"Orality and Literacy" by Walter J. Ong

Upon reading Walter J. Ong’s “Orality and Literacy,” I was struck by two things. The first is simply the Western-Eurocentric views that the book takes and uses as a meterstick to judge other cultures and classify them. The second thing that struck me was how little thought I had ever given to the implications of written word over oral-aural language. To address the first concern, it seemed to me that certain examples in the book, about the shift in mentality towards and way of reacting to writing following the development of mechanized printing instruments, were insufficient to allow Ong to make the kind of conclusions he did. For example, Ong states that even though Korean and Turkic tribes had mechanisms for printing their language, it was not until the development of the printing press in Europe that individual letters came into importance and people began to study them. One can’t say that the Turkic tribes or Koreans didn’t value letters simply because their printing implements were whole words. Also, certain alphabets may make it impossible to divide words into letters simply because a language does not need an alphabet of letters to be written. Mandarin Chinese is written in characters that have the meaning of whole words and only sometimes characters are combined to take on the meaning of one world. Further, the characters in Mandarin Chinese often represent more than one phoneme. The biggest problem here is the implications that Ong draws from the created importance of individual letters. One implication is that written language is needed to carry out analytical thought as well as categorization and chronological logic, the foundations for modern science. I think it is very possