Making my way towards the end of my exploration into Ong’s Psychodynamics of Orality. Only 4 more points left.
Today:
Verbomotor Lifestyle
The Handshake – the kind of handshake that doesn’t end till the negotiation is over. The kind of handshake that’s a dance of business. The kind that someone judges characters with. Not only words. I think that type of handshake is a great symbol of verbomotor.
While Ong doesn’t lay it out specifically, verbomotor is words with action.
To the literate observer, it ends up looking like a lot of unnecessary talking. To the oral one, it’s the proper back and forth to uncover real meaning.
Ong uses a specific story based on a visitor to Cork, Ireland, a region in a country where it’s though to have “massive residual orality.”
“[A] visitor saw a Corkman leaning against the post office. He went up to him, pounded with his hand on the post office wall next to the Corkman’s shoulder, and asked ‘Is this the post office?’ The Corkman was not taken in. He looked at the questioner quietly and with great concern: ‘ ‘Twouldn’t be a postage stamp you were lookin’ for, would it?’”
It wasn’t treated as a simple yes or no answer. There was no aggressive “what’s it to you?”. The response was a carefully thought and a legitimate question to a question.
The answer to which would be very revealing on wants and needs from the person asking.
Words without Action
Maybe if it was a question on it’s own, the result may have been simpler? The fact that the visitor needed to pound, or touch the building is what gave rise to a that specific call and response.
Only through radio or podcast can we imagine words without action. They are rhetorical: no answer or response required, unless extremely compelled and moved.
Words without action require no action, not even mental storage. They are here, herd and likely forgotten.
In radio school we were taught to always activate the “theater of the mind.” That’s where the connection is.
With verbomotor, it is. Only with theater of the mind can you imagine a corollary action. If you can connect the words being spoken to an action there’s a higher chance the message is retained and acted upon.
A note about written action words
You might be thinking, but books are full of descriptive actions. That’s what makes them great! You can read the words and the actions… that should be verbomotor enough, right?
Let’s callback to this post about “close to the human lifeworld“. About the Iliad and all the physical language to engage oral minds.
The use of the physical words were to appeal to transitioning from orality into literacy. However transitioning away from literacy, words are just more abstractions. Written words are an abstraction from the spoken word which is an abstraction from the real thing. Oral minds abhor abstraction.
Action without Words
Now, if someone pounded a wall next to my shoulder, I imagine my response to be a more emotional or visceral: confusion, curiosity, defensive. Then again, I’m writing an argument for orality, which means while I am intrigued, my oral residue is likely lower than The Corkman.
The action alone without words was simply an action – neutral or, at most, inconclusive.
It’s why video’s with transcripts or words popping up in your face are more effective. On mute, or when scrolling and the video sound is default off, words are needed to connect the action and stop us in our tracks, to hopefully stop scrolling for a moment. Otherwise, it’s just some other flashing media vying for our attention and being ignored.
Subtitles are kind of OK.
Here’s where I think we come across our first decent aliterate twist.
We have the choice of subtitles. Given visual action, we are fine to read what’s being said. Or at the least keywords of what’s being said. So long as it’s in sync.
Netflix seems to be doing just fine with subtitles. Take a look at Squid Games and other international show hits.
We seem to caption everything lately. Even the subtlest accent and viewers turn on subtitles. Which at first could be an argument that I’ve been totally wasting my time. However, it’s on context, it’s ephemeral, it’s in precise and synchronous replacement of audio
But kids don’t want to talk on the phone
Here’s something I heard the other day in a podcast , made by my old radio school instructors.
It raised a conundrum I want to understand more. The episode I was listening to noted, students are terrified of picking up the phone to talk to people.
It is kinda true. No one wants to call anyone anymore.
Is it the cold call? The faceless phone call? The pone call where no one can see any actions?
Words without action. Words without any context to even imagine action. In some cases not even the ability to imagine the face saying the words… this is making them afraid?
Note: I’ve reached out to them to talk more. Let’s see what happens.
