Fee-Alexandra Haase Language cultures. Cultures of orality, literacy and media communication. A ...

217 Pages·2003·2.14 MB·English

Fee-Alexandra Haase

Language cultures.

Cultures of orality, literacy and media communication.
A historical approach to global communication structures.
0. Introduction (cid:150) Rhetorical communication and cultural heritage(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)...3
I History of communication...............................................................................................................9
1. Ancient times...............................................................................................................................9
1.1. European Literature......................................................................................................................9
1.2. Ancient Greek communication....................................................................................................10
1.3. Roman communication (cid:150) Classic rhetoric, asianism and atticism........................................................25
1.4. Middle Ages and Early New Time..................................................................................................34
1.5. Communication during Renaissance (1350-1600).............................................................................47
1.6. Baroque literature on communication(cid:133)(cid:133).(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133).(cid:133)...63
1.7. European 17th and 18th century communication(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)....(cid:133)70
1.8. European 19th century communication(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133)(cid:133).78
1.9. Communication from 20th century till present time................................................................................84
1.10. European contempory communication..........................................................................................95
2. Southern and Eastern communication.........................................................................................105
2.1. Oriental communication...........................................................................................................105
2.2. Asian communication...............................................................................................................122
2.3. Africa....................................................................................................................................149
3. Western communication............................................................................................................168
3.1. North America.........................................................................................................................168
3.2. South America........................................................................................................................189
3.3. Australia and Pacific zone.........................................................................................................200
4. Global rhetoric and communication: A review from future to presence back to history...........................209
0. Introduction (cid:150) Rhetorical communication and cultural heritage

Traditionally communication is supposed to run in certain systems having their equivalent or background in theories. We
will take a look at human communication as the way to deliver information on the one hand in a historical review starting
from early time of humanity going to epoches until present time of 21 century. This book focusses on the thesis that there
in different cultures not only e.g. a typical oral tradition exists. Definitly the author will demonstrate that in every culture
more or less the same basic communication developments do exist. Well, of course one can say: But the Greeks invented
rhetoric. That·s true! But if we look behind the things we can find the same or similar structures in different cultural systems.
This introduction is about the basic ways of communication. The aim is to demonstrate in a few sentences the main ways
of communication. We can devide and classify any communication this way:

Oral communication; any message delivered mouth to mouth
Literary communication; any message delivered in a literary way
Media communication; any message delivered by a medium

In all continents we find more or less these three main ways of communication. In the main part of this book you will read
about the applications of these ways of communication. This book·s aim is to be an introduction into the different existing
communication systems both in theory and in applications. Like mentioned above the complexity of communication
systems exists both in the different applications of communication and of course in the scientific reception of
communication. We also have chosen the view though different parts of communication to make sure that we figure out
the connections between different communication systems and models in an area. The basic definition of
communication in this study is that communication is the transfer process of any data from one entity to another. In this
study we will look at the exchange between the entities in a local area and inbetween different areas of global
communication. The different communication areas in the world are changes of communication historically a part of the
cultural development. So a certain local area can have a development from an oral tradition documentating the
archaic cultural steps. Later communication areas can be e.g. the literacy and technical media development of this
area. The steps of communication culture in this study we will have to consider are the following:
Archaic communication: Oral tradition
Literal communication : Literal tradition
Media communication: Media supported tradition

The contempory existing fields of communication theory try to cover the needs of communication. Although
communication processes cover the most of life, we find some special areas that are necessary fields for communication.
Business
Science
Politics
Entertaining

In opposition to most of the concepts of science this book doesn·t separate the basic fields of communication. That·s
because of a special view on the topic communication in this book. While there is a long tradition of western separation
of communication issues (that (cid:150)by the way- will also be a part of this review) we will figure out the steps of
communication development in local areas of Europe, America, Africa, Asia and Australia. In other words: We must
consider that the communication culture (that is: all the communication afforts existing in an area) does consist of
different communication areas depending on the different social, cultural, political, technical and economic situations
that changed in history.

