Orality can be defined as thought and its verbal expression in societies where the technologies of literacy (especially writing and print) are unfamiliar to most of the population. The study of orality is closely allied to the study of oral tradition. However, it has broader implications, implicitly touching every aspect the economics, politics and institutional and human development of oral societies. The study of orality has important implications for international development, especially as it relates to the goal of eradicating poverty, as well as to the process of globalization. Personification of thought (Greek Εννοια) in Celsus Library in Ephesos, Turkey Thought or thinking is a mental process which allows beings to model the world, and so to deal with it effectively according to their goals, plans, ends and desires. ... World literacy rates by country The traditional definition of literacy is considered to be the ability to read and write, or the ability to use language to read, write, listen, and speak. ... Oral tradition or oral culture is a way of transmitting history, literature or law from one generation to the next in a civilization without a writing system. ... Face-to-face trading interactions on the New York Stock Exchange trading floor. ... The Politics series Politics Portal This box:      Politics is the process by which groups of people make decisions. ... This article is about International Development. ... A boy from an East Cipinang trash dump slum in Jakarta, Indonesia shows what he found. ... A KFC franchise in Kuwait. ...

An oral community in Cambodia confronts writing. Have they heard the warning of Socrates? Photo: Brett Matthews, 2006

Walter J. Ong, a key scholar in this field, distinguishes between two forms of orality: ‘primary orality’ and ‘residual orality’.^[1] Illustration of a scribe writing Writing, in its most common sense, is the preservation of and the preserved text on a medium, with the use of signs or symbols. ... This page is about the ancient Greek philosopher. ... Walter Ong Father Walter Jackson Ong, Ph. ...

The impact of literacy on culture

Ong draws on pioneering work by Milman Parry and Marshall McLuhan, among the first to fully appreciate the significance of the word as a technology. McLuhan, in his work The Gutenberg Galaxy^[2] shows how each stage in the development of this technology throughout the history of communication – from the invention of speech (primary orality), to pictograms, to the phonetic alphabet, to typography, to the electronic communications of today – restructures human consciousness, profoundly changing not only the frontiers of human possibility, but even the frontiers it is possible for humans to imagine. Milman Parry (1902 -December 3, 1935) was a scholar of epic poetry. ... “McLuhan” redirects here. ... A word is a unit of language that carries meaning and consists of one or more morphemes which are linked more or less tightly together, and has a phonetical value. ... By the mid 20th century humans had achieved a mastery of technology sufficient to leave the surface of the Earth for the first time and explore space. ... The history of communication dates back to the earliest signs of life. ... Pictogram for public toilets A pictogram or pictograph is a symbol which represents an object or a concept by illustration. ... A phonetic alphabet is any of three things: A type of phonetic notation used for transcribing the sounds of human speech into writing. ... This article or section is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ...

Primary orality

‘Primary orality’ refers to thought and its verbal expression within cultures “totally untouched by any knowledge of writing or print.”^[3] Illustration of a scribe writing Writing, in its most common sense, is the preservation of and the preserved text on a medium, with the use of signs or symbols. ... Printing is an industrial process for reproducing copies of texts and images, typically with ink on paper using a printing press. ...

All sound is inherently powerful. If a hunter kills a lion he can see it, touch it, feel it and smell it. But if he hears a lion he must act, fast. Speech is a form of sound that shares this common power. Like other sounds, it comes from within a living organism. A text can be ignored; it is just writing on paper. But to ignore speech can be unwise; our basic instincts compel us to pay attention.^[4] Sound is a disturbance of mechanical energy that propagates through matter as a wave. ... This article or section does not cite any references or sources. ...

Writing is powerful in a different way: it permits people to generate ideas, store them, and retrieve them as needed across time in a highly efficient and accurate way. The absence of this technology in oral societies limits the development of complex ideas and the institutions that depend on them. Instead, sustained thought in oral settings depends on interpersonal communication, and storing complex ideas over a long period of time requires packaging them in highly memorable way. Institutions are structures and mechanisms of social order and cooperation governing the behavior of two or more individuals. ... In psychology, memory is an organisms ability to store, retain, and subsequently recall information. ...

