Language and Textuality

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Language and Textuality
Stages of Development of Human Consciousness,
or Frameworks for Thought, Knowledge, and
Activity

• Textuality and New Media
• English 444 Section 3
• Fall 2000
• Webster Newbold, Instructor

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Overview

• Why study Textuality?
• To provide perspective on the development and
  nature of language as communication, expression,
  memory
• To understand how people in the general culture
  relate to the word--especially as regards
  education and public and private discourse
• To identify ways we can participate in new
  textualities as readers and writers, teachers
  and students

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Overview

• Stages defined by dominant mode of language use
• Oralspoken word predominates (no history or
  concept of writing)
• Chirographicwriting in manuscript predominates
• Typographicwriting in print predominates
• Cyberneticexpression in digital form
  predominates writing mixes with other
  audio-visual forms in complex and dynamic ways

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Some Terminology

• Textuality The existence of thought in external
  form, usually as symbolic language
• Primary orality Totally oral culture--no idea of
  writing
• Secondary orality Oral use of language but based
  ultimately on writing
• The human sensorium The whole set of human
  senses in operation--repertoire

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More Terminology

• Noetic economy The thought system of a culture,
  controlling how everything--individuals, objects,
  memory, etc.--interrelates
• Contumacious Stubbornly rebellious

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Overview--Time Frame
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Orality

• From Walter Ong, Literacy and Orality, chapter 3

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Time Frame for Primary Orality
(Varies with cultures) Western Cultureuntil
pre-Classical Greece, about 1,000-800 BC
Characteristics of Primary Orality
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Words are Power and Action

• Words exist as long as they are going OUT of
  existence
• Words are events, not objects
• Religious implications

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Oral Knowledge Must Be Recallable

• Patterning of words essential (rhythm,
  formulae)
• Knowledge is recalled as proverbial or epic
  (short durable, long durable forms)
• Proverbial wisdom forms/guides thought

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Verbal Memory Works Differently in Song

• Rarely verbatim or word-for-word
• Uses modular strategies in real time
• Performances vary within consistent framework
  (response to live audience dynamic)

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Sound Comes from the Interior

• Sound reveals hidden nature or beings, objects
• Sight reflects externals, is unreliable
• Hearing is holistic and unifying--happens all at
  once, everywhere

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Orality Affects Thought and Expression

• It is additive rather than subordinative in
  discourse structure
• Aggregative rather than analytic in thought

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Orality Affects Thought and Expression

• It is redundant or copious
• Hearers can only process language so
  fast--repetition aids communication
• Repetition and expansion aid production (orator
  thinking in real time)

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Orality Affects Thought and Expression

• It is conservative, traditionalist
• Hard-won knowledge is guarded carefully
• Folkways are preserved as valuable

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Orality Affects Thought and Expression

• Orality is Close to the Human Lifeworld
• Knowledge has to be connected to life to have
  meaning
• Abstraction is nearly impossible (it is separate
  from life and action)
• Concepts are understood situationally

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Orality Affects Thought and Expression

• Oral Interchange is Agonistically Toned
• Link to human lifeworld retains link to conflict
• Disease, disaster, death often personalized--causi
  ng conflict
• Ritual praise and blame common worldwide

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Orality Affects Thought and Expression

• Oral Cultures are Homeostatic
• Knowledge serves to preserve the culture as it is
  (homeostasis)
• Truth changes to fit current circumstances

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Orality Affects Thought and Expression

• Oral Cultures are Situational Rather than
  Abstract
• Concepts understood operationally (hammer, saw,
  log, hatchet)
• Abstract thinkers held in suspicion

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Review

• Words are Power and Action
• Oral Knowledge Must Be Recallable
• Verbal Memory Works Differently in Song
• Sound Comes from the Interior

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Review ctd

• Orality Affects Thought and Expressionit is

• Additive
• Redundant or copious
• Conservative, traditionalist
• Close to the Human Lifeworld
• Agonistic
• Homeostatic
• Situational Rather than Abstract

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Return to Main Presentation...
WWN 9/12/00
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From Manuscript to Typographic Culture

