Since I’m going to say the word a lot, we might as well set the ground rules around it, eh? ( yes, I’m Canadian )
“the quality of being oral or orally communicated”
– the dictionary
That’s it.
Think of it as the verbal version of literate. I tried to play with language around all of this, and as you can see, it doesn’t seem to always pan out…
but you get the gist, right?
So what’s the big deal?
The deal is when you see how the word is being used. It seems to have a good amount of baggage. Baggage that I’m going to ask you to throw away.
Like religious baggage. Looking over Twitter’s #Orality, from what I can tell, some use it when referring to the art form of a sermon and preaching, and some use it when discussing bringing the bible to the illiterate. While there could be overlap with religion – I will not mean anything religious when I use the word.
Then the academic baggage. A few of the “big wigs” (Harold Innis, Eric Havelock, Marshall McLuhan, and Walter J. Ong) have determined Orality and Literacy are in total opposition. These worlds were exclusive. Ong added some nuance defining terms like “oral residue” (yuck) or primal morality. He tried to give some complexity, but in the end, they felt you lost your orality the moment you became literate. All said and done, this also, is not what I mean.
I believe it’s not as cut and dry. Like introverts and extroverts, it’s more fluid. Non-binary ( ooo I’ve got a thought around that too ).
Fortunately, in later years there have been more arguments supporting my current use and belief of Orality.
“orality is not what is spoken, but what allows one to speak.”
Donald Wesling and Tadeusz Slawek, Literary Voice: The Calling of Jonah, 159
The same could be said that literacy is not what is written, but what allows one to read.
It’s a skill. Perhaps, once learned, becomes more…
Right, and…
So where I’m going to be going? Orality and an oral mind make a big difference in our world in ways I’m not sure we fully understand.
The following, I think, is a plausible story around the invention of the printing press. Media has a darker business side. Perhaps it always has and always will.
The Gutenberg printing press was made to sell bible knock-offs. It was the ultimate as seen on TV product.
The year was roughly 1450 and Gutenberg had a brilliant idea.
Why have monks pray in silence hand copying a book that could take months, when this “device” could knock out hundreds in the same time and sell ’em for cheaper.
Most of the schmucks buying these things can’t even read ’em. It’s latin! And those who can, are rich folks who want to keep their money. Who cares if the thing doesn’t have gold flaked pictures.
It’s the deal of the century.
But how will he pay? Easy. Borrow it.
If Gutenberg had the gift of the gab to convince someone to pay him to learn how to polish gems, he can surely convince someone to give him money for this.
After all, it’s like printing money!
He found a nice shylock, sorry, “rich financier”, Johann Fust, who was kind enough to lend him 800 guilders.
Although he had most of the machine figured out the additional equipment and tools where a bit harder to get right. By roughly 1452, he had run the clock out and it was time to pay his debts.
Now, Gutenberg was probably crapping his pants a bit by now. You don’t owe money. You know that Shakespeare’s “pound of flesh” thing? That was a real thing!
It was a real shame, because he had figured out the kinks, but hadn’t printed any books yet to sell.
He shows the potential results to his financier praying not to be skinned and thrown into Debtors’ prison. Fust, decides not to break anything, gives Gutenberg a few extra guilders, and oh, one more thing, takes a cut of the score.
In the end it works. Making the bibles is going great, but this is where the Breaking Bad like story really starts.
Gutenberg brings in an apprentice to learn how to “cook” the books, a guy named Peter Schoeffer.
A few years later, roughly 1455, Fust, finally makes his play. Schoeffer wasn’t as talented, but who cares. It’s letters on a page what does quality matter.
Fust probably offers Schoeffer a whack less. But by now Gutenberg thinks he’s the Walter White of making books.
Rather than just whacking him — he takes everything from him, legally. Partners with Schoeffer and the press keeps printing.
It took 10 years for Gutenberg to be recognized as the inventor. He was 67. Died at 70.
