Brad, I too suspect that we are closer on these issues then
it seems. Rather a matter of syllabic emphasis. Your's is
more academic with mine seeming at least to be more from
the practical practice. I don't appoint a hierarchy to either
nor do I mean to say that I'm not academic or you are
impractical. Instead I feel it to be a point of emphasis..
Consider,
> Ray E. Harrell wrote:
> >
> > I've been away so I'm not sure whether this is old turf or not
> > on this issue.
>
> (Ditto)
>
> >
> > 1. As a performing artist who deals with the meaning of words
> > on the stage I find literacy useful in three ways.
> > a. as a substitute for a poor memory
> > b. as a way of transmitting rudimentary information
> > over a distance or hiding information from an "enemy."
> > c. as a separate art form that contains its own rules
> > apart from every day life and emotion. I put the
> > internet in this last catagory.
>
> These are, of course, contentious issues. The argument has been
> strongly put forward that literacy changes persons' mode
> of oral behavior and the inner experience thereof
> (see, e.g.: Singer of Tales (Harvard Studies in Comparative
> Literature, 24) Albert Bates Lord / Paperback / Published 1981 --
I've used the book for years in my teaching but the book beginsnot with the analysis
of literature but a discussion of performers
and performance. The act of per-form-ing is a synergistic
dialogue that transcends the particulate linearity of literacy.
Most societies that developed literacy, especially the glyphic
ones, did not want to develop forgetfulness or lose the
holistic nature of verbal performance dialogue. Just as we
still teach arithmetic to children instead of simply using
calculators, they had rules for what was written down and
what was only committed to memory. Plagues and Diasporas
elevated literacy because of the fragility of the lives of the
rememberers. I come from a society that brought out that
process only in the 1830s due to the pressure of European
society on our culture. We did not want to lose everything.
So we wrote it down but in a new syllabury that not everyone
could read.
> I confess to not having read this book but only reading
> *about* it in Walter Ong's writings). When literacy
> "infects" a society, the craft of the poet changes
> radically.
One might consider the poems of Robert Lowell on theone side with e.e. cummings on the
other.
> Previously, his tales (e.g., the Iliad) were
> the encyclopedia of the people, and the integrity of this
> information was protected by long apprenticeship and complex
> mettical (etc.) patterning of the material.
An interesting metaphor. I'm not really sure what it meantto the Greeks.
> Now the people
> have an encyclopedia, and it's not "cost effctive" for people
> to either learn the craft or listen to its practice.
I don't understand this either. The theater, movies, operasare all alive. The issue
is not the "encyclopedia" (creative
material) but the performance of such. Live versus "canned."
Movies are productive in the economic value sense, while
operas are not. Small rock ensembles can play to big crowds
with technological enhancements. That makes money, symphony
orchestras do not. It seems much more about economics than
the value of the encyclopedia.
Anyway it is not the same in
Europe. They still perform the encyclopedia live and on stage.
They used to hire America's performers to perform their works
after WW II. Even Germany. Now they have grown their own
and American performers have no place to go to perfect their
craft.
> Another
> point (among many): Literacy brings the advent of "objective
> history".
Nonsense! Where?
> Texts change much less fluidly than oral culture,
So do scientific ideal states, but they don't exist in
reality. That does not however, keep them from being
useful. I suggest the same for written language. False
but useful.
> and, in a primary oral culture, one did no9t need a Stalin
> to rewrite history, because the poets always knew which
> way the wind was blowing, and anything that dropped out of the
> poetry the poets sang was irretrievably gone. Ets.
In Tenochtitlan, they didn't hesitate to change the writtentext but if you changed a
word or missed a pitch or rhythm
in the performance, you were fodder for the Gods. They
took their verbal history seriously. You seem to be equating
reality with Europe. A problem with literacy.
> >
> > As far as information is concerned there is a different
> > connotation for every single word that is stressed by
> > the voice in a sentence.
>
> Of course, and I will agree with you that a lot of
> people who know how to read and write don't pay
> attention to these crucial aspects of our comunicative
> life.
In my experience with students and professionalperformers, there is little preparation
in the schools
for something as simple as defining the distinctions
between word stresses. I was pleasantly surprised
to read that Murray Gell-Mann (The Quark and the
Jaguar) made the same points. He did, however,
have a family tradition of language study so the
distinctions in English were obvious when compared
to French or Italian for example.
> > Writing as it is currently defined
> > is hopeless. English "grammar" is not built upon the stress
> > values of English but is left over from the archaic study of
> > Latin. Without a serious grammar that is more inclusive
> > English writing is a poor substitute for sound.
If I may add to my above with a little practical exercise.Consider the sentence."I
will be traveling to Toronto."
I....will be traveling to Toronto (and not my sister Deanna)
I WILL be traveling to Toronto (and you can't stop me)
I will BE traveling to Toronto. (I haven't done it yet)
I will be TRAVELING to Toronto (not sitting here at home)
I will be traveling TO Toronto (not AWAY from New York City)
I will be traveling to TORONTO (not Cape Briton!)
And there can be other versions of the above along
with combinations. Taking the mathematical probability
of three denotative (dictionary) meanings with a minimum
of four connotative meanings for every single word then
you have the possibility of seven versions of six words
that then can be mixed in any combination of six and
seven. You can do the Math, I'm not academic, but
the doing of it is the way you plan the performance of
a text and it's creative possibilities.
As this work has
become less common in the schools, the stage directions
in plays have grown more complicated. Shakespeare is
said to have required only "exit left" because his actors
knew how to analyze texts for performance. That is
why they were "apprentices." Shakespeare's texts are
ques to memory. (My first point) But many consider
them to simply be literature. A point that I cannot imagine
such a practical actor as Shakespeare agreeing to.
> Thank you for bringing up this point. I agree with you, and
> I have proposed a solution:
>
> http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/sgmlnote.html
>
I'll look into it.
> >
> > In otherwords I find Brad's comment about the place of
> > non-literate people to be hopelessly literacy bound.
>
> This may be true, but I have made serious efforts over
> 15 years to become aware of the issues here.
Welcome aboard
> > Has anyone brought up Leonard Schlain's book on
> > this titled "The Alphabet Versus The Goddess"
> > Viking Press?
>
> I do not know it. Walter Lord's book, just about
> anything by Milman Parry or Walter Ong or Eric Havelock
> is probably far more worth allocating a bit of one's
> so short life time to
There are so many. But the point is always whether it"works" in creating a Universe
that has integrity with itself.
That makes it trustworthy. I am enjoying Schlain. He is
a clear writer and an MD who has written other such texts
as "Art and Physics."
As you know from my past posts,
I have an inherent distrust of any of the sciences getting into
the Arts. Only the Anthropologists have truly tried to
capture performances on paper and thus have done the best
work on literacy that I have seen to date. The Tedlocks,
Ken Lincoln, the poet Jerome Rothenberg and some of the
Semiotics folks all have made serious attempts to get their
audio tapes onto the printed page. This has made the almost
incomprehensible work of the likes of Benjamin Lee Whorf
make sense.
> I hope we "pretty much agree with each other". I strongly
> urge the primary of face-to-face speech, e.g.,
> a mother's early words with her infant, as the
> foundation of all more abstract cultural achievements.
Me too.
> And if ever that foundation gets lost (which it easily
> could in the all too well fundable social engineering
> projects of "cognitive scientists" et al.), that will
> be the end of civilization and humanity.
>
I agree.
> Best wishes! Yours in discourse!
>
> \brad mccormick
Thanks for the time. I always enjoy your mind.
REH
