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1 COMPREHENSION As we lurch into a future mediated by digital technology, we cannot but notice that the oral has returned with a bang and vies with the written to exemplify our communication and expression. It is not just that in this interactive, multimedia-enabled ambience, video, audio and text can combine seamlessly; that you can see what you hear what you read. Even what may be only written acquires an orality; a manner of oral writing comes into force somewhat as envisaged by Jacques Derrida as he rescued writing from subservience to speech, to which influential intellectual opinion had, for long, relegated it. The Derrida discourse was set against the phonocentric Western tradition of Socrates, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Claude Levi-Strauss and Ferdinand de Saussure privileging speech over writing. The spoken versus the written debate goes way back to the Socratic dialogue of around 370 B.C., as recorded by his pupil Plato. Socrates tells Phaedrus about the Egyptian god of invention, Theuth, waxing eloquent about his new creations numbers, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and letters to the Egyptian king Thamus. The king responded with appropriate enthusiasm to each of these until the presentation came to letters. On Theuth s self-applause for his invention of letters as enabling writing, which in turn would, he claimed, aid memory, royalty gently rapped divinity on the knuckles and told him that it was not for the inventor to judge the usefulness or otherwise of his handiwork; it was for others to do so. The king went on to express his own concern that writing, far from helping memory, would in fact make people less reliant on their memory, since they could now record, and afford to forget, what they otherwise had to remember. Himself a man of the spoken, never the written, mode, Socrates was, of course, in full agreement with the king here. Writing, for him, was an illegitimate offspring of the original spoken word. The origins of logocentrism were implicit in the Socratic parable of Theuth and Thamus. Speech came to be seen as superior to writing not only because it was anterior, but also because it was the originary act of language, writing being the derivative; and because speech implied presence, whereas writing implied absence. In his Confessions, Rousseau, in the 18th century, refers to writing as a means of absence: The decision that I have taken to write and hide myself is precisely the one that suits me. If I were present, people would never have known what I was worth. However, writing is by no means a virtue in itself. It connotes destruction of presence and disease of speech. It is clear to him that languages are made to be spoken and that writing serves only as a supplement to speech supplement construed as an add-on to something that is already autonomously whole; thus, education becomes a supplement to nature which is otherwise whole; and masturbation is a dangerous supplement to wholesome sex. Into the 20th century, Saussure railed against the tyranny of writing and against linguistic theory dealing with writing, declaring that the object of linguistic analysis is not defined by the combination of the written word and the spoken word: the spoken word alone constitutes the object. Levi-Strauss brought in the element of nostalgia for pre-literate cultures, suggesting that the practice of writing entailed a loss of innocence. More fiery opposition to the written word came from Dadaists like Tristan Tzara who called for all books and libraries to be burnt so that a fresh oral era could begin. For the media guru, Marshall McLuhan, the oral and the auditory had precedence over the visual which, he recognised, became dominant.

2 Umberto Eco traces the origin of the spoken word, in the Western tradition, to genesis, pointing out that creation itself arose through an act of speech; God spoke before all things and said Let there be light.... He called light Day, darkness Night and the firmament Heavens... We are not told in what language God (later) spoke to Adam...out of the ground God formed every beast of the field, every fowl of the air and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them. Thus Adam, says Eco, may have been the first nomothete ; when he first sees Eve, he says: This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman. Earlier, Walter Benjamin had described the essence of language as communication of mental meanings, the use of words for the purpose being only a part of the exercise. Thus, Paradisiac language provided the perfect mental lexicon and was symbolised by the Tree of Knowledge. In this scheme, The Fall marks the birth of the human word the word becomes a by-product of the loss of innocence. Ancient Indian tradition, of course, was pre-eminently oral and the languages of both the elite, Sanskrit, and of the masses, Prakrit, were ritually transmitted by word of mouth down the generations. The written form was disincentivised, considered infra dig and seen as resorted to by those who did not have it in them to memorize and remember. There was a sophisticated approach to the spoken word, distinguishing it in terms of dhvani (word and sabda (sound), and the phonetic speech was considered superior to the non-phonetic. Writing was seen as polluting and was ritualistically tabooed in certain contexts. The Vedic text, Aitareya Aranyaka, stipulates that a pupil should not recite the Veda after eating meat, seeing blood or a dead body, having intercourse, or engaging in writing. [G] QUESTION 1. WHY WAS SPEECH SEEN AS SUPERIOR TO WRITING? [A] speech was anterior [B] speech was the originary act of language, writing being the derivative [C] because speech implied presence, whereas writing implied absence [D] all of the above QUESTION 2. WHO REFERS TO WRITING AS A MEANS OF ABSENCE? [A] Socrates [B] Rousseau [C] Saussure [D] Plato QUESTION 3. HOW DID TRISTAN TZARA OPPOSE THE WRITTEN WORD? [A] He rallied against the written tyranny [B] He expressed that writing, far from helping memory, would in fact make people less reliant on their memory, since they could now record, and afford to forget. [C] He called for all books and libraries to be burnt. [D] He refused to let people record discourse in writing.

