What is Reverse Speech?

I stumbled across this the other day and thought it was pretty interesting..

It has been called the discovery of the 7th sense. The research into this phenomenon has been described as being of "Nobel calibre". It has been featured in numerous publications around the world, and in the United States it became a household name in the late 90s. It is called Reverse Speech, the phenomenon of hidden backward messages in speech. It initially gained worldwide fame in the early 80s as those strange backward messages in rock and roll. Since that time, research has progressed significantly and it is now known to exist in all forms of human speech.

If human speech is recorded and played backwards, mixed amongst the gibberish at regular intervals can be heard very clear statements. These statements usually appear in short sentence form and are nearly always related to the forward speech. It appears constantly throughout language, so much so in fact, that it is believed to be a natural part of our speech processes.

The pioneer and 20 year veteran of this field, Australian David John Oates, describes Reverse Speech as another form of human communication. He states that language is bi-level, forward and reverse. As the human brain constructs the sounds of speech, it forms those sounds in such a way that two messages are delivered simultaneously. One forwards, which is the conscious mind speaking, and the other in reverse, which is the unconscious mind speaking.

The applications of this discovery are exciting. On the surface level, it can act as a sort of Truth Detector as Reverse Speech will usually correct the inconsistencies of forward speech. If a lie is spoken forwards, the truth may be communicated in reverse. If pertinent facts are left out of forward speech these may also be spoken in reverse. It can reveal hidden motive and agenda and other conscious thought processes. At deeper levels, Reverse Speech can reveal thought patterns that are unconscious, including reasons behind behaviour and disease. This information can be used to greatly enhance the therapeutic and healing processes.

Although still a new and emerging field, Reverse Speech is already making its mark felt in many areas. It has been used successfully in business negotiations and corporate mergers as means of providing extra information. In the state of Oregon, it has been used in criminal investigation and its results independently verified by DNA testing in one case.

Reverse Speech has now come back to Australia, where it was initially discovered. If you are looking for a new and challenging career, you might want to consider training and becoming one of the pioneers of this field. If you have an important decision to make or behavioural issue you want address, Reverse Speech may be able to help you too.

Coincidence? Probably not.

I know that being able to memorize fifty things is a bit of an ego boost for some, just knowing that it can easily be accomplished, however I never really knew if it was something that could be applied to real life.. I was wrong.. In one of my classes today, we were talking about Norway and the professor randomly asked when the winter olympics were held in Norway. A few people spewed out some incorrect answers, then someone from the back yelled 1994. I turned around to see Kevin from oral traditions class, and immediately made a correlation between the two in my class. (he was the one that memorized the winter olympic years...) So this was a complete coincidence, well maybe just a 1 in 3 chance, but I was happy to see that our memory demonstrations are being put to good use.

Rough Beginning of my Paper. . .

The African People have always been known as good storytellers, just as the many different peoples around the world who came from traditionally oral cultures and customs. Many African’s today, just like they were hundreds of years ago, continue to live in a primarily oral culture rather than a literary one. The oral traditions in Africa, which originally derived from the beginnings of African cultures, are historically rich art forms that continue to evolve and spread through the ears of our world.
Every human culture has seemed to create a set of oral stories to make sense of what was happening in the world. However, the themes, motifs, narrative meanings, genres, and specific storytelling styles differ from culture to culture. While some stories from Africa may make sense to people from different continents and backgrounds, others will be more foreign and difficult to understand. To be able to relate to the stories, one must gain knowledge on the African storyteller’s values, themes, images, metaphors, narrative structures and plots. To fully understand African traditional storytelling, one must become familiar with the context of the cultures in which a story has derived from.

My Paper Topic:

After going back and forth on different paper topics, I finally decided to write on African Oral Traditions. My father spent a lot of time in Africa when I was growing up and grew close with some of the tribes. Because of this, I have always been fascinated with the culture and people for it is so different that what people are used to in the United States. I found some African quotes that I think are complimentary to my topic.

“…It is only the story that can continue beyond the war and the warrior.
It is the story that outlives the sound of war-drums and the exploits of brave fighters.
It is the story...that saves our progeny from blundering like blind beggars
into the spikes of the cactus fence. The story is our escort; without it, we are blind.
Does the blind man own his escort? No, neither do we the story;
rather it is the story that owns us and directs us."

--Chinua Achebe, Anthills of the Savannah (1987)

"I will tell you something about stories....They aren't just entertainment...
They are all we have...to fight off illness and death.
You don't have anything if you don't have the stories."

