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| My question: Why not preserve and protect? Why change? |
As technology pushes us towards an increasingly written
culture, and away from our previously oral traditions, the character and power
of particular places begins to weaken. Writing down oral stories, over time,
makes them independent of the environment in which they stemmed, rendering them
separate from the actual places where the events in the stories occurred. The
specific people and places in the stories are no longer needed for
recollection, so what once stood as cultural preservation now becomes a subjective
backdrop. Writing in this sense, has contributed to the loss of differentiated
sense of place, and perhaps muted the sensory experience of storytelling.
Gee’s article explains that “words are connected more to
knowledge and beliefs, encapsulated into the stories or theories that
constitute cultural models, then they are to definitions”. As oral tales become
written stories, modified, edited, and even rewritten, the original meaning
behind the words themselves as they relate to the context in the story begins
to change. The ancestral understandings and viewpoints of a once verbal story,
expressed through culturally specific articulation and vocabulary, can now be
changed to meet the needs of other people with different ideas and a separate
understanding of terminology. Instead of new readers being shaped by the
cultural history of the story, in particular by the language and dialect used,
and feeling an impact as such; the readers can instead project their own ideas
into the story, use their own sense of linguistics, and thus shape the story
closer to their own personal and cultural norms or ideals.
Contrary to Gee’s statement that “languages are always deteriorating
over time because uneducated people and other debilitating social forces change
them”, I would argue that the powerful—those with the ability to read and
write, to have access to technology to create written culture, are those who
are deteriorating language. If those in power cling to “correct/proper English”
when both speaking and writing, in their translation of oral stories to written
stories, culturally significant and locale specific vocabulary will be lost.
This not only frees the story from its origin, it condemns it to monotonous retelling
through the culturally accepted linguistics of the time.
COMING SOON:
‘sausage’ term and how food vocabulary is still an issue
today
“how far can a company stretch the meaning of the word?”
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Cage free
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Low calorie
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Natural flavor
I find it interesting how you found a connection between the "cultural model" idea and the evolution of oral histories. The language of oral histories will surely be interpreted differently over different time periods due to the changing context(backdrop).
ReplyDeleteAlso the nature of verbal/aural vs. written/read storytelling varies greatly. We listen to and understand an oral story differently than we can understand written text. This is an interesting distinction which connects to the idea of multiple learning styles. An oral history may be more accurately absorbed by an aural learner while a visual learner may better absorb written text.
Furthermore this relates to the theme of cultural preservation. It is interesting to try and comprehend a society's values by looking at what cultural products it preserves and leaves to rot.
Beyond oral and written stories, how are folk music and visual arts traditions preserved from diverse cultures? These too are valuable cultural products that outside of their native time and place cannot be fully understood. Looking back, we create a context in which we imagine that they were created. This is how we come to understand them as best as we can.
To wrap up, we should preserve and protect the cultural products that we find valuable. However the nature of the progression of time is that things will change. So that means in our fleeting acts of preservation we should remember to not only protect the cultural product but the story of its context.