Try reading your favorite passage in your favorite book out loud. Now try and tell me if what you just performed, belonged to an oral culture or written culture? You might find, like me, that often what we read or listen to does not belong to a single realm of oral or written, but rather coexisting Worlds of the oral and the written. Both Edward Chamberlain and Courtney MacNeil serve as interesting evidence to contest a popular understanding of our culture as either oral or written. Macneil quotes Walter Ong in saying that currently, “orality exists either in isolation from literacy, or as subservient to it…mutual interdependency between the two media is not a recognized possibility”. In reality, I feel that even by typing this blog post, I’m participating in both an oral and a written culture, speaking in my mind what I am inscribing onto this page. Chamberlain contributes to this argument in claiming it is a misconception that these two cultures exist separately, and that “all so-called oral cultures are rich in forms of writing, albeit non-syllabic and non-alphabetic ones” (Chamberlain 18). In other words, we cannot simply discount the existence of a written culture in a predominantly oral culture, since “written” can take multiple forms. Both MacNeil and Chamberlain see that orality and literacy come hand in hand, and not separately.
I am drawn to the performance aspect of language, whether everyday story telling or upon a theater stage. Being a theater lover, I connect with this aspect of a co-existing “literature/oralature” pairing that Rosenberg proposes in MacNeil’s work. Especially in the world of performance, there is a close tie between the written text of a performance or story, with its oral expression. Chamberlain importantly claims that we are all involved in “both oral and written traditions…our stories and songs draw on resources of both” (Chamberlain 18). I am inclined to think of our stories and songs as performances, both written in text or an alternative structure of scribing, as well as an oral interpretation with imaginative expression. There is a way in which our stories or performances can exist scientifically and categorically as letters on a page (written or literate culture), as well as in imaginative and magical forms performed or told (oral culture). This is the case especially when different people can interpret a single written story or text differently. In terms of story as performance, the existence of ‘misinterpretation’ seems to suggest a written culture that is dependent on an oral interpretative culture, and not existing separately. When we tell a story to a friend, or when a story is passed from one generation orally down to another, speech and writing becomes hard to separate. MacNeil sums this up perfectly by claiming that “speech and writing are so entangled with each other in our various forms and performance of language”.
So what does all this mean to our current World of heightened technology and communication? In my opinion, the argument that oral and written cultures exist separately is becoming harder to prove as our World advances technologically. Walter Ong suggests a sense of oral cultures living in the present and the permanence of written culture. In fact, speaking in terms of our present society, text has lost a sense of durability and permanence, text messages being deleted instantaneously, and oral cultures can exist through time as recordings and sound-files (MacNeil). Today, we can ‘delete’ or ‘extend’ both oral and written aspects of our culture easily. I think this goes to show the blurring of both oral and written cultures in our present World, and how both of these modes of culture exist not only together, but dependent on each other for existence and performance.
What do you think?
Works Cited:
Chamberlain, Edward. If This is Your Land, Where are Your Stories? Finding Common Ground. Toronto: AA. Knopf. 2003. Print.
MacNeil, Courtney. “Orality.” The Chicago School of Media Theory. Uchicagoedublogs. 2007. Web. 14 Jan 2015. http://lucian.uchicago.edu/blogs/mediatheory/keywords/orality/
I think you are an excellently articulate and thoughtful writer Jeffry, thank you, I look forward to reading/hearing some of your peer’s comments here – and excellent dialogue starter, thank you ;0
Thank you for your kind words! It’s a lot to process, organize and write about, but it’s been a lot of fun so far. Here’s to more interesting dialogues!
Hi Jeff,
After reading your blog and another classmate’s blog, I have come to believe that the distinction between oral and written culture, is just our societies way of categorizing groups. As the other classmate noted, we all have this incessant need to group things together in neat piles. This is important when it comes to reading about oral and written cultures. It makes me question whether they even exist. Did our 21st century society create these terms to simply differentiate between two groups of people? Is it even necessary to differentiate between these groups? If so, why?
Your example of theatre suggests that Chamberlain and MacNeil are right. While I can see why critics might think that oral and written communication is completely different from one another because of the way in which they are delivered and received, I think it is only possible to communicate orally with literature, and visa versa. This proves true with your other example you provided us with when you write, “When we tell a story to a friend, or when a story is passed from one generation orally down to another, speech and writing becomes hard to separate.” They are so “entangled” as the author says, that it is hard to even distinguish one from the other.
I guess the “entanglement” is where next weeks assignment comes into play. It will be interesting to see how we read and gather King’s stories, the way we tell our stories to friends and family and finally, how we eventually put it on to “paper” (online blogs in this case).
