Furthermore, in oralculture new styles "are seldom if ever explicitly touted for their novelty, but are presented as fitting the traditions of the ancestors," (Ong, 43).
In oralculture, knowledge is assimilated to what Ong calls the "human lifeworld," (Ong, 42-3); similarly, in Insular decoration, writing is adapted to the known world by the addition of zoomorphic and anthropomorphic figures in familiar decorative patterns.
Aspects of orality that are known from thte study of present-day oralcultures allow for the analysis of oral features that have survived in these manuscripts, providing valuable clues to the lost Celtic culture.
The oral mode of abstraction is deemed ‘unreflective’ meaning that it “does not foster a critical distinction between the knower and the known” (28).
Oralculture requires a face-to-face mode of communication that facilitates the sharing of experiences and living each experience imaginatively, hence, these “encounters preclude the separation of the knower form the known” (22).
Oralculture finds no use “for preserved communication to store knowledge of everyday practices” as these practices are preserved, not in a container, but through the activity of people living in the oralculture itself (23).
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