Rhetoric in oral cultures tends to be, in Walter Ong’s phrasing, “agonistically toned.” Ong noted that speech in oral societies was more like an event or action than it was a label or sign. Words did things (curses, blessings, incantations, etc.), and irrevocably so. This was so, in part, because speech in oral societies was uttered […]
via Media Ecological Perspective on Free Speech — L.M. Sacasas
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