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Orality »
The
Epistemological Validity of Orality in Human Learning
Ambrose J.
Bwangatto
Introduction
The most prominent distinguishing feature of human beings is
the capacity to search knowledge and once gained preserve it for posterity. This
stems from the very nature of human beings as rational. The basic constitution
of man biologically is to facilitate him go out of oneself and reach out to
others in a dialogue of communion. This can be realized only by the tools of
speech which man shares with none of the other creatures in the created order.
This places the human race at the helm of all that is in material existence
since man has the rational faculty which enables him invent new ideas and
transmit these ideas using the power of speech. The primary inventory of human
ideas is the mind built in such a way that it can generate ideas, store them and
make them available to the organs of speech that is the tongue and the vocal
cords. Human beings have all through history applied the orality in the day to
day running of their life business and also to conserve the age old wisdom in
fables, stories, parables, proverbs, folklore and song.
Orality or oralism can also characterize whole
societies that have relied on oral communication without the use of writing.
They also seek to identify a given type of language used in oral communication,
and also seek to understand of what literacy may mean to us as it is
superimposed on an orality into which we were born and which governs so much of
the normal give and take of daily life.
Society celebrates the power of spoken word since it carries with it life in the
voice of the interlocutor and the basic expressions the author wants his/her
audience to grasp. As we shall see in the sections ahead, orality has been
boosted by the new means of audio-visual communication which have influenced the
whole world including the academic institutions, because of their effectiveness
and speed in transmitting knowledge and the lasting impact they create on the
human mind. However, there are some strong objections against orality which
place its proponents in a dilemma, since some objections are facts which have
been tested by history in literacy. However, let us have the consideration of
the existing dichotomy between the orality and literacy.
The validity of
orality in human epistemic system
The concept of oral literature is an unfamiliar
one to most people brought up in cultures which, like those of contemporary
Europe, lay stress on the idea of literacy and written tradition. In popular
view it seems to convey on the one hand the idea of mystery, on the other that
of crude and artistically undeveloped formulations.
But then, we can agree that there is no mystery about the first and most basic
characteristic of oral literature, even though it is constantly overlooked in
collections and analyses. Oral literature, as we shall see more, is by
definition dependent on a performer who formulates it in words on a specific
occasion and there is no other way in which it can be realised as a literary
product. With oral literature, there is a connection between transmission and
its very existence is a much more intimate one, and questions about the means of
actual communication are of the first importance, without its oral realization
and direct rendition by singer or speaker, an unwritten literary piece cannot
easily be say to have any continued or independence existence at all.
In the case of written literature a literary work can be said to have an
independent and tangible existence in one copy, so that questions about, say,
the format, number, and publicising of other written copies can, though not
relevant, be treated to some extent as secondary. Therefore there is a
distinction between the actual creation of a written literary form and its
further transmission. With this then, we realise that there appears to be a
marked and clear distinction between the two forms of literature and the
relevant epistemological questions they present to the literary world.
There are many scholars who make a special
distinction between literacy and orality, in their terms, referred to as the
“great divide”.
There is an assumption that there is a fundamental difference between literate
and non-literate cultures and the literacy art they produce. They even go far as
to claim that the techniques of oral and written literature are contradictory
and mutually exclusive.
But one of them Ruth Finnegan, in her findings, claims that it is an
oversimplification to suggest a rigorous distinction between spoken and written
art forms and she argues that the special characteristics attributed to oral
literature are, in fact the same as those of written literature, or at least
show a considerable overlap.
According to my observation, it is clear that literacy appeared later on the
scene of human history, and at times it was contested by the ancient
philosophers like Socrates. In the Phaedrus, Plato narrates how Socrates had
been telling the story of the invention of all “learning”- number and
calculation, geometry and astronomy, not to speak of draughts and dice, and
above all writing- by the Egyptian god Theuth and Theban King Thamus discuss
the value of the various branches of learning and Thamus accepts all gifts but
writing saying that “if men learn this, it will implant forgetfulness in their
souls; they will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is
written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by
means of external marks. Writing is an externalization of memory that alienates
the knower from what he or she knows.
