The classic account by doyen prize-winning anthropologist Ruth Finnegan of the issues, crucial for us all, surrounding oral and written communication as they worked - and still work - out in the romantic islands dotted round the Pacific Ocean. A riveting short book, remarkable equally for its scholarship and its readability. Not to be missed by anyone interested in these fundamental processes of our culture, Read more in Ruth's fabulous Orality and Literacy series - she is an accepted world authority on these far-reaching issues - of interest and importance to each of us. And then about the hidden nature of human communication in the so-often-misunderstood secrets revealed in her 'Communicating' and how we so amazingly overlap with animals and even have much to learn from them (startle your friends - and yourself!)

The doyen multi-award anthropologist Ruth Finnegan examines the age-old issues of the significance of orality and literacy. A unique, authoritative and readable account on an absolutely fascinating area. Riveting. Not to be missed. Read more in Ruth's fabulous series SWHC series THE SECRET WAYS OF HUMAN COMMUNICATING in the scintillating Callender Press collection.

Exploring the oral traditions of the South Pacific, this work demonstrates that oral media and native cultural forms are vital throughout the South Pacific. It appeals to scholars concerned with the relationships between verbal art, social change, gender, power, and social organization.

This classic work explores the vast differences between oral and literate cultures offering a very clear account of the intellectual, literary and social effects of writing, print and electronic technology. In the course of his study, Walter J. Ong offers fascinating insights into oral genres across the globe and through time, and examines the rise of abstract philosophical and scientific thinking. He considers the impact of orality-literacy studies not only on literary criticism and theory but on our very understanding of what it is to be a human being, conscious of self and other. This is a book no reader, writer or speaker should be without.

Anuta, a small Polynesian community in the eastern Solomon Islands, has had minimal contact with outside cultural forces. Even at the start of the 21st century, it remains one of the most traditional and isolated islands in the insular Pacific. In Polynesian Oral Traditions, Richard Feinberg offers a window into this fascinating and relatively unfamiliar culture through a collection of Anutan historical narratives, including indigenous texts and English translations. This rich, thorough assemblage is the result of a 25-year collaboration between Feinberg and a large cross section of the Anutan community. The volume's emphasis is ethnographic, consisting of a number of texts as related by the island's most respected experts in matters of traditional history. The texts themselves have important implications for the relationship of oral tradition to history and symbolic structures, affording new evidence pertinent to Polynesian language subgrouping. Further, they provide insight into a number of Anutan customs and preoccupations, while also suggesting certain widespread Polynesian practices dating back to the precontact and early contact periods. Feinberg's annotations, an essential aspect of this volume, arm the reader with essential ethnographic and historical contexts, clarifying important linguistic and cultural issues that arise from the stories.