ORALITY AS A POSSIBLE FORM OF KNOWLEDGE CONSTRUCTION

Abstract

Orality is an ancient form of communication and the principal way to exchange information where senses and meanings are involved. Memory is its only material support; therefore it is characterized as being volatile and evanescent. It uses the space of sound, and unlike writing, it is labile. In this article we expect to address orality as object study but fundamentally as a technique and methodology which allows to access to certain individual and collective events that would not be available by other ways. We will review some dominant and hegemonic paradigms, beginning with a revision of epistemological foundations laid by the Natural and Physical Sciences. The purpose of this work will be to analyse critically, historical models which appeared as the only reliable methods for objective knowledge, wondering about their assumptions.
We believe there are other ways to access to the socio-historical world and to the diversity of cultural groups. Placing emphasis on orality, we will use epistemological, theoretical and methodological contributions which allow a repositioning about this issue at the moment of approaching research problem which could be susceptible faced from Social Sciences.
Some new lines of work ensure that orality is a new scientific paradigm, while some others simply consider it as pseudo-scientific, with its own methods and tools.  We will try to provide elements which help to think these ideas and thoughts, seeking to show new forms of knowledge and could find those which are not.