Is Literacy Different To Orality?

This Paper looks at literacy and orality in a socially scientific, sociological and anthropological way, which discards literacy and orality as something, which is “taken for granted”, and reveals there is more to them that meets the eye. Literacy refers to the social practice of reading and writing while orality describes the transmission of knowledge through stylised or artistic speech, for example in poetry, proverbs, folk tales, myths and legends. Firstly this paper begins by setting the subject in context by recognising the works that have brought recognition to the subject of literacy and orality. Secondly, it outlines a number of different approaches to the study of literacy and orality. After which, it looks at a few empirical examples, one from Britain, at the time of the Norman conquest and another example from India, both of these are used in a way which prompts thinking around literacy and orality to examine whether these are radically different as we commonly accept, or whether they have a important and complicated relationship in the way they form each other.

Literacy is part of our every day conventions; it is why we go to university for long periods, so that we can learn to read and write and to get these conventions as well sorted for ourselves and in judgement of others. We see literacy as almost natural, it is something that we learn to do from a very early age, if we didn’t know how to read and write we would be at a great disadvantage. Tardif remarked that people are either ear people or eye people (Tardif, cited in Synnott, 1993). This usefully introduces both of our main themes here: the ear versus the eye, orality versus literacy.

In the early 1960s several significant books and papers were published on the theme of oral versus literate cultures. These included The Savage Mind by the French structuralist anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss ([1962] 1974), a paper on 'The Consequences of Literacy'(1963) by the English anthropologist Jack Goody and his colleague the literary historian Ian Watt (cited in Goody, ed.1968), The Gutenberg Galaxy by Marshall McLuhan (1962), and Preface to Plato by Eric Havelock (1963). These works and many others since brought notoriety to the theme of what came to be called ‘literacy and orality ' in cultural debates. This controversial topic sheds light, for instance, on some of myth of the so-called decline of literacy (Graff, 1987).

There are two models that have been brought to bear for the study of this question. The first is called the ‘autonomous model’ and the other is what has come to be known as the ‘ideological model’. The ‘autonomous model’ looks at literacy in particular, which has been associated with people like Jack Goody and Walter J. Ong. The reason it is called autonomous is because theorists (Jack Goody in particular) were interested in, what it was about certain societies that allowed them to develop in a way they have, particularly societies like the west, which have large-scale institutions and which are very economically productive.

In his works since 1976, Jack Goody an anthropologist was interested in this issue, he did most of his field study in Africa where he was very much struck by the tremendous differences between the societies he was seeing in Africa and his own society back in the west. He was interested in the comparative questions of, how can be begin to account for the radical differences, he believed it was not necessarily something to do with the people them selves but held institutions responsible. He came to focus more on the issue of literacy and what that entailed. He elaborated on how literacy acts as an agent of social changes and considered literacy as the major difference between ‘primitive’ and ‘advanced’ societies (Goody, 1968). Theorists involved in the comparative analysis of modes of communication frequently assume or refer to a binary divide or dichotomy between different kinds of society or human experience: 'oral' vs. 'visual', 'pre-literate' vs. 'literate' or 'primitive' and 'advanced'. Such pairings are often also regarded as virtually interchangeable: so that modernity equals advanced equals civilization equals literacy equals rationality and so on (Finnegan, 1988).

Goody inclined to identify ‘general differences between literate and no-literate societies somewhat along the lines suggested by Lucien Levy-Bruhl’, who created a storm of protest early in this century by linking the idea of logic with the growth of alphabetic culture (Goody, 1968, p.44).  Lucien thus, labelled as 'prelogical' the thinking of people in hunter-gatherer societies. Goody argument, suggested that writing leads to certain consequences, for example when someone is able to put things down on paper and read them, this opens certain consequences, which would not be available to someone who did not have these capacities. Goody developed a whole argument around the way in which literacy, writing for example leads to certain forms of permanence, where as communication or an interaction simply through speech according to Goody has less or selected permanence. In oral cultures, he claims: ‘The individual has little perception of the past except in terms of the present; whereas an analysis of a literate society cannot but enforce a more objective recognition of the distinction between what was what is… which can hardly begin to operate without permanent written records’ (Goody, 1968, p.34). For Goody’s argument permanence was an important feature, because it gives certain objectivity and distance to what has been written down, so that other people can examine and criticize it. Thus the idea of permanence becomes important in terms of the ability to develop critical attitudes, which are necessary in fields such as science. (Goody, 1968)

