The concept that verbal thought is separable from action, 
     and is, or can be, ineffective and contained within the 
     man . . . has important sociocultural implications, for it is 
     only in societies which recognize that verbal thoughts can 
     be so contained, and do not of their nature emerge on 
     wings of power, that social constraints can, in theory at 
     least, afford to ignore ideation. (p. 311)

Thus, in a society still so profoundly oral as Russia, where 
spying is done by ear and not by eye, at the memorable “purge” 
trials of the 1930s Westerners expressed bafflement that 
many confessed total guilt not because of what they had done 
but what they had thought. In a highly literate society, then, 
visual and behavioral conformity frees the individual for inner 
deviation. Not so in an oral society where inner verbalization is 
effective social action: