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A Study on Oral Literature & Verbal Arts in a Digital Society

  • Journal of Humanities, Seoul National University
  • 2024, 81(4), pp.7-27
  • Publisher : Institute of Humanities, Seoul National University
  • Research Area : Humanities > Other Humanities
  • Received : October 22, 2024
  • Accepted : November 12, 2024
  • Published : November 30, 2024

Cho, Hyunsoul 1

1서울대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

Due to the digital revolution, we are living in the world of “new new media.” Looking at this in the history of orality, the 3rd era of orality has arrived. While the 1st oral era was an era of face-to-face communication where speakers and listeners sat around and even breathed together, the 2nd oral era was an era of one-sided and mass communication formed by the spread of typography. The 3rd oral era, which has just arrived, is an era of machinemediated communication based on new new media. “New new media” seems to provide a sense of integrated communication, but the perspective tends to lead to an enlarged sensory imbalance. As the audiovisual content of “new new media” becomes increasingly short, our senses are more dependent on the visual, and this imbalance limits our imagination. The development of imagination given by the auditory sense when listening to stories and the limited visual sense of description and narrative when reading novels is weakened in “new new media.” In this way, our thinking is simplified and unilateralized, and critical thinking disappears. The disappearance of thinking and the weakening of imagination make the possibility of life shrink. The digital environment is weakening letter-centeredness and providing technical conditions for restoring speech initiative. It can be said that an ecosystem suitable for oral literacy has been created. However, there is a possibility that this ecosystem will be erased again by visualism according to the main mobility digital images that expand to infinity. Research on the production and text of oral literature in a digital society will need to find a path that has not been taken while considering the tensions created by such an unstable ecosystem.

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.