The autonomous model that Goody was developing saw literacy as having autonomy, further to that, literacy existed as something definable on it own and had certain definable features. One of these features being permanence and the other, the capacity of written documents to travel over distances. Thus, a limitation is attached to the spoken word or orality, which lacks the ability to cover large distances. Therefore the permanence of literacy and its ability to travel long distances means it gives a capacity to cover large areas (Goody, 1968). The outcome of something like writing is that it allows the establishment of large institutions, bureaucracies and states, which according to Goody would not be possible in system built on the spoken word (Goody, 1968). It is evident then that written texts allow a critical distance, objectivity and the circulation of these texts over wide distances.

The arguments of Goody and other such as Ong are very persuasive; the contention that writing enables certain things the spoken word does not seems intuitively, logically sound. However, by making such distinctions Goody may well be constructing a model in which literacy is conceived autonomous, but this has ‘a built-in tendency to determinism’ (Street, 1984). Moreover, there is always a complication to arguments and another position that developed came to be known as the ‘ideological model’, it developed as a critique of Goody and Ong’s analysis. The ‘ideological model’ argument contends that literacy (writing and reading) is not a technology that can be isolated independently of any given social context. Thus the notion of ideological is accomplished from the idea, that the way in which writing and reading comes to be taken up in a social context, is in relation to forms of power or what ideological structure they are part off, this is what gives them the characteristics they have. This position has been developed Brain Street (1984) as well as Ruth Finnegan (1988) who outline a number of these arguments. Whilst emphasizing the primary importance of close studies of actual uses of orality and literacy, Finnegan concludes that: 'looking for recurrent patterns and differences can still be illuminating in the study of human societies even if one has to treat them with caution, and avoid the idea of universally applicable causal mechanisms based on specific technologies' (Finnegan 1988, p. 168).

Arguments of orality versus literacy are relevant to all types of technology we use, in particular information and communication technologies such as the television, internet, telephone or the radio. Within the disciplines of media studies, communication studies but also anthropology and sociology, the argument has developed of how, television, computers all information and communication technologies exist only as part of power relations which don’t exist outside of ideologies, it is contented we can’t simple read of from the technology what it consequences are going to be. Thus, it is important to study the way in which technology becomes imbedded in ongoing social relationships between people, because relations between people entail power and ideological relations.

The argument this paper touches on is the argument between the autonomous model and ideological model, through which focus is brought on literacy and orality, although it has relevance far beyond these areas. We can help demonstrate this argument by looking at several examples. The first example is one developed by Clanchy (1993) in From Memory to Written Record. Clanchy was a medieval historian, who is concern with the consequence of the Norman Conquest in England in 1066. Clanchy studies clearly shows, that what we see in the situation of England in after the Norman Conquest, is a mix of societies that came together (Normans and English) where the English had organised a large part of their social life simply around the spoken word with various artefacts that they used to legitimate the spoken word in various ways.

The Normans, who conquered Britain in 1066, were conquering elite who wanted to impose the use of writing and the use of documents on the English. The argument in Clanchy’s material essentially looks at how these two societies came together and what its consequences were. A large number of the interesting tension and conflict between the Normans and the English following 1066, focus on the way in which claims to land rights were legitimated. The Normans had an interest in making the written records the prime guarantee of truth, thus, anyone who had a piece of land that had a written document showing entitlement was held to be the rightful owner. The system of written proof to ownership of land, was the system the Norman wanted to introduce into England (Clanchy, 1993).

