Tedlock’s clarifications of the differences and similarities between inscriptions and recordings of oral stories are both detailed and enlightening.  He explains that both the “ear of the mythographer” and the “voice of the storyteller” are set free “by sound recording” (4).  Tedlock recognizes that for further study “some kind of visible notation will be required” in order for “the reader to choose between the objectifying eye of stares and glances, which declares its independence from the temporality of sound, and the participating eye of what musicians call ‘sight-reading,’ in which the reader coordinates vision with the properly timed reenactment of sound” (5).  The downside of a transcribed “audible text” is that a textual account of a recorded performance cannot fully recreate what has been captured on the tape (5).   There are elements of textual representations that are connected to the oral performances that the texts have captured and it is these connections that may make it possible to recreate the oral performances of inscribed oral performances of the past (8).  Tedlock argues that if passages are discovered, through an audible text, that contain “statistical patterns in the interrelationships between pitch and timing, on one hand, and syntax and meaning, on the other, it may be possible to carry out a hypothetical reconstruction of the oral delivery of a dictated text from the past—given passages whose syntax and wording resemble those of passages from audible texts” (8).

There are factors of oral performance that must be taken into consideration in relation to recreating oral texts from the past and even recreating contemporary oral performances.  The tone, pitch, silences and body movements affect the sound of the oral performance and in turn are part of the performance (9-10).  It is often difficult to recreate these factors in transcriptions of texts and even more so in regards to trying to reconstruct the oral performances of texts from the past but Tedlock’s examples of Zuni oral stories that he has recreated shows that it is not impossible to reconstruct several aspects of oral performance.  He includes many examples of Zuni stories in this text and explains in detail how the textual representations of the pieces were designed to include as many characteristics of the oral performances as possible.  Tedlock also examines the work of other scholars and discusses what has worked and what has not worked in translations of the Zuni narrative traditions.  One thing that has often occurred is that scholars have not incorporated the stylistic aspects of narrative traditions” within their translations (38-41).  Tedlock gives an example of a textual representation of “the manipulation of voice quality in Zuni narration” (47).  He uses words and phrases in all caps to represent a loud voice.  The text looks as follows:

And his uncle, dismounting,

Caught him.

“THAT IS WHAT YOU DID AND YOU ARE MY REAL MOTHER.”

He put the quiver on and went out.

There he died. (46).

Without the use of the capital letters in this translation, it would be difficulty to recognize the tone and mood that a loud voice creates when this Zuni narrative delivered orally.  This technique, which predated the internet, is widely used in digital texts such as emails, chat rooms, social networks and blogs etc… to show when someone is raising their voice or yelling.  I will return to this connection when I examine John Miles Foley’s work, Oral Tradition and the Internet: Pathways of the Mind.

Tedlock makes the argument that research about oral performance should not be confined to prose.  He even made a pact with David Anton that they would not publish their “words” or “critical discourse” in prose format (107).  Tedlock explains that they did not keep the pact for long due to lack of publishing opportunities” but some experiments came out of this pact (107).  He was asked by Ronald J. Grele to “join a session on oral history he was organizing for the 1973 meetings of the Organization of American Historians” (108).  He collected his comments on a tape-recorder; he also gathered examples of Zuni narratives on slips of paper and combined them with his commentary orally.  Tedlock then transcribed his remarks using techniques that captured aspects of oral performance.  After the transcription, he read his comments out loud and cut lines in order to meet the time limit (108).  Tedlock’s oral performance of his research supported his findings by demonstrating them.  This is an excerpt from his transcription:

If anthropologists, folklorists, linguists, and oral historians

are interested in the full meaning

of the spoken word

then they must stop treating oral narratives as if they were reading prose

when in fact they are listening to dramatic poetry (123).

To further demonstrate Tedlock’s point, I am also posting the lines above as prose:

If anthropologists, folklorists, linguists, and oral historians are interested in the full meaning of the spoken word then they must stop treating oral narratives as if they were reading prose when in fact they are listening to dramatic poetry. (123).

The line breaks, pauses and final end-stop of the initial excerpt flows much differently on the page then when expressed in prose.  If read out loud, the two versions of the excerpt would, in most cases, sound very different.