How the invention of writing changed societies and the way people think.
In CM 345: Orality, we take a deeper look into communicating the Gospel and telling Biblical stories in specific ways to reach certain people groups. People lie along the lines of a primarily oral culture (listening and speaking) and a primarily literate culture (textual and print based). Many people have a very ethnocentric point of limiting their ability to reach further groups. Learning how people from both cultures think will allow one to adapt his/her thinking and presentation style to relate to the specific people group(s). Father Walter Ong’s book discusses how speech is the first communication and literacy comes after. In the past words had power and would resonate in the souls of the people and now printed writings are kept on shelves. Ong does not discredit textuality nor does he say it is negative, Ong simply discusses how the advancing and creation of writing has changed the way people in society think. Today, there are many societies that are heavily influenced by literate thinking, but are still rooted in oral processes. Specifically in the islands of Hawaii many natives speak a creole known as pidgin while writing is taught and required; as a child many stories were passed from person to person by word of mouth. I will be recreating and performing a story from the Bible in Hawaiian Pidgin English.
CM 345 Orality
Terry O’Casey
P003
2 PM