• From Walter Ong, Literacy and Orality, chapter 5

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Time Frame for Manuscript Culture
In Western cultures, approximately 800 BC through
1500-1600 AD
Characteristics of Manuscript Culture
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Manuscript Culture

• Hearing-dominant
• Writing cues oral performance (e.g., reading
  aloud, in groups or alone)
• Writing recycled knowledge back into oral world
  (e.g., reading lessons in school writing to
  practice rhetorical exercises)
• Memory retrieval based on sound--no visual
  retrieval practicable

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Manuscript Culture

• Producer-oriented
• Copyists, scholars originated and controlled MS
  texts
• Texts open-ended--copyists, readers could become
  part of them (scholae)

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Manuscript Culture

• Homeostatic
• MS writing allows conveying of some knowledge
  over time
• MS writing culture is traditional, conservative,
  preserving bias toward orality
• Key factor socio-cultural aspects of literacy
  (not enough text, not enough readers within
  economic limitations)

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Time Frame for Typographic Culture

• (Western culture)
• From approximately 1700-1800 AD to 2000 AD
• Characteristics of Typographic Culture

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Typographic Culture

• Sight-dominant
• Reading can be rapid, silent
• Knowledge can be directly gained from print
  source, privately
• Memory retrieval becomes visually based (indexes
  embed words in space)
• Print documents develop labels for books as
  identical objects (titles and title pages)
• Dictionaries list, control decontextualized
  words correctness becomes issue

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Typographic Culture

• Sight-dominant ctd
• Typography organizes visual space as knowledge
  (words objectified graphic representation)
• People can think of their own knowledge as
  objectified and neutral

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Typographic Culture

• Consumer-oriented
• Final product is the goal of the
  printing/publishing process (rapid, silent
  reading creates more reader demand)
• Machine-produced print is automated, detached an
  object for consumption
• Printed book is closed--cannot be queried or
  changed
• Strongly implies the book covers all of its
  subject
• Encourages readers to think their knowledge is
  also complete

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Typographic Culture

• Dynamic
• Shift is slow at first (1450-1800)
• Change accelerates with Industrial Revolution and
  machine press (1800-1950)
• Change increases, complications abound with
  advent of media and digital culture
  (1950--current)

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Typographic Culture

• Dynamic
• Change is encouraged by growth of reading and
  reading materials (modern science made possible
  by language tied to accurate and identical
  graphics and symbols reading public gains
  strength, consumes non-fiction)
• Reader-writer relationship altered in literary
  contexts
• Point of view and tone can be tightly controlled
• Narrative Structure can be more sophisticated,
  precise
• Characters can be deep, psychologically more
  consistent

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Typographic Culture

• Dynamic
• Print becomes invisible, underlying structure for
  Secondary Orality
• Television
• Film
• Telecommunications
• Popular and Educational Computing

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Some Conjectures about Digital Culture

• Digital technology extends capabilities of print
  world (first generation)
• Desktop publishing duplicates older activities
• Digital text often solidified on paper for
  comprehension, exchange

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Some Conjectures about Digital Culture

• BUT--DT transcends print world (second
  generation)
• Flexibility, changeability of text becomes the
  norm
• Duplication
• Hypertext
• Graphic element becomes increasingly significant

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Some Conjectures about Digital Culture

• Enables return of oral elements
• In email and real-time chat
• Graphic iconography? ? (8/
• Brings People Together
• Instant messaging CU C ME audio/video
  conferencing newsgroups MOOs other virtual
  communities

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Key Questions to Follow

• How has takeover of digital textuality changed
  the pattern once again, in relation to
• Dominant sense and sensory processing
• Writing, reading, expressing
• Patterns of consumption and production
• e.g., Napster
• Impetus for cultural change
• Has DT brought people together productively,
  and will it continue to do so?

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Back to Contents
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An Assignment

• "...it was print, not writing, that effectively
  reified the word, and, with it, noetic activity"
  (119)
• Briefly explain what this passage means, and then
  describe (in several sentences each) three major
  effects that Ong believes print has had on how
  we experience the word.