ABSTRACT
Goody’s strategy was to explore ‘oral culture’ through contrast, by considering ‘the effects of writing on social organisation and cognitive processes’. The restriction of linguistic communication to the oral channel accounts for some of those features that are commonly regarded as characteristic of the ‘primitive mentality’. The greater concreteness and relative lack of abstraction must be linked to the dominance of the context of the interactive situation. Goody similarly rejects the notion that the advent of ‘literacy’ had automatic and immediate results. Goody’s delineation of ‘oral’ through its contrast with written eventually turns out to be somewhat elusive. The voices of several reciters could thus overlap and intertwine simultaneously, sometimes interspersed with comments or corrections from experienced listeners or mixed with shouts or ululations from the gathered participants.
