language and you have a prior knowledge and assumptions of the topics talked about. I share a TED video on this subject (9min): http://www.ted.com/talks/lesley_hazelton_on_reading_the_koran
It is true that the Koran is written so it was not a fully oral culture but again language then was so strong that when the Koran first was written it had no dots. Which means each alphabet in each word has almost 2-4 possibilities. Then after 300 years of the death of the prophet the Koran was dotted to make it easier for the literal generation to read. So even when you have the technology of writing in a society you may still have an oral culture simply because the society has little access to writing.
Thank you for this Nidal;
It sounds like the reading of the Koran was meant to be a full sensory experience, where all senses were needed to be focused on the text. The possibility of making human errors of interpretation must come with each translation, especially if, as you say, the addition of dots effects 2-4 possibilities of word choice. I wouldn’t mind exploring back to the earlier versions sometime.
Terry
Hello Michael and Nidal,
I agree with what you both said about it being very difficult to understand and relate to oral cultures. It is just such a normal part of our life to be inundated by written text and information, that it is hard to imagine that for some this did not and does not exist. I’ve gone to numerous sources looking for further clarification in hopes to understand better! What I found most interesting was that there would be nothing written with their laws and rules governing their communities. This would all be passed on by word of mouth. This passage on Wikipedia (not the greatest of sources, of course) helped put things into perspective a little more for me.
“Oral cultures face a few unique obstacles when passing down information. Without the use of writing systems to transmit information through time, oral cultures employ various strategies that serve similar purposes to writing. For example, heavily rhythmic speech filled with mnemonic devices enhances memory and recall. A few useful mnemonic devices include alliteration, repetition, assonance, and proverbial sayings. These strategies help facilitate transmission of information from individual to individual without a written intermediate, and they can also be applied to oral governance.”
So far I’ve only read about half of the chapter on Ong as I’ve had to pick through what each part means but the paragraph above helped me a little in realizing that they did have methods to help with the remembering of tradition and law. What you said, Nidal, about the Koran fits right in there and also what Michael said about body language, tone and delivery. Thanks for helping clarify for me!
Jennifer
I too agree with you all, that in this digital age it seems impossible to relate ourselves to oral times but that being said the ability to speak and to remain silent is one of the essential difference which separates humans from animals. It is interesting to note that the use of sound starts from the time child is born. It further grows and develops into speech as the child grows older and by the time he/she is about six or seven years old they can comprehend, share and express their thoughts and feelings. Here I approve to what Ong states (pg 8) orality can exist without writing but writing never without orality. (Ong, 1982) My experience of teaching language to preliterate adults coming for ESL classes was a challenging yet rewarding experience. I used various strategies like; culturally specific names, playing audio/video clips, sharing stories from their cultures and using words from their language facilitate the understanding of the fundamental concept of literacy. Furthermore, children or adults coming to classroom with no preliterate background learn a lot from each other as literacy is highly dependent on social and communal interactions.
Though I agree to Ong’s claim (pg 14) that without writing, human consciousness cannot achieve its fuller potentials but at the same time I feel that the act of writing a text is a slow and deliberate process (Ong ,1982). Reading on the other hand is the first step towards literacy development. Reading facilitates word recognition process, which further enhance intellectual capacity. When children and adults are engaged in reading simple stories they can memorize and pay attention to the printed words. Furthermore, meaningful interpretation can provide opportunities for context-supported text analysis.
Reference:
Ong, Walter. (1982.) Orality and literacy: The technologizing of the word. London: Methuen
Hi Jennifer and all;
Do they still play the word game in schools whereby one child whispers a word or phrase into the ear of the next person in a line and that person whispers what they think they heard into the ear of the next person until they reach the last person who voices the result? I wonder if you could change this up a bit by having the students themselves solve the puzzle of getting the first word and the last word to be the same. They would need to hone their pronunciation, listening and memory skills among others. Would facial and body language play a part?