A communication situation is given all times and everywhere people have to communicate. It(cid:146)s a situation for which we
will have a look at comparing different cultures. Actions of communication always involves the relationship between a
communicating entity, the ones being the reciever of the information and the data for the communication exchanged
between two entities. Cultures and their communication are changing and within that exchange the way of speeches
and other ways of communication changed. For the global processes in communication we have to consider also
contradictory or parallel processes. Meanings and forms of communication do change depending on the conditions of
an area.
The notion of cultural approaches in communication like speeches, documents and technical media was and is not
related to just one scientific area. E.g. these kinds of research are used in anthropology and ethnology for studies in
communication, narrative elements, language and rituals. Connected with this question of ethnical groups is also
connected with the question of the ethic conditions the communication process is involvede in. Different cultures have
different communication conditions, methods and aims. The term globalisation represents the idea of a process involving
economic, political, cultural, and technological aspects of worldwide developments and means the exchange of
communication methods. It is possible because of media communication driven by technical advances especially in
information technology. At the same time of course traditional ·oral· communication is available as an opposite
development of local areas with one and the same cultural background. Globalisation is a process of the 20th century
that is a part of the idea of worldwide economic business. There is a wide range of information on the cultural influences
in communication. These differences include differences in linguistics, attitudes towards authority, and social structures for
issues like respect and culture specific rules of interpersonal relations.

George A. Kennedy·s Comparative Rhetoric was the first study about a cross-cultural overview of rhetoric as a universal
feature of communication. Kennedy(cid:146)s work begins with a theory of rhetoric as a form of mental and emotional energy
that is transmitted from a speaker or writer to an audience or reader through a speech or text. Kennedy demonstrates
human rhetoric, animal communication and culturally developed local rhetorical conditions in traditionally oral societies
in Australia, the South Pacific, Africa, and America and early literate societies in the Near East, China, India, Greece and
Rome. In the tradition of Kennedy·s work this study makes differences between the oral and literary steps of
communication. In opposition to Kennedy·s studies we will demonstrate that in one and the same local area a
development of different communication steps is given. This book begins with a historical investigation into the origins of
Western rhetoric, looking at how European history represents until present time. This historical review will lead to
theoretical questions about how communication systems can be definied and compared.

The three concepts orality, literary media and technical communication can be considered as parts of any culture.
Orality is a paradigm for the spoken word transmitted by anonymous aboriginal figures. As a subject of study orality is a
main key to the communication concept of ethnic people in cultures with no connection to literacy. Literacy as a later
step in communication development is based on text documents. With the inventon of print in Renaissance the literacy
became a new technical quality. The simple oral paradigm has characteristics that show the difference between orality
and literacy. The concept of the transmission of a word as action with a anonymously transferred memory of persons or
artifical formulas that keep the information in a form.

Communication was first limited to sound. For human thought structures are tied in with verbalization and must fit
available media of communication. Verbal performances in oral cultures are formulaic. Until writing, most of the kinds of
thoughts we are used to thinking today simply could not be thought. Traditionally communication is considered as a
process for connecting different groups by informations. The basic data are therefore handed out e.g. in a medium from
one to the other group. Most of the communication is delivered by media containing data. The part of pure human
communication is very low compared to the technically realized communication run by media. Media supported
communication has the advantages that it is faster, can contain more informations, can reach more recievers, can
reach recievers in fare distances and is save. When we look at the possibilities of media supported communication we
find also the combination of different typs of media. E.g. the combinations of media in the internet present a large variety
of informationas in textual, visual and acustic ways.

Oral history research seeks to preserve historical data that usually cannot be found in any written form and exists mainly in
the memories of historical participants themselves. Communication has its background both in the theological idea of
the connection to gods and the human and latest media communication. Although its origins lead back to the ancient
Latin word ‘communicatio· there is a bride variety of communication areas and their applications. Communication does
include other sciences and their applications. Oral tradition is an expression that characterisizes the simple mouht to
mouth communication with its literary outcome such as legends, tales, stories and other narratives such as romours,
news and other short informations.