3 QUESTION 4. WHICH OF THESE WAS NOT ASSOCIATED WITH PHONOCENTRIC WESTERN TRADITION? [A] Socrates [B] Rousseau [C] Derrida [D] both A and B QUESTION 5. THE VEDIC TEXT PROHIBITED THE READING OF THE VEDAS AFTER: [A] Writing [B] Sunset [C] Dancing [D] Hunting a wild animal INSTRUCTIONS: THE FIVE SENTENCES GIVEN BELOW HAVE ALL HAD THEIR CONSTITUENT PARTS JUMBLED. THE FIRST AND LAST SENTENCES ARE IN THE CORRECT POSITION. READ EACH JUMBLED SENTENCE CAREFULLY AND THEN PICK THE OPTION. QUESTION 6 A. What is Broccoli Good For? B. These benefits have not been found in most other vegetables and food items suggested by regular doctors for many years in the past. C. For starters, it can help with arthritis. D. Most recently, the benefits of broccoli for the prevention and treatment of the most common form of arthritis has made headlines. E. If this is not good enough, broccoli besides this also helps people with gastric problems. QUESTION 7 [A] ACDBE [C] ADBCE [D] ABCDE A. Your inbox overflows with customer s suggesting features and improvements. B. Yet within months, what you learned has been lost, forgotten, or ignored by someone in a different department. C. You conduct usability tests, user interviews, and competitive analyses, creating and sharing key insights. D. Instead of benefiting, you feel overwhelmed by an unmanageable deluge. E. What if you could shift, store, and share all your customer learning in a way that breaks down silos, preserves and amplifies insights?

4 [A] ACDBE [C] ADCBE [D] ADBCE QUESTION 8 A. When design and client cultures truly come together, magical and memorable projects emerge. B. These benefits are enabling immediate feedback, balancing capability and challenge, and setting clear goals with visible progress. C. The beautiful part is, you can get both yourself and your client into a flow state more often by doing three things. D. These magic projects aren t random, though they happen when you reach a state of flow. E. Breandán Knowlton, who is famous for developing such client culture theories shows you how. [A] ADBCE [B] ADCBE [C] ABCDE [D] ABDCE QUESTION 9 A. When an architect designs a structure, he or she can be fairly sure the work will endure for decades, maybe even centuries. B. By defining the organization's vision. C. Knowing how temporary digital creations can be, how can we ensure our work matters? D. Unlike the physical world, here on the web, we re not so lucky. E. However, simply defining the vision doesn t help because this isn t just about solidifying a mission statement. [A] ADBCE [C] ADCBE [D] ACDBE

5 QUESTION 10 A. Delivering bad news is hard, but it s part of life and business. B. We notify customers when we re out of a product they want to buy, and we send warnings when people violate our companies terms of service. C. But these things happen to the best of us. D. God forbid we have to send a system alert because our database was hacked, affecting every one of our users. E. Can you be the bearer of bad news in a way that respects your customers? [A] ABCDE [C] ACDBE [D] ACBDE Answers for the same are available at our Facebook Group. The link for the same has been given below Join our Facebook Group to get the best guidance from students of topmost NLUs for free. Details have been given below. Facebook Group- CLAT Preparation (CollegeSnoops). Follow the link: Like our Facebook Page for More Material and Tips for preparation of CLAT and other Law entrance papers right at your wall: