Orality and Literacy: Re-assessing Congnitionist Criticism of Oral Literature by Kontein Trinya, Ph.D Department of English, Faculty of Humanities, Rivers State University of Education,P.O. Box 10974, Port Harcourt,Nigeria.kontein@hotmail.com +234(0)803 3388 489 and Shirley R. Trinya Department of Humanities Rivers State College of Arts and Science Port Harcourt, Nigeria. +234(0)802-322-9842  ABSTRACT Orality and Literacy: Re-assessing Congnitionist Criticism of Oral Literature It has been argued by cognitionist critics that the context-dependent communicative attributes of oral literature confer on it an inferior status relative to writing in which meaning is made clear independent of the immediate referents; that oral literature and non-literate cultures are incapable of abstract thought, as in the written tradition. It has also been argued, etymologically, that oral literature, not being written, is a preposterous concept. This essay seeks to address those positions by answering the following three questions: Is there an oral literature? What are the peculiarities of oral literature? What is the nature of the difference between orality and literacy?  Orality and Literacy: Re-assessing Congnitionist Criticism of Oral Literature It has often been argued that even though we are able to subject oral literature in many ways to the same literary analysis that is usually applied to written literature, the peculiar qualities of the oral form are realized only as we examine the features of actual performance within the text, in other words, the interactions between the artist and the physical context of his work. It is concluded by some cognitionist scholars therefore, that, relative to literacy, orality is qualitatively inferior. This cognitionist perspective raises three main questions: Is there an oral literature? What are the performance-related peculiarities of oral literature? What is the nature of the difference between orality and literacy? The fact that oral literature is capable of the same literary approach as its written counterpart, the fact that both modes of literary expression are capable of the aesthetic approaches available to the genogroup of “Literature,” implies that they are similar, even though (and here we get to the next issue) unique. The intrinsic qualities of oral literature lie in the dynamic and dialectical relationship (in performance) between text and context, text being “the artifact, or the record of a manifest of folklore […], the manifestation of a folk idea, whether it be a song, a dance, or a cooking pot” (Wilgus, 244), and context referring to the atmosphere for the actualizing of, and of the actualized, text. Wilgus justifies his inclusion of “a cooking pot” in his definition of text because “there is certainly no reason that the making of a pot cannot be considered a ‘performance,’ even a kind of rhetoric in clay” (244). The preliminary point has been made, that even though oral literature is similar, as literature, to written literature (as strengthened by the fact that both forms can be subjected to similar literary approaches), oral literature has a uniqueness inhering in the peculiar mode of its actualization - performance. The further point is that this difference between the forms is not one of degree but of kind. In other words, oral literature, being context-dependent, is not inferior to written communication which, it is claimed, “puts a heavier mental burden on a writer than face-to-face oral communication does on a speaker” (Scribner and Cole, 203). Patricia M. Greenfield similarly argues that “context-dependent forms of speech and thought are more primitive or basic than context-free ones” (176), and that the mere difference in language-use between written language and spoken language, has “implications for cognitive processes” (169). In a way that relates back to our primary point on the ‘literature-ness’ of both, this cognitionist perspective has implications for oral literature both as a concept and as an oral mode of literary expression. Walter J. Ong (11), for example, states that, in print, the marks (printed marks) signal words to decoders, and that written words are a residue, but that this is not the case with orality (essentially “primary orality,” by which he means the orality of a culture unmediated in any way by any knowledge of writing or print). He argues that in the oral culture a tale, for instance, exists, except during performance, only in the minds of those who share a knowledge of it. To him, terms like “oral literature” are therefore “monstrous concepts.” Further insisting that the etymology of the word “literature” relates to the idea of writing, he points out the strangeness in the term “oral literature” because it incongruously implies “oral writing.” Although he recognizes the commendable arguments of Ruth Finnegan against the etymology-based perspective, he insists that “concepts have a way of carrying their etymologies with them forever” (12). Since for prominent cognitionist critics like Ong oral literature does not qualify to the status of literature because its orality inherently contradicts the concept of literature, the preliminary argument about the kinship of the forms based on the fact that they drink from the same critical pool, will be insufficient. The point from which to begin, then, would be to answer the discriminatory definition of concepts. The first question to answer, in that case, would be Is there an Oral Literature? For Walter Ong, it does not exist, or exists, at best, as a preposterous concept. For Chinweizu, Jemie, and Madubuike, even though there are written and oral modes of aesthetic expression, the term literature should refer to the “written forms” and orature to the oral. In essence, therefore, although in the oral mode as in the written, we can find “poems, plays, stories, etc.,” “oral literature” is not an appropriate term (2). Fundamentally, the position of this troika rests on the same etymological consideration. In her “Extending Generic