ENG1710 Intro to Language and Technology, SP2018
with Prof. Ellis
Before our next class, write and post at least 250 words summarizing your reading and your notes from lecture on Walter Ong’s “Writing is a Technology That Restructures Thought.” Feel free to make connections between Ong and our previous readings, such as Klein or Mufwene.
For our next class, we will discuss Bruce Mazlish’s “The Fourth Discontinuity.”
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Walter J. Ong was a Jesuit priest, a professor of literature, historian, theologian and philosopher, among many other things. He wrote the book, âOrality and Literacyâ in 1982, and it was found to be so significant that it is still being updated and printed today. We read an excerpt from another of Ongâs books, and the article is entitled, âWriting is a Technology That Restructures Thought.â The crux of what he is trying to express in this article is contained in this title: the very act of writing will literally and irreversibly change the human brain because literacy is âall-consumingâ. He describes it in such a way that almost sounds insidious, how writing creeps into the mind, takes over thinking, and the person isnât even conscious of it. He goes on to say that a strictly oral culture, one in which the people do not read or write, does not process information or express knowledge in the same way that a literate culture does.
As Victoria Fromkin noted, there are no âprimitiveâ languages, and in the same way, Father Ong is not advocating the supremacy of writing above oral language, nor vice versa. He is simply noting that writing will alter the human mind in such a way that all thought will be filtered through text and words thereafter, whereas the mind untainted by writing has no such filter. He compares and contrasts the two cultures and the benefits and deficiencies of both. He explains that strictly oral cultures are holistic because they require close proximity to speak and hear sound, to see gestures and expression. He says that in that way, oral cultures are alive and dynamic and more easily understood. But oral culture is perishable, and can only be expressed to a small amount of people. Conversely, he says that writing creates division and separation because there is no connection between the writer and the reader (there is no need to be face-to-face). It separates the “knower” from the “known”. In this way, Ong says writing is inert and âdead,â as it is a finite structure that canât be changed; in addition, writing also may be easily misconstrued because you cannot see, hear or infer what the writer meant through text. However, writing can reach a vast audience, is not perishable, and isnât relegated to the present (a text created 1,000 years ago may still be read today). And in the end, per the philosopher Roland Barthes, it is our interpretation of the writing that matters, not the writerâs intent. We know now that knowledge demands both proximity and distance in order to be best understood and acquired.
Father Ong notes âprimary orality,â which is the orality of people who have no knowledge of writing, but only spoken language. He goes on to define âsecondary orality,â which is orality that emerges from a highly literate and technology-rich culture. Though it is a return to an oral culture of sorts, it is an orality that can only arise from writing and text. Examples of this would be computers, television, and smart phones. Professor Mufwene believed language to be a technology; Father Ong also describes writing as a technology, one that is fundamental to high levels of secondary orality.
Finally, Father Ong addresses the philosophical debate people have had over writing as a technology. Writing is fairly new, dating back 4,000 years or so, and we had only primary orality before this technology. In the 1980s, people worried about computers taking over writing in the way that the ancient philosophers worried about writing taking over oral cultures. He is saying that this debate is nothing new and as technology continues to evolve, more debates will ensue.
Walter J. Ong demonstrated his essential role in linguistics; he is an American philosopher, cultural historian, and the professor of linguistics. Ong mentioned how language influences society by transforming it as a technology, and he focuses on the evolution of human mind from the language. Human uses languages as a tool, and it converts after a period. Language starts from the oral part, which means human only understands the sound of it instead of the script of itself. After a period, it upgrades to literate form. The language with literate means human can comprehend the writing of it instead of just the oral part; literacy establishes books to diffuse the information soundlessly. In additions to the modern day’s society, the literacy languages transform into digital, we can transmit languages through data instead of books and sound, which is a radical change. In the article of “Writing is a Technology That Restructures Thought,” Ong conveys the message that human writing ability is taking over human consciousness. Considering orality in literacy, Ong sees literacy changes the way we think. We can process our mind more efficiently with primary orality culture. It increases how human think radically. Oral culture is completely different from literate culture. Ideas and concepts and be enhanced differently from the literate language culture. Primary orality is the term Ong describes people who did not know writing and reading, which mean the oral part is the only skill those people obtained. Secondary orality is the term Ong describes how literacy emerges with orality enriches the culture, which means the human can read and write simultaneously, and it requires a high level of literacy. Roland Barthes wrote the “the author is dead,” it prescribes how does the writer is isolated from the reading, this is related to Ong’s concept.