To make this introduction short (cid:150) let·s have a look at the different conditions of the delivery of rhetoric, communication
and oral traditions: In a common definition rhetoric is the art or study of using language effectively and persuasively. Also
a treatise or book discussing this art is called rhetoric. For the practical skill in using language effectively and persuasively
is also this expresion used. A style of speaking or writing, especially the language of a particular subject and a language
that is elaborate, pretentious, insincere, or intellectually vacuous are described by this expression.1 Rhetoric is the theory
and praxis of Greek oral and literary tradition later developed in Europe and in Near Eastern and Western regions. The
sender/ producing entity is known. The reciever is also known at least as a specific audience for which the speech is
composed. In other words: Both the source of the speech and the audience are known. The authority is the main
principle in rhetoric.

Communication is a wide field of the transfer of informations. In communications the relations between the sender /
producing entity and the receiving entity depends on the specific aim of a communication process. The procucing
entitiy of informations in a communication process can be known or nor. In most cases the source is unknown or
anonymously instead of a person there is an institution·s name as the source given. The information itself which is
reflecting the source it comes from and the medium is the main principle. Oral tradition is an ethnic good that is limited to
the moth to mouth delivery of informations. Oral tradition is characterisized by the fact that the source / the producimg
entity is unknown in the later process of the delivery of the oral information. Both the pure orally transmitted information
and the literary document of a former orally transmitted information have no known source. The information is the main
principle. Influences on communication processes in a globally communication contempory world base on the media
that make exchange of informations possible. These media are nearly all over the world available both for institutions and
private persons. We will look at the different local cultural as well at the global influences to see the historical
development of communication.

We will look at the world regions Europe, Asia, North America, Central America, The Caribbean, South America, Oceania,
Africa, Middle East, Pacific and Australia to see where the rhetorical system of Greece has gone and to see the
traditional systems of communication in these areas and the influences on each other. On the other hand we will look at
the media of global communication and their possibilities. One factor for the use of communication is the language.
Since there are several groups of languages existing, communication depends on the local language and its
transformation into other languages. The main world languages except Chinese come from Europe.

Europe
Indo-European languages
Caucasian languages
Ural-Altaic languages
Altaic languages
Uralic languages
Asia
Sino-Tibetan languages
Africa
Afro-Asiatic (Hamito-Semitic) languages
Niger-Congo languages
Nilo-Saharan languages
Khoisan languages
Austroasiatic languages
Austronesian (Malayo-Polynesian) languages
Elamo-Dravidian languages
Tai languages
America
Native American languages

Australia/Pacific
Australian Aboriginal languages
Pama-Nyungan languages
Creole languages, Pidgins, and Trade languages
Chinook Jargon
Hawai’ian Creole
Haitian creole

1 Http://www.bartleby.com/61/80/R0218000.html. [1.9.2002]
Tok Pisin

Isolate languages

These languages are basic material for literate communication (cid:150) the most applied communication media next to
pictures. The history of writing as alternative to written language used by which humans have recorded and conveyed
thoughts, feelings and grocery lists, is the history of civilization itself. This is how we know the story of us, by the drawings,
signs and words we have recorded. The written language itself has diffent forms in different cultures. A character of a
language is not related any longer to the form he may represent. Instead of a original meaning it is an element of
language having a phonologic, morphologic, syntactic, semantic and pragmatic grammatical dimension. The quality of
communication is a quality focussing on the application of spoken language. In its original sense rhetoric is application
focussing on a theoretical basic knowledge of this art.