In his studies of the Homeric Question, Milman Parry was able to show that the poetic metre found in the Iliad and the Odyssey had been ‘packaged’ by oral Greek society to meet its information management needs. These insights first opened the door to a wider appreciation of the sophistication of oral traditions, and their various methods of managing information.^[5] For other uses, see Homer (disambiguation). ... Milman Parry (1902 -December 3, 1935) was a scholar of epic poetry. ... The metre (American English:meter) is a measure of length. ... title page of the Rihel edition of ca. ... Beginning of the Odyssey The Odyssey (Greek Οδύσσεια (Odússeia) ) is one of the two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to the Ionian poet Homer. ... Information management is the cibai collection and lancau management of information from one or more sources and distribution to fuck one or more audiences who have a stake in that information or a right to that information. ... Oral tradition or oral culture is a way of transmitting history, literature or law from one generation to the next in a civilization without a writing system. ...

Residual orality

‘Residual orality’ refers to thought and its verbal expression in cultures that have been exposed to writing and print, but have not fully ‘interiorized’ (in McLuhan’s term) the use of these technologies in their daily lives. As a culture interiorizes the technologies of literacy, the ‘oral residue’ diminishes.

Socrates. Writing is 'inhuman'. Bust at the Louvre.

But the availability of a technology of literacy to a society is not enough to ensure its widespread diffusion and use. For example Eric Havelock observed in A Preface to Plato that after the ancient Greeks invented writing they adopted a scribal culture that lasted for generations. Few people, other than the scribes, considered it necessary to learn to read or write.^[6] In other societies, such as ancient Egypt or medieval Europe, literacy has been a domain confined to political and religious elites. ImageMetadata File history File links Download high resolution version (600x800, 153 KB) Suject : Portrait of Socrates ; Origin : Roman (1st century), perhaps a copy of a lost bronze statue made by Lysippos ; Material : Marble ; Location : Louvre museum, Paris, France, MA 59 ; Author : Eric Gaba (User:Sting) ; Date : July 2005. ... ImageMetadata File history File links Download high resolution version (600x800, 153 KB) Suject : Portrait of Socrates ; Origin : Roman (1st century), perhaps a copy of a lost bronze statue made by Lysippos ; Material : Marble ; Location : Louvre museum, Paris, France, MA 59 ; Author : Eric Gaba (User:Sting) ; Date : July 2005. ... Attic cup inscribed with the Greek alphabet. ... Ancient Greece is the term used to describe the Greek_speaking world in ancient times. ... This is about scribe, the profession. ... Khafres Pyramid (4th dynasty) and Great Sphinx of Giza (c. ... The Middle Ages formed the middle period in a traditional schematic division of European history into three ages: the classical civilization of Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and modern times, beginning with the Renaissance. ...

Many cultures have experienced an equilibrium state in which writing and mass illiteracy have co-existed for hundreds or even thousands of years.^[7]

Oral residue rarely disappears quickly and never vanishes completely. Speech is inherently an oral event, based on human relationships, unlike texts. Oral societies can mount strong resistance to literate technologies, as vividly shown in the arguments of Socrates against writing in Plato’s Phaedrus. Writing, Socrates argues, is inhuman. It attempts to turn living thoughts dwelling in the human mind into mere objects in the physical world. By causing people to rely on what is written rather than what they are able to think, it weakens the powers of the mind and of memory. True knowledge can only emerge from a relationship between active human minds. And unlike a person, a text can’t respond to a question; it will just keep saying the same thing over and over again, no matter how often it is refuted. ^[8] This article or section does not cite any references or sources. ... Look up oral in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Look up text in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... This page is about the ancient Greek philosopher. ... PLATO was one of the first generalized Computer assisted instruction systems, originally built by the University of Illinois (U of I) and later taken over by Control Data Corporation (CDC), who provided the machines it ran on. ... The Phaedrus, written by Plato, is a dialogue between Platos main protagonist, Socrates, and Phaedrus, an interlocutor in several dialogues. ... The mind is the term most commonly used to describe the higher functions of the human brain, particularly those of which humans are subjectively conscious, such as personality, thought, reason, memory, intelligence and emotion. ...

