Assignment 1:3

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.

The characterisation of cultures as an “oral” or a “written” one is a problematic conception in the sense of its implications that lead to the tension and inequitable relationships between genres of communication and cultures.

First of all, the way in which cultures are divided by written or spoken language may widen the gap between the two ways in which information is exchanged, with a competitive relationship in-between being created (“Orality”). It seems to be a common way of thinking that writing by nature is considered “cultivated” and “complex” (Chamberlin 19) as it “frees the mind for original, abstract thought” . However, the dialectical relationship between printed and spoken words suggested by some scholars in effect makes speaking seem comparatively “primitive” and “underdeveloped” as opposed to writing (“Orality”). It also entrenches the idea that oral traditions can only exist in an aesthetic sense (“Orality”) due to their “naturalness” and “naiveté”, consequently dismissing the practicality of oral language (Chamberlin 18). However, such a misconception has been challenged by Chamberlin who argues that the oral words in the story-telling traditions can also perform abstract work effectively such as communicating the knowledge of religion, science, history and the arts or “give meaning and value” to the reality that we could hardly make sense of without imaginative perspectives (1). It can also, according to Chamberlin, reveal truths of the world we live in as much as scientific knowledge written in texts can do and in a way bring us close to it (1). In addition to the equivalency between writing and orality which is evident in terms of their practicality and effectiveness in communicating abstract information, Paterson suggests that orature as a way of passing on stories might be more complex than written literature which begins with stories as far as the dynamics of readership and listenership is concerned (“Lesson”). She demonstrates that listeners in the context of story-telling can literarily change the story according to factors such as the time and space and people involved in the speech performance and therefore make new and contemporary meanings with that transformation; whereas readers of a text can do nothing about the story when it becomes textual and as a result static (“Lesson”). Although Paterson applauds the strength of orality over writing in terms of its power in empowering people to make changes on stories happen, she suggests that both forms of communicating stories should exist in a symbiotic relationship (“Lesson”). Such a conception is echoed by MacNeil who maintains that neither orality nor writing should be privileged (“Orality”).

The misconception that writing is more superior to orality might lead to hierarchical relationships as they are employed to frame and differentiate cultures. The categorisation of the “oral culture” and “written culture” implies that people who have writing skills are more intelligent, than those who rely on orality, in terms of their “self-reflexive” abilities that can generate “real thought” (Chamberlin 19). The subliminal bias that writing literacy holds the key for the development of human civilization while oral traditions are not able to “accommodate civilized thoughts and feelings” (Chamberlin 13) is very likely to give rise to the racist assumption that Indians, in the historical context of colonial Canada, should be educated; as a result, this group of people who are identified as having “primitive consciousness” (Chamberlin 19) or having a childlike state of mind or even “beasts of the field” (Chamberlin 10) can push through “the chronological progression” (“Lesson”) and become civilised. Such an understanding implying the hierarchical relationship between the Canadian Aboriginal cultures and the European cultures leads to the idea of replacing the Indigenous languages with the European ones (Chamberlin 18). Another implication of the division of the “oral” and “written” culture is that the societies who have the traditions of written literature are more “advance”, than those “whose major forms of imaginative expression are in speech and performance”,  in terms of the evolutionary process (Chamberlin 19). The underlying ethnocentricity in this colonising discourse lead to the justification of the legitimacy of dispossession, including the new comers from Europe taking the land away from the native inhabitants, and worse, enslavement of Aboriginal people in the Canadian history. The unequal dichotomy of the “oral” and “written” culture eventually causes the division of “Them and Us” (Chamberlin 4).

Works Cited:

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. 16 SEP. 2016.http://lucian.uchicago.edu/blogs/mediatheory/keywords/orality/

Paterson, Erika. “Lesson 1:2 Story & Literature”. ENGL 470A Canadian Studies: Canadian Literary Genres Sept 2016. University of British Columbia Blogs. 2016. Web. 16 Sept. 2016. https://blogs.ubc.ca/courseblogsis_ubc_engl_470a_99c_2014wc_44216-sis_ubc_engl_470a_99c_2014wc_44216_2517104_1/unit-1/lesson-12/