Orality

The Power of the Spoken Word

  • Graham Furniss
Book

Table of contents

  1. Front Matter
    Pages i-xii
    PDF
  2. Introduction: The Power of the Spoken Word
    Graham Furniss
    Pages 1-11
  3. The Oral Communicative Moment
    Graham Furniss
    Pages 12-42
  4. Cultural Parameters of Speech: Genre, Form, Aesthetics
    Graham Furniss
    Pages 43-71
  5. Insertion into the Social — Constituting Audiences, Audience Cultures and Moving from the Private to the Public
    Graham Furniss
    Pages 72-91
  6. Ideology and Orality
    Graham Furniss
    Pages 92-130
  7. Academic Approaches to Orality
    Graham Furniss
    Pages 131-163
  8. Concluding: On the Centrality of the Evanescent
    Graham Furniss
    Pages 164-170
  9. Back Matter
    Pages 171-188
    PDF

About this book

Introduction

Oral communication is quite different in its spontaneity and communicative power from textual and visual communication. Culturally-bounded expectations of ways of speaking and individual creativity provide the spark that can ignite revolution or calm the soul. This book explores, from a cross-cultural perspective, the centrality of orality in the ideological processes that dominate public discourse, providing a counterbalance to the debates that foreground literacy and the power of written communication.

Keywords

aesthetics communication creativity culture discourse expectation genre ideology individual literacy oral discourse revolution

Authors and affiliations

  • Graham Furniss
    • 1
  1. 1.School of Oriental and African StudiesUniversity of LondonUK

Bibliographic information