ORALITY
Heart and mind communicated with all senses.
It simply is the ways and means of communicating orally with either a preference over textuality (print) or to the exclusion of it. For purposes of mission, orality can be defined as “a complex of how oral cultures best receive, understand, remember, and pass on news, important information, and truths.”1
Oral people are not to be equated with illiterate. Instead of using a dichotomy of orality and textuality, we see it as a continuum between two poles. People who mostly rely on written text are LOR, and people who prefer to communicate with oral methods are HOR. Most people will not be on one extreme but rather somewhere in between.
This survey was developed to quantify people’s orality preferences. We described 15 traits of orality in 5 clusters. From there, a series of questions help to access people groups, resulting in an overall Orality Quotient (OQ) and an OQ for each of the 5 clusters.
Based on the OQ, recommendations are given for instructional design, discipleship, or evangelism based on the 7 disciplines of orality used by Jesus in his ministry.
Historical development of textuality
When the Bible came off Gutenberg’s printing press about 500 years ago, he didn’t know that his invention would forever change the world. For the first time in history, the written page was within reach of the illiterate masses and even fueled the Protestant Reformation. Truth and information that previously came from the mouths of sages and songs were now stored and studied in books and libraries. Before, everyone was highly reliant on oral communication. Now, the West took a new path. The path of reading, writing, and reasoning. Western colonial powers capitalized on this new path and rapidly advanced it through education, industry, and scientific discoveries.
As Colonial powers gobbled up the planet’s resources, the Good News also reached every part of the world where Christ was unknown. Western missionaries built hospitals, churches, and schools as they passed on the Good News using the same methods they used to learn it – reading & writing. After Euro-Christians developed 2-300 years of, they expected those whom they called “savages” in the tribes of Africa, Asia, and South America to convert to the church through Western thinking and Western forms of Christianity. Converts were pressured to dress like the West, talk, learn, sing, and lead with Western innovations. They were “converts to Christianity” but never fully understood the Kingdom of God and His church.
The oral majority today
80% of the world is highly reliant on oral communication.2 That is 8 out of every 10 people! It’s not that they can’t read or write. It simply means they prefer to communicate and learn through things like music, arts, and drama from people they trust in they understand and with terms they use. It’s how they best receive, understand, remember, and pass on news, important information, and truths. The COVID-19 pandemic significantly lessened the children’s reading comprehension even further.3
Today the dominant Western thinking – with its high reliance on text – is setting the standards in education worldwide. By doing so, oral cultures are “forced” to discard their own way of thinking and expressing themselves. The divide between higher orality and lower orality-reliant people is not clear-cut, but rather a preference spectrum that ranges from very high to very.
The 15 Traits of Orality
Andy: Do you like chicken?
Susan: Sure, I love to eat chicken!
Andy now knows that Susan loves chicken. Still, there are hundreds of chicken recipes out there, and Andy could still get it wrong if he had to cook for Susan.
Then we talk about a people group’s orality; we only have a general idea about how they are. Orality comes in different flavors, and we must look deeper than just thinking that storytelling will be a good method to reach them. The traits of orality help us understand a people’s orality reliance in more detail.
The word “traits” is typically used to refer to distinguishing qualities, characteristics, or features that define or describe someone or something. It is often used to describe individual attributes, behaviors, or patterns of thought that are considered typical or distinctive of a person, animal, or object. In this sense, we ask: What traits are common for oral-preference learners or oral cultures?
During our study of oral cultures, we identified 15 traits of orality. To make these easier to understand, we’ve grouped them into 5 clusters. While these categories are based on Walter Ong’s psychodynamics of orality,4 we’ve also included additional research from scholars like Geert Hofstede5 to create a more comprehensive picture.
We recognize that there is some overlap between these traits and that they could fit into multiple clusters. Our goal in categorizing them is to provide a valuable framework for our survey, but we acknowledge that there are other ways of understanding orality. Ultimately, we hope this framework will help us better understand the unique qualities of oral cultures and how they shape communication and interaction.