Lastly, Ong specified the discourse of innovation. Human continues debates the period of innovation, and it won’t stop followed by the innovation of itself.
Walter J. Ong accomplished many things in his life, as a Jesuit and philosopher, Ong was an interdisciplinary learner who combined literacy, history, and religion into his works. One of his most famous works, “Orality and Literacy” serves as a testament to the study of linguistics and technology more than 30 years after its initial release. However, we as a class only analyzed one crucial text called,â Writing is a Technology That Restructures Thoughtâ. Ong introduced us to new terms such as primary and secondary orality, primary orality refers to verbal communication being the only form of literacy. On the other hand, secondary orality refers to literacy such as reading and writing. Ong believed that literacy would cause people to become more distant because of the very nature of reading and writing is expressed individually, unlike verbal communication which is two or more people speaking to each other. Ong believed that writing is a form of technology because it changes the way we think. He argued that reading and writing would attach us to the concept of words, and we would never go back to just pointing out objects/people without describing them first. I agree with his statements. Different types of writing provide content, context, and tone that changes the readers perspective on an idea or event. In another scenario, when, a news reporter is describing a possible wanted suspect they describe how they looked, and location they were spotted at last. I think this text described how humans have developed new ways of making life easier through new literacy elements and technologies. I think back to when we analyzed Steven Klineâs article, âWhat is Technologyâ where his third definition of technology describes the knowledge and know-how to complete tasks. Writing has taken on new forms of documentation such as troubleshooting, short slides, and online manuals where people can just learn how to develop content for themselves or learn how to solve a variety of problems.
In the article “Writing is a Technology That Restructures Thought,”by Walter Ong, he stresses the importance of writing in correlation with our minds. Ong posits the immense significance of writing having been deeply integrated and ingrained into our minds. Writing gives us a more organized and efficient way to think, we compose our ideas and thoughts based on the visualization of the words. Being from a literate society, it is second nature for us to view a word when heard as it is spelled. When writing, we enforce how we view a word as an “event” as Ong puts it, and not just a sequence of sounds. It is an interesting point that I never really thought of as viewing words a simply just sounds that cease to exist when spoken. We are lucky that we are one of the seventy eight other languages that possess a literature. Writing has made our lives immensely easier and I can’t really imagine having to live with only orality to go on. Just think about how many things wouldn’t exist if not for writing. All of the great works of literature, nearly all of our technologies, and all forms of communication, except speech, wouldn’t exist if not for writing. Another interesting point is Plato’s “thinking of writing as an external alien technology…” line. As Ong notes, we have “so deeply internalized writing” that its almost impossible to view writing as a form of technology, just like speech. We all use tools to aid us in writing, and in “What is Technology,” as Kline notes in his four usages we can evidently see how writing falls into the category of technology. Another interesting point is that Ong believes writing is artificial. Aside from the mentally and psychically impaired, everybody has the capacity to learn speech. The ability of humans to produce sounds that mean certain things isn’t restricted to one’s culture; we all possess this ability. In writing, however, only those with a literate society learn writing, ergo making writing artificial.