--Leslie Marmon Silko, epigraph to Ceremony (1977)

The Story

INTRO

The chapter on Traditions in Kane explains that the moment in which mythological tradition is most active is the moment when its orders of knowledge are most focused. That moment is the actual telling of a story. The traditional act of storytelling involves different aspects that make a story more powerful. These include the voice of the narrator, its polyphonic form and the effects that nature, people and the surroundings have on a story, consistency and the replication of the essential patterns of mythology, and finally, improvisation. The main instrument in any story is the voice, which brings the listener away from their current state of reality to the unseen worlds of tribal memory. For our oral presentation, we have each selected various short stories that derived from oral cultures where the tradition of storytelling created a bond between humanity and our relationship with the earth and the world we live.

The Earth on Turtle’s Back

 Before this earth existed, there was only water. The water stretched as far as the eye could see, and in the water lived birds and animals that could swim around. Above the water among the clouds was the sky land. In this land stood a great beautiful tree. It had four white roots that stretched far in every direction and the branches were covered with many fruits and flowers.

 In the sky land lived an ancient chief. One night his young wife had a dream where the great tree was uprooted. The next morning she told her husband about her dream.

 After she told him the story, he nodded and said “My wife, I am sad that you had this dream. However, it is clearly a dream of great power and we must do what we can to make it true. The great tree must be uprooted.”

 The chief called all of the young men together and told them that they must pull up the tree. But the roots were so strong and deep that they could not uproot it. After their failure, the ancient chief wrapped his arms around the tree and bent his knees and strained. At last, with one great effort, the chief uprooted the tree and laid it on its side. The trees roots were so long that they had shot deep into the sky land and created a big hole. The wife of the chief went to the hole, grabbed the tip of a branch for support, and leaned way over to look down. It seemed as though she saw something deep within the hole that glittered like water. She leaned even further to get a better look when her hand slipped from the branch and she fell down, down, down into the hole with only a few seeds in her hand from the branch of the tree.

 Far below in the water, some birds and animals looked up to the sky.

 “Something is falling toward us from the sky!” said one of the birds

“We must do something to help her!”  So two swans flew up. They caught the woman and slowly brought her back down to the water where all the other birds and animals were watching.

 “She is not like us” said one of the animals. “Look, she doesn’t have webbed feet. She will not survive in the water.”

 “Then what shall we do?” said another of the water animals.

 “I know”, said one of the birds, “I have heard that there is earth far below the water. If we dive down and bring up the earth, then she will have a place to stand.”

 So the birds and animals decided that one of them would have to dive down and bring some of the earth back to the surface. One by one they all tried.

 The duck dove down first. He swam down, down, far beneath the surface, but could not reach the earth. Then the beaver tried, he swam down, down, but could not reach the earth either. Then the Loon tried. Swimming with his strong wings. He was gone a long, long time but he too failed to bring up and earth. Soon it seemed that all had tried and failed. Then a small voice spoke. “I will bring up earth or die trying.”

 The animals looked to see that this small voice came from a tiny muskrat. She dove down and down, and swam and swam. She was not as strong or swift as the other, but she was determined.

 She went deep down into the darkness, and still swam deeper. She went so deep that he lungs felt ready to burst. But she swam deeper still. At last as she was becoming unconscious, she reached out one small paw and grasped at the bottom, barely touching the earth before she floated up, almost dead.

 When the other animals saw her break the surface they thought she had failed. Then they saw her right paw was held tightly shut.

 “She has the earth!” They all shouted with delight. “Now where can we put the earth so the woman can stand?”

 “Place it on my back.” Said a deep voice. It was the great turtle who had come up from the depths.

The brought the muskrat to the great turtle and opened her paw over his back. To this day there are marks at the back of the turtles shell which were made by the muskrats paw. The tiny bit of earth fell on the back of the turtle. Almost immediately, the turtles shell and the earth grew larger and larger until they became the whole world.

 The swans lifted the sky woman and placed her on the earth. She stepped onto the bare soil.  The woman dropped the seeds she held tightly in her hand from the great tree, from which trees and grass sprang up. Earth had begun. 

 

 

Oral Presentations

Today I had my group presentation on the Traditions chapter in Kane. For the presentation we were attempting to re-create a traditional feeling of storytelling with native american music in the background. While the guys sitting next to me were telling their stories, I found myself not listening to the words that they were saying but instead I followed what they were reading on their sheets of paper. I realized half way through the presentations that I was depending on the written words rather than the oral presentation itself. After the presentations were over, Sexson asked how everyones presentations were not traditionally oral- that fact being that every single group so far has read from a piece of paper. I agree that this method of telling the story lost some meaning and the connection with the audience, because you are not looking at everyone and becoming engaged with the listeners present.  With that said, I do feel that we portrayed our chapter appropriately, however, if we were to do that same presentation again I would try to memorize my story to create a more traditional act of storytelling. 

Primary and Secondary Orality

Primary orality is a group mentality because it forced people to connect orally with one another.


The secondary orality has forced people to become more connected with themselves. I feel like these images have summed up how I feel each has affected the way people interact with one another and and how people are now forced to interact with themselves.