Following a meeting with my dissertation committee, it was drilled-in that what I am calling “Humanness”–the elements of face-to-face communication, such as visual (gesture, facial expression, attire, location, etc.), audio (voice intonation, volume, emotion, etc.), ability to be participatory– is really not represented well (or accurately) by that term. I need to come up with a better term (perhaps my own) for it. Read the rest of this entry »
Continuing the conversation on Residually Cyclical Styles (the cyclical nature of orality and literacy), I realize the next (or most recent) cycle.
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In past posts, I have established digital orality as relevant to the way we communicate using non-textual (largely oral), computer-mediated communication forms, such as podcasting and vodcasting. I have juxtaposed this concept to writing, noting the differences between the two and why communicative writing tools, such as IM and Chat cannot be forms of digital orality. I have been careful to not form a binary (”orality vs. writing”), since one of the foundational points I want to examine is how the two interact in given situations and media. However, looking at the many forms of communication media and trends that arise seemingly weekly, I question how something like Jott fits in with this structure. Read the rest of this entry »
“Narrators narrate what audiences call for or will tolerate. When the market for a printed book declines, the presses stop rolling but thousands of copies may remain. When the market for an oral genealogy disappears, so does the genealogy itself, utterly.” (66).
This is certainly logical in consideration of the printed word. When the call for a given text declines or subsides, it remains, since it is a tangible form. Conversely, an oral genealogy will vanish if the need and the members to carry it on are gone. However, this is not the case with digital orality Read the rest of this entry »
In a primarily oral culture, there is no way to record and recall a speech or oral performance. As Ong, Heim, and others have detailed, this is the reasoning for the structured, rhythmic nature of the oral epic. It was just not possible for the human mind to organize and remember a detailed, complex story without some form of mnemonic method applied.
The only way to reproduce a speech or orl performance would be to apprentice with the speaker, going off of his (rarely her) memory and rhythmic prompts to get the speech down and by repeating many times over the tale. However, beyond the use of writing to record these speeches, there came a point where writing was used as its own tool to produce creative works. Read the rest of this entry »
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