Both McLuhan and Ong also document the re-emergence, in the electronic age, of a kind of ‘secondary orality’ that displaces written words with audio/visual technologies like radio, TV and telephones. Unlike primary oral modes of communication, these technologies depend on print for their existence. Mass internet collaborations like Wikipedia rely primarily of writing, but re-introduce relationships and responsiveness into the text. The term secondary orality was coined by Walter J. Ong in the early 1970s. ... See TV (disambiguation) for other uses and Television (band) for the rock band European networks National In much of Europe television broadcasting has historically been state dominated, rather than commercially organised, although commercial stations have grown in number recently. ... A telephone handset A touch-tone telephone dial Telephone The telephone or phone (Greek: tele = far away and phone = voice) is a telecommunications device that transmits speech by means of electric signals. ...

Importance of the concept

It has been a habit of literate cultures to view oral cultures simply in terms of their lack of the technologies of writing. This habit, argues Ong, is dangerously misled. Oral cultures are living cultures in their own right. A 1971 study found that of 3,000 extant languages, only 78 had a written literature.^[9] While literacy extends human possibilities in both thought and action, all literate technologies ultimately depend on the ability of humans to learn oral languages. Old book bindings at the Merton College library. ...

Understanding between nations may depend to some degree on understanding oral culture. Ong argues that “many of the contrasts often made between ‘western’ and other views seem reducible to contrasts between deeply interiorized literacy and more or less residually oral states of consciousness.”^[10]

In a benchmark study on rural poverty the World Bank estimated that about 1.2 billion people earn less than US $1 a day (adjusted for Purchasing Power Parity), and that about 70% of them live in rural areas. ... PPP is an abbreviation for: In real estate: prepayment penalty, a penalty paid when property is sold before an agreed-upon date. ...

“More than half a century of persistent efforts … has not altered the stubborn reality of rural poverty, and the gap between rich and poor is widening. The likelihood of achieving the Millennium Development Goals without a focus on improving the livelihoods and service accessibility of rural dwellers is low.”^[11] The Millenium Development Goals The Millennium Development Goals are eight goals that 192 United Nations member states have agreed to try to achieve by the year 2015. ...

Illiteracy is both an important cause, and an important effect, of chronic global poverty. Improvements in livelihoods and access to services in rural communities depends on their ability to manage local organizations, or hold external ones accountable. The processes of development can also be undermined by educated agents of development whose ‘deeply interiorized literacy’ informs their decisions. In recent years this has begun to change, with methods of engagement with oral communities that have emphasized participation, voice, and other development methods like participatory rural appraisal, participatory action research and Farmer Field Schools. World illiteracy rates by country Literacy is the ability to read and write. ... A boy from an East Cipinang trash dump slum in Jakarta, Indonesia shows what he found. ... Alternative meaning: Organisation (band). ... Look up participation in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... PRA ranking exercise being carried out by members of a Farmer Field School in Bangladesh, 2004 Participatory rural appraisal (PRA) is an approach used by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and other agencies involved in international development. ... // Description PAR has emerged in recent years as a significant methodology for intervention, development and change within communities and groups. ... Rice farmers in Indonesia attending an early FFS, 1991, organised by FAO (photo by JM Micaud) The Farmer Field School (FFS) is a group-based learning process that has been used by a number of governments, NGOs and international agencies to promote Integrated Pest Management (IPM). ...

Theory of the characteristics of oral culture

Walter Ong, dean of oral studies.

Drawing on hundreds of studies from anthropology, linguistics and the study of oral tradition, Ong summarizes ten key aspects of the ‘psychodynamics of orality’. While these are subject to continuing debate, his list remains an important milestone. Ong draws his examples from both primary oral societies, and societies with a very high ‘oral residue’. Walter Ong This image has been released into the public domain by the copyright holder, its copyright has expired, or it is ineligible for copyright. ... Walter Ong This image has been released into the public domain by the copyright holder, its copyright has expired, or it is ineligible for copyright. ... Anthropology (from Greek: ἀνθρωπος, anthropos, human being; and λόγος, logos, knowledge) is the study of humanity. ... Linguistics is the scientific study of language, which can be theoretical or applied. ... Oral tradition or oral culture is a way of transmitting history, literature or law from one generation to the next in a civilization without a writing system. ... Sigmund Freud - the central founder of psychodynamics Psychodynamics is the application of the principles of thermodynamics to psychology. ...

