Features of a Literate Culture!

By Janna, Aaron, John, Adam and Amanda

Literate culture vs. Primary Oral Culture

· Writing can never dispense with orality· Saussure: language is nested in sound.· Difference is between time and space

Enhancement through Writing

• Grapholects• 1.5 Million words (Standard English) vs.

Several thousand words (oral culture)

• Transformed Rhetoric into a ³art²• Better defined rules of grammar and sentence

structure

Academic Shortsightedness

• Writing studied as superior yet ³secondary² modeling system.

• Oral Literature?• Scholars tried to ³start backwards². For

example, the wheelless automobile.• For literates, oral culture is hard to wrap mind

around.

Homeric Question

• Chauvinistic views: Homer¹s writing is primitive while our writing is

developed• Scholars applied our definitions of good

writing to the context of Homer¹s time.• Homeric Greeks valued clichés• Milman Parry discovers weaving of oral

formulas in the Iliad and Odyssey

Eric Havelock

• Greek Philosophy tied to writing• Introduction of vowels led to new visual

coding and abstract thought.• The Bicameral Mind

Literacy

Ong: literate human beings are those “whose thought processes do not grow out of simply natural powers, but out of these powers as structured, directly or indirectly, by the technology of writing.”

Writing not only effects how we relay information, but how we think and speak.

Features of a Literate Culture(What is lost?)

In Plato’s Phaedrus and Seventh Letter, he argues that writing:

-is inhuman and unnatural: “autonomous discourse” with no verifiable context

-destroys memory and weakens the mind

-Produces unresponsive discourse

-Cannot defend itself

(This is ironic, because Phaedrus and Seventh Letter are written texts)

Features of a Literate Culture(What is gained?)

PermanenceTexts allow for the longevity and proliferation of knowledge/discourse

ArtificialityWriting is an “unnatural” or artificial tool that modifies the natural.Realization of human potential

Analytic PrecisionThe development of more complex ideas and structures. Favors left-hemisphere activity = more abstract, analytic thought.

RevisionMistakes in oral discourse can be glossed over, but not edited and revised as in a written text.

Distance“Alienation from the natural milieu” can be good for us!Introspectivity - Writing opens the psyche to the external objective world and

creates a framework through which the internal self can be viewed and evaluated.

Scripts and Alphabets

Cuneiform Script

Pictographsideographsrebus writing

Syllabaries

The Semitic AlphabetReliance on non-textual and textual data

The Greek AlphabetTransition into almost pure textual data

Characteristics of a Literate Culture

Literacy begins in restricted sectors e.g. clergy, scribes

The Middle English “grammarye” associated with the occult or magical lore.

Writing regarded as dangerous or possessing intrinsic religious value

Early writing materials encouraged scribal cultureClay Goose quillsAnimal skins BrushesTree Bark etcWaxWoodStone

Long after a culture has incorporated writing into daily life, literacy may not be interiorized.

People remain skeptical of written texts, viewing writing as untrustworthy and its processes as expensive and troublesome.

Characteristics of a Literate Culture

Restricted language code v. elaborated language code

Grapholect

Magnavocabulary

Academic Rhetoric

Learned Latin

Written Texts

The shift from orality to literacy was a shift from sound to visual space.

Literate cultures consider the printed word to be a visual unit. Written material is processed visually first and sounded out second, as opposed to in oral cultures where written material was subsidiary to hearing.

Written Texts

Writers think differently than oral composers. They can write an outline of their work, and their words are available for extensive editing and revision.

Written stories implement the Freytag's pyramid structure with ascending and descending action, whereas oral stories were episodic.

Written Texts

The reflectiveness of writing encourages growth of consciousness.

Writing and reading are solo activities that engage the mind in introspective and internalized work. Literate societies therefore relate to “round” characters, whose motivation is always internal.

Writing created the concept of “round” characters, as opposed to “flat” characters, in both stories and psychology. The world of writing is concerned with introspection and the analysis of inner states.

Written Texts

Detective-story plots show the interiorization of closure because the detective always figures out the mystery in his head before he reveals that knowledge to the reader.

Printed Texts

Printing made the word a part of the manufacturing process and turned the word into a commodity.

Print is consumer-oriented. Individual copies represent a small interest of time, meaning more copies can be made.

Books are less like utterances and more like things.

With the spread of books as commodities owned by many, the anonymous “reading public” came into existence.

Printed Texts

Concrete poetry is viable only in the world of print. Placing the text a certain artistic way on the page is only effective if all the copies that will be distributed can look exactly the same as the original.

Printed Texts

Print locks words into visual space, making them seem more definite. This is seen in then invention of lists, alphabetic indexes, and in the use of words for labels.

Print led to the creation of dictionaries, and set language in stone.

Print led to the invention of modern textbooks as an instrument of teaching.

Printed Texts

Print influenced the way modern science is structured. Written texts allowed science to be quantifiable and exact, and transmittable to people all over the world. Now we can have an exactly repeatable verbal statement along with exactly repeatable visual diagrams.

Printed Texts

Print has locked words into space and has created a preference in literate societies for mechanical and psychological closure, which drives the modern narrative.

The fixed point of view that came with the modern novel led to the invention of the narrator, which created a greater separation between between author and reader.

Printed Texts

Printed texts created the concept of private ownership of the word. With writing came a resentment of plagiarism, and also the ideas of creativity and originality.

Print was a major factor in developing the modern sense of personal privacy.

Printed texts are more legible than manuscripts, which makes reading easier . This led to the rise of rapid, silent, solo reading.

Printed Texts

Writing creates a definite record of history, science and other information and changes the way we think about knowledge.

Writing the next big thing

How literacy changed the human mind

The development of LettersFun with script

From Humble Beginnings

Early hieroglyphs

Alphabetized Hieroglyphs

Pictography

Well know Symbols

Rebus Writing

Milwaukee

Chinese Calligraphy

Literary History

Manuscript culture was originally oral (154)

Even until the 18th century, authors wrote their texts with oral presentation in mind. (154)

For example, academics in medieval culture focused on literacy (154-155)

The Narrator and his Performance

• Structure of an oral narrative (161)

• The performance quality of oral narratives (162)

• ‘Narrator’ vs. ‘Text’ as the ultimate authority.• Form matters in a literate culture.

Writing as an Art

Writing has an intended audience (155)

Writing shifts from a platform performance to a conversation (156-157)

Oral work is rarely aesthetic (158)

The "epic" as an oral art form and it’s decline (155-156)

Writing as a tradition (154)

What did we lose during the transition from an oral culture to a literate culture?

The value of rhetoric.

Lost sight of our intended audiences.

The "epic" as an oral art form, and other oral formats.

The ability to adapt to an audience.

The “performance quality” of written work.

Storytelling as a tradition

Memorization and other internal intellectual capabilities

Active dialogue

A connection to the live world

What did we gain during the transition from an oral culture to a literate culture?

Focus on characterization and linear plot

The physical “form" of the text gains importance.

Writing became a conversation, instead of a platform performance.

Writing for aesthetic purposes

The importance of structure and organization

Text became an authority.

Analogies and spatial relations.

A more patient form of analytic, sequential thinking (163).

Permanence of the text

Artificiality that allows us to fully realize human potential

Analytic precision

The ability to revise

Connection to the external objective world