Furthermore, I agree that it is with technology advancing at such a rapid pace that the distinctions between oral and written culture are meshing together. These boundaries are becoming harder and harder to define because of the World Wide Web. As I mentioned on the other blog, I don’t think that there would be such rigid distinctions had the WWW not been here. Without it, I don’t even know that we would have the terms oral and written culture.
I find that knowing about oral and written communication makes reading and talking about it that much harder!
Jessica Pellegrino
Hi Jeff – I like your post!
I would posit that digital media are separate. while inseparable, from the oral, written and inscribed culture(s) (media) they remediate. I expanded on my thoughts there in my latest post [https://blogs.ubc.ca/joecanada/].
I’m fascinated with the entanglement of literature and orality you point out in theatre. I’d respond with poetry, music (particularly rap, opera (with translated ‘subtitles’ projected) and ‘languages’ – drums, whistles) and film – especially subtitled work. I have found myself angry with translated subtitles – they can be incorrect and take away from the film’s ‘aura’ (see W. Benjamin) by their very nature, obscuring visuals and reshaping interpretations in their instantiation.
If you’re interested in Ong I’d recommend checking out others in the Toronto School – the most famous of these is Marshall McLuhan.
I also appreciate and laud you for not attaching value judgments to orality and literature. All too often the oral (and aural) is treated as inferior or ‘primitive’; what is YouTube but an oral/visual space? Who are these groups that make up cultures – why do we classify them by media? If we are a digital culture how can we understand oral or written cultures? We remediate and incorporate these media into our own – changing their nature – and exist outside them. If experience begets understanding, we cannot ‘understand’ written culture – let alone the oral or inscribed. Perhaps, then, experience is not necessary and sufficient for ‘understanding’? Maybe ‘understanding’ is a flawed approach. Sorry, I digress.
I like your use of ‘delete’ and ‘extend’ – I think it fits the medium wonderfully – and I wholeheartedly agree with your position that “text has lost a sense of durability and permanence” – at least in electronic media.
Nice to meet you, Jeff – I look forward to reading more!
Best,
Joey Levesque
Hi, Jeff!
I completely agree with your assertion that reading and listening do not belong in separate realms, instead, they co-exist with one another. As I am typing this, I am performing an act from the “oral culture” in order to complete the act of writing/typing. I always have an inner dialogue with myself as I talk to myself before I ever write down a word. In my view, all forms of orality contain components from scripture culture, and vice versa.
I love how you argue against Ong’s claim that oral culture lives in the present, and written culture is permanent. I also agree with you that in the society we live in today, there is a definite permanence to oral culture as well as a disappearing element to written culture that exists. I was curious as to what are your thoughts about the nature of oral and written cultures? (I have never understood why there is a need to divide the two aspects from each other and attach the word “culture” to it. I believe that both oral and written “cultures” should be known as modes of communication. I digress). With the prevalance of the internet and social media, I feel that we are moving towards a different communication altogether. The fact that we are able to manipulate oral communication (through our recording devices, translation, etc) as well as scripture through a computer, (rather than writing utensil to a surface) makes me feel that we are in the digital culture of communication. I believe that society should get rid of the notion that there are different “cultures”, and instead refer to “it” (it being orality, scripture, and electronic cultures) simply as communication.
Also, if you haven’t already, I highly recommend that you should check out “Becoming Beside Ourselves” by Brian Rotman, I think you would really appreciate it!
Regards,
Rajin Sidhu
Hi Jeff,
I very much enjoyed reading your commentary on the differences between oral and written culture especially when you related it to the performance aspect of language and theatre. I agree that it is almost impossible to distinguish a clear separation of orality and written text.
If for a moment we consider a Shakespearean play, this is a great example of written word which was intended to be orally performed with a strong importance on visual performance. The question becomes, if one of these aspects were removed, would the play lose its meaning or importance? If the actors were told the story and asked to perform it, would the story we less powerful? If the story is read, does the reader still have the same understanding? And if we listen to the story being read is the reader still able to visualize the plot?
Though Chamberlain claims that we are involved in “both oral and written traditions” (Chamberlain 18) I feel that the visual and performative element of story telling is constantly overlooked. Linda Sue Stewart discusses the importance of performance and improv as a teacher. She states that in order to teach others we are in an “almost continual conversation with the internalized voices of people from [our] past.” (Stewart 169) This implies that we are always in a state of performance when exchanging information or telling stories. This is just another example of how there is not a clear distinction between oral, written, or performative communication.
Works Cited
Chamberlain, Edward. If This is Your Land, Where are Your Stories? Finding Common Ground. Toronto: AA. Knopf. 2003. Print.
Stewart, Linda Sue. “A Catalyst for Change: Staging Dramatics for Preservice English Teachers through Improv, Role-Play, and Collaborative Reflection.” English Education 47.2 (2015): 168.