Take the survey and learn more about the traits of orality of your people group.
The 5 Clusters
- Ways of Articulating
The orality traits linked to language, narrative, and words that help people articulate the things around us so that we gain a shared understanding. People tend to think more generally/descriptively on one side of the lingual spectrum. On the other side of the spectrum, people… - Ways of Expressing
How we display our inner speech through arts, rituals, and symbols. They generate the power to penetrate the heart and transform the mind by engaging all senses. On one end of the spectrum, people generally tend to immerse themselves in the medium of their own… - Ways of Relating
The orality traits of identity, respect, and environment describe our connectedness within our world and community. People generally function more holistically on one side of the spectrum – they are a part of the whole. On the other side of the spectrum, people tend to… - Ways of Organizing
The traits that describe our sense of time, need for change, and how we classify things in our world. They represent how we tend to frame and manage the patterns and movement of life together. On one side of the spectrum, people generally frame things… - Ways of Knowing
These traits require a more complex set of factors. They represent how we capture and process a message, how people really learn, and their preferred ways of remembering a message. On one side of the spectrum, people gravitate to familiar patterns, repetition, and non-linear logic.…
The 15 Traits of Orality
Ways of Articulating
- Language
Story: I Don’t Understand My Teacher Lila grew up in a small village nestled in the mountains. It was her… - Narrative
Story: A Lifechaging Story Sara was walking in the park when she saw an old man sitting on a bank.… - Words
Story: Do You Have a Word for It? Lerato: I’m having a hard time explaining this to you. There’s no…
Ways of Expressing
- Arts
Story: The Art Critic Learning The art critic, John, walked into the cultural exposition and was immediately drawn to a… - Rituals
Story: Why Would You Do This to Yourself? Michael: This tradition sounds crazy to me. Suryo: It might seem strange… - Symbols
Story: Just Say It! Jack: We need to be the arrow, not the target. Alexis: I don’t get it. Are…
Ways of Relating
- Environment
Story: Powerplay over a Powerline Kent: I understand your concerns, Chief Wamalwa, but we assure you that we will take… - Identity
Story: Lending the Borrowed Ladder Gregory: Hey, neighbor, I came to get my ladder back. I need to use it… - Respect
Story: Coffee-Wisdom Bob and Jim were co-workers at a tech startup. During their coffee break, they talked about respecting their…
Ways of Organizing
- Change
Story: Electrifying Change John: I’m thinking about getting an electric car. They’re environmentally friendly and much cheaper to run. What… - Classification
Story: What is a Dolphin? A biologist, David, was on a remote archipelago trying to classify the different fish species… - Time
Story: Deal or No-deal? Tom: We need to get this deal done quickly because I must be at the Airport…
Ways of Knowing
- Learning
Story: Is School Necessary? Teacher: Good morning, sir. I’m here to talk to you about your son’s education. Mr. Birchwood:… - Memory
Story: Living Stories Grandma Khadija had just finished telling Amina a story about a wise king who defeated his enemies… - Sensemaking
Story: The Group Assignment Samantha and Ryan were assigned to work on a group project for their sociology class. Samantha:…
- Charles Madinger, “A Literate’s Guide to the Oral Galaxy,” Orality Jornal 2, no. 2 (2013): 13–40. ↩︎
- Grant Lovejoy, “The Extent of Orality: The Word Become Flesh,” Orality Journal, no. The Word Become Flesh (2012): 11–40, 29. ↩︎
- “70% of 10-Year-Olds Now in Learning Poverty, Unable to Read and Understand a Simple Text,” World Bank, 2022. ↩︎
- Walter J Ong, Orality and literacy: the technologizing of the word (London: NY: Routledge, 2002), 31–55. ↩︎
- Geert Hofstede, Gert Jan Hofstede, and Michael Minkov, Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind; Intercultural Cooperation and Its Importance for Survival, Rev. and expanded 3. ed (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2010). ↩︎
