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On Orality (why oral-literate isn't the only spectrum to think about)

Since Walter Ong's book back in the 80s many have written on the oral-literate spectrum. Maxey, amongst others, correctly criticises the polarising of oral and literate cultures, and points out that it's easy to read 'primitive' for 'oral' and 'developed' for 'literate' - not a divide we want to promote in these post-colonial (or global) days.

I want to bring up another issue. It seems to me that oral-literate is not the only relevant spectrum. We also need to consider mono-cultural to multi-cultural, and monolingual to multilingual spectra. If the people we are working with are fairly mono-cultural this will also affect the way people think. (I was going to say that people are less likely to be able to think the way others think, but in light of recent events such as Brexit, the election of right-wing leaders, and so on, it seems we're pretty poor at that in Western countries too.)

Another important factor is that Western cultures tend to be individualistic and therefore low-context, whereas many other cultures are collectivistic and therefore high-context. High-context cultures are much more likely to take into account the views of their extended family when making decisions. In fact many decisions are made by the community, not the individual. If Westerners ask questions in a high-context culture they will get the 'what we think' answer, not the 'what I think' answer. The response may come from an elder but he or she will have listened to the rest of the community before speaking.

So we need to learn to listen before we speak, as those in high-context cultures do. In fact they have much to teach us, rather than vice versa. Let's not encourage simplistic views of other cultures!

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