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08300_Field_TCGG T65.txt
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1996-04-10
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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: