This reading really opened up my eyes to the contrast between orality and literacy. (I suppose that’s why the book is titled Orality and Literacy). Of course, the farther you get into the book, the more sense it makes. But as someone who was raised in this day and age in America, which 99% of the time means being raised to be very literate, this disconnect is not something one thinks of very often. Actually, the fact that orality was once the primary means of exchanging ideas and information is not something we think about often either. When in fact, humans actually became literate very late in their history. According to the book, “Homo sapiens has been in existence for between 30,000 and 50,000 years. The earliest script dates from only 6,000 years ago.” We are so literate in fact, that it’s difficult for us to even think of an orally-based society without thinking of it as some kind of variation of the literate society we live in today.
A really interesting point that was brought up in the reading is the way in which writing and study are related. For this reason, oral creations have tended to be considered below scholarly attention. As a student myself, I have to admit this is does hold some truth. When I think of studying, I think of familiarizing myself with the contents of some kind of book or reading. Although there are a lot of different learning styles out there, and some are catered to by assigning videos to watch as homework, or going out and completing some kind of activity, I have to say that writing has still really held that position because it gives us the ability to analyze and examine information and stated truths. An interesting counter-argument brought up in the reading is the fact that not all learning has to be done by studying in the way that we know it to be. People in primary oral cultures (which means a culture that has been completely untouched by writing) learn by apprenticeship (learning skills hands-on) and discipleship (listening and repeating what they hear, mastering proverbs etc.). The reading refers to written words as “residue”. Oral tradition has nothing like this. The only way in which an oral story can be kept alive is by people continuing to tell it.
A conclusion I came to was that oral culture seems like it has been a little displaced, or put on the back burner if you will. Something that makes me think this is the fact that the term “literature” essentially means writing in Latin. This term as we know, covers a wide array of written materials. But there is no comparable term for the wide array of oral productions that are and have been in existance. There have been a few attempts to establish such a term. One is “oral literature” (which the author is not shy to express disdain over). It just really shows that people struggle with thinking of verbal materials except as some variation of writing, even though they have no relation to writing whatsoever. It almost seems like working backwards from a term you already know; As if to say, “it’s like literature, except it’s spoken”. Another term is “epos” which is basically equivalent to “voice” in English. However, the typical meaning for epos has already been somewhat confined to epic poetry, so it would be difficult to try to make it an all-encompassing term that would refer to all oral creations. In my opinion, it still seems more fitting than oral literature.
While it is easy to begin to think negatively of literature, when coming to the new realization that as it’s almost completely replaced oral culture, it’s benefits cannot be ignored. It has helped to make great strides in many different areas (science, history, philosophy, etc.) as well as documenting that progress. I do think that oral culture could have a larger place in society once again if a real effort was made to accomplish that.
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