It is often argued that there is no clear-cut line between oral and written
literature, and when one tries to differentiate them as has often been
attempted, it becomes clear that there are constant overlaps…there proves to be
no definitive and unitary body of poetry which being oral, can be clearly
differentiated from written poetry. The basic point then is the continuity of
oral and written literature. There is no gulf between the two.
This position gives us a new perspective in evaluating and re-positioning
orality given the peripheral character it gained at the advent of literacy. The
impression created at the mention of orality is one that oral production always
has the form of the conversations of everyday life. But this is not necessarily
true. In fact, in some oral cultures one finds very distinctive oral forms that
are thoroughly different from the talk of everyday conversation, that is,
distinctive oral genres.
But the most noted and distinctive feature of orality which goes beyond the
“great divide” between oral and literate cultures is dispute resolution which
arises in virtually every culture. In many cultures, this takes on a ceremonial
form that lies outside the ordinary events of everyday life. Even here, a
central part of legal life is oral argument. Elsewhere, the entire procedure is
oral.
In my observation, I find this position as enlightening and giving us the value
of orality and its intricate and symbiotic nature it has with humanity. The two
are convertible. The celebration of orality in the legal arena is a clear
manifestation of the value of the power of speech. Many new sciences are hinged
on orality. If we consider counselling, psychotherapy and the whole range of
innovations in that area we value the necessity of the oral genres and
constructions.
In the field of oral literature and in related
areas, it is quite clear that there is no such thing as a definitive list of
typically “oral” characteristics. There are, however, some general points on
which most studies agree. Some of these are self evident, since they are what
define the very nature of the oral as opposed to the written. Oral story tellers
are engaged in a performative act which makes use of the aural devices. In
written story telling, there is no access to the more performative elements, and
writers are forced to translate all sensory appeals into the more living medium
of the written word. By its very nature, literature can be revised and edited
before reaching its audience, the reader. Oral literature on the other hand, can
only be gradually remoulded in subsequent performances. Written literature thus
tends to take the shape of a finished, permanent, “definitive” text, while oral
literature is continually changing in a dynamic process from performer to
performer, from audience to audience, and from performative to performative.
One of the most interesting forms of orality is what Odera Oruka calls sage
philosophy;
an African mode of thinking most of which remains unwritten for reasons which
must now be obvious to everyone. For Oruka, in contemporary or traditional
Africa, there were and must still be wise men and women who, despite their lack
of modern and formal education, convey, orally, critical thinking that is
essentially philosophical and distinct from the type of narrative description of
cultural traditions, customs, and laws as portrayed by the old sage Ogotemmeli
of the Dogoni
The philosophic sage may know, as the folk-sage does, what the cardinal beliefs
and wisdom of his community are. But he makes an independent, critical
assessment to what the people take for granted. For him the sages attain a
second-order philosophy, that is a reflection on and a rationalized evaluation
of what is given.
This argument presupposes that the wisdom of these sages is not yet translated
into text and hence the only mode in which it can be communicated is by oral
medium. This same position again raises some difficulties if we are to pursue a
systematic and analytical path of philosophy. Some questions cannot be easily
answered especially if we are to address a salient point concerning consistency
and logical flow of ideas. We have just seen above that oral literature can be
gradually remoulded in each performance, and hence we cannot expect a
consistent, systematic, and flowing argument for a long time. The sage may not
be able to keep his propositions for a long time since each day will bring in
different occasions which may not allow him/her to develop the earlier
propositions and keep them in their original fashion as when he first conceived
them in his mind. The proponents of this view will be surprised to find out that
the sage is a mere recipient and recitor of the collective lores, feelings, and
insights of the people in general, as is supposed to be the case with anybody of
similar age and sharp memory of the teachings passed down by the forefathers of
the tribe.
This objection leads us to question the whole trend of orality and its
comparison with literacy in the philosophic discourse. This prompts another
question and idea whether critical thinking can develop within an oral tradition.
Jack Goody in objecting to this kind of hypothesis argues in his work, The
Domestication of the Savage Mind, that, “One of the features of oral
communication in preliterate societies lies in its capacity to swallow up the
individual achievement and to incorporate it in a body of transmitted custom
that can be considered as the approximate equivalent to culture and society.
