Orality newsletters - Janet Stahl

My wife, Janet has been writing some newsletters on the topic of orality. So we'll be posting them here occasionally on this blog.

Jim

GURT 2008

March 14-16 are the date for this year's GURT (Georgetown University's Round Table). This year's topic is storytelling 'Telling Stories: Building bridges among Language, Narrative, Identity, Interaction, Society and Culture.' What an opportunity to have storytelling the focus of this linguistic conference. I'm planning to go and look forward to posting some of what I learn as a result. One of my heroes in the world of sociolinguistics, William Labov will be one of the plenary speakers. Deborah Tannen is also speaking. I'll have to attend 'They immediately know you're from Pennsylvania' by Barbara Johnstone.

Variation on folktales - a kiss or body slam?

We just purchased a copy of Grimm's Fairy Tales and I started reading the first one, The Frog King. I expected to read about the story of the princess kissing the frog and him becoming a prince and the two living happily ever after. At least that's how it has been passed on to me through various media. Much to my surprise, assuming that written stories don't change, I read that only after the princess threw the frog against the wall in disgust did he change into a prince. The body slam hardly seems like a gesture of endearment. But, low and behold he changed and they did marry. I thought this would be the end of the story, but instead a new character is introduced after the main event. He is Henry, the prince's longtime aide, who's heart had to be banned three times so it would not break out of sadness (when the prince became a frog). Instead, Henry is so glad, his heart bursts out of joy for his master. The bands break and all three ride off.

The website SurLaLune Fairy Tales has some good annotations describing the reasons behind the variation and significant parts and characters of the story. So, the translator, Edgar Taylor (1823) changes a significant event in the story to suit his taste or perhaps what he thought his audience would enjoy.

In the Wikipedia write-up, the contributor calls the violent act of throwing the frog against the wall, a means to undo shapeshifting.

Kai and natural English

I've been thinking about natural English, storytelling and translation. When I attended formal schooling I was taught that sentences starting with 'and' are not proper English. I don't think my teacher went so far as to say such sentences were ungrammatical, but just not proper.

One of the goals of a good translation is that it achieves a certain naturalness. The translation doesn't sound like the language it came from but the language into which it was translated. When reading the Christmas story in some new English Bible translations (not The Message) I was surprised to see that several of the sentences started with 'and' or 'but'. This is very common for the source language, Koine Greek - 'kai'. But how common is this for English? Does starting sentences or paragraphs with 'and' or 'but' mirror spoken English? Is the rule prohibiting using 'and' sentence initial specifically for written English? Is it a reflection of the difference between spoken and written language, or possibly a reflection of a regional variety of spoken English?

I thought I'd start listening to people telling their stories and how they begin major sections. Well, just yesterday was a good time to listen as we had a 2 hour meeting and the presentations were interspersed with stories. One presenter told a story, where after the introduction each section started with 'and' and the last section started with 'so'. It was in the last section where the significant action happened, marked by language like 'he was stunned'. The transition in these paragraph starters marked a significant change in the story to me as the listener.

What do you think?

The relationship between literacy and orality

While working in Vanuatu people were excited to see their language developed as a written language. Some understand the benefits of literacy as shown on the banner 'Literacy Helps Us' (Literasi i givhan long ol pipol - Bislama). And generally, people enjoy seeing their stories written and illustrated. Mostly, people not living in the town centers don't have all that much to read on a daily basis, which affects their literate abilities. The relationship between orality and literacy within a culture is intriguing. Is the relationship dichotomous or interwoven?

Orality and Literacy is Ong’s most widely known work, having been translated into at least 12 languages. At first glance, the title suggests a variety of topics such as technology, and orality as compared to literacy, perhaps favoring one over the other. Before I go further, I would like to take the reader to the end of the book, where Ong states that being literate definitely has its advantages. Ong is concerned with the interrelationship between orality and literacy.

“Orality is not an ideal, and never was. To approach it positively is not to advocate it as a permanent state for any culture. Literacy opens possibilities to the word and to human existence unimaginable without writing. Oral cultures today value their oral traditions and agonize over the loss of these traditions, but I have never encountered or heard of an oral culture that does not want to achieve literacy as soon as possible. (Some individuals of course do resist literacy, but they are mostly soon lost sight of.) Yet orality is not despicable. It can produce creations beyond the reach of literates, for example, the Odyssey. Nor is orality ever completely eradicable; reading a text oralizes it. Both orality and the growth of literacy out of orality are necessary for the evolution of consciousness.” (Ong 2001 171)

The subtitle to this book is ‘technologizing the word’. In order to understand what Ong meant, he urges the reader to consider that writing in itself is a technology, using tools such as styles, quills, pencils, pens and computers. Ong notes that Plato had his objections to the technology of writing, but in order to make his point wrote about it. Plato’s main criticism had to do with the effect that writing would have on mental processes (Ong 2002:79).

