orality
/ɒˈralɪti
/noun [mass noun]
1The quality of being verbally communicated.Its orality, its political intentions and ramifications, and its promise of unspoken truths about the African American experience all place it firmly in African American autobiographical traditions....
- Harper's poem, wonderfully modulated in its orality, speaks to such an audience.
1.1Preference for or tendency to use spoken forms of language.Her brief (and only briefly summarised) lecture on ‘the future of the novel’ is followed by her getting into an argument about orality, performance and the need to please an audience....
- This shift in sensibility toward orality is not a single literary movement, as it has sometimes been misconstrued.
- There seems to be this fascination with orality.
2 Psychoanalysis The focusing of sexual energy and feeling on the mouth.Think also of the importance of the mouth and orality....
- The spectator at the cinematic dream screen regresses to a similar state of orality as the masochist and also experiences a loss of ego-body boundary.