Communication Rhetoric
Application Theory and application

We see that in large parts of the world both, communication and rhetoric, exist next to each other, e.g. modern North
America. On the other hand in other parts no rhetoric ever existed; e.g. Africa. In other places rhetoric existed, but never
was an art or seperated cultural element; e.g. in Asia. Most cultures today we can consider as hybride cultures that have
different elements from communication and rhetoric. This is a sign of cultural exchange. Classical languages are
languages of ancient epoches that are no longer in use. They preserve highly developed cultures that became
important for later cultures. Latin and Greek are classical language. On the other site old languages developed and had
a ·classical stadium·, e.g. the classical Arabic language in opposition to the colloquial spoken language. A natural
language is an ordinary hereditary language, spoken by a group of individuals as their native tongue. Artifical languagea
are Esperanto and computer programming languages or machine languages. Computer languages are a group of
orders to change the appearance of natural language writing. Their aim is not to communicate, but to arrange natural
language texts according to the efforts of computer communication. Html, Pascal, C++, and Prolog are examples of
machine languages. Types of languages that apply for communication and rhetoric:

Spoken native languages
Artifical languages
Historical extinct languages
Classical languages

Information systems of the word are used for storage, processing and transmission of messages. Communication systems
on the other hand because in addition to messages they also control the traffic of persons and goods in all kinds of
media.
Cinematography
WRITING Digital Camera
Writing Systems
Ancient
Modern
Undeciphered Writing Systems

PRINTING
Printing
Typography
Copying FILM
Typewriter Early Inventions
Printmaking in Cinematography
Video
PHOTOGRAPHY DVD
Classic Photography
Camera Obscura TELEGRAPHY
Daguerreotype Samuel Morse and the Telegraph
Telegraph TELEVISION

TELEPHONY COMPUTER
General
Bell, Alexander Graham INTERNET
Web Programming
RADIO Web Browsers
Radio Web Site Creation

We can make a difference between types of communication. Books provide today in all global societies informations.
Other media allow a more complexe communication method.

One way communication Two way communication Multi way communication

Book Telephone New Media
Letter
Radio
Television

More fundamental than the difference between print and other modes of writing is the difference between writing and
orality. In the age of multi-media, the model of language is neither oratory nor orality, but speech. Speech here bears
characteristics of orality and oratory, but it is neither orality nor oratory.

Speech orality oratory

Multi-media direct communication rhetorical communication

Literacy

We can make a difference between types of communication. Books provide today in all global societies informations.
Other media allow a more complexe communication method.

One way communication Two way communication Multi way communication

Book Telephone New Media
Letter
Radio
Television

Since the beginning of time, people have had the need to communicate with one and other. Early communication is in
prehistoric times not written. Since prehistoric times, people have given visual form to ideas and concepts, in order to
store knowledge in graphic form, and bring order and clarity to information. The most common type of communication is
speech. When a society losses orality and developes to a literate and visually communicating society, oral features like
the art of storytelling get lost. Then written language was developed, people marked symbols on paper, stone, or
whatever was available. In the past it was hard to communicate with many people and over long diastances or at one
time. Written documents had to be copied over and over by hand in order to make it available to a large amount of
people. In ancient times typewriters were invented allowing people to write their own papers and distribute them.
Typewriters made communication much easier. Documents still had to typed up one at a time. In modern
communication circles information can be distributed in that wy that it is turned into different media formats. In a media
transformation process information can be transformed from one media into another. An example of such a process
would be radio (cid:150) hand written text (cid:150) computer written text (cid:150) email (cid:150) Html web page (cid:150) printed document.

The word ’communication· is a derivarate from the Latin verb communicare, ·to talk together, confer, discourse, and
cunsult, one with another·. It is also initimately related to the Latin communitas, meaning not only community but also
fellowship and justice in human dealings. A signal may be considered as an interruption in a field of constant energy
transfer. Signs contain greater amounts of meaning of and by themselves than signals. Symbols are more difficult than
signs to understand and to define because, unlike signs and signals, they are intricately woven into an individual’s
ongoing perceptions of the world.

