Oral Tradition

I tend to see and experience the world through my own cultural lens. Before reading this excerpt taken from Methuen Ong’s Orality and Literacy I hadn’t spent much time reflecting on my thought process and how it is fundamentally affected by the written word. “Try to imagine a culture where no one has ever ‘looked up’ anything. In a primary oral culture, the expression ‘to look up something’ is an empty phrase: it would have no conceivable meaning” (Ong, 1982, p. 31). It’s hard for me to think of a world where language is spoken but not written. I haven’t experienced it. I would even dare to say living in a world like that would change a foundational part of my daily communication. Ong goes on in his text to describe the difficulty of understanding a culture rooted in oral tradition. “Freeing ourselves of chirographic and typographic bias in our understanding of language is probably more difficult than any of us can imagine, far more difficult, it would seem, than the ‘deconstruction’ of literature, for this ‘deconstruction’ remains a literary activity” (Ong, 1982, p. 77).

As time has marched on I wonder how much oral tradition I lose out on because of my immersion in the written word. In an interview by the St. Petersburg Times, reporters interviewed Tampa Florida educators and found that they were using storytelling rather than having the students read in order to teach learning in the classroom. “According to Tampa educators I talked with, not only are we not necessarily helping them to be better readers, we are losing a golden opportunity to teach children our values in a creative setting” (Brooks Tiplin Post, 1987, p. 2). The article went on to describe all the positive effects storytelling can have on children. I wonder if my memory would be better if I was better versed in story telling? Or perhaps I would be more creative?

I’ve been reading a book in the little spare time I have entitled A. Lincoln. It’s a biography of Abraham Lincoln’s life and it notes the utmost importance of oral tradition just a little over 150 years ago. “A society oriented around the spoken word rewarded those who learned its ways. In his constant drive for self-improvement, Lincoln sought out opportunities to enhance his speaking ability” (White, 2009, p. 86-87). I think about our presidents today and their use of notes and teleprompters when they communicate to the masses. In Lincoln’s time, people were expected to give speeches without the help of these crutches. This required the speaker to spend much more time internalizing and committing to memory the words that would be shared.

In a thesis written by a University of Central Missouri graduate student named Xiaoshi Wei, Wei explores how the introduction of the phonetic alphabet contributes to detribalization in a rural Chinese village. “To be specific, the use of the phonetic alphabet contributes to detribalization, for it rationalizes oral culture material to be textualized. The process of incorporating alphabets into culture is the process of standardizing and notating the oral words by their combinations of sounds. As McLuhan (1964) said, detribalization translates humans from the magical world to the visual world” (Wei, 2011, p. 4) Wei’s findings help in further illustrating the shift that happens when the written word is introduced into a culture rooted in oral tradition.

Ong believed that the technology of writing would change the way people think and process information. Although it is hard for me to wrap my mind around a culture in which I have no experience, the evidence suggests that Ong’s findings are true and accurate. Our culture today is based around the written word. Even though our culture has shifted away from an era of oral tradition, I think there are some invaluable things that we should hold onto from this era of communication.

References:

BROOKS TIPLIN POST. (1987, December 26). Storytelling is a good way to teach learning :[CITY Edition]. St. Petersburg Times,p. 2. Retrieved February 6, 2011, from ProQuest Newsstand. (Document ID: 50174910).

Ong, Methuen, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word, 1982.

Wei, X.. The disappearing Hua'er tradition: A case study of electronic media in the Chinese rural village, Lianlu. M.A. dissertation, University of Central Missouri, United States -- Missouri. Retrieved February 6, 2011, from Dissertations & Theses: The Humanities and Social Sciences Collection.(Publication No. AAT 1446340).

White, Jr. Ronald C. (2009). A. Lincoln: A Biography. Random House Publishing, New York.