The Spoken and the Written

1.1 The Spoken and the Written

In an essay entitled ‘Broadcasting, Speech and Writing’ (1946), the BBC producer Christopher Salmon⁴ began a discussion of orality and literacy by quoting passages from two different sources, of equal length; one from a radio broadcast and one from a book (see Appendix A). Salmon’s reason for comparing these two passages was to support his argument that the English language (and every other living language) as practised in society consists in reality of two languages conjoined, the written and the spoken. Written or printed language provides a visual ‘horizon’ for the reader to scan at his or her own leisure, allowing both author and reader greater scope to juxtapose and synthesise ideas. Writing and printing promote precision, concision and consistency. In contrast, oral speech is immediate, copious and transitory. In the absence of the ‘storage capacity’ of writing or print, the speaker must rely on rhetoric and redundancy (repetition) to reinforce an argument or tell a story. However, in the face-to-face context of oral communication, there is a directness of relationship between symbol and referent (Goody and Watt 1962-3/1972: 313).

Aristotle identified three main forms of persuasive proof at work in the art of rhetoric: logos, or the use of evidence in rational argument; ethos, the use of the personal charisma or social role of the speaker to claim credibility or authority; and pathos, or the use of emotion, such as hatred, to move people (Sreberny-Mohammadi 2005: 27, 31). It is arguable that the rhetoric of writing and print involve a disproportionate use of logos, and create a decontextualized form of communication, in which ethos and pathos are no longer as vital to the interpretation of the text. Salmon believed that in this manner language was “like a plant with two sexes” or like “two separate kingdoms”, and maintained that language is best cultivated by the practice and development of each mode in its own right:
Those who write the language will find it quicker and more flexible through the efforts of those who speak it, and those who speak it will find their resources more subtle and far-reaching for the efforts of the writers. But if ever the writers of a language take too readily to the mode of speech, or those who speak it consent too widely to the idioms of the eye, the body of the language will sicken, lacking the fertility to maintain for long even the mode which the speakers or the writers are erecting to take possession of it… (Salmon 1946: 208).
Salmon goes on to discuss the origins of the alphabet, and observe that “in every language the tendency was naturally enough for the official patronage and the advantages of authority to be laid more and more upon the visible mode” (Salmon 1946: 211) of the written. For example, in China, the ability to write has historically been confined to literate elites of religious, administrative and commercial experts possessing skill and etiquette acquired only through many years of special training. The majority population who lacked the skill revolted with a vernacular language that they used for personal intercourse, without recourse to the mediation of experts.⁵

The use of classical administrative and liturgical languages has typically been restricted to a privileged minority who commanded the necessary social status or financial resources, and who maintained a centralized governing bureaucracy on these lines. As a result, elites have tended to maintain control of their linguistic skills in “somewhat the same way that craft guilds strive for exclusive control of their craft skills” (Gumperz 1972: 222). A wide gap has often existed between literate and oral cultures, a gap that the literate have been interested in maintaining as a vital measure to uphold the existing social order. What can be identified here is the sustained use of a technology or medium by elites to maintain or to shore up what Harold Innis referred to as ‘monopolies of knowledge’:

Innis also believed that every communications medium has a capacity for either travelling over considerable distances (portability) or lasting for a considerable duration (durability), and therefore some media are space-biased or space-binding whilst others are time-biased or time-binding (Innis 1951/2003; see also Meyrowitz 1986; Comor 1994; Blondheim 2003). Innis argued that the bias of a culture’s dominant medium affects the degree of the culture’s stability and conservatism as well as its ability to govern large amounts of territory. Innis’ historical studies of communication attempted to demonstrate that the use of heavy, durable or complex time-biased media such as stone hieroglyphics or complex writing systems tended to lead to the evolution of decentralized and sometimes hierarchical societies dominated by the ‘elders’ or priests who could master these forms. This was because they were difficult to create, interpret, revise, reproduce or transport.

However, a new medium or technology (for example, the introduction of printing), or an alternative use of an existing technology, could increase the availability of knowledge by breaking the monopoly on its production, thereby eroding the basis of such hierarchies. According to Innis, the sustained or disproportionate use of light and portable space-biased media tended to lead to the evolution of bureaucracies or empires – for example, through the sending of messages on papyrus the Romans were able to maintain a large empire with a centralized government that efficiently delegated authority to distant provinces. Yet this was ultimately unsustainable because of the difficulties in controlling and restricting marginal opposition and subversion of this system of administration.
According to Innis, whereas the use of space-biased media encouraged the valuing of empire and present-mindedness, the use of time-biased media encouraged the valuing of custom, continuity, tradition, community and religion. Over-reliance on either space-bias or time-bias shored up monopolies of knowledge and created hierarchies and ‘cultural disequilibrium’. Innis believed that political and social authority have always been altered by the development of different forms of communications. Put simply, oral and literate traditions of communication shape the character of the civilization, particularly the orientation to spatial dominance or temporal sustainability (Noble 2000).

For example, Innis believed that modern education had become too bound up with the written tradition, introducing monopolistic and dogmatic elements in culture, which devalue and inhibit contact with the oral tradition and the vernacular. We can observe that, during Innis’ lifetime, there was a decrease in the oral pedagogy that had characterised North American university education during the latter part of the 19^th Century. Students during that period had been expected to acquire ‘oral prowess’ by means of “lectures and recitations, formal original speeches, declamations, disputations, dramatic dialogues, and essays and poems read aloud in four languages – English, Hebrew, Greek and Latin” (Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 1998: 287). This type of pedagogy fed a demand for good speakers for the pulpit, courtroom, legislative hall, and town or business meeting (ibid, p.287).

Secondly, in oral cultures, “the cultural tradition functions as a series of interlocking face-to-face conversations in which the very conditions of transmission operate to favor consistency between past and present” (Goody and Watt 1962-3/1972: 337). Memorizing conceptualized culture through speech involves great amounts of time spent inventing strategies for the “learning, accumulation and maintenance of culture” (Narváez 1986) intended for transmission across the span of generations. This tends towards the creation, consolidation, and adaptation of cultural traditions, binding communities through the passage of time.⁷ Finally, oral or spoken communication does not generally encourage hierarchy or territorial expansion, due to the equivalence of status and lack of distance between performer and listener.