Walter J. Ong was a Jesuit who taught and wrote at St. Louis University. His book, âOrality and Literatureâ was published in 1982 and was later reissued as âOrality and Literature: The Technologizing of the Word 2000â. Reissuing his book shows just how much his ideas were and are important. They are keeping his book in print as well as updating it and making sure to preserve his work. In his article âWriting is a Technology That Restructures Thought,â he argues that writing is a type of technology and describes its pros and cons. Ong describes writing as an intrusion and although it was an intrusion, he noted that it was an invaluable intrusion. In his article, he uses many examples to support to his argument, including drawing from Plato and Socrates. In class we discussed that Plato was a writer of philosophy, whereas Socrates was more of a speaker, he spoke about philosophy with his students. He was against writing. Ong says that when writing was first present, it had the same objections just as much as when the first computers were introduced. Socrates states that âwriting is only a thing, something to be manipulated, something inhuman, artificial, a manufactured product.â He criticizes writing and says that it is a written text that is unresponsive and will not speak for itself. If someone was asked to explain themselves, theyâll be able to do it or make an attempt doing it. Socrates also talks about how writing will destroy your memory. For those who are writing will soon be forgetful. Writing for Socrates is like an external source that people will rely on and will make them be forgetful. To him, writing weakens the mind. Although Ong uses Socratesâ points, he also argues that writing is a good thing. He says that âto say writing is artificial is not to condemn it but to praise it. Like other artificial creations and indeed more than any other, writing is utterly invaluable and indeed essential for the realization of fuller, interior, human potentials.â Writing has helped human beings enhance their life and has helped us to our full potential. Although writing is a kind of technology, it is something that everyone does not see and has been taken for granted. It may feel like writing has been around for a very long time, but the truth is, it hasnât, and just like how we approach new technology with concerns, writing was approached the same when it was first introduced.
Jessica L. Roman
ENG 1710
Walter J. Ong was a Jesuit priest and professor who taught at Saint Louis University from 1954-1984. In the lecture turned essay, âWriting is a Technology that Restructures Thoughtâ, Ong presents the case for writing as a technology that we do not consider in our day-to-day lives. The material covered is presented in a very approachable format that clearly illustrates Ongâs position and rational. The essay first seeks to demonstrate how imbedded writing into those living in high-technology societies. We take writing as being innate and fail to see how literacy has changed our cognitive process on a fundamental level. He also make sure to point out that even though we are a high-technology highly literate culture orality is still present. However, it is the orality that results from the innovation and advancement that stems from technology rich culture that thrive because of literacy, Ong refers to this as secondary orality.
Another distinction Ong makes of orality and literacy is the characteristic and mode in which we receive information. In oral cultures orality takes place in the present, we must be in a close enough vicinity in order to communicate information. Literacy on the other hand can share information even through several layers of separation. It is that separation literacy provided that has allowed us to think more deeply on ideas and to think more abstractly. While literacy affect our thought is very positive ways, it is by no means perfect, and there is always a chance for error, misunderstanding and abuse of its power.
An important point I felt Ong makes is in reference to the artificiality of writing. More often than not artificial comes with a negative connotation. As Ong mentions, Plato himself thought of writing as inhuman and artificial and among other things, that it destroys the memory. Ironically enough it was literacy that give humans the capacity to think with the abstraction that allows for developed philosophical thought. While Ong in ways tries to deny that writing is artificial, goes on to explain that does not make it a bad thing. As humans, our ability to manufacture artificial things is what has allowed us to develop and progress in all the ways we have, both technologically and cognitively. Artificial innovation is a part of humans historically to enhance our lives and societies.
There will always be a fear that technologies will make use too dependent on them, whether it be the technology of writing, typography, the technological advancements of the computer, smartphone and of the ones to come, perhaps like â the Rememâ technology from Chiangâs The Truth of Fact the Truth of Feeling. We should embrace our technology and advancements but we must always allow rooms to critique our technologies and analyze how they affects us, negatively and positively as humans.
Walter J.Ong was a Jesuit priest as well as a professor and taught English literature at the University of St.louis. In his time one of his most major pieces of literature that he constructed was titled Orality and Literacy which was later on issued again. In his college lecture, Ong discusses about how language is actually a form of technology that has been completely been glossed over. His lecture on how literature is a form of technology shares a similar concept of our previous lecture on how speech is also a form of technology that has been overlooked.. Within his lecture he introduces the audience to the perspective of two ancient profound philosophers, Socrates and Plato and how they believe literature was actually a form of crippling the minds of human beings. The introduction of literature and the reactions that it received because the concept of a new form of communication or technology was foreign to humans, is compared to that of the time when computers were first introduced. The ancient philosophers believed that writing does indeed cripple the minds of human being, that it causes them to rely more on writing and less on using their own brain power. âThirdly, Platoâs Socrates urges, writing destroys memory. Those who use writing will become forgetful, relying on an external source for what they lack in internal resources.In a way it demonstrates how they believed that writing prohibited one from using the power of their own mind and internally expanding. âWriting, Plato has Socrates say in the Phaedrus, is inhuman, pretending to establish outside the mind what in reality can only be in the mind. Writing is simply a thing, something to be manipulated, something inhuman, artificial, a manufactured product.â They see writing as more of a tool which in our case is not necessarily degrading this form of technology. We as human beings use technology in order to complete certain tasks weather that be a device or simply a tool. That also applies to literature because Ong states that âYet writing(and especially alphabetic writing) is a technology, calling for the use of tools and other equipment, styli or brushes or pensâŠâ Writing is a tool that we use as an extension of our minds to bring what we process in a physical form.
