Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (1982)

First published in 1982 by Methuen & Co. Ltd, Jesuit scholar Walter J. Ong's classic study of the development from orality to literacy has been a constant reprint for the past three decades.

This cover (photo left) is from the edition of 2002. Amazon is selling a yet new edition celebrating the book's thirty-year anniversary.

Ong premises that primarily orality society is a society "totally unfamiliar with writing" (p. 6), whose "oral university of communication or thought" (p. 2) is very difficult for readers like us born in the age of 'secondary orality' to conceive.

In order not to mistaken oral societies for being inferior or secondary to chirographci (writing) and typographic (print) societies, which is absolutely incorrect too, it is essentially approach them diachronically or historically. That is what Ong did in this book by contrasting "orality with alphabetic writing...as used in the West" (p.3).

Human societies (according to Ong's study and references) develop through the following technical transformation:

Oralàwriting (bisected by the invention of the alphabet around 1500 BC)àprint (bisected by the invention of alphabetic letterpress print in the mid-15th century Europe)àelectronics or post-typography.

In each phase, the way human beings express themselves shapes up not only their cultures but also their consciousness as they gradually interiorize each new technology.

"The medium is the message" (Marshall McLuhan, p. 29).

Respectively, each culture registers the following features:

(1) Primary oral society (Chapter 2 & 3)
     * Language=a mode of action, not a countersign of thought
     * Word as necessarily spoken, sounded and power-driven (sound=power)
     * You know what you can recall (knowledge in mnemonics and formulas)
     * Additive rather than subordinative
     * Aggregative rather than analytic ("The savage [oral] mind totalizes") (Strauss)
     * Redundant or 'copious'
     * Conservative or traditionalist (originality lies in managing connection with listeners)
     * Close to the human lifeworld (assimilate the alien to the more familiar)
     * Agonistically toned (situates knowledge in a context of struggle)
     * Empathetic and participatory (learning and knowing=getting with it)
     * Homeostatic (meanings in insistent actual habitat, "direct semantic ratification" by Goody)
     * Situational rather than abstract (intelligence assessed in operational contexts)
     * Verbal memory highly valued (a sine qua non)
     * Actions and attitudes depend more on effective use of words and human interaction
     * Oral memory works effectively with monumental, heavy characters

(2) Chirographic or writing society (Chapter 4)
    * A late development: Home sapiens has been on earth perhaps some 50,000 years, the invention of writing or script dates as followed:
       @ Sumerian cuneiform  3500 BC
       @ Egyptian hieroglyphics  3000 BC
       @ Indus Valley script  3000-2400 BC
       @ Chinese script  1500 BC
       @ Semitic alphabet  1500 BC
       @ Minoan or Mycenean 'Linear B'  1200 BC (syllabary)
       @ Greek alphabet   720-700 BC
       @ Mayan script  AD 50 (syllabary)
       @ Aztec script  AD 1400
       @ Korean script  AD 1443
       @ Cherokee syllabary  AD 1821
   * Always marginally oral, "the transition from orality to literacy was slow" (p. 112)
       @ Took centries to internalize alphabets and lose orality residues
       @ 8 BC Greek Script developed;
            The Middle Ages taught texts but always tested by oral disputes;
            16th century rhetoric books still focused on memory, an oral style;
            19th century the defense of doctoral dissertation;
            In western classical antiquity, texts were meant to be and deserved to be read.
    * "Served mostly workday economic and administrative purposes" (p. 84)
    * Often regarded as an instrument of secret and magic power (p. 91)
    * Governed by consciously contrived articulable rules
    * Favors left-hemisphere activity and fosters abstract, analytic thought (p. 89)
    * Can choose between words, a reflective selectivity (Backward scanning) (p. 102)
    * Makes it possible to articulate introspectivity to the external world and interior self
    * Orality relegates meaning to context but writing in language itself (p. 104)
    * Moves words from the sound world to a world of visual space

(3) Typographic or print society (Chapter 5)
   * Situates words in space relentlessly, locks words into position in this space.
   * Calls for painful revision for the author which is unknown to manuscript culture.
   * The invention of the following:
     @ Indexes—to locate words  visually;
     @ Books, contents and labels;
     @ Meaningful surface—the exact worded description of complex observations;
     @ Typographic space.
     * Eventually removes the ancient art of (orally based) rhetoric
     * Creates a sense of the　private ownership of the word, a sense of closure and finality
     * In the 18th century, modern copyright laws were shaping over western Europe
     * Word becomes commodity, thing-like, impersonal and religiously neutral
     * The printed text is the text in its fullest  paradigmatic form
     * Gives rise to issues of intertextuality and romantic notions of 'originality', 'creativity'

(4) Post-typography or Electronics society (Chapter 5)
     * New secondary orality, which is essentially deliberate and self-conscious orality
     * Primarily on the use of writing and print
     * Generates a larger groups than those of primary oral cultures (the global village)

For my purpose here, it is satisfying to learn so many characteristics of societies developing into a writing tradition. The book answers many of my questions such as why indigenous peoples are at the same time so fascinated by yet so fearful of the invention of writing (Ong's agony).

As Ong admits, his book explains orality and literacy mainly based on a development in the west with occasional references to the works of Jack Goody et al. for cases from other parts of the world. The Homeric Question, Roman orators and the Bible are his most used examples.

As most indigenous societies encounter with chirographic culture at a later stage of human history with some indeed entering into it at the moment, it will be very interesting and certainly necessarily to study this 'cultural clash' that is happening right under our nose.I believe Ong will also encourage such a study.

For Word is spirit, and life only gives death. (2 Corinthians)

Ong's Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word has lived in the market against  the vagaries of human preference for three decades. In addition to the theme, I think I know why he prevails:

First, he's structured and informative.
Second, he presents lengthy arguments in manageable chunks, separated from each other by subtitles within ten pages.
Third, his language is friendly, including vocabulary, syntax and discourse style.
Fourth, his references are many, but he uses them tersely.

It almost seems he knows the secret of popular blogpost writing, except that there is only one titlepapge in his entire book. As a reader, I have greatly enjoyed this intellectual treat.