Oral performers, especially but not exclusively performers in verse, are beset with distractions. A word may set off a chain of associations which the performer follows into a cul de sac from which only the skilled narrator can extricate himself. . . . The modes of organization and disorganization here seem not to be a matter of mere bricolage (handiman's work, ad hoc improvization), a favorite term of structuralist semioticsŠ Bricolage is the literate's term for what he himself would be guilty of if he produced an oral-styled poem. But oral organization is not literate organization put together in makeshift fashion.
Walter J. Ong, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word, (165).
