Review on "Orality and Literacy" (Second Half - Ch. 4 priority)

After reading Ong’s “Orality and Literacy” , I must admit, that while technically challenging and at times dry, he collaborates his information into a well rounded view of his subject.

I was awe struck as he laid out the foundation of orality, language, writing, grammar, and context. It was fascinating to gain introspect on the subject and learn about the process in which we transcend from a primitively oral being into a literate one when given the necessary tools.

From the beginning of Chapter four, Ong’s borrowed quote “Writing establishes what has been called ‘context –free’ language (Hirsch 1977, pp. 21-3, 26) or ‘autonomous’ discourse (Olson 1980a)”, reveals a truth about writing that I’d never given any thought to. It’s relatively easy not to give any thought to this, because typically, we as the reader are putting into context what the writing is “saying” to us.

While parts of Ong’s book are redundant, he does lend some brilliant statements and ideas to us. Some of these statements are as follows and should protract our thoughts as readers in retrospect.

- “Writing heightens consciousness.”

- “With writing or script in this full sense, encoded visible markings engage words fully so that the exquisitely intricate structures and references evolved in sound can be visibly recorded exactly in their specific complexity and, because visibly recorded, can implement production of still more exquisite structures and references, far surpassing the potentials of oral utterance. Writing, in this ordinary sense, was and is the most momentous of all human technological inventions.”

- “Writing develops codes in a language different from oral codes in the same language.”

- “…orality relegates meaning largely to context whereas writing concentrates meaning in language itself.”


One of the most brilliant quotes in Ong’s book, “The condition of words in a text is quite different from their condition in spoken discourse. Although they refer to sounds and are meaningless unless they can be related – externally or in the imagination – to the sounds or, more precisely, the phonemes they encode, written words are isolated from the fuller context in which spoken words come into being.”

What is really amazing however is that we as individuals, process and put into context what we are reading differently from one another. While I’ve long known that individuals are different from one another, the idea of interpreting written language differently is something that I had given little thought to.

Ong does bring up a couple of things in his book that I found questionable. First, described on pg. 88, “The most remarkable fact about the alphabet no doubt is that it was invented only once.” I’m wondering how he came to this conclusion. Was it because someone else stated that in their book?

Secondly, on pg. 95, “A present-day literate usually assumes that written records have more force than spoken words as evidence of a long-past state of affairs, especially in court. Earlier cultures that knew literacy but had not so fully interiorized it, have often assumed quite the opposite.”

Interestingly, I find myself asking who is right? Both are assuming that they have more force than the other. An assumption has a small amount of credibility over a fact and leaves me pondering the situation. According to Ong, written words far surpass oral utterance. Contrary to the prior notion, Ong writes about Plato describing how written words are unresponsive and therefore indefensible. So who’s more credible?