Orality

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

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.

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

'a thought-provoking view on the centrality of orality from a cross-cultural perspective.' - Luna Beard, Linguist List

• School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, UK

  Graham Furniss

GRAHAM FURNISS is Professor of African Language Literature at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, UK. He is the author of Poetry, Prose and Popular Culture in Hausa and Co-Editor of African Broadcast Cultures; Power, Marginality and African Oral Literature; and African Languages, Development and the State.

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