Introduction 2

Literature for African Students - to be published soon

Introduction - Why study Literature

1. LITERATURE
Literature is the art of using language.
We can classify the arts of language in several different ways:

1. Spoken language
Story telling
Stage Plays
Film and television plays
Radio plays
Songs
Jokes
Poetry
2. Written language
Stories
Novels
Plays
Other Poetry
But the spoken types are often written down before they are performed.
Traditional storytelling and praise-songs and other traditional poetry were exceptions as they were not written down before or after performance but were handed on from generation to generation by memory alone. (This is the meaning of tradition - handed on).
So another type of classification is the one below:
1. Language spoken to be heard.
Original material on live (unscripted) radio or television
Praise songs and traditional histories
Story-telling
Telephone conversations

2. Language written to be spoken.
Film scripts
Play scripts for radio, television or theatre
News scripts for radio or television
Politicians' speeches
3. Language written to be read.
Newspapers and Magazines
Short Stories
Novels

Poems
Non-fiction books
Letters
Reports and other business language
4. Language spoken to be written.
Lectures to students making notesIn the modern world these are some of the ways of using language. Any of them may come to be part of the arts of using language and therefore part of what is included in Literature.
Is the language of films and television part of literature? Only those which are specifically the arts of using language and nothing else are usually counted as literature. Film scripts make use of language but a film or television script is a sort of instruction manual for making a film. A film is valued not mainly by the language but by the pictures. The writer is not the person who receives the greatest place in the list of people concerned with making the film. Thus film and video nowadays form part of Media Studies courses.
The study of Literature in school, therefore, starts with and concentrates on the items in the list above which are printed in bold script.
This book is about these uses of language.

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