Ong Chapter 3

Orality is an occurence, an event
Inpossible for literates to imagine oral beingness
You cannot stop sound like a picture of sound
No still shot for sound
All sound is dynamic
Adam naming of the animals - Atwood
Oral cultures know what they can recall
No concept of looking up
Sustained thought in oral culture=communication
Lola wants to hear stories over and over again she is memorizing
mnemonic devices, rhyming and meter help orals remember long things
the kid that memorized long poems on youtube
Oral culture even laws are mnemonic/proverbs
Mnemonic devices include:

Additive v. subordinative
Ands v. narrative flow

Aggregative v. analytic
speaks of things and events in cliches
uses epithets: the mighty oak
works to prove cliches v. cast doubt
savage/oral mind totalizes

Redundant
Has to be. No backlooping like in reading.
I am always redundant in speech
Copia/redundancy is better than a pause when speaking

Conservative/Traditionalist
In order to remember generations of lessons, thought experiments are at a minimum
Prayers for Sale by Dallas
Oral tradition has need for elders
New material is not often incorporated
New material is structured like ancestors

Close to human lifeworld
expressions of human experience
even instruction given in human context
Apprenticeship = way of training v. manuals

Agonistically Toned
Rap Music
Human element presents competitiveness
Yo Mama contests
Extremes of violence/heroes/villians
Has to be entertaining

Empathetic/participatory v. objective distance
the oral story is happening to narrator and audience
written story is distanced

Homeostatic
sloughs off memories no longer relevant
seems in contrast to conservative mindset
when words are no longer part of the present experience, they vanish
political winners storeis more often told
irrelevant genealogies drop off
orators storiesflatter employers

situational v. abstract
oral = identified shapes as moon, door, etc. v. literate abstaractions = circle, square, etc.
oral will categorize via situation v. literate categories
orals prefer experience v. descritions
orals don't understand self-examination, all situational

Oral Memorization
rememberances of songs sung
hexametric phrases
epithets for each character that fit into hexameter
rhapsodized uniquely @ each performance via teller, mood, situation, audience
oral words are different than written ones
Lola creates/blends words ie text-based
literates attribute literate achievements to orals & vice versa
oral memorization is never verbatim, though orals claim is
oral performances change under social pressures

Verbomotor Lifestyle
Don't answer questions, compete/haggle with them
answer questions with questions
conversation as sparring
oral=social reading=solo
oral schizo=external literate schizo=internal

Noetic role of heroic heavies
Oral = extreme circumstances and character traits

Interiortiy of sound
interior of objects can be assessed through sound
observer fills/hearer is immersed
oral=anthrocentric
sound happens inside a body

orality, community and the sacral
oral performance =unifying experience
print = isolating
less unity in countries with more than one language
god speaks, not writes
religious experience is oral first

words are not signs