ABSTRACT
The term “orality” is used in scholarship to refer to specialized genres of speech ranging from simple jokes through folktales and ballads to epic. These areas of speech are marked by special rules which allow them to be carried from one generation to the next. Before the modern spread of literacy, virtually all cultures carried on much of their formal discourse, especially narrative, in oral form. Studies of oral cultures and oral texts by modern scholars have illuminated many of the techniques used by carriers of these traditions, such as the ancient Greek poet Homer, to recompose in the process of performance, an area of study generally called “oral theory.” Many oral forms exist even in modern cultures with mass literacy, but few have high status in such cultures.