The different styles of writing of people in individual and collective cultures can be reduced to the common cultural
heritage in a culture. The exchange of cultures leads to new aplications of the heritage. The first manifestations of script
are of course inscriptions without a writing surface in the accepted sense. Two-dimensional rolls of seals or stamps in the
medium of clay enabled goods to be given addresses indicating their owner or their contents. Stone inscriptions named
the deceased occupants of tombs. As signals in the absence of the source of information. The addressing using page
numbers, titles and, since Leibniz, alphabetical library catalogues, put the communication system which is science on its
reference basis, while book illustrations free of copying errors formed the basis of engineering. New media exis next to old
media. Also global communication systems exist next to local ones.2

Types of communication systems

Oral communication systems
Written communication systems
Sensual communication systems
Media communication systems

In this book we will focuss on communication systems in historical and cultural dimension. A communication system is here
a shared model of information exchange used and applied by a group of persons in a historical time and local area with
certain methods. People in all cultures seek to persuade in one way or another. Our terminology about persuasion is
based on the ancient Greek model. Greeks were the ones who first analyzed persuasion systematically. On the other
hand terms of rhetoric also exist in other cultures independently from the Greek influence but not in the systematic
tradition. Communication systems like the ancient rhetoric system also exist in other cultures.

2 Contempory data of counties follow the 2003 release of survey at:
Http://www.glreach.com/globstats/. [7.8.2002]
I History of communication
1. Ancient times.
1.1. European Literature

Europe

Albania Greece Poland
Austria Greenland Portugal
Belgium Hungary Romania
Bosnia and Iceland Russia
Herzegovina Ireland Serbia and Montenegro
Croatia Italy Slovakia
Cyprus Liechtenstein Slovenia
Czech Republic Lithuania Spain
Denmark Luxembourg Sweden
Estonia Macedonia, Former Switzerland
Finland Yugoslav Rep. Ukraine
France Moldova United Kingdom
Germany Monaco Vatican
Georgia Netherlands Yugoslavia
Gibraltar Norway

Indo-European is the language family which includes most European languages, as well as some Asian languages. In
Europe, the Indo-Europeans overwhelmed the Neolithic Europeans.These Neolithic Europeans of the 5th to 2nd millenium
B.C. had learned to farm and make metal weapons. The Indo-European language family has 443 languages. Theses
languages include the mostly spoken ones like English. In different parts of the world there are 1.400.000.000 mother-
tongue speakers of English. Exspecially in Europe and America there are 250.000.000 mother-tongue speakers of Spanish.
In Europe and Asia are 270.000.000 mother-tongue speakers of Russian. In Europe and America are 135.000.000 mother-
tongue speakers of Portuguese. In Europe 1.00.000.000 mother-tongue speakers use German. In Europe and America
70.000.000 mother-tongue speakers use French. The record-keepers developed systematized symbols from their drawings.
These symbols represented words and sentences, but were easier and faster to draw and universally recognized for
meaning. The discovery of clay made portable records possible. Early merchants used clay tokens with pictographs to
record the quantities of materials traded or shipped. These tokens date back to about 8.500 B.C.

It appears that the use of language came about independently in a number of places. All languages change with time.
If two groups of people speaking the same language are separated, in time their languages will change along different
paths. First they develop different accents; next some of the vocabulary will change. All the Latin speakers in different
parts of Europe became isolated from each other. Their languages evolved along independent paths to give us the
modern languages of Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Romanian. Each language family described below is a
group of related languages with a common ancestor. Languages in the same branch are sister languages that diverged
within the last 1000 to 2000 years. Language families make it possible that a communication system has a basic language.

The Indo-European family is the most used family of languages and the family with the largest number of speakers.
Languages include English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, Russian, Greek, Hindi, Bengali and the classical
languages of Latin, Sanskrit, and Persian. The Indo-European languages are the world languages. The Uralic family is
found in Europe (Hungarian, Finnish) and Siberia (Mordvin) with complex noun structures. The Caucasian family based
around the Caucas Mountains between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. Georgian and Chechen are the main
languages. They are known for their large number of consonants. There are about 60 langauges in the Altaic family, with
about 250 million speakers. Included are Turkish and Mongolian.
1.2. Ancient Greek communication

