That being said, Fish's blog entry for this week strikes a chord with our class relating the power of orality and literacy working in coexistance. In his blog entry from 1-22-09 Fish writes "Barack Obama's inaugural address is proving to be more powerful in reading than it was in the hearing ... It is as if the speech, rather than being a sustained performance with a cumulative power, was a frame work on which a succession of verbal ornaments was hung, and we were being invited not to move forward but to stop and ponder significances only hinted at ... Obama doesn't deposit us at a location he has in mind from the beginning; he carries us from meditative bead to meditative bead, and invites us to contemplate."
Fish continues by explaining how the speech when listened to seems to flutter by ones brain because of the lack of connecting and directed language. The speech when heard seems like one be uninterrupted sentence due to lack of conjunctions and structure. Fish explains how Obama uses a seldom utilized rhetorical strategy called parataxis which places phrases, clauses, and sentences in short suscint order without conjunctions. The result, a prose style much like the Bible, "the style is incantatory rather than progressive" argues Fish.
Immediately the word Incantatory sticks out. The short poetic statements are throwbacks to the oral traditions of the primary oral cultures. More importantly, Obama uses these incantations as the primary body to each of his sections of speech. The word incantation traditionally associates with magic and spells and thus incantations are usually cryptic and only understandable by a select few in society. One quick google search for the presidents inauguration speech and thousands of hits and thousands of responses appear. If nothing else, this speech provoked thought among millions. This comes as a nice change from the lovable (although mostly hateable) Bush speeches where people were constantly hung up on pronunciation or a slip up followed by a doofy Texas grin. This new style, whether written by the president or by a team of speech writers, got the collective brain of America and the World turning. Personally I think this a far superior use of the collective concsiousness to the constant bashing and insulting of the last presidency. The USA Today has already released a detailed analysis where they record the frequency of words and the use of alliteration according to Fish. I don't recall a single speech of the past administration that received such truly academic scrutiny. The beauty of the speech is the simple poetic nature. One can study the speech like a poem, one line at a time.
The inaugural address is an interesting crossroads of orality and literacy. The parataxical oral style threw many people for a loop however the same style reevaluated as a text has created more buzz with each passing day. Which aspect of the speech is superior is a topic of debate however I think the beauty in the orality is equaled by the intricacy of the text. My suggestion, watch the inauguration on YouTube, read the transcript of the speech and finally read the blog written by Stanley Fish ... but only on one condition... leave all previous political biases at the door and try to look from strictly a scholarly point of view. My guess is the excercise will be vastly beneficial to the subject matter at hand.
A little blurb from the speech to illustrate the ideas behind this post.
"Homes have been lost, jobs shed, businesses shuttered. Our health care is too costly, our schools fail too many, and each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet."
"Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things--some celebrated, but more often men and women obscure in their labor--who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom."
Check it out
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