1. Formulaic Styling

To retain complex ideas requires that they be packaged memorably for easy recall.

To solve effectively the problem of retaining and retrieving carefully articulated thought, you have to do your thinking in mnemonic patterns, shaped for ready oral recurrence. Your thoughts must come into being in heavily rhythmic, balanced patterns, in repetitions or antithesis, in alliterations or assonances, in epithetic and other formulary expressions… Serious thought is intertwined with memory systems.[12]

Jousse identifies a close linkage between rhythm and breathing patterns, gestures and the bilateral symmetry of the human body in several ancient verse traditions.^[13] This synergy between the body and the construction of oral thought further fuels memory. Rhythm (Greek = flow, or in Modern Greek, style) is the variation of the length and accentuation of a series of sounds or other events. ...

2. Additive rather than subordinative

Oral cultures avoid complex ‘subordinative’ clauses. Ong cites an example from the Douy version of Genesis (1610), noting that this basic additive pattern (in italics) has been identified in many oral contexts around the world: ^[14] Genesis (‎, Greek: Γένεσις, meaning birth, creation, cause, beginning, source or origin) is the first book of the Torah, the Tanakh, and the Old Testament. ...

In the beginning God created heaven and earth. And the earth was void and empty, and darkness was on the face of the deep; and the spirit of God moved over the waters. And God said …

The New American Bible (1970) offers a translation that is grammatically far more complex: In 1970, the New American Bible (NAB) was first published. ...

In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless wasteland, and darkness covered the abyss, while a mighty wind swept over the waters. Then God said …

3. Aggregative rather than analytic

Oral expression brings words together in pithy phrases that are the product of generations of evolution: the ‘sturdy oak tree’, the ‘beautiful princess’ or ‘clever Odysseus’. This does not apply specifically to poetry or song; rather the words are brought together out of habit during general communication. ‘Analyzing’ or breaking apart such expressions adds complexity to communications, and questions received wisdom. The Chinese poem Quatrain on Heavenly Mountain by Emperor Gaozong (Song Dynasty) Poetry (from the Greek , poiesis, a making or creating) is a form of art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its ostensible meaning. ... A song is a relatively short musical composition. ...

Ong cites an American example, noting that in some parts of the United States with heavy oral residue, it is still considered normal or even obligatory to use the adjective ‘glorious’ when referring to the ‘fourth of July’. ^[15] In the United States, Independence Day (commonly known as the “Fourth of July,” “July Fourth”, the “Glorious Fourth”, or simply the “Fourth”) is a federal holiday commemorating the adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, declaring independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain. ...

4. Redundant or ‘copious’

Speech that repeats earlier thoughts or thought-pictures, or shines a different light on them somehow, helps to keep both the speaker and the listener focused on the topic, and makes it easier for all to recall the key points later. This was transformed from a daily practice to a high art as ‘copia’, a part of the Roman discipline of rhetoric. ^[16] Roman or Romans may refer to: A thing or person of or from the city of Rome. ... Rhetoric (from Greek , rhêtôr, orator, teacher) is generally understood to be the art or technique of persuasion through the use of spoken language; however, this definition of rhetoric has expanded greatly since rhetoric emerged as a field of study in universities. ...

5. Conservative or traditionalist

Because oral societies have no effective access to writing and print technologies, they must invest considerable energy in basic information management. Storage of information, being primarily dependent on individual or collective recall, must be handled with particular thrift. It is possible to approximately measure oral residue “from the amount of memorization the culture’s educational procedures require.”^[17] Conservative may refer to: Conservatism, political philosophy A member of a Conservative Party Conservative extension, premise of deductive logic Conservativity theorem, mathematical proof of conservative extension Conservative Judaism britney spears Category: ... Information management is the cibai collection and lancau management of information from one or more sources and distribution to fuck one or more audiences who have a stake in that information or a right to that information. ...

