Primary / Secondary Orality

Lecture Date: 31October 2008

How the Secondary Orality of the Electronic AgeCan Awaken Us to the Primary Orality of Antiquity

or

What Hypertext Can Teach Us About the BiblewithReflections on the Ethical and Political Issuesof the Electronic Frontier

Robert M. Fowler

rfowler@bw.edu

http://homepages.bw.edu/~rfowler/

Baldwin-Wallace CollegeBerea, Ohio 44017





Background
• The computer rewrites the history of writing by sending us back to reconsider nearly every aspect of earlier technologies.
• Orality is enduced by radio and television
• Electronic orality has burgeoned in the last decade


Assumptions
• It is the sensibilities that have allowed us to reacquaint ourselves with the sensibilities of primary oral cultures
• Hypertext as paradigmatic of digital, electronic communication
• Electronic communication brings a host of ethical and political issue.



Theories
• Jay David Bolter’s Writing Space: The Computer, Hypertext, and the History of Writing
• Richard A. Lanham’s The Electronic Word: Democracy, Technology, and the Arts
• George P. Landow’s Hypertext: The Convergence of Contemporary Theory and Technology


What Is Hypertext?
• Non-Sequential Writing
• Includes any kind of information that can be digitized electronically
• Electronic media are networked media.



Fowler’s Hypertext
* Hypertext demands an active reader; it blurs the distinction between author and reader

* Hypertext is fluid, multiple, changing; not fixed or single.
* Hypertext has no beginning or ending, no center or margin, no inside or outside
* Hypertext is Multi-centered; infinitely recenterable
* Hypertext is a Network text
* Hypertext is collaborative
* Hypertext is anti-hierarchical and democratic




ORALITY AND LITERACY
Walter J. Ong

* Orality is “evanescent” not permanent.
* Orality is “additive rather than subordinative”; aggregative rather than analytic.
* Orality is “close to the human lifeworld”.
* Orality is “agonistically toned”.
* Orality is “emphatic and participatory rather than objectively distanced.”
* Orality knits persons together into community.
* Orality is “homeostatic”.


ONG’s MAIN POINTS
• Orality is “evanescent” not “permanent”.
• Writing and print provide a one-way, permanent document.
• An electronic document returns us to more fluid, shifting, open-ended communication.
• Writing and print and the computer are all ways of technologizing the word.
• Technology is both a promise and threat.
• Technologies belong to an age of Second Orality.


Print Culture
• Authors can be distinguished from readers
• A text is the property of its author
• A text is (or should be) fixed
• A text should speak with a single, clear voice
• A text has a beginning and an ending
• The center of a text is fixed, stable and single
• A text is (or should be) clearly organized in a linear structure
• An author writes by himself, and a reader reads by himself
• The act of writing or reading is (or should be) ethically and politically neutral


Ethical and Political Issues
* The inclination toward collaboration in cyberspace
* Creating and maintaining virtual communities
* The fate of the authors moral claim to intellectual property rights and legal claim to copyright
* Who will provide and who will receive services in cyberspace? Who will pay and who will profit?
* The question of human identity and the human/machine interface
* Sex on gender in cyberspace
* Civil liberties in cyberspace
* The electronic media: force for totalitarianism or democracy? For control or freedom?




Inclusions
• Does the incessant quest for novelty bring satisfaction?
• What grand legacies have we trashed needlessly, heedlessly?
• Is it possible that the electronic age will see the return of a culture both deeply rooted in its heritage and at the same time vibrant and open to the future.
• In cyberspace can we conserve the very best of the biblical traditions?
• By means of the electronic media can the biblical traditions become open and vital again?
• Can the biblical traditions break out of the amber of the printed page and once again live, grow, and change?
• The bible is the product of oral and manuscript cultures and achieved its crowning glory in the Age of Print, but what will succeed the printed Bible in the electronic age?
• Where is the interactive multimedia Bible for the 21st century being produced today?
• In multimedia, what will the biblical traditions look, sound, taste, smell and feel like?

MTV and Genderlect

CULTURE OF MTV

• August 1, 1981, 12:01a.m., MTV: Music Television was launched with the words "Ladies and gentlemen, rock and roll," spoken by John Lack.
• The first images shown on MTV were a montage of the Apollo11 moon landing.
• Video Killed the Radio Star (The Buggles) was the first music video shown on MTV
• Before 1983, Michael Jackson struggled to receive airtime on MTV because he was a black artist.
• CBS records denounced MTV in a strong, profane statement, threatening to take away MTV's ability to play any of the record label's music videos.
• His harsh stance worked, and MTV began showing “Billie Jean" in regular rotation, forming a lengthy partnership with Jackson and helping other black music artists.
• Then, Jackson's videos were credited for MTV’s success
• Michael Jackson's 13-minute music video Thriller was broadcast on MTV three weeks before Christmas 1983. It was the most expensive video of its time, costing US$500,000, and the Guinness World Records (2006) list it as the "most successful music video", selling over 9 million units



MTV videos become a testing ground for new film techniques. - Jawitz



It is an intellectual breakthrough. – Gregory Ullmer of the Unversity of Florida



MTv promotes not just music but as well movies.- Hunt and Tuben



Issues on MTV
• In 1984, only 4% of lead performers on MTV music videos were black. (Brown and Campbell, 1986 as cited by Croteau and Hoynes)
• Only 12% of MTV videos broadcast featured a female lead.



