Orality and Literacy: Reflections Across Disciplines

Orality and Literacy: Reflections Across Disciplines
ISBN-10
0802098266
ISBN-13
9780802098269
Series
Orality and Literacy
Category
Social Science
Pages
336
Language
English
Published
2011
Publisher
University of Toronto Press
Authors
Natalia Khanenko-Friesen, Kristina Rose Fagan

Description

Orality and Literacy investigates the interactions of the oral and the literate through close studies of particular cultures at specific historical moments. Rejecting the 'great-divide' theory of orality and literacy as separate and opposite to one another, the contributors posit that whatever meanings the two concepts have are products of their ever-changing relationships to one another. Through topics as diverse as Aboriginal Canadian societies, Ukrainian-Canadian narratives, and communities in ancient Greece, Medieval Europe, and twentieth-century Asia, these cross-disciplinary essays reveal the powerful ways in which cultural assumptions, such as those about truth, disclosure, performance, privacy, and ethics, can affect a society's uses of and approaches to both the written and the oral. The fresh perspectives in Orality and Literacy reinvigorate the subject, illuminating complex interrelationships rather than relying on universal generalizations about how literacy and orality function.

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