The Organic State of Oral Communication
As human beings, we are born with the ability to see, touch, taste and hear the world around Imagine what it’s being a baby during the first few moments of birth. From the instant you come into the world, you quickly become bombarded with a multitude of sensory experiences. Moving from your comfortable and perfectly climate controlled environment to a bright, cold and very unfamiliar place. This alone is enough to make anyone stressed out leaving you longing to return to where you just came from. Just when things couldn’t get any worse, you hear it, a familiar sound, one that is smooth, vibrating through your entire body soothing every little care that just moments ago seemed so big. This experience is louder, more clearly than what you’ve known previously but it feels like home, and therefore is good. You open your eyes for the first time, longing to know where it came from, and then you see her, your Mother.
Although we have all gone through the above experience, the majority of us have no recollection of it (unless there is a very good Psychologist specializing in regression therapy involved.) Instead, we just trust that the organic nature of hearing helps us form early bonds with our parents and individuals that bring us up as children. This example helps illustrates the concept of primary orality, having absolutely no concept of the written word or print yet relying solely on sound, cadence and auditory levels and pitch of the voice, facial expressions, and body language. If you can imagine the same experience as described above, only as the child comes into the world, he is immediately handed a piece of paper from his Mother with written text affirming love and promises of a great life together. As absurd as this concept sounds, it is a clear way to demonstrate literacy.
The Origin of Speech
In the Bible’s story of creation, Adam is clearly the first human being to ever speak. In Genesis 2:19 in the New International Version Bible, the portrayal of what are possibly Adam’s first spoken words are as follows:
Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field. (NIV, p.9)
In Genesis, Adam’s conversation with God leads to the creation of Eve, and so the creation story of man and woman is complete. For some, the idea that God created Adam in his own image and therefore Adam just began speaking may be enough for some, however for those that want to get down to the actual origin of language, this might prove to be difficult. Although many scholars are baffled by the origin of speech, many continue to develop theories and concepts to help further understand this basic, yet so profound process of oral communication. Overall, humans seem to be born with the innate ability to communicate and express themselves vocally, and yet scientists and linguists are still unsure of how humans first developed the ability to speak. World renowned linguist, Noam Chomsky is possibly the world’s leading expert on this exact subject matter, however when interviewed by MIT News and asked the question, “when did human’s start to speak,” Chomsky’s immediate response is, “I don’t think we have a prayer of answering that on the basis of anything that’s now understood.” (Chase, 1992) Chomsky appears to firmly support the idea that language is part of our biological design, “Contrary to what people thought, language is not taught, not even learned. It's something that your mind grows in a particular environment, just the way your body grows in a particular environment.” (Chase, 1992) This theory would clearly explain the differences in communication amongst oral societies across the globe. For example, few tribes in Africa use a form of oral communication called ‘clicking’ using a number of tongue clicking sounds to convey their message. If a Caucasian baby were to be raised from a young age amongst one of the African tribes that possess this language, that baby would use that form of dialect to communicate. Oral language is one of those tricky things that cannot be explained. This can also be seen amongst people in America where the primary language is English, there are a whole slew of dialects and accents that directly related to the location of where a person is raised.
Primary Oral Cultures
Imagine what it would be like to live in a society with no books, internet, magazines or newspapers, in fact, no written word at all? Professor Walter Ong coined the term primarily oral culture for societies such as this that still exist to this day. Ong discusses this lack of writing in his 1982 book Orality and Literacy and the issue of not being able to “look something up” as you would in a literate society, Ong states that, “Without writing, words as such have no visual presence, even when the objects they represent are visual. They are sounds. You might ‘call’ them back –‘recall’ them, but there is nowhere to ‘look’ for them. They have no reference or trace.” (p.30) In an oral society, sound is dynamic. Because of the lack of written language, words are not as fluent as they would be in a literate society. In fact, primitive people view words as being very powerful. Ong discusses this idea stating that,
Sound cannot be sounding without the use of power. A hunter can see a buffalo, smell, taste and touch a buffalo when the buffalo is completely inert; even dead, but if he hears a buffalo: he had better watch out: something is going on. In this sense, all sound, and especially oral utterance, which comes from inside living organisms, is ‘dynamic.’(p.32)
In an essence, oral communication, the ability to rely solely on expression through speech and listening is a survival skill. Surprisingly enough, the majority of cultures are oral. “Of the some 3000 languages spoken, that exists today only some 78 have a literature”. (p.7) This particular fact is somewhat astonishing to imagine in such a high-tech world where the majority of people you interact with on a daily basis communicate just as much in writing (via text messaging, facebook, tweeting, email etc.) than they do orally.
Secondary Oral Cultures
The notion of a primary oral culture may seem so far away to the typical American, however the idea of a secondary oral culture, one that has a literature but still prefers oral communication over written word actually exists as a sub-group amongst Americans. Older generations frequently mistrust methods of computer mediated communication (CMC) because they are more comfortable with oral communication, using the telephone, or stopping by a friend’s house to convey a message versus sending them an email or text message. Even today’s most modern scholarly individuals may find oral communication to be superior over written depending on the situation. For example, if a loved one dies, it is clearly more appropriate and human to orally communicate this message than to write it.
In a discussion between Socrates and Phaedrus written in Plato’s Phaedrus, Plato writes:
Writing, you know, Phaedrus, has this strange quality about it, which makes it really like painting: the painter's products stand before us quite as though they were alive; but if you question them, they maintain a solemn silence. So, too, with written words: you might think they spoke as though they made sense, but if you ask them anything about what they are saying, if you wish an explanation, they go on telling you the same thing, over and over forever. Once a thing is put in writing, it rolls about all over the place, falling into the hands of those who have no concern with it just as easily as under the notice of those who comprehend; it has no notion of whom to address or whom to avoid. And when it is ill-treated or abused as illegitimate, it always needs its father to help it, being quite unable to protect or help itself. (p.67)
Transitioning From an Oral Society to a Literate Society
Is today’s heavily enriched literate society and the ever increasing CMC replacing oral communication a sign of an increased transition from oral societies to literate? The answer is yes. With satellite technology and advances in educational program availability for third world countries, we are likely to see a shift occurring with a decrease in the oral communication exclusive societies. This advancement however can only exist with either the creation of a new written language, or an adaptation to another.
References
Chase, Naomi (Interviewer) and Chomsky, N. (Interviewee). (1992). Chomsky Explores Origins of Language [Interview Transcript]. Retrieved from http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/1992/chomsky-0401.html
Holy Bible: New International Study Version. (1995). Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House.
Ong, W. (1982). Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. (Chapter 3). Retrieved from https://learn.gonzaga.edu/bbcswebdav/pid-701532-dt-content-rid-805906_1/courses/COML509_A2_11965_FA011/COML509_A1_21816_SP11_ImportedContent_20110107075456/COML509_B1_11722_FA010_ImportedContent_20101013085144/GORG-COML-509-Inagaki-Master_ImportedContent_20100819115744/Course%20Resources/COPYRIGHT%20NOTICE/embedded/ong1.pdf
Trans. W. C. Helmbold and W. G. Rabinowitz. Plato. Phaedrus. Indianapolis: Library of Liberal Arts-Bobbs, 1956. Retrieved from http://people.ucalgary.ca/~dabrent/webliteracies/platowri.htm
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