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Re: Levels of Consciousness/+orality is primary
Jesse S. Cook III (jcook@AWOD.COM)
Wed, 2 Oct 1996 16:56:24 -0400
On 2 October 1996, Wade Tarzia commented:
>>>Orality
>>>is still the most important means of linguistic interaction for most of
>>>the people on the planet. [Ron Kephart]
>>
>>Trivially true but of what value? [Jesse Cook]
>
>I know I am responding to a small detail in a large on-going
>discussion, but my oralist alarms went off and my adrenal glands need
>release.
>
>Jesse, how can this be 'trivially true' when a large number of people
>on the planet are not literate and pattern many of their language
>communications with oral strategies based on generations of traditional
>methods? And people who ARE literate continue with an oral tradition still
>attached to folklore processes. I mean oral traditions, the formally
>organized kind--jokes, anecdotes, songs--and also the more
>paradigmatically organized kind--folk "ideas" expressed through language
>and visible as replicable patterns of ideas (sometimes but not always or
>even usually comprising similar linguistic el;ements or formal features).
>These kinds of things influence elements in print media as well. Not
>trivial, but primary, I would argue, and of high value to many
>anthropological arguments.
Wade,
Ron's statement was trivially true in the context of this discussion only.
I had no intention of trivializing orality itself. That would be
ridiculous, and could not stand up to argument.
Jesse S. Cook III E-Mail: jcook@awod.com
Post Office Box 40984 or
Charleston, SC 29485 USA 201-9573@mcimail.com
"...it is not for our faults that we are disliked and even hated,
but for our qualities."--Bernard Berenson (1865-1959)
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