TO: Professor Dr. Jason W. Ellis
FROM: Ronald C. Hinds
DATE: February 27, 2018
SUBJECT: Writing is a Technology that Restructures Thought
The Reverend Walter Jackson Ong, Jesuit priest and scholar of language, whose contributions include âOrality and Literacyâ and who was influenced by Eric Alfred Havelock, and was also as a student of Marshall McLuhan; the âgreatest diversifier of all,â saw literacy as intrinsic to the development of history and philosophy. Havelock and Ong essentially founded the field that studies transitions from orality to literacy. âWriting heightens consciousness,â Ong writes, and sets out to make a compelling narrative to support this contention. He walks us through his thinking and defines his understanding of oral-aural; “oralâ – the mouth for speaking and âauralâ- the ear for hearing. Ong goes on to make a distinction between primary orality and secondary orality. Primary represent people who have no usage of reading and writing and secondary emerge from a highly rich and technologically advanced stratum. Just as computers can be seen as artificial contrivances, foreign to human life, writing is artificial, something that one can manipulate and is a manufactured product.
Ong focused on the more primal origins of oration’s path from simple expression to a means of established communication, rather than from the point, as McLuhan did, at which the written word evolved to printed text, and eventually, to the universally established place it holds today in all electronic communications media and cyberspace. However, Ong goes farther and dares to answer the “Which came first? The chicken or the egg?” question by delineating his own idea, for the purposes of his discourse, of at what point the official transition from, as he writes, “…a footprint or a deposit of faeces or urine [used by many spieces of animals for communication]” to actual “writing.” Ong draws his referential boundary at the creation and implementation of alphabethization, with a dispensatory nod, notwithstanding, to Chinese’s use of characters for words as opposed to that of individual letters. I like the opinion of Roland Barthes, French literary theorist and philosopher, that âthe author is dead,â and his work, having been written, is henceforward freed from him to be read and interpreted only by those who contend with it and, in any event, how can the reader ever know precisely what the scriptor intended. He thinks of the writer not as an author imbued with any authority. On the other hand with orality alone, one knows the speaker’s intention, generally, by the sheer theatricality of inflection (as captured for example by a storyteller in Ted Chiang’s piece) and narrative style along with facially and otherwise visually expressed nuance.
McLuhan, who is a Canadian professor, philosopher and public intellectual, argues that literate mankind suffered a âconsiderable detachment in feeling or emotional involvement that a non-literate man or society would experience.â All three of these gentlemen, Ong, Havelock and McLuhan apparently studied the Greek philosophers; particularly Plato and Socrates. Socrates was an orator who worried about reading serving as a substitute for remembering. According to Nicholas Carr in his article titled âThe Oral World vs. The Written Word,â it was Plato, in his work Phaedrus, who depicts Socrates as telling the title character that he would in the Republic, ban poets from his perfect state. Plato was a writer, however, and, by contrast, Socrates’ frontal attack on poetry has always been a problem for sympathetic students, who have often minimized or avoided addressing it. Havelock thought that Socrates’ rejection of poetry was merely the realization of a cultural shift but, be that as it may, one must realize that oral cultures merely present the meaning of words by using them. Beginning with the premise that the attack must be taken seriously, Eric Havelock attempts to show that Socrates’ hostility is explained by the continued domination of the poetic tradition in contemporary Greek thought.
