CLIC Speaker Abstracts

Alessandro Duranti (Anthropology, UCLA): "Orality with Attitude: On the Limits of Writing According to Samoan Speechmakers and American Jazz Musicians," December 3, 2004, 10am.

The paper examines situations in which members of two communities with a long history of commitment to and appreciation of writing display strong negative attitudes toward it in favor of oral (and aural) communication. It is shown that, while expecting younger members of their community to be literate, both Samoan speechmakers and American jazz musicians socialize apprentices to distrust writing as a reliable source of knowledge for achieving a high level of creativity during live performance. It will be argued then that rather than thinking of "orality" as a mode (à la Ong 1982), it is more appropriate to think of it as an attitude, with political, moral, or aesthetic implications.