Ong Part II

Finishing Ong's "Orality and Literacy" I continued to read on about orality versus literacy and the differences between them. I began to read about narrative, and learned about its role in a literate society.  Narrative becomes more prevalent, because through writing it becomes the backbone of most all "verbal art forms" (137). The example given in the text is how even science students "write-up" their findings in a narrative way after conducting experiments (137). A story can be fragile, and the differences in telling it through writing versus orally are vast. The act of telling a story orally relies on kairos, it is totally depended on the right moment that the story is told in, and the audience present. After the story is told it vanishes again (138). The fact that we live in a literate society means that we depend on written text for authenticity, it holds permanence that we value much more than just 'hear-say'. Reading about narrative led me to the discussion of story - including characters, plot and storyline. I found this particularly interesting because of another class I am taking, where we are exploring the topic of storytelling as well. Storyline and plot are closely related to narrative - a narrative can many times tell story too. Telling a story in a literate culture requires much less memory to recite than that of an oral culture. Oral prompters and written notes completely revolutionize the way that the oral reciting of stories has been done. One thing I particularly learned about were characters - round ones and flat ones. Round characters have emotions and relatable characteristics that make them lifelike and 'full' to audiences, while flat characters don't really change much and offer little real interaction or a depth of characteristics. Round characters are what make stories good, and are much harder to create in an oral culture. According to Ong, the existence of written text itself fostered a feeling of internalization of human emotion. Written word let people write down their individual and internal thoughts, and allowed for "private interpretation". Ong explains that written word and the act of reading itself "engage the psyche in strenuous interiorized, individual thought" and in this way can more easily connect with 'round' characters in a story (150). I found this very interesting, the fact that writing and written text could allow literate audiences to analyze and interpret any body of text individually. Where in oral culture it would be very difficult to individually interpret ideas or stories because individuals would tell them different every time, or if someone else told the story their interpretation may be biased or different than the last. The fact that internal interpretation is so important in literate cultures is very surprising.

While reading Walter Ong's "Orality and Literacy" on the development of writing through speech I noticed many things. One thing I found particularly interesting is the division between spoken word, and written word or text. I hadn't thought much before about the distinction in language, other than their obvious differences. I know from personal experience in classrooms of other wide-eyed students that many hate to publicly speak - not only do their faces show it, but some even admit it while speaking. In the text Ong states that "the impression grew…oral art forms were essentially unskillful and not worth serious study" (10). This I found interesting in that oral delivery and/or speeches seem to be one of the most difficult things to get people to do enthusiastically, and successfully so it seems that it isn't actually so unskilled at all.
Since the change from oral presentation to written texts, many changes have happened as a result.
Another thing I learned and found interesting while eroding was the discovery of oral cultures. I have little previous knowledge of these types of societies and am intrigued by their apparently different means of communication which I can not quite experience ever. I am amazed by the ability their minds acquire for memory compared to a society like our today, where since things are written down and thus available without memory, our capacity for memory is less. One question I found myself asking was, "How long does it take for an oral society, with written text first introduced, to being to lose their mental memorization capacity?" How long after the ancient Greeks 'invented' language did it take for their dependence on strong memories to dissolve to what we have today? This leads to a realization I had that is that emerging technologies, including writings and other 'mediations', build society in one way while also leaving a trail of consequences or reactions as well. Because of writing, our linear society has a smaller memory capacity, but with the ability to write we have built the biggest database in the world - the internet, can fully oral cultures say the same?