Oral tradition

The oral tradition (also oral culture , oral inheritance or immaterial patrimony for UNESCO) is a way of preserving and of transmitting the Histoire, the Loi and the Littérature from generation to generation in the human society (people, ethnos groups, etc) which does not have a system of writing or which, in certain circumstances, chooses or is forced not to use it. The oral tradition is sometimes regarded as belonging to the Folklore of people. It would be undoubtedly righter to see there one of the principal forms of the education (initial and continued) of the human society, with or without writing.

Until the end of the late Antiquity, many mythological matters or religious were initially conveyed by the oral tradition before being fixed in writing: among the most famous texts, one can quote Iliade and the Odyssey of Homère (resulting from the Trojan Cycle), the Vedas, the chansons de geste and Romance arthuriens (resulting respectively from the Matière from France and Matière of Brittany), etc Certains books of the Bible are sometimes historically regarded as having initially been transmitted thus, though it is a discussed subject.

The modern societies taken in the globalisation are characterized by a commercial industrial development and related to the scientific development, and by undeniable technological advances implying of the new attitudes, such as for example: the desire to seek, to exceed themselves, innovate, be deeply oneself and taste for the pure intelligence… The vulgarizing of the means of communication, information modern such television, the radio, the cell phone, the educational systems, etc upset the practices of antan considerably, upheaval largely facilitated by the rural migration. In short, today, the company traditionnele is very different from the modern society. Often and in many areas, first is characterized by the spirit of group while individualism, consequence more or less immediate of the urbanization and the rural migration, prevails in the second. In sub-Saharan Africa for example, the bursting of the widened families, the irruption of the Western lifestyles, the development of the school (resulting from colonialisms and wars from independence), the modern channels of transmission of information (media) are as many elements which take part of the disappearance of the oral traditional transmission, for example: there is no more neither griots dependant on families or to clans to animate taken care, neither almost more wood kassaks, nor crowned etc

See too

External bonds

  • rhythmic and mnemotechnical oral style among verbomoteurs. Marcel Jousse (1925).

Category: art of public speaking

Simple: Oral examination tradition

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