So I promised academics in my description, and here they appear...
Mark Amodio comes lately to the discussion of orality. Walter Ong and Eric Havelock are the fathers of orality as we understand it today, but Amodio is making in-roads in the field (but he does not have a wiki, yet).
I am reading New Directions in Oral Theory, which he edited. His essay, "Introduction: Unbinding Proteus" has some important implications for my study.
He first discusses how "profitably" orality can be applied to a "wide range of verbal art, but they have also begun to free oral tradition itself from the bonds oral-formulaic theory's formalist emphasis unintentionally placed upon it" (2).
"Orality and literacy, we are coming to understand with ever increasing clarity, exist not in conflict with each other but as constituents of a continuum whose termini, what we might label 'pure orality' and 'pure literacy,' exist only as theoretical constructs. These termini are useful heuristics in that they provide us with touchstones against which to situate various cultures
and their practices along the oral-literate continuum, but they do not reflect real world states" (4).
I love the quote above. He articulates a problem I have had with Ong. That is, how Ong can contend that Primary Orality could have disappeared with the printing press. My thesis is that Primary Orality survived in the Ozarks up through the middle of the 2oth century and continues to have a great deal of influence in the rural areas there. While better education is creating more of a literate culture, it has been slow to come. And possibly, Primary Orality has simply been replaced by Secondary Orality rather than Primary Literacy.
Now I just have to write the paper...
5 comments:
Amodio is indeed doing excellent work in helping us better understand orality. I would note, however, that Ong never stated that primary orality disappeared with the printing press. Primary orality, a term I believe he first introduced in Rhetoric, Romance, and Technology and has always be defined as "the pristine orality of mankind untouched by writing or print that remains still more or less operative in areas sheltered to a greater or lesser degree from the full impact of literacy and that is vestigial to some degree in us all" (particular wording from “Literacy and Orality in Our times, page 470 in An Ong Reader).
See also these quotes from Orality and Literacy (1991 reprint ed.):
“But, for all their attention to the sounds of speech modern schools of linguistics until very recently have attended only incidentally, if at all, to ways in which primary orality, the orality of cultures untouched by literacy, contrasts with literacy” (5-6).
“As noted above, I style the orality of a culture totally untouched by any knowledge of writing or print, ‘primary orality.’ It is ‘primary’ by contrast with the ’secondary orality’ of present-day high-technology
culture, in which a new orality is sustained by telephone, radio, television, and other electronic devices that depend for their existence and functioning on writing and print” (11).
“Fully literate persons can only with great difficulty imagine what a primary oral culture is like, that is, a culture with no knowledge whatsoever of writing or even the possibility of writing” (31).
I take the time to mention this because it is one of Ong's more misunderstood ideas, especially within rhetoric and composition studies. I've traced this misreading of Ong can be traced back to the work of Tom Farrell and Beth Daniel.
Since the very knowledge of writing disrupts primary orality (not as a sudden instanteous break but an ongoing cultural shift), Ong himself is much more in tune with Amodio's continuum than people like Daniel present him. Ong would have argued that pure orality did exist at one time but not any more.
You might find useful the following posts: "Tertiary Orality, Secondary Literacy, and Residual Orality," "Passages and Thoughts on Ong’s 'Reading, Technology, and the Nature of Man'," and "(Mis)Uses of Secondary Orality."
So, well, I didn't know anyone was actually *reading* this...
I have actually read Ong, directly, at least _Orality and Literacy_, and what I took away from him was that he said that primary orality disappeared with the printing press, at least in the English speaking world. Ong defines primary orality the orality of “persons totally unfamiliar with writing” (p. 6)and then he says, “Fully literate persons can only with great difficulty imagine what a primary oral culture is like, that is a culture with no knowledge whatsoever of writing or even of the possibility of writing.” (p. 31)
So that is where I am taking my understanding of Ong. I am not actually familiar with the other writers you have mentioned.
What I am trying to show in the paper I am writing (I am a grad student-- guess it shows) is that despite being familiar with the concept of writing, many people in the Ozarks functioned as primarily oral until about 50 years ago.
Oh, and thanks for the links. I read some of your Ong archive. That is really interesting.
Laura,
I hope I didn't come across as harsh -- that was not my intent. And don't worry about being a graduate student -- I'm one too. I just happen to know a lot about Ong, and even hand the pleasure of visiting with him on a number of ocassions (he lived in the Jesuit residence here on campus and the first time I met him was at a department picnic).
I think I understand what you're argument is, and I think it's a good one. One of the big problems here, I think, is terminology. In short, it's a very different thing to say that the people of the Ozarks (Ong spent much time down in the Ozarks, BTW) were primarily oral until 50 years ago and that they were a primary oral culture. One implies a high level of orality or a heavily oral-residual culture, and the other implies that they "that is a culture with no knowledge whatsoever of writing or even of the possibility of writing."
And this is where work like that of Amodio is useful, and it's also where Orality and Literacy, which is just shy of being 25 years old, is showing its age: we're developing a more nuanced understanding of the continuum. This isn't to say that Ong wasn't aware of these nuances. But his early work was done at a time (the 1950s-1960s) when orality-literacy scholars believed that an oral poet had to be illiterate, that one could not be fluent in both traditions.
And while the printing press stands as a landmark for a cultural/noetic shift in Ong's work, Ong doesn't see it as the end of *primary* orality, but the beginning of the end of Western "oral" culture (oral here meaning the oral-rhetorical tradition). With the printing press, literacy becomes more wide-spread and literacy becomes more interiorized by the Romantic period (the Jane Austen example in Orality and Literacy).
In short, I would say, and I know Ong would say, that you're on track with the oralness of Ozark culture 50 years ago and that it would be different from secondary orality. Nor do I don't think that residual orality is the right term here. The old orality was still in play, and still is, I think, in some places and with some people. But that old orality isn't *primary* orality.
I hope this is making sense. And if you get the chance, please tell Carl Whithaus hello for me. When I saw him at Computers and Writing this past summer, he mentioned he'd be teaching Ong this fall.
I just wrote a reply that disappeared... Oh, the fun of technology.
I didn't take your comment as harsh. I was just surprised ;)
So you are at SLU?
So Ong thought about orality in the Ozarks? I do realize that the Ozarks encompass Rolla (and a little further north) and Columbia, so it would have been near where he lived. Did he write anything about the Ozarks? I guess that is more to the point. A trip to St. Louis is out of the question this fall.
It is cool that you met Dr. Whithaus. I haven't actually. Next time I email him, though, I'll mention that we're corresponding.
You mentioned a problem of terminology for orality and the Ozarks. What terms would you suggest? I see that the oral tradition was functioning to transmit information and values within the culture. I also see that a great number of illiterate people functioned in that culture without really feeling like they were missing something.
Thanks,
Laura
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