Boundaries…,” Katheryn Wright also prefers “orature” to “oral literature.” In further extension of the conceptual controversy, Aaron Mushengyezi even describes the context of that literature as “oralate societies” (108). One of the opening concerns in Ruth Finnegan’s literary classic, Oral Literature in Africa, is that people whose orientations incline them to associate literature with print and writing often denigrate the oral mode because they are unaware of the peculiar qualities of oral literature, a position which Nkem Ohoh in Preface to Oral Literature shares (41-9). Citing R. Wellek and A. Warren (Theory of Literature), she states that the non-validity for limiting literature to writing is demonstrated by the absence, in other languages, of the etymological connections that are drawn, by speakers of English, between literature and writing/reading. For example, Finnegan points out, the term for literature in German is Wortkunst, and in Russian, Slovesnost, both of which have nothing to do with reading or writing (17). The etymology-based cognitionist argument can therefore not be universal, as literature is. Ruth Finnegan points our furthermore, that the tenacious adherence to the separatist position against oral literature even reveals a prejudice which smacks of the “ethnocentric preconception” that “the familiar and traditional forms of a given culture” are supposed to be applicable to all times and places (17, 18). One dares to ask, Do the literary models existing in any one culture exhaust all the possibilities of literature? Does Europe or the English tradition possess a monopoly of literature? Does it have the only ruler my which literatures worldwide may be measured? Did the Homeric poems, generally believed to have been originally oral, become literature only after they were written down? Are the literary stylistic elements in transcribed forms a product of the transcription, or did they originate from their oral sources, transcending the means by which they have been recorded, in spite of the peculiarities of that process? The fact is that whether a culture is literate or not, it manifests modes of expression that we recognize as ‘literary’ because they contain evidence of the imaginative use of language in a creative perspective to comment on the human condition, help man to cope with his environment and heighten man’s awareness of the beautiful and the sublime (Apronti 126). And “wherever a linguistic culture exists... the spirit of literature will indubitably dwell.... Its composition, consumption, appreciation or criticism, therefore, cannot be considered the prerogative of any one people...” (Okoh 21, emphasis in the original). We speak of the devices of aesthetic language-use in written literature, so do we in oral literature. We speak of social functions in written literature, so do we in oral literature. For example, besides the songs and dramatic sketches whose social functions might be defined by their satiric or instructional nature, the moral themes that also underlie oral narratives (especially etiological tales) well amplify that function. When Aderemi Bamikunle (44) says that Wande Abimbola' s approach in Ifa, An Exposition of Ifa Literary Corpus is mainly “structuralist,” and that Adeboye Babalola's Content and Form of the Yoruba Ijala is “a mixture of formalist and sociological approach,” or that G. G. Darah’s conference paper, “The Oral Poet and Public Morality in the Era of Primitive Accumulation,” had a “Marxist critical approach,” the point, again, is that both linguistic forms, in spite of their differing mediums of expression, are literature, approachable with the same common critical tools. Does this mean that both forms are the same, and that we could speak, for instance, of metre and rhyme and rhythm in oral poetry the same way as we would do, for example, with Metaphysical or Romantic poetry? No. In oral poetry, (especially poetry in the indigenous African languages, which are generally tonal), rhythm is not a function of metric regularity in terms of the combinations of stressed and unstressed syllables; it inheres in the patterned successions of different tones in predictable or regulated beats. In most children play-rhymes in Nigeria, for example, rhythm is often regulated by the hand-clapping that is part of the accompaniment to the performances. Unfortunately, that activity of rhythmic feet-stomping and synchronized hand-clapping that is a vital part of the total performance is lost when the verbal text is abstracted from its vibrant context for written literary analysis. It is the observation of O.R. Dathorne that, although oral literature has to be collected and written down so as to be preserved, the spontaneity of the oral flavour is “once and forever lost” through the process, and that “no longer will one be able to claim that each oral performance is unique” (15). Dan Ben-Amos and Kenneth S. Goldstein have also suggested that the emphasis in folklore study (oral literature) on text rather than context, imposes literary bonds on this study (3), and that “a text is a necessary but not sufficient documentation” (5), which takes us to the second issue: Performance and the Peculiarities of Oral Literature The uniqueness of oral literature (in spite of its similarities to the written form) derives from the fact that texts, in the sense of the verbal props of the oral performance, “acquire significances beyond the literal meaning of their constituent words” in the context of their performance (Ben-Amos 16). This is because the text is actually constituted not only of words and sounds and/or actions, but also of the way these relate to such elements of the context (of the performance) as setting, costumes, time, place, audience, etc., all of which are coded into the performance. James Brink (385) has observed, for example, that the nocturnal theatrical performances of the sedentary Bamana (Bambara) of the Buludugu region of Mali, take on different meanings from the daylight performances because, with the