2. Or watch movies? Special issue of 19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century (forthcoming 2014). One of the best (and most challenging) books I’ve read in recent months is Walter J. Ong’s extraordinary Orality and Literacy – which documents the invention of writing and its effect on culture. A foundational work is The Singer of Tales, by Albert B. Lord (1960; posthumous new ed. The presence of runic writing before the influx of Latinate literacy in Anglo-Saxon England is often neglected when investigating the transitional nature of orality and literacy in vernacular Anglo-Saxon writing. The framing of orality as a “preference” or “tendency” encourages its place within the paragone of the printed and spoken word, and suggests a single-sensory conception of media – that orality exists in a dialectical relationship with literacy, and that communication is a competition between eye and ear. Buy Orality and Literacy (New Accents) 2 by Ong, Walter J.

Orality exists in an ongoing relationship with literacy in ways that are mutually constitutive and reinforcing.

So what does “orality and literacy” mean for us? Although speech is still prominent over writing, this current “high technology” age gives writing more weight on a scale of importance. Like all technologies, literacy has the potential to deepen our appreciation of the world and ourselves. Ong calls writing a “technological revolution” that not only transformed societies, but also re-structured the way individuals think and feel in the privacy of their own minds. … We have to understand the culture of those we’re around. But it also has the potential to alienate us from lived reality. (ISBN: 9780415281294) from Amazon's Book Store. Do they prefer to tell stories or to read? His account has more than just historical interest, however, as there remain in the world today many cultures that are primarily oral. Ong (2002) argues that “in all the wonderful worlds that writing opens, the spoken word still resides and lives” (p. 8). Secondary orality. We can change the way we teach. It’s reshaping the way we look at communication.

The concept of orality stems from ethnographic descriptions of oral poetry in particular and of oral traditions in general. Ong on the Differences between Orality and Literacy Walter Ong characterises the main differences between the languages of oral and literate cultures in these terms: [It] is possible to generalize somewhat about the psychodynamics of primary oral cultures, that is, of oral cultures untouched by writing. As Walter Ong observes in Orality and Literacy, the way we communicate — whether it be through voice, writing, or print — changes how we think and behave. Everyday low prices and free delivery on eligible orders. The presence of runes in Anglo-Saxon In “Orality and Literacy,” Walter Ong gives a fascinating account of how the development of writing and moveable print has forever changed the way people think and process information. Orality and Literacy ‘Professor Walter Ong’s book explores some of the profound changes in our thought processes, personality and social structures which are the result, at various stages of our history, of the While homo sapiens started speaking language as long as 60,000 years ago, it only began writing down its speech within the past three or four thousand years of its history.