This creates incentives to avoid exploring new ideas and particularly to avoid the burden of having to store them. It does not prevent oral societies from demonstrating dynamism and change, but there is a premium on ensuring that changes cleave to traditional formulas, and “are presented as fitting the traditions of the ancestors.” ^[18]

6. Close to the human lifeworld

Oral cultures take a practical approach to information storage. To qualify for storage, information must usually concern matters of immediate practical concern or familiarity to most members of the society.

Long after the invention of writing, and often long after the invention of print, basic information on how to perform a society’s most important trades was left unwritten, passed from one generation to the next as it always had been: through apprenticeship, observation and practice. ^[19] Apprenticeship is a system of training a new generation of skilled crafts practitioners, which is still popular in some countries. ...

By contrast, only literary cultures have launched phenomenological analyses, abstract classifications, ordered lists and tables, etc.. Nothing analogous exists in oral societies.

7. Agonistically toned

Beowulf fights the dragon

‘Agonistic’ means ‘combative’, but Ong actually advances a deeper thesis with this point. Writing and to an even greater extent print, he argues, disengage humans from direct, interpersonal struggle. Image File history File links Beowulf_and_the_dragon. ... Image File history File links Beowulf_and_the_dragon. ...

Products of “the highly polarized, agonistic, oral world of good and evil, virtue and vice, villains and heroes” the great works of oral literature from Homer to Beowolf, from the Mwindo epic to the Old Testament, are extremely violent by modern standards. They are also punctuated by frequent and intense intellectual combat and tongue-lashings on the one hand, and effusive praise (perhaps reaching its height among African praise singers) on the other.^[20] Oral literature corresponds in the sphere of the spoken (oral) word to literature as literature operates in the domain of the written word. ... Homer (Greek: ) is the name given to the supposed unitary author of the early Greek poems the Iliad and the Odyssey. ... The first page of Beowulf This article describes Beowulf, the epic poem. ... Note: Judaism commonly uses the term Tanakh to refer to its canon, which corresponds to the Protestant Old Testament. ... World map showing location of Africa A satellite composite image of Africa Africa is the worlds second_largest continent in both area and population, after Asia. ...

8. Empathetic and participatory

In an oral culture the most reliable and trusted technique for learning is to share a “close, empathetic, communal association” with others who know. Participation in social science is an umbrella term including different means for the public to directly participate in political, economic, management or other social decisions. ...

Ong cites a study of community decision-making from 12th Century England. Writing already had a long history in England, and it would have been possible to use texts to establish for example, the age of majority of the heir to an estate. But people were skeptical about texts, noting not only the cost of generating and managing them, but the problems involved in preventing tampering or frauds. Motto (French) God and my right Anthem No official anthem - the United Kingdom anthem God Save the Queen is commonly used England() – on the European continent() – in the United Kingdom() Capital (and largest city) London (de facto) Official languages English (de facto)1 Government Constitutional monarchy  -  Monarch Queen Elizabeth II...

As a result, they retained the traditional solution: gathering together “mature wise seniors of many years, having good testimony”, and publicly discussing the age of the heir with them, until agreement was reached.^[21] This hallmark principle of orality, that truth emerges from best from communal process, resonates today in the jury system. This article or section does not cite any references or sources. ...

9. Homeostatic

Oral societies conserve their limited capacity to store information, and retain the relevance of their information to the interest of their present members, by shedding memories that have lost their past significance.^[22]

While many examples exist, the classic example was reported by Goody and Watt (1968). Written records prepared by the British in Ghana in the early 1900s show that Ndewura Jakpa, the seventeenth century founder of the state of Gonja, had seven sons, each of whom ruled a territorial division within the state. Six decades later two of the divisions had disappeared for various reasons. The myths of the Gonja had been revised to recount that Jakpa had five sons, and that five divisions were created.^[23] Since they had no practical, present purpose, the other two sons and divisions had evaporated. Jack Goody (born 1918 or 1919) is a British social anthropologist. ...

10. Situational rather than abstract

In oral cultures, concepts are used in a way that minimizes abstraction, focusing to the greatest extent possible on objects and situations directly known by the speaker. A study by A.R. Luria, a psychologist who did extensive fieldwork comparing oral and literate subjects in remote areas of Uzbekistan and Kirghizia in 1931-2^[24] documented the highly situational nature of oral thinking. Alexander Romanovich Luria Александр Романович Лурия (July 16, 1902-1977) was a famous Russian neuropsychologist. ... Kyrgyzstan (Kyrgyz: Кыргызстан) is a country in Central Asia. ...