Even though writing is ‘completely artificial’ according to Ong – in fact Ong states, “There is no way to write ‘naturally’”, Ong praises writing as such. “Like other artificial creations and indeed more than any other, it is utterly invaluable and indeed essential for the realization of fuller, interior, human potentials.” (2002:81)

This statement on technology being internalized makes me think of playing a musical instrument. There are some songs and etudes that I play from kinesthetic memory, and when I think about them too much, stumble. Yet Ong states that:

“The use of a technology can enrich the human psyche, enlarge the human spirit, intensify its interior life. Writing is an even more deeply interiorized technology than instrumental musical performance is. But to understand what it is, which means to understand it in relation to its past, to orality, the fact that it is a technology must be honestly faced.” (2002:82)

Orality and Literacy is a seminal work on this topic taking the reader deep into the inter-relatedness and polarities between the two concepts. Ong explores the history of literacy and the change from orality to literate cultures and how literacy brings a way of thinking not conceivable by primary oral cultures. He is very careful to distinguish between intelligence and cognitive processes or ways of thinking, by no means insinuating that oral cultures are primitive and unintelligent, rather exploring how the two cognitive processes differ and interact.

Identification stories

A group of us met to talk about language development strategy the other day and got to the subject of identity, what identifies a person with a certain group, i.e. language, dress, ways of doing things, religion, accent, food and stories. We're from the USA, and can point to the legends of the founding fathers as something shared, or of conflicts, expansion, immigration, travel, exploration, science, drama and American literature as being somewhat shared. Where does one go from there? I'm from eastern Pennsylvania of southern German descent. I'm grateful to my uncle and other relatives for researching the family history. I have family tree charts and am learning the stories, which identify me with a certain people, even though for me the language, Pennsylvania German, is gone. I'm sure that if Pennsylvania German would've been passed on to me, I would've identified more strongly with that group than I do at present.

While living on Epi Island in Vanuatu, we learned some of their stories, such as how Lamen Island arrived in its present location, having floated over from Malakula Island. They say you can see the hole in the reef where it once stood. Knowing the story, especially in the Lamen language, helps Lamen Islanders identify with their group. It's a shared story of their past.

Even in Vanuatu identity is layered. One can be called 'Man Vanuatu' as being a citizen of Vanuatu, or 'Man Epi' as being from the particular island called Epi. Epi has at least 5 languages though, spoken by around 5,000 people. So, 'Man Epi' is not enough to identify oneself in that situation. Someone might speak the Lewo language and then is probably not 'Man Lewo' as you'd expect, but identified by the village they live in. People there know what language is spoken in what village. After that, people are identified by their clans and families.

We had a good discussion on language and identity, and shared stories that mark that group. What stories identify you and your group? It can be a difficult question to answer, but one worth asking.

Storytelling as an assessment tool

Lately we've been discussing Doug Lipman's course on storytelling (called Storytelling Workshop in a Box^TM, available from www.storydynamics.com or email doug@storydynamics.com) and most recently the topic of eliciting stories. Doug urges storytellers to hear other people's stories and in so doing this will help them become better storytellers. Some important aspects of eliciting a story are listening and imagining what is happening in the story. At some point in the imagining processes the listener needs to question what they might be missing in the story. What gaps are there in the story? My wife for instance can read a novel and find holes or character changes.

Then I was thinking after listening to some children retell a Bible story they had just heard in church, about storytelling or retelling a story as an assessment tool for comprehension. In one way, this would help the teller see what impressions the story made on the audience, and in another possibly show what the listener understood or didn't understand.

In the field of sociolingusitics, questioning people about stories they've heard is a useful way to assess how well they might understand another language variety. This method can take a variety of forms, answers to direct questions on short stories or a retelling of the story.

So, I did what I usually do, and search Google to see what others have written on the subject of storytelling and assessment and found this e-article on the subject of using storytelling as an means of assessment by George Rooney called 'Storytelling and Contextually Based Design Techniques for Needs Assessment'