This presupposes that without written texts, it is not easy to evaluate the
ideas of an individual and to separate and distinguish them from the general
corpus of societal and cultural knowledge. This then suggests that, in
pre-literate cultures, the individual cannot claim any personal idea since these
ideas are subsumed into the collective entity called cultural tradition. Goody
makes a strong and specific proposition that: “Writing, and more especially
alphabetic literacy, made it possible to scrutinise discourse in a different
kind of way by giving oral communication a semi-permanent form; this scrutiny
favoured the increase in scope of critical activity, and hence of rationality,
scepticism, and logic to resurrect memories of those questionable dichotomies.
In this proposition, he makes a significant remark which is essential for the
growth of knowledge. It is stated that the growth of knowledge is essentially
dependent on the ability to review the content of knowledge in a continuous
fashion, that is, the ability to return to static texts. This ability requires a
method which objectifies knowledge beyond the historical fluidity of oralism.
This view is consonant with what Mudimbe believes about African philosophers. He
thinks that there is still time to identify, apply, and problematize the basic
African epistemic frameworks and principles in analyses of discourses and in a
manner that will make oral traditions useful to the present. This means that the
growth of knowledge, as the result of the deliberate intellectual pursuit of
explanation of understanding, cannot be sufficiently dependent on the natural
methods of preservation and transmission such as the oral tradition. Oralism
must be seen as a natural method whose functions and aims need to be fortified
through new methods to guarantee the reliability and vigour of the pursuit for
knowledge.
The main defect pointed out here is the fluidity of orality. There is no denial
that oral cultures have critical and logical epistemic systems. The only hurdle
which is difficult to get over, is to prove consistency over a long period of
time and to elicit an enlightened debate about these formulations. There is a
need to decipher the philosophical ideas prevailing in the different mythologies
and preserve them in a form which will make them accessible to later generations
of philosophers. This is what Plato and Aristotle and other literary Greek
philosophers did with the ideas of the Pre-Socratics. It would have been
impossible to distinguish the philosophical ideas from the ancient Greek
mythologies if they were not committed to writing. Also, many of us today would
probably not have been able to comment on the utterances of the Pre-Socratics
with any sense of confidence if they had not been preserved in writing either in
their original presentation or in their reformulations. So, writing is an
important vehicle for the systematization and growth of knowledge.
This understanding presupposes that orality takes a primordial stage in the
process of knowledge development and it serves one purpose only; to keep the
wisdom of a given culture until such a moment when it would be committed to
writing. So we cannot take it as a method or tool of philosophy like in the
form which Odera Oruka proposes with his sage philosophy. A critical observation
of the wisdom of the sages may provide something new which we have not taken
seriously before; that the sages can only make personal comments on a topic
included in the questionnaire of a given a researcher. I am beginning to develop
doubts about the existence of critical and analytical statements in oral
cultures. Because if such statements do exist, then, how do we prove their
existence given the fluidity of orality? Another difficulty concerns the mode of
transmission given the physical situations in which the oral performer finds
oneself. This is likely to influence ones thinking and formulations of his
ideas.
Conclusion
We have tried to explore the validity of orality
in human epistemic system and there has been many issues raised especially the
big contrast between orality and literacy. Many people still hold serious
objections about the relevancy of orality in the system of preservation and
transmission of knowledge. As we observed earlier on, that orality changes from
performer to performer according to circumstances, then it means that we cannot
employ such a system which is so fluid to a serious intellectual pursuit where
we have to make critical and analytical remarks on a given subject. According to
me, orality can serve well in those fields and communities where there is no
serious intellectual projects which demand a strenuous mental activity. Although
this position too may be challenged for failure to appreciate the value that the
spoken word adds to human life generally. But I think the middle course would be
to take into consideration the complimentarity of the two: the oral and the
written. This is for the simple reason that, for it to be valid and relevant in
the fields of philosophy, orality needs to be accompanied by literacy to
preserve the ideas expressed therein in a more permanent form. But again we must
take extra caution as we evaluate orality and its position in the development
of, and quest for, knowledge and intellectual pursuit in human history. There
has been a general grouping of, especially, Traditional African societies by and
large into the general category of “primitive”. And one of the most
differentiating characteristics of this category is normally taken to be the
fact of ‘non-literate’; another of being ‘simple’. People have found it only too
easy to slip from this assumption that ‘non-literate’ involved something like
the concept of ‘illiterate’, that is, someone who in a literate community may be
regarded as having failed to master the ways of a particular culture and
further, that ‘simple’ implied simple intellectually or artistically as well as
simple in technology. But neither of these assumptions is in fact logically or
empirically defensible.