Madonna and Cindy Lauper
• Madonna and Cindy Lauper introduces resistance and identity (Lisa Lewis)
• Performances that built apparently traditional images of female sexuality and male pleasure – and styles of dress that drew on the same images – were interpreted by teenage fans as expressions of their own desire. (Croteau and Hoynes)
• The sexuality of these videos was a sign of female power, because women were the subjects, not the objects.
• Female fans who imitated the style of these female performers were asserting their demands for fame, power, and control without giving up their identity as girls. (Croteau and Hoynes)
• Texts of these videos are routinely dismissed in the broader culture as negative portrayals of women.
• MTV helped opened the door for female musicians. (Croteau and Hoynes)



MTV displays images of attractive people living comfortable lives surrounded by contemporary consumer goods.


MTV promotes a commitment to the latest styles – clothes, cars, leisure activities – that requires not only consumption but continuous consumption in order to keep up with stylistic changes.


62 MTV music videos – A research study
• R. Baxter
• C. De Riemer
• A. Landini
• L. Leslie
• M. Singletary
Findings:
- Sexual content was relying on innuendo through clothing, suggestiveness, and light physical contact (Baxter, et.al.)
- Sexually oriented, suggestive behavior is portrayed frequently in music videos. (Baxter, et.al.)
- Frequency of instances of violence and crime content also merits further attention (Baxter, et.al.)
- Provocative visual element accentuates the sexual and violent aspects. (Baxter, et.al.)
- Women are passive, Men are directing women. (Baron, Campbell and fisher, 1986)



RAP VIDEOS
• MEN DOMINATE WOMEN…AS OBJECTS OF MALE DESIRES.
(Pareles, 1990; Texier, 1990)
• BLACK GANGSTA RAP MUSICIANS REFER TO WOMEN AS “BITCHES” AND “HOS” NOT EXACTLY RESPECTFUL NAMES (Wood, 1998)


GENDERED VIOLENCE (J. WOOD)
• GENDER INTIMIDATION
• SEXUAL ASSAULT
• ABUSE BETWEEN INTIMATES
• QUID PRO QUO
• HOSTILE ENVIRONMENT
• GENITAL MUTILATION


MTV - a premise on short attention spans. - Gleick




GENDERLECT THEORY – D. TANNEN

- Believes that masculine and feminine forms of communication should be viewed as two distinct cultural dialects rather than as inferior or superior ways of speaking


Biological Differences
Ø Differences of fundamental experience of living.
Ø Due to the presence of two X chromosomes rather than an X and Y and/or to differing levels of various hormones
Ø Some differences in the structure of the body
Ø Some differences, apparently, in patterns of brain function.



Social Differences
- There is the idea that there is a woman's culture, created in part by male dominance and the exclusion of women from certain realms.
- These differences are enforced as well by ideological practices which associate women with the primitive societies with promiscuity, with dark forces, with the working classes, with irrationality, etc.



Psychological Differences
Based on biological and on social or cultural difference in the main; women are seen as more open, less aggressive, more discerning/intuitive, more nuance in their perceptions and responses.




COMPARATIVE RESEARCH: Men vs Women

MEN

1. Striving for status in a hierarchical social order where they are either one-up or one-down
2. Trying to protect themselves from others influence and from getting pushed down
3. Goal to get and keep the upper hand
4. Asymmetry is an element of status
5. We are separate and different
6. Report talk preserves independence
7. Public speaking
8. Mistake laments for requests for advice
9. Conversations are a competition
10. Conflict is accepted, sought out, enjoyed
11. Struggle to be strong
12. Jockey for position and compete for floor time
13. See interruptions as a struggle for control
14. Comfortable giving information and speaking authoritatively
15. Home is a sanctuary where you don’t have to talk
16. Practiced his whole life dismissing his thoughts and keeping them to himself
17. Want to be the protector because it is the dominant role
18. Masculine talk is associated with leadership and authority
19. Powerful speech is confident




WOMEN
1. Striving for intimacy
2. Trying to protect themselves from being pushed away
3. Goal is to establish connection by having intimate knowledge
4. Symmetry creates equality and community
5. We are close and the same
6. Rapport talk gets at the connection and the relationship
7. Private speaking
8. Laments are part of rapport talk
9. Conversations are negotiations for closeness
10. Conflict is a threat to connection and is to be settled without direct confrontation
11. Struggle to keep the community strong
12. Accommodate their conversation style and yield the floor
13. See interruptions as part of rapport talk because it shows participation and support
14. Comfortable supporting others and cautious about stating information
15. Home is a sanctuary where you can say what you want
16. Practiced her whole life verbalizing her thoughts in private conversations with people she is close to
17. Become the protected which is the subordinate role
18. Talking with leadership and authority is being a bitch
19. Powerless speech hedges, hesitates, and apologizes