There is, historically, no greater school than a revolution. A revolution can bring about some excesses but it is therefore not surprising that some of the most innovative, radical, and successful literacy campaigns are those that are born out of revolutionsâwhen, on a mass scale, people fight for a better society. In revolutionary periods, ideas matter as never before, and literacy needs no motivation as it becomes a truly liberatory endeavor. One of the most inspiring examples of the revolutionary transformation of literacy and education is the Russian Revolution of 1917. One of the gains of the Cuban revolution of 1959 was the Castro Regime’s fight to eradicate illiteracy in the little island. He did this in spite of an economic embargo that was used to defeat the revolution and failed to do so.
References
Ong, W. J. (1986). Writing is a technology that restructures thought. In G. Bauman (Ed.), The written word: literacy in transition (pp. 23-50). Oxford: Clarendon Press. Retrieved from https://www.bc.edu/content/dam/files/centers/boisi/pdf/f08/ong_article.pdf
Carr, N. (2010). The Oral Word vs. The Written Word
https://www.poemsoutloud.net/columns/archive/oral_world_written_word.html
Saxon, W. (2003). Walter J. Ong, 90, Jesuit, Teacher and scholar of language. Obituary. New York Times. 25 August, 2003.
Keywords:
Scriba, homeostatic, semiotics, noetic, oral-aural, diaeretic, grapholects, primary orality, secondary orality.
Walter J. Ong was an Jesuit priest, philosopher, and a linguist. In his essay âwriting is a technology that restructures thoughtâ the main thing he tries to show us is writing is a technology that changes us and yet we still donât even realize it and how writing Is a technology and it changes the we think. He talks about orality. He says there are a primary and secondary orality. The primary orality is when people have knowledge of reading and writing, their entire language is spoken. Secondary orality is when there is a highly literate and technology rich culture, a new orality emerges. Ong seeâs orality as bringing us together and literacy as dividing. In the essay he brings up points on how literacy divides or separates us. In one he says, âWriting separates the known from the knowerâ and how it creates objectivity. In his second point he says that âoral cultures merge interpretation of data and writing separates interpretation from data.â In his third point Ong says, âwriting distances us from sound, reducing the oral evanescence.â Ong goes on saying that speech and thought is all philosophy and how Plato did not like story telling. He even goes on to saying how writing affects us in school, he says âwriting making possible the conveyance of highly organized abstract thought structures independently of their actual use or of their integration into the human lifeworldâ. Ong argues that writing changes the way we think and how once a society goes literate they can never go back.
In Class we went over the transcribed thoughts of the Jesuit Priest Walter J. Ong and went over his view on writing. His transcribed speech wad titled âWriting is a Technology that restructures Thoughtâ Ong states how Oral and Literacy Culture compete with one another due to the thoughts and notions that surround the other. Oral culture believes Literacy to a crutch when dealing with memorization and depending t heavily on writing will deteriorate memory. The following passage makes a reference to early philosopher Socrates and his stance on Literate culture which holds to be a prominent argument against literate culture: âPlatoâs Socrates urges, writing destroys memory. Those who use writing will become forgetful, relying on an external source for what they lack in internal sources. Writing weakens the mind.â Where the literate see Oral culture as absolite in the ways of preserving knowledge. Literate culture sees itself as the superior of the two holding high regard to those who can read and write, as shown with the word âIlliterateâ which can be seen as an insult among literate culture. As the Passage states:âThe term âilliterateâ itself suggests that persons belong to the class it designates are deviants, defined by something they lack, namely literacy.â Walter Ong noted in oral and Literate culture and being famous for âtechnologizing the word âTwo-Thousandsâ.â He deciphered and differentiated the struggles of writing versus speech by what they each feel the other lacks and what actually separates them. âThe oral world as distresses literates because sound is evanescent. Typically, literates want word and thoughts pinned downăŒ though it is impossible to âpin downâ an event. The mind trained in oral culture does not feel the literateâs distress: it can operate with exquisite skill in the world of sounds, events, evanescences.â This article over all tied in well with our proves readings such as Ted Chiangâs novella âThe Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feelingâ and Nicholas Wadeâs article âEarly Voices: The Leap to Languagesâ where they discuss the journey of language and its shifts from one plan to the next: from proto-language to the current multiple ones and from Oral to Literate to Digital. âWriting, in the strict sense of the word, as has already been seen, was very late development in human history. The first script, or true writing, that we know was developed among the Sumerians in Mesopotamia only around the year 3500 BC, less than 6,000 years ago.â
Walter J. Ong was a Jesuit Priest and was apart of a scholar religious congregation. Always interested in learning, Ong was known for his orality and literacy contributions. After his death in 2003, Ongâs work still remains the topic of discourse. In Ongâs âWriting is a Technology That Restructures Thoughtâ, Ong uses psychological thoughts and a primitive approach that has created a vast impact in the study of etymology. Ong says that writing changes us without awareness and changes human consciousness. Thus the change of orality. The primary early form of language orality was with face-to-face communication. Oral traditions dominated how information was discoursed and taught. Then secondary orality emerged from highly literate and technology-rich culture. Communication shifted with help of radio, computers, smartphone, etc able to reach the masses. Ong believed regardless of the process of communication, literacy was necessary for the development of history, science, and philosophy.
