Orality, Literacy, and Various Implications

This blog entry (like my second blog entry every week) is just an expression of various thoughts and connections that our readings have brought to my mind. I have a lot of various points this time.

First, I am curious to know if orality is the natural condition under which humans are meant to live. This is the type of society that came first, and sound is supposed to be more harmonious than vision. Additionally, when babies start out in the world, they definitely practice orality, as opposed to literacy. It is usually only through parents’ and schools’ oral reading that children experience the transition into literacy. Children’s orality is stifled in school, where reading is definitely promoted. Would it be better if we allowed ourselves to remain a talking society? Would we be more communal, more inquisitive?

On the subject of education, it is interesting to consider if the ability to write things down leads to student laziness, preventing them from remembering useful information. I find it annoying, for example, when math students use calculators for simple arithmetic; it takes away from the development of one’s own abilities and encourages dependence. On the other hand, oral culture can also be detrimental. Without written words, it is possible for children to experience “giant word” syndrome (Bereiter & Englemann 34), where sentences and phrases are said as a word and cannot be recombined to form questions from sentences and the like. It is a double-edged sword, but I tend to think a literate culture can lead to further developed minds, as long as short-cuts are minimized.

Fairy tales have always intrigued me, perhaps for how powerfully simple they are and how they really highlight various aspects of human nature. It is, therefore, interesting to consider that such traditions are the result, not of our exalted literate society, but of something more fundamentally (or primitively) human. Again, it is worth noting that this is how children start out learning. There definitely does seem to be a progression from orality to literacy, but both are necessary; we should remember our oral roots and deepest fears, desires, etc. of the human psyche as presented through fairy tales.

I now realize why listing geneology is so important in the Bible. I have sat through many a Christmas mass wondering why it was significant to hear Jesus’ whole lineage about thirteen generations back. It means his family is significant enough to be remembered, and, thus, he is an important personage.

The idea of homeostasis scares me, because it reminds me of dystopias, such as those presented in 1984, Brave New World, and Equilibrium, where (at least in one of those) past events and people are erased from history when they deviate from strict social rules. The idea of throwing out ideas that do not have to do with present society may have worked in a simpler time, but it would be extremely dangerous in the hands of powerful people now.

Along the lines of orality being a simpler form of human development and thus a reflection of degree of education, I think traces of a stronger oral culture are visible in poorer, less educated communities. Spoken word and poetry are both cheap and accessible forms of communication, as well as powerful. More people speak up in churches. When sociologists talk with children from such communities, the children are practical and use situational explanations. Like Ong’s discussion of a peasant’s bafflement when asked to describe a tree, sociologist William Labov found that one lower-class child fumbled for words when an interviewer asked him to describe a jet (Labov 1971); those types of questions are not practical nor relevant in everyday for these people. Furthermore, some children were at first very quiet, because talking, as Ong described, is often seen as confrontational to some degree in an oral community.

The differences in people’s ways of expressing themselves in oral versus literate societies exemplifies the relativity of measuring knowledge and, thus, may inspire test creators (such as those for the SAT’s) to reconsider how they quantify knowledge and, thus, determine futures.

I think it is sad how the literate world, in its very existence, isolates the individual from society. Do we realize that communal happiness is sacrificed for knowledge? I think every college student does realize this when deciding between homework and parties. I also think that such deprivation leads to more psychological problems, such as depression.

Finally, I am curious as to the implications of Ong’s work on forms of entertainment. He contends that sound is more harmonious than the visual and that “[w]ithout harmony, an interior condition, the psyche is in bad health” (72). Is it, therefore, better to listen to music than read a book? Ong states, “Knowledge is…a unifying phenomenon, a striving for harmony” (71-72). Does this mean that, with music (or forms of auditory learning), we are more likely to learn or to better relax and let our experiences combine so as to make us feel whole?

That is all for now.