Lingthusiasm Episode 89: Connecting with oral culture
For tens of thousands of years, humans have transmitted long and intricate stories to each other, which we learned directly from witnessing other people telling them. Many of these collaboratively composed stories were among the earliest things written down when a culture encountered writing, such as the Iliad and the Odyssey, the Mwindo Epic, and Beowulf.
In this episode, your hosts Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne get enthusiastic about how writing things down changes how we feel about them. We talk about a Ted Chiang short story comparing the spread of literacy to the spread of video recording, how oral cultures around the world have preserved astronomical information about the Seven Sisters constellation for over 10,000 years, and how the field of nuclear semiotics looks to the past to try and communicate with the far future. We also talk about how "oral" vs " written" culture should perhaps be referred to as "embodied" vs "recorded" culture because signed languages are very much part of this conversation, where areas of residual orality have remained in our own lives, from proverbs to gossip to guided tours, and why memes are an extreme example of literate culture rather than extreme oral culture.
Click here for a link to this episode in your podcast player of choice or read the transcript here.
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Here are the links mentioned in the episode:
The 'Which Lingthusiasm episode are you?' quiz
'The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling' by Ted Chiang
'The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling by Ted Chiang — Subterranean Press' blog post by Devon Zeugel
'Orality and Literacy' by Walter J. Ong
Wikipedia entry for Grimms' Fairytales
Wikipedia entry for Milman Parry
Wikipedia entry for Homeric Question
Wikipedia entry for Mwindo Epic
Encyclopedia.com entry for Mwindo
Crash Course episode 'The Mwindo Epic'
'The world’s oldest story? Astronomers say global myths about ‘seven sisters’ stars may reach back 100,000 years' by Ray Norris on The Conversation
'The Pleiades – or 7 Sisters – known around the world' by Bruce McClure on EarthSky
Wikipedia entry for Nuclear Semiotics
99% Invisible episode 'Ten Thousand Years'
Wikipedia entry for Aesops Fables
'How Inuit Parents Teach Their Kinds to Control Their Anger' by Michaeleen Doucleff and Jane Greenhalgh for NPR
Deafness and Orality: An Electronic Conversation
Wikipedia entry for The Tale of Genji
Bea Wolf, a middle-grade graphic novel retelling of Beowulf, by Zach Weinersmith
Lingthusiasm episodes mentioned:
'Writing is a technology'
'Arrival of the linguists'
How translators approach a text'
You can listen to this episode via Lingthusiasm.com, Soundcloud, RSS, Apple Podcasts/iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also download an mp3 via the Soundcloud page for offline listening.
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Lingthusiasm is on Bluesky, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Mastodon, and Tumblr. Email us at contact [at] lingthusiasm [dot] com
Gretchen is on Bluesky as @GretchenMcC and blogs at All Things Linguistic.
Lauren is on Bluesky as @superlinguo and blogs at Superlinguo.
Lingthusiasm is created by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our senior producer is Claire Gawne, our production editor is Sarah Dopierala, our production assistant is Martha Tsutsui Billins, and our editorial assistant is Jon Kruk. Our music is ‘Ancient City’ by The Triangles.