Literacy is a separation. The rules of writing differ from the spoken word. Once you go literate, there is no going back. Writing increases the way we think. We become more abstract and less concrete. This reminds me of the Ted Chiangâs novella âThe Truth of Fact, The Truth of Feelingâ. With his character Jijingi, Chiang demonstrated how written word became a valuable resource in remembrance of family lineage. This was required to preserve his culture. Characters in this story were also wary of the impact this new technology would have on the people. Because writing was not a natural concept. There are tools needed to create words. This will change how individuals think and how information is conveyed.
One aspect of the lecture that I found fascinating was Ongâs analogy. His analogy states if one has the knowledge of written word, oral words will always be filtered by text. This means as an audience, you will always spell in your head. Ong is quoted saying, âThe fact that we do not commonly feel the influence of writing on our thoughts shows that we have interiorized the technology of writing so deeply that without tremendous effort we cannot separate it from ourselves or even recognize its presence and influenceâ (Page 24). Now that I am aware of this idea, I always recognize when spelling words in my head. Living in a digital word, I find myself lacking the appreciation for written language. Being able to talk to your phone and letting an app write has changed my dynamics of texting. In addition when writing versus speaking, one must think clearly of the idea they want to convey. I find myself revising at least twice before sending out a message to make sure I accurately state the opinion I want to convey. When I speak, I say what comes to mind, in hope my audience understands me.
It is clear why Ong was so intrigued with language. His use of rhetorical techniques to draw attention creates leeway to myriad thought-provoking conversations. This is why his work is continuously valued today.
The first line in Walter J. Ongâs article, âWriting is a Technology that Restructures Thoughtâ, is âLiteracy is imperiousâ. Imperious means to assume power in an arrogant and domineering way without reason or justification. Ong couldnât have chosen a better word to encapsulate his article. In this article Ong compares the orality of peoples who have no written language or âprimary oralityâ to the orality that emerges from highly literal and technology-rich cultures or âsecondary oralityâ. Ong argues that the qualities in reading and writing affect the way a human beingâs brain works. Literacy literally increases the way in which mankind can think, something that an oral culture would never be able to achieve. Literacy changes us and it does so without us even realizing the changes are occuring. Ong states âThe fact that we do not commonly feel the influence of writing on our thoughts shows that we have interiorized the technology of writing so deeply that without tremendous effort we cannot separate it from ourselves or even recognize its presence and influence.â The way that we think is forever changed when we become literate. Ong also argues that writing is a technology. Oral speech is entirely natural to human beings. Any child who is not born physiologically or psychologically impaired will inevitably learn to talk. Writing on the other hand is not learned by all physiologically or psychologically unimpaired peoples. Writing is not natural to humans. It must be learned and must be performed using tools, this makes writing itself a technology. Ong states that, âWriting is simply a thing, something to be manipulated, something inhuman, artificial, a manufactured product.â Labeling writing as artificial is not meant to condemn writing but rather meant to praise it. Writing is one of the most important technologies, if not the most important technology that mankind has ever experienced. âWriting is utterly invaluable and indeed essential for the realization of fuller, interior, human potentials.â Without a literate culture humans would not have been able to create radios, televisions, phones, computers, or any of the modern technologies that we take for granted everyday. Writing is the ultimate grandfather to all technologies.