If we look at the autonomous model of Goody we can venture into the assumption that the Norman system makes perfect sense, because a written document gives land ownership permanence, it has a certain objectivity and so forth. But the inhabitants of England at the time were suspicious of these written documents and land titles. For the English these document could be easily forged, they were just seen a devices, for people to fix things as they wanted, so from their perception far from the document carrying a objectivity, a unquestionable truth value it was just the opposite, these things were completely open to manipulation and forging. What the local population would out their trust into, was the truth of oral testimony, the idea of  ‘twelve good men and truth’, this was the idea of how one legitimated ones access to a piece of land, through the words of people that were trusted, who one felt were to be believed, or who were deemed to be true.

What we see here is a conflict between different conventions of how one legitimates truth. The Norman say on one hand it can only be achieved through written documents, while, the English believed they can be forged, and the only method was to believe the words they trusted. We can see that the Normans have a political as well as a ideological agenda at work here, because what Normans tried to do, through the instituting of written documents is first of all undermine the conventions of the English, by instituting their own convention of the use of writing, which was readily accepted by people of a Norman background. This was a way for the Normans to mischievously get hold of the legitimate rights to the land through the use of writing, because one group didn’t subscribe too writing and the other does. Thus, we can see very clearly that what is happening here is that writing can’t be looked at in simply an autonomous form, but it is part of a political process, which is trying to change a population, to gain access to their resources, in this case their land.

Subsequently, the way Clanchy’s argument develops is that any time a claim to land is made; it had to be made in a court, with a written document. Whereas the English convention held onto the idea of people’s oath and word, but also had certain artefacts such as swords and seals, which could be produced as evidence, to show the land belonged to them, which then legitimated their claim. Thus, the English had a complicated system prior to the Norman Conquest, this was a system which worked and which was suitable to their purposes. What the Normans were attempting to establish was a bureaucracy, a system of control from above, where writing became central. What we see emerging in this post 1066 situation is that land get stolen from its rightful owners, by Norman knights (who had certain political allegiance to the conquers) that showed the courts written documents that the land belonged to them. How these documents came to be produced or how knights gained access to them was not questioned, because the written document was defined as the way in which the right to land could be legitimated. The effect this had was, ownership of property based on oath or artefacts were lost to the written documents stating the contrary through the claims in court.

This is a very specific and small example, of how ideological, in a sense writing is, how it can be used by a very powerful bureaucracy in this case a conquering bureaucracy. The Norman case is probably one in a long line of cases where these incidents happen; we only have to think of the long history of European colonialism around the world where similar procedures was instituted for the use of written documents. There is a myth in the Doomsday book, that the Normans came and gave literacy to the people. The tensions and conflicts highlighted here occurred over a several century period and it was only after several centuries of conquest, that the English people began to trust to make writing there own. Writing it is not something English people accepted with open arms, because it undermined  (with respect to the issue of land rights) the well trusted convention of the spoken word between people, which was seen as far more objective and trustworthy then an written document.

Thus, Clanchy is attempting to show through his argument, writing has to become adapted and transform within the way people conduct their orality, we simply can’t see both of these (certainly literacy), as some how autonomous, self evidently correct and the best way of conducting ones self in the world. The point of drawing attention to Clanchy example, is to make us question, what writing actually is and to question the autonomy that some theorist have attributed to literacy. It is evident that literacy is open to important political and ideological uses and it that always exist within that kind of framework.

 In order to expand this argument, this paper proposes a different example of the uses of literacy and orality, from India. In India unlike medieval England there was no history of writing where it has been forcibly introduced. India in contrast had writing for thousands of years, but in the Indian context writing had a different significance. This was focused on and developed by Parry (1985, cited in Overing) in ‘The Braminical tradition and the technology of the intellect’ his argument is an important example of the ‘ideological model’. The argument Parry presents is opposed to the position put forward by Goody, which see literacy as autonomous. Parry is concerned with the Hindu culture in particular Brahmans who are seen ethnocentrically in the Indian context as an equivalent to the priest in the Hindu cast system. The interest that Parry presents is the way in which the Brahmans control powerful knowledge. In this example we can see a different type of control, in Clanchy example the focus of control is to control rights to land. Brahmans control of powerful knowledge exists both within ancient texts/writing (which date back thousands of years) and as an important convention of orality; it is the inter-relations between these that Parry highlights.

