Orality, literacy and the “great divide” in cultural values

What is it about?

This study aims at analyzing the conceptual relationships between orality/literacy and cultural values. The study adopts a purely conceptual approach to connect orality and literacy with nine cultural dimensions adopted from Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck’s (1961), Hall’s (1976), and Inglehart’s (1997) frameworks. The analyses suggest that orality is associated with values such as high-context communication, poly-chronic time, public space proxemics, collectivism, hierarchical social structure, subjugation, past orientation, religiousness/traditionalism, and survival cultural dimensions. Literacy is associated with opposing values, including low-context communication, mono-chronic time, private space proxemics, individualism, egalitarian social structure, subjugation, future orientation, secularity/rationality, and self-expression cultural dimensions. The paper relies on modernization theory to explain the socio-economic implications and organizes the nine pairs of cultural dimensions according to the great divide between orality and literacy.

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