Walter Jackson Ong. SJ (Nov 30, 1912- Aug 12, 2003) was the famous professor of English literature. His major concern was to shift from orality to literacy on culture and education. His reflection on âWriting is a technology that restructures thought âhad an extremely wide-ranging impact in all areas of life. Mr. Ong portrays humans as lacking understanding in the literary field by nature. In other words, Ong means to say that being literate is expected to be normal. His stance that literacy is not the condition of the normal human because if it were then, we would never need to learn literacy. Being illiterate is not a problem or defect that it taken to be as. He establishes a distinction between our oral communication as the life force of an idea and the belief that writing thus idea causes it to be nonexistent or dead. Oral speech is a natural thing (outside of impaired individuals). Ong says speakers can speak unconsciously correct without necessarily explaining the rules they are unconsciously following. Even the impaired (psychologically or physiological) may not be literate in the writing sense; so, as speech writing is not a natural act.
Ong disagrees with the thought of writing consist of mechanical skill. Not all humans are writers from birth. They need to do some efforts to separate their skills from thyself and realize its presence and influence on them. According to Ong,” A word is an event, a happening, not a thing, as letters make it appear to be. âin this Ong takes an example of a word that is made from letters will seems to be imaginative white writing culture but in oral culture (that includes stories, quantifiers etc.) the focus is on the sound that not progressively let us imagine. Writing culture leads us to think and analyze but oral culture sometimes takes us to just focus on sounds that cannot ever be present all at once.
Plato argues that âwriting is something inhuman, artificial, and a manufactured product, which are some of the same arguments against computers. â. In this Plato condemning writing as a manufactured product which we make my own and not reliable. Plato also argued that âtexts do not respond to a readerâs queries, and then likens writing to computers with the adage, âGarbage in, garbage out.â here in this Ong made the comparison with his previous argument that in case any question that is poorly phrased question written on the internet, has been under many improvements in the further research. That is why sometimes it does not respond right to the question that is to be asked. Another Plato argument that,” writing weakens the mind through removing the necessity of memorization.” In this Ong says that less thinking and more researching to the ready-made material will be prevalent.
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Mr. Ong argument is persuasive because we had not established literacy as a necessity before we had initially developed tools for hunting and gathering in previous human existence. Ong, like Baron, points out that writing is a technology that has become so ingrained in some cultures that it has become transparent to the point we do not even give it much if any thought, much less considers it a technology. On the other hand, Ong continues and join the bacon’s thought that, âAlthough we take writing so much for granted as to forget that it is a technology, writing is in a way the most dramatic of the three technologies of the word. Literacy is considered a necessary trait in modern society, or you are deemed as uneducated, the same concept can be interpreted in computers, if you are illiterate at working a computer, you will ultimately be seen as an uneducated individual in the same way as an illiterate writer would be. Mr. Ong intention is not to insult technology of writing, on the contrary, he states âto say writing is artificial is not to condemn it but to praise itâ, thus beginning to go into depth of technology’s contribution to the human race. The technology of Writing somehow extracts words from real life, and transfer it to a sort of different world on paper or digital.
Walter Ong was an an American jesuit priest, an English literature professor, a historian and philosopher. In his published lecture âWriting is a Technology That Reconstructs Thoughtâ, he makes a point on how he sees orality and literacy. Father Ong sees orality as bringing together while literacy as dividing. Father Ong argues that literacy as a technology changes the way a human mind thinks and once we go literate, there is no turning back. Primary orality, which is orality of people who have no knowledge of writing and secondary orality, orality emerging from literate and technical culture such as television and smartphones are two very different cultures. Although both involves orality, primary orality where a person is standing face to face in a conversation doesnât compare to watching a commercial on television sitting alone on your couch. If an oral culture were to be introduced to a literate culture, there would be a huge shift within that culture and can change their ways of thinking entirely like Jijingiâs story from Ted Chiangâs âThe Truth of Fact, The Truth of Fiction.â Roland Bartâs âThe Author is Deadâ is also an example of how orality differs from literacy, how the reader has their own interpretations on the authorâs writing and as a reader, itâs normal to completely disregard the authorâs intentions. Obviously, you canât do that if the author were to be standing in front of you while telling you their story. Itâs also ironic how in regards to secondary orality, literate culture must be involved in order to create things like television which are orally based. In conclusion, there is no saying that orality is good and literacy is bad or vice versa, but with any type of technology there are downsides and benefits to it. Like we have learned from the previous readings, weâll just have to work around the bad and enjoy the good aspects of it all.
