Orality and Literacy as Factors of 'Black' and 'White' Communicative Behavior

There is a cultural basis which contributes to the mutual "frustration, resentment, futility, hostility, & bewilderment" experienced by lower socioeconomic or oral individuals (O people) in their interaction with "mainstream" or literate (L people) members of contemporary American society. This results not only in different interactional styles, but in different conceptions about what constitutes "proper" communicative behavior. L people reject an "adversary" mode of confrontation (the higher level of feeling, heat, & loudness that pervades the interactional style of O people), preferring to suppress feelings, to maximize rationality, to compromise. For O people, on the contrary, a high & demonstrated feeling level signifies "sincerity" & "earnestness." These opposite views on the role feeling should play in communication suggest, in a fundamental epistemological sense, different underlying conceptions about the nature of the "truth" being sought: if feeling & conviction are seen as compatible (O people), the nature of truth is subjective--it exists within a person. If, on the other hand, truth is seen as having an objective basis in reality (L people), that truth exists outside the person & is created by him. The L mode is dysfunctional in interpersonal communication, in that it attempts to resolve antagonism by bypassing the feelings at the core of the antagonism. The O mode is "irrelevant for discovering the laws of the universe." Each group, it is concluded, could learn much from the other. A. Meharry