In Greece communication developed in separates social areas and went through different political systemes such as
monachy, tyranny, oligarchy and democracy. About 2000 B.C. the first Indo-European Greek tribes, collectively called
Achaeans, entered Greece, where they absorbed the earlier settlers and ruled from strongly fortified citadels at
Mycenae, Pylos, Athens, and other sites. Greek contact with the Caucasus region dates from the colonizing period
between the 8th and the 6th centuries B.C., when many settlements, such as the Milesian outpost of Dioscurias, were
established on the Caucasian coasts of the Black Sea. The polis, or city-state, the famed Greek political unit, did not exist
in the Greek early times. When commerce revived in the eighth and seventh centuries B.C., a trading center developed
below the acropolis. The two areas and the surrounding territory, usually smaller than a modern county, formed the polis.
Famous poleis were Athens and Sparta. Plutarch wrote about the Spartanian way of talking that ·they are taught never
to talk at random, nor to utter a syllable that does not contain some thought.

Early ancient Greeks had a long-distance communication system. Greeks used fire signals during the night and smoke or
audio signals during the day to send messages from city to city or from remote places back to their homeland, much
earlier than 1200 B.C. In 775 Greeks develop a phonetic alphabet, written from left to right. About 400 B.C. the Greek
alphabet was developed. Greek was the first script written from left to right. From Greek followed the Byzantine and the
Roman writings. In the beginning, all writing systems had only uppercase letters, when the writing instruments were refined
enough for detailed faces, lowercase was used as well (around 600 A.D.). The earliest means of writing that approached
pen and paper as we know them today was developed by the Greeks. They employed a writing stylus, made of metal,
bone or ivory, to place marks upon wax-coated tablets. The tablets made in hinged pairs, closed to protect the scribe’s
notes. The first examples of handwriting originated in Greece. The Grecian scholar, Cadmus invented the written letter in
form of text messages on paper sent from one individual to another.

The Greek polis had but one script to set against a communications empire such as the Persian, but in contrast to oriental
bureaucracies it was entirely susceptible of orality. Firstly the Greek alphabet turned redundant consonants into vowels,
performing the first total analysis of a spoken language. In the Assembly, the lawcourts, the Agora and the theater public
speech was used. Communication as the exchange of meanings between individuals through a common system of
symbols has concerned scholars since the time of ancient Greece.

The Greeks considered language to be a very inportant social skill. So the communication between the Greeks and other
contries of barbarians had to follow their language. In ancient Greece literacy became common and accessible to the
whole of the society. In Greece writing was used for communication, education, and recording information. Writing was
used extensively to record scientific discoveries, philosophical thinking, government edicts and laws, literary works, and
historical facts in Greece. Writing became a key part of Greek education, especially in city-states such as Athens.
Learning the works of famous orators was essential in the teaching of rhetoric for the Greeks. These skills would be put to
use primarily in the law courts, in Greek, Hellenistic and Roman times. Greek education consisted of learning reading and
writing by the use of the classical authors and orators.

Early Greeks soon depended on the sea trade for communication and survival. Angareion, the Persian name of this
military mail, is the root of the Greek word for messenger. The Greek polis had but one script to set against a
communications empire such as the Persian, but in contrast to oriental bureaucracies it was entirely susceptible of orality.
The Greek polis had but one script to set against a communications empire such as the Persian, but in contrast to oriental
bureaucracies it was entirely susceptible of orality. The Greek alphabet from Indo-European developed in the course of
commercial and translation intercourse with semitic consonant scripts turned redundant consonants into vowels,
performing the first total analysis of a spoken language - and in principle of all such.

The formal study of rhetoric in the West began in Greece in the 5th century B.C. with the Sophists. Classical rhetoric,
although concerned with oratory, still influences writing instruction. Socrates was considered by contemporary persons as
an opponent to sophists. Cultural communication is the opposite to intercultural communication.3 Ancient Greek rhetoric

3 Casmir, F. L.: Introduction: Culture, communication, and education. In: Communication Education, 40(3), 1991. Pp. 229-
234.