Review on "Orality and Literacy" (Ch. 1-3)

Wow, what a read. I never thought I'd finish. The pure depth and complexity in Ong's writing style notably shows why he's written a book on orality and literacy.

Maybe I'm naive here, but there seemed to be quite a few words that I (and possibly many others) was unable to comprehend or define. In my opinion, Ong's writing style is one that is definitely suited for the scholarly field. It was by all means, a very un-enjoyable read.

That aside.....I did comprehend a fair amount of what he was persuading the reader to endure. Interestingly noted, was the way Ong writes about the differences in oral cultures and literate cultures repeatedly. He seems to illustrate the same point regarding the cultural differences over and over, utilizing three chapters, when it may have been more appropriate to summarize it in one. Maybe that's his culturally literate side appropriating his oral character? :-)

To start chapter one, Ferdinand de Saussure, "the father of modern linguistics", brings up a generic, yet satisfying definition of oral speech's implications on writing as the basic form of language.

Digging deeper in the chapter, we find orality is really, in its own right the basic form of language. We also learn that orality existed and still exists without writing. Conversely, writing doesn't exist without orality (Maybe just me, but I believe any intellectual being could have figured this one out.)

By the end of chapter one we are able to "see" (all pun's intended) that "text" (pg. 13) enables us as literary beings to visualize meaning associated with written language.

Chapter two was a complete sleeper for me. It seemed like filler for the book. The most useful portion of this chapter was Marshall McLuhan's brilliant saying - "The medium is the message", which seemingly resounds among all of the D.T.C. courses at Washington State University.

Chapter three was definitely the most useful and inspiring conceptually. While Ong continually perpetuates the differences in the oral and literate cultures, he clearly illustrates some key points.

- Fully literate people have great difficulty imagining what a primary oral culture is like.

- Primary oral cultures depend on mnemonic patterns, where as literary cultures depend on linguistic structure.

- Fully literate cultures often denature "human things" in favor of making them more abstract. Primary oral cultures verbalize their knowledge based on life experiences, making abstract items fit or relate to human beings.

Ong makes an interesting statement (pg. 50), when he says, "it takes only a moderate degree of literacy to make a tremendous difference in thought process." This statement leads into the most interesting portion of the chapter (pg. 50-51) and describes the differences in thought process among somewhat literate and primary oral people. It is invaluable to evaluate the responses among the people interviewed (pg. 51) in direct correlation with Ong's statement regarding literacy and thought process. The thought process the primary oral culture utilizes is one that very few of us will experience here in the United States and should be worth noting as a highlight in Ong's book.