On one hand he argues Brahman culture, maintains it’s position and power, which it derives through the spoken word, but at the same time there is a tremendous emphasis on text of written word. Thus, a situation arises where there are a number of existing text but the texts on there own, are not the crucial important thing, what does hold importance is the spoken word. In this example of India we can see that the consequence of the written word only exists in relation to the spoken word. Parry suggest that one’s ability to dominate others, and appear powerful is achieved verbally by rendering other speechless through force of one’s speech and knowledge. Thus, power in this example is not achieved through written text, like the Norman example, but here power lies in speaking those texts, and coming across as having tremendous erudition.

The Shastrath[1] consists of Brahmans who interpret the Veda[2]. Parry argues that, Veda, manuscripts are only a kind of subsidiary aid. The written documents are derivative from the amazing oral transmission of Brahmans, who have learned their Veda in the traditional way, living gurukule[3] at the teacher's house, practising the ancient methods, and in this way learning long complicated texts by heart without any supporting written material. In the case of the most ancient text the line of such oral transmission goes back more than 3000 years, and the text has still remained virtually unchanged. There are even texts for which there are no manuscripts or no written record at all, with possible exception of modern notes written from an oral source.

Parry argues these texts existed for thousands of years before then came to be written down. Thus, the Vedas were transmitted and reproduced for thousands of years simply through the spoken word. But here, too, the texts were probably first written down in connection with commentaries. For the textual integrity of the Veda this seems to have been rather fortunate, as the purely literary tradition is somewhat open to corruption. Due to the semi-moist climate of India, manuscripts are rather short-lived: in poor conditions a palm-leaf as well as a paper manuscript is liable to rapid decay, and even in best conditions - kept carefully and tightly bound in a dry place and not read too often - three or four centuries seem to be the average maximum of age. There are some older manuscripts extant, true, but generally they are very brittle and fragile, worm-eaten, and often darkened more or less into illegibility.

Of course the extant manuscripts were often copied from older ones, but frequent copying seems to have introduced textual corruption more easily than the traditional method of oral transmission founded on careful training applying special mnemotechniques. In any case it seems that the written tradition of the Brahmans hardly extends beyond the mediaeval period of Indian history[4]. Manuscript books, their keeping, preservation and copying have never had such an important role in traditional Hindu religion as in Buddhism and especially in Jainism. For the Veda, oral transmission has always been the main way of transmission.

Thus, it would be a mistake to see the written text as primary or as autonomous because they have existed thousands of years in a spoken form before they became documented. One could argue there was probably no use of literacy at the time, but in-fact there was a capacity to write at that time, the important point here was the power never originated from the written form, it derived from the spoken form and it was incidental it came to be documented. The relationship between the Vedas and Brahmans involved each verse has to be endlessly repeated until mastered. This is what is taught by the Brahman to the pupil, it is not a question of learning words, but the interpretation, pronunciation and delivery of the words. Thus, each word and sound must be preformed as perfectly as one can. It is almost as if the performance of the Vedas to a perfection of the sounds of the words, obtains a permanence, like writing it self. If this is the case, then in the context of the Vedas and the institutional relationship between the Brahman and the pupil the spoken word obtains a real permanence it become autonomous in the same way Goody suggests, writing lends permanence.

The interesting thing about India is the existence of literacy and the capacity to write and read existed for many thousands of years, but it was restricted to the Brahman. However, one can possibly suggest that when India became independent from the British Empire several decades ago and it began to develop all of it’s trappings, of education and industry its literacy spread. It could then be suggested that the power of the Brahman would have diminished because more and more people would have access to the written text and literacy itself, which in effect undermines the Brahman access to accident texts. This however, has not been the case, because it stems back to the importance of the way in which the institution of the Shastrath operates. It is not just the question of knowing the text and being able to memorise it, there is an interpretation factor. The way in which the sounds are articulated, attribute the texts true meaning, which are a product of the spoken word, taught only through this student, teacher relationship.