arrival of darkness, it is believed that spirits appear to wrestle, kill and seduce people (and the spirits are also considered as part of the audience), that witches who had been part of the day-time performances change into prowling animals which, singly or in packs, go about to look for people to “eat.” The behaviour of the audience, the nature of their response to the performance at dark, is thus affected by the temporal setting. This relationship between text and context is both dialectical and dynamic; dialectical because the performance is both influenced by the modes of its relationship with the context of its actualization, and influences that context itself. For example, the different types of audience responses can either slow down a performance or urge it on, and modify it in other respects. The performance itself, or more accurately, the performer, may also influence those response (especially the critical responses) that occasion his more self-conscious steering of the performance (Ikiddeh, “Historic…” 106). The relationship between text and context is also dynamic because the performance itself progresses in time with the inter-influencing exchanges between performer and audience. Unless one takes into account the way it relates actively with its context, the text of the bare words of oral literature, no matter how faithfully transcribed, would not be found essentially different from the written poem or narrative. In performance, oral literature moves from the relative stasis of the printed copy to the dynamic immediacy, present-ness, or now-ness of the oral art; and since no two performances (even if successive, and by the same performer), can be exactly the same, there is newness (better or worse) of every fresh performance. Also, in performance, nuances of tone, vocal inflections, voice-imitations of characters (animals or persons), and gestures, all are vital tools to interpreting the performance. In print, or writing, however, these unique features of oral literature, peculiar to, and realizable only in actual performance, are lost. The dependence of performance on those context-bound non-verbal communicative devices is based on the fact that both audience and performer(s) share the same social and physical context in oral literature. A story-teller can say, for instance, “and the lion did like this,” accompanying the speech with a gesture to complement the communication. Or a speaker might say, “Put it there,” at the same time pointing a finger to indicate “there.” Here, because of a shared context, and because of a visual and an auditory participation, there would be a mutual understanding of what is referred to by “it” and “there.” However this text alone (“text” now as the verbal utterance, the speech event) in print, would not make much sense to a reader who does not share in the advantage of the context on which the speaker’s ellipses are based. It is this reliance on context, which is essentially a characteristic of oral speech, that some cognitionists pick on and interpret as a mark of cognitive inferiority to writing. In investigating The Nature of the Difference between orality and literacy, congitionist scholars assert that in an oral culture communication is face to face, and that speakers therefore rely on or exploit the context; that oral languages (by which is meant languages that do not appear in writing), being limited to and defined by particular linguistic groups, impart a common psychological point of view on the members of those restricted linguistic communities; that in writing, however, meaning depends entirely on the text; that writing uses a linguistic context that does not depend on the presence of their referents; that written communication tends, as a result, to be more abstract because it relies solely on words to convey what, in an oral situation, would have been conveyed with a combination of context-dependent devices; and that "Because oral language is concrete and imagistic, it is unsuitable to the expression of abstract concepts or logical propositions" (Scribner and Cole 6). They add that “in contrast, written language requires that meaning be made clear, independent of the immediate reference.” This is their conclusion: “it follows that abstract thought fails to develop in a non-literate culture” (Scribner and Cole, 11). Scribner and Cole, with the school they represent, have failed to acknowledge that in orality also, there is obligation on the part of the speaker to visualize aspects of his speech which cannot be cart-driven on any available element in the context at any point in time. Does not orality, like writing, therefore also resort to ‘abstract’ thought and speech? Even though the context-dependent communicative attributes of oral literature in performance are important, and even though they display some of the essential peculiarities of that art form in contradistinction to writing, the dissimilarity between orality and literature is not one of degree but of kind. The difference is not essentially in their language-use as it is in the mediums of their communication. One is in agreement with Albert Lord’s position in The Singer of Tales, as Ime Ikiddeh points out, that the written tradition is not an improvement on the oral tradition, and that writing “is not in its style essentially superior to oral compositions. The position is that the two traditions are simply different” (“Positioning…” 4). WORKS CITED Apronti, E. O. "On Naming 'Traditional Oral Literature." In Institute of African Studies Research Review 9, No. 3 (1973): 126-36. Bamikunle, Aderomi, "The Criticism of Oral Literature in Nigeria An Assessment of Some Critical Views." In Nigeria Magazine 53, No.3 (July-Sept. 1985). 44-9. Ben-Amos, Dan. "Folklore in African Society." In Research in African Literatures 6, No.2 (Fall 1975): 165-98. Ben-Amos, Dan and Kenneth S. Goldstein. Introduction to Folklores: Performance and Communication. Ed. Dan Ben-Amos and Kenneth S. Goldstein. 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