In particular, there is nothing necessarily ‘backward’ about a poet in a culture
which does not use the written word choosing to express his literary ability
through the rich oral medium at his disposal. Also it should be clear from the
various descriptions and example we have encountered in various societies that
being non-literate or technologically simple does not mean that such societies
are lacking in elaborate artistic forms, in literature, in complex symbolism, in
scope of the individual to express his own artistry and insights, or in an
awareness of the depths subtleties of the world and of human life.
Oral literature needs to be taken seriously in its own right. Explaining oral
literature away by reference to social or even symbolic function is to miss much
of its actual detailed significance. People have spoken of the revolution in
communication which involves a change to a much greater dependence on auditory
forms, like the radio, television, and telephones at the expense of the visual
or written word. Although the fast growth of the internet on a global scale is
rapidly changing this trend. Many people are using the internet as a mode of
communication hence stressing the importance of the written over the spoken
word. But again this, too, is not an indicator or a sign of qualification of one
mode of communication over another. Unless it is a biased stereotyping of
peoples there is no way we can make a clear and distinct demarcation between the
oral and written as a way of understanding human intellectual capacity. This
would be too simplistic an understanding that would lead us to a perpetual
problem which we are unable to come over. I reaffirm my position that the two
modes of communication are properties of the same human family which can be used
interchangeably according to geographical location or development in human
culture which may take different turns in different periods. But the two
originally belong to the same stock and hence are likely to bear the same fruits
if applied well and if directed to the same goal which is the epistemological
acquisition.
Selected Bibliography
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Astri Heen Wold, Decoding Oral Language, London: Academic
Press Inc, 1978
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David R. Olson, Nancy Torrance ed., Literacy and Orality,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991
-
Douglas Robinson, Translation and Taboo,
Illinois, Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Pres,
1996
-
Finnegan Ruth, Oral Literature in Africa, Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1970
-
Isidore Okipewho, African Oral Literature, Backgrounds,
Character and Continuity, Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1992
-
Jack Goody, The Domestication of the Savage Mind, London:
Cambridge University Press, 1977
-
Masolo D.A, African Philosophy in Search of Identity,
Nairobi: East African Educational Publishers, 1995
-
Nicole E. Reith, Walking on the Waves of Sound, doctoral
dissertation on Aspects of Orality in the Writings of Zora Neale Hurston,
Universiteit Amsterdam, 1997
-
Odera Oruka, Sage Philosophy, Leiden: E.J Brill, 1990.
David R. Olson, Nancy Torrance eds. Literacy and Orality (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1991) 11
Ibid
Ruth Finnegan, Oral Literature In Africa, ( Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1970) 1
Ibid, 2
Nichole E. Reith, Walking on the Waves of Sound, doctoral dissertation on
Aspects Of Orality in the Writings of Zora Neale Hurston
(Universiteit van Amsterdam, 1997) 15
Ibid
Ibid
Douglas Robinson, Translation and Taboo ( Illinois,Dekalb: Northern Illinois
University Press, 1996) 19
Nicole E. Reith, 16
David R. Olson, Nancy Torrance, 48
Ibid
Nicole E. Reith, 17
Sage Philosophy: In Odera Oruka’s usage , it consists of the expressed thoughts
of wise men and women in any given community and is a way of thinking and
explaining the world that fluctuates…..an expounded wisdom and a rational
thought of some given individuals within a community.
Masolo D.A, (African Philosophy in search of Identity, Nairobi: East African
Educational Publishers 1995) 234. Also in this footnote, the Dogoni are an
ethnic community found in Burkina Faso.
Odera Oruka, Sage Philosophy, ( Leiden: E.J.Brill, 1990) 29.
Masolo D.A, 234
Ibid
Jack Goody, The Domestication of the Savage Mind ( London: Cambridge University
Press, 1977) 27
Ibid, 37
Masolo, D.A, 242
Ibid, 243
Ibid, 243.
Ruth Finnegan, 519.
Ibid. |
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