This then presents us with the ideological model having as much applicability to orality itself as it does to literacy, because the Brahmans are able to maintain their position through the dominance of a particular ideology, the ideology of the spoken word. Ironically it is the spoken word that is re-communicated between teacher and pupil and is the thing that is resilient. The text themselves are potentially open to a whole range of different interpretation. Therefore what we can draw from Parry’s example of India is a complete inversion of what the autonomous model is suggesting, far from writing being a permanent thing, they are open to a whole range of distorted reading with no legitimacy.

The point of both these examples was to help highlight, that the ability to separate out literacy and orality is not really possible except in a very abstract way, the way in which Goody or Ong does. When we get into the specific examples and the way these modes of communication are used, one can see they are very much interconnected and overlap one another. Thus the great divide theory of literacy and orality has been called a ‘tyranny of conceptual dichotomies' Graff declares that 'None of these polar opposites usefully describes actual circumstances; all of them, in fact, preclude contextual understanding’ (Graff 1987, p. 24). The interpretive alternatives to Great Divide theories are sometimes called ‘Continuity’ theories: these stress a ‘continuum’ rather than a radical discontinuity between oral and literate modes, and an on-going dynamic interaction between literacy and orality (Finnegan 1988, pp. 139, 175).

In concluding this paper firstly examined, the two different models that have developed in the study of literacy and orality, the autonomous and ideological model. Secondly, through these brief and empirical examples we can see how there are extreme complications in thinking that something like writing can be defined in a way that exists outside of particular social context or particular social processes. Moreover, the functions of writing and speaking we normally tend to separate, are very much interrelated and not radically different. This was demonstrated in Clanchy’s example of the Norman Conquest, where it was only through the adaptation of a literary mentality into a society, which was based very much on the spoken word, that writing eventually came to be accepted. In Parry’s example of India where writing and speaking existed for many centuries, even with the tremendous spread of writing, it only has its place within a very distinctive spoken culture. Therefore, the idea of literacy as radically different to orality and the master concept that determines the conditions for ‘civilization’ is very misleading. The question to address is what people do with elements of literacy and orality, not how they automatically affect people. Additionally, ideas related to concepts of literacy and orality is not exclusive, but is often interwoven. Politicians, barristers and priests, for example, even in a modern, literate society, depend a great deal on the memorized and spoken word for their position of authority a feature that Goody mistakenly thought characterized primitive societies.  

Bibliography

Clanchy, Michael T (1993): From Memory to Written Record: 1066- 1307, 2nd ed., Oxford: Blackwell

Finnegan, Ruth (1988): Literacy and Orality: Studies in the Technology of Communication. Oxford: Basil Blackwell

Gonda, J. (1977): Mediaeval Religious Literature. History of Indian Literature 2:1. pp. 41 ff. Wiesbaden.

Goody, Jack (Ed.) (1968): Literacy in Traditional Societies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Goody, Jack (1977): The Domestication of the Savage Mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Goody, Jack (1987): The Interface between the Written and the Oral . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Graff, Harvey J. (1987): The Labyrinths of Literacy. London: Falmer

Havelock, Eric (1963): Preface to Plato. Cambridge. Mass

Havelock, Eric (1986): The Muse Learns to Write. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.

Levi-Strauss, Claude ([1962] 1974): The Savage Mind. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson

McLuhan, Marshall (1962): The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul

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Ong, Walter (1982): Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. London: Methuen

Overing, J. (ed.): Reason and Morality. London: Tavistock.

Street, Brian V (1984): Literacy in Theory and Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Synnott, Anthony (1993): The Body Social: Symbolism, Self and Society. London: Routledge

Footnotes

[1] The institution of the interpretation for religious text.

[2] Religious text/manuscripts.

[3] The Formal school for religious learning

[4] A concept like the Middle Ages is not very precise, even in European circumstances, and when applied to India it has a different meaning. In history, the concept of Indian Middle Ages is mostly used as roughly corresponding the early (pre-Mughal) Islamic period, sometimes also including the period immediately preceding the Islamic conquest (Gonda, 1977)