If you don’t know McLuhan’s theory, here’s my super-duper simplified a-little-too-much version of it:
Around 1964, McLuhan theorized that as technology advanced it would become a digital central nervous system of information connecting all media like our physical central nervous system connects our senses.
In this connectivity, mankind will revert back to an oral society, back to a time of Villages — but this time a Global Village. In turn, it would rekindle us back to a tribal-like life.
Now to break it down:
Yes, his central nervous system theory was a prediction of the Internet. Usually, the mic drops here, we stop.
But wait, there’s more.
His Global Village is happening everywhere. It’s in every craft beer you drink, every food truck you eat at, pop up shop you buy a bar of elderflower artisanal soap from; every digital nomad you meet; every tattoo and piercing; every lumber-sexual you see drinking an Old Fashioned variant with locally source gin or whisky.
What does an oral society have to do with all of that?
The underpinning of most of McLuhan’s theories is how we interacted with a medium is far more important than its content. It changes us by interacting with it. The radio dial and transistors; understanding that invisible waves can transmit voices through the air; using the theatre of the mind to pretend that the announcer is talking just to you. All of this is more important than how captivating the content is.
The medium is the message
How does media make lumber-sexuals? It’s the consequences of how your brain rewires itself slightly when interacting with a medium.
The dominant medium of choice can influence how your mind works, in essence, your thoughts.
Back to the Lumber-sexual thing.
Orality.
Yup – there’s that word again
Story Telling. Oral Traditions. Great grandmothers teaching grandmothers a recipe. Learning a childhood lesson through a bedtime fable. The sound of someone else’s voice as you remember what you’ve learned. It rings with a sense of history.
McLuhan referred to this oral time and the time of the Tribal Man. And like the term Tribal, a sense of history comes. The exploration of it — asking yourself, when Mom said she was drinking an “Old fashioned” what was that? When Dad was showing me a picture telling me about camping — what was up with the mustache and toque? How would I look with a mustache and toque?
And the exploration of history deepens:
How did my grandfather make moonshine?
My grandparents sold their own butter to make ends meet. How can I do that?
Every tattoo is a story to tell; a visual history of your life.
Sure — this isn’t the exact same. Our current Orality is driven more through digital channels, but it’s still word of mouth.
The craft and artisanal resurgence are nice and all, I’m a huge sucker for that scene, but with the latest wave of Xenophobic-like politics happening in the US & UK, I’ve started wondering, is Orality a part of it?
What are our darker tendencies when we are Tribal?
If you’ve traveled as I have, you have walked into a place you shouldn’t have been. All eyes staring up at you wondering who you were, asking themselves “What is this stranger doing in here? Don’t they know better?”
Now imagine going farther back in time. What happens to that situation in a more primitive world: Slavery. Salem witch hunts. North America’s genocidal colonization. Farther. Holy Wars. Dark Ages. Roman Conquest. Genghis Khan. Vikings. Farther.
Humanity has a history before the written word of being fiercely loyal and territorial, perhaps to a fault: racism, religious wars, family feuds escalated to extremes causing neighbours to kill. Our history is full of a darker side when anyone mentions “protecting our own.”
Oh did I bury the lead… McLuhan said so himself …
McManus: But it seems, Dr. McLuhan, that this tribal world is not friendly.
McLuhan: Oh no, tribal people, one of their main kinds of sport is butchering each other. It’s a full-time sport in tribal societies.
McManus: But I had some idea that as we got global and tribal we were going to try to — —
McLuhan: The closer you get together, the more you like each other? There’s no evidence of that in any situation that we’ve ever heard of. When people get close together, they get more and more savage, impatient with each together….The global village is a place of very arduous interfaces and very abrasive situations.
If you can get past that part and watch the rest – I think it will also help with where I’m going. Though – take out the old man complaining about the young wippersnappers.
![Literal : Oral
Literary : Oratory
Literacy : Orality
Literate : ???
What is the oral equivalent of literate?
[ Given, I think verbal is the comprehension of words both oral and literal. That "said", it seems to be muddled a bit ]](https://whoisnick.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/image.png)
