Oral communication is quite different in its spontaneity and communicative power from textual and visual communication. Culturally-bounded expectations of ways of speaking and individual creativity provide the spark that can ignite revolution or calm the soul. This book explores, from a cross-cultural perspective, the centrality of orality in the ideological processes that dominate public discourse, providing a counterbalance to the debates that foreground literacy and the power of written communication.

GRAHAM FURNISS is Professor of African Language Literature at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, UK. He is the author of Poetry, Prose and Popular Culture in Hausa and Co-Editor of African Broadcast Cultures; Power, Marginality and African Oral Literature; and African Languages, Development and the State.