In today’s lecture we read the writing of Walter J. Ong titled, “Writing is a Technology that Restructures Thought”. Walter J. Ong was a priest, a historian and theologian as well as a professor of literature, and much more. Once and for all he was an important image to many. In his excerpt Father Ong talks about how literacy is something that developed and that was gained to the human brain. He analyzed that peoples though are only important and serious if it is written down. He believed that writing is a technology or a mechanism. In order to gain this writing technology human being must practice it in order to master it. I found the idea of writing being a technology very interesting, as I never thought about it that way. Ong made me realize that this might actually be a mechanical process that was encoded in humans and in me as I was growing up and learning to write. That writing was the technology I was designed to practice and master.
Moreover, in classes we talked about few terms that had played a big role in Father’s Ong excerpt and two of them were “primary orality” and “secondary orality”. Primary orality is the knowledge only of the spoken language and no knowledge on writing. Secondary orality is wider knowledge or technology of both. In today’s world, for the secondary orality we could consider different technologies such as smartphones, computers or laptops. The literate mind within us, gives as the ability to understand and process the language we speak.
Walter J. Ong is an American Jesuit priest who was scholarly, and even celebrated his interest of learning through his Jesuits tradition. In his essay âWriting is a Technology that Restructures Thought,â Ong speaks about many subjects including Socrates and orality. The essay Ong creates was originally an oral one, spoken to an audience. Ong uses the a rhetoric strategy of illustrating the things written, differentiating the oral speech from the language used. He goes on to saying there are two different orality: primary and orality. Primary orality is the orality of people who have no knowledge of writing, it is like the oral culture seen in Chiangâs story. These people that identify with primary orality have no knowledge of reading and writing. Secondary orality is orality that emerges from a highly literate and technology rich culture, such as the one we live in today. Secondary orality would be used to describe the United States as a whole, being surrounded by phones, and computers and bright bigÂlit advertisement son the side of
the highway. His main idea is about consciousness. Looking at the first line in his essay, âLITERACY is imperious.â Imperious means âassuming power and authority without justification.â Therefore, this entire line is a bold statement to make. Literacy is powerful, it changes society and Ong states we are so unconscious to the changes that something as simple as literacy does. However he does contrast this by bringing the idea about that we must have a highly literate and intellectual community to invent the innovations we have around, such as tvâs and computers.
Walter J Ong was a professor in English literature and one of his main interest was discovering the transition between orality and literacy influenced our current culture and human consciousness today. He was born and raised in Missouri.
He graduated high school in 1929.
In 1933 he received a Bachelor of Arts degree, majoring in Latin from Rockhurst College. In 1941 Ong graduated from Saint Louis University After majoring in English and earning his masterâs degree.
Ong returned to Saint Louis University and taught there for 30 years. In 1955 he received his Ph.D. in English from Harvard University.
He died in 2003 in St. Louis, Missouri.
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Ongâs âWriting is a Technology That Restructures Thoughtâ
Literate mind
Primary orality
Secondary Orality
âIt explores the issues raised in Ted Chaingâs âThe Truth of Fact, The Truth of Feeling,â namely the literate mind is fundamentally different than the mind of one who has primary orality or no knowledge of reading and writing. This is the difference between the world and literate cultures. Then secondary orality, is the return to oral culture through literacy with visual technology. Much like the narrator world in Chaingâs story, moving from a literate to digital culture, which we could call a culture of secondary orality. I began to pose certain questions pertaining to information that seeped itself into my brain while reading said texts. What couldâve happened differently to help early humans and their way of communication evolv much quicker than it actually did? What influenced the change, and how technology is influencing and changing language?