Terry
Thanks for the post Michael, I was particularly drawn to your comments relating to the power structures of oral societies and the relationship between memory and leadership. After reading Biakolo’s response to Ong’s Orality and Literacy I have began to question every method of studying oral cultures. We have very little evidence to base our assumptions about how earlier culture behaved and agreeing with Biakolo (1999), assuming the people at the time to be homogeneous is pretty big leap. Different communities of oral communicators probably had different methods of exchanging ideas and governing. Ong relies on oral literature as evidence to make general claims about oral cultures. Biakolo (1999) suggests that it would make “more scholarly sense to study a particular oral literary piece in terms of its own individual style than to make grandiose pronouncements about the oral style” (p60). Aside from evidence from oral literature, Ong also uses logical arguments by analyzing the fundamental differences between orality and literacy like the differing relationship between the knower and known you mention from page 42 (Ong). Even with logical arguments related to the mechanics and limits of oral communication, it is still presumable that different communities would develop different strategies. However, even if using specific artifacts and logical speculation to generalize about oral cultures is problematic, I still think there is value in exploring hypothesis like your own in regards to leadership. To further your argument I think evidence or logic would have to eliminate some alternative possibilities. Perhaps leaders of oral societies were the most physically intimidating or perhaps the most trustworthy, or the most fertile. Any findings would surely be interesting but would not be transferrable from one oral community to the next. I think you could probably argue that we would learn more about ourselves than the peoples in question. Instead of discounting all social science and historical research like Ong’s, wouldn’t it be more valuable to reframe our goals and questions?
Biakolo, E.A. (1999). On the Theoretical Foundations of Orality and Literacy. Research in African Literatures 30.2 42-65.
Ong, Walter. (1982.) Orality and literacy: The technologizing of the word. London: Methuen
Hi Brendan;
I like what you wrote and can relate, too, to the findings of Biakolo (1999). What seems logical in Ong’s discussions are too expansive in nature to encompass all communities. But he does force us to reexamine our values and how we decipher information presented to us. I learned in an earlier MET course not be believe all the articles put on our reading lists were to be taken as ‘Bible’ truth. We are here to question and through our questions learn.
Terry
Oh Michael!
First, “thinking society was less intelligent back then to where we are now. I based that on the lack of knowledge and recall one would have” is assuming a lot. Just because we don’t have complete recorded data from ‘back then’ shouldn’t mean we can assume earlier societies were not as knowledgeable. There are eras where whole thriving societies were built on sand. There had to be more than one person with some smarts to accomplish the building of these past civilizations. There are many first nations/aboriginal peoples who have survived up to today because they were knowledgeable of the necessary information to do so, and much was based on their oral culture. They were smart enough for their times as we should be for ours. With our community being global today, we have far greater access to much more information and must weed though a larger maze to obtain the essential bits (enter our educational systems).
You “see the leaders of the communities would always be the people with the best memory” where I see leaders are only as good as the people they surround themselves with. Remember the phrase the scribes and the Pharisees? The scribes controlled the oral/written word. Many a ruler depended on others (experts on various subjects from laws to architecture to astronomy) to advise them on important matters. Give the wrong advice and you were most likely separated from your head. I think the successful ruler’s skill set was different, more along the lines of being a strategist. Even today, we don’t elect the most intelligent people to high office.
” Or if there was an earlier version of Albert Einstein but he couldn’t communicate his thoughts effectively so those thoughts or ideas went nowhere.” Who is to say how long scientists were trying to convince those in power that the earth was not flat (without being branded insane). Maybe if the quality of their writing communication skills were upped a notch a convincing letter in a bottle from an early adventure may have made it back from ‘the other side’ and changed history. I guess the longevity of data storage gets us every time.
Terry
Oh and Michael;
One more question: Would you not consider the inventor of the wheel or the discoverer of fire to be in the same league as Albert Einstein in relation to their time period?
Terry