• Oral subjects always used real objects they were familiar with to refer to geometric shapes; for example a plate or the moon might be used to refer to a circle.
• Asked to select three similar words from the following list “hammer, saw, log, hatchet”, oral subjects would reject the literate solution (removing the log to produce a list of 3 tools), pointing out that without the log there wasn’t much use for the tools.
• Oral subjects took a practical, not an abstract, approach to syllogisms. Luria asked them this question. In the far north, where there is snow, all bears are white. Novaya Zembla is in the far north and there is always snow there. What colour are the bears? Typical response: “I don’t know. I’ve seen a black bear. I’ve never seen any others. … Every locality has its own animals.”
• Oral subjects proved unwilling to analyze themselves. When asked “what sort of person are you?” one responded: “What can I say about my own heart? How can I talk about my character? Ask others; they can tell you about me. I myself can’t say anything.” ^[25]

References

1. ^ Walter J. Ong. Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (second edition). Routledge, London and New York, 2002
2. ^ Marshall McLuhan. The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 1962.
3. ^ Walter J. Ong. Orality and Literacy, p. 11.
4. ^ Walter J. Ong. Orality and Literacy, p. 32.
5. ^ Adam Parry (ed.). The Making of Homeric Verse: The Collected Papers of Milman Parry. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1971, p. 272.
6. ^ Eric Havelock. A Preface to Plato. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1963.
7. ^ Walter J. Ong. Orality and Literacy, pp. 92-93.
8. ^ Walter J. Ong. Orality and Literacy, pp. 78-79.
9. ^ Monro E. Edmonson. Lore: An Introduction to the Science of Folklore and Literature. Holt, Rinehart & Winston, New York, 1971, pp. 323, 332.
10. ^ Walter J. Ong. Orality and Literacy, p. 29.
11. ^ Reaching the Rural Poor: A Renewed Strategy for Rural Development. World Bank, 2003.
12. ^ Walter J. Ong. Orality and Literacy, p. 34.
13. ^ cited in Ong, p. 34. Marcel Jousse. Le Parlant, la parole, et le souffle. Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, L’Anthropologie du geste. Gallimard, Paris, 1978.
14. ^ Walter J. Ong. Orality and Literacy, p. 37.
15. ^ Walter J. Ong. Orality and Literacy, p. 39.
16. ^ Walter J. Ong. Orality and Literacy, pp. 40-41.
17. ^ Jack Goody, cited in his introduction to Jack Goody (ed.) Literacy in traditional societies, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1968, pp. 13-14.
18. ^ Walter J. Ong. Orality and Literacy, pp. 42.
19. ^ Walter J. Ong. Orality and Literacy, p. 43.
20. ^ Walter J. Ong. Orality and Literacy, pp. 43-45.
21. ^ M.T. Clanchy. From Memory to Written Record, England 1066-1307. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1979, pp. 230-33.
22. ^ Jack Goody and Ian Watt. The consequences of literacy. In Jack Goody (ed.) Literacy in traditional societies, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1968, pp. 31-34.
23. ^ Jack Goody and Ian Watt. The consequences of literacy. In Jack Goody (ed.) Literacy in traditional societies, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1968, pp. 33.
24. ^ Aleksandr Romanovich Luria. Cognitive Development: its Social and Cultural Foundations, Michael Cole (ed.); Martin Lopez-Morillas and Lynn Solotaroff (trans.). Harvard University Press. Cambridge, Mass., and London, 1976.
25. ^ Walter J. Ong. Orality and Literacy, pp. 49-54.

The Gutenberg Galaxy, named for Johannes Gutenberg, the inventor of printing, is the universe of all printed books ever published. ...

See also

• Cultural traditions
• Oral literature
• Oral poetry
• Oral history
• Oral law
• Oral contract
• Intangible culture
• Ethnopoetics
• Storytelling
• Performance poetry
• Oral interpretation
• History of communication
• History of writing
• Linguistic anthropology