Ong Chapter 4 James Butler

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Ong Chapter 4James Butler

• Writing Restructures Consciousness

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The New World of Autonomous Discourse

• Writing creates context free language
• Written words cannot be challenged the way an
  orator can be

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Writing as a Technology

• Platos challenge to writing and the paradox of
  his work
• Writing is a technology

4
What is Writing?

• A coded system of visible marks
• Writer knows what what the reader will decode
  from the marks

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Only One Alphabet

• Writing emanates from invention of scripts
• Cuneiform
• Hieroglyphics
• Chinese Script
• Mayan Script
• Pictographs require enormous number of symbols

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Only One Alphabet

• Alphabet derives from Semitic script
• Alphabet has added advantage of vowels added by
  the Greeks
• Ensured the domination of Greek philosophy and
  ideas in the development of western civilization
• Claims of left brain advantage for phonetic
  alphabet analytic thought
• Transforms sounds from the evanescent to world of
  space

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The Onset of Literacy

• Reserved for the few clergy
• Rise of writing craft scribes
• Primitive writing tools supported this
• Initially texts were dictated to scribes
• Oral format retained in style of writing

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From Memory To Written Records

• Written form was not trusted
• Often accompanied by a symbol representing the
  text
• Concept of being located in time not prevalent
• Documents often not dated
• Forgery common charters of Edward the
  Confessor
  
  

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Dynamics of Textuality

• Struggle to discover the subtext
• Actors need to adapt written words back into the
  oral world
• The tyranny of the blank page

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Distance

• Orality not effective for truly analytic work
• Writing by nature analytic
• Speaker cannot correct without undermining
• Writer can scan back and analyze own work

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Precision

• Analysis allows for precision
• Can alter speech patterns
• Greater introspectivity when knower is separated
  from known

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Grapholects

• Dialects that become dominant because of economic
  or political power
• Access to and control of printing
• London English
• Tuscan Italian
• Hochdeutch
• Printing even more than writing caused explosive
  growth in the content of languages

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Rhetoric VS Philosophy

• Rhetoric originally aligned with the oral
• Philosophy aligned with the literate
• Socrates (oral)
• Plato (written)
• Aristotle (taxonomic)
• Women excluded from rhetoric
• The novel

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Learned Languages

• Learned Latin in Europe
• Development of Science

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Tenaciousness of Orality

• Slow movement from orality to literacy
• Oral dissertations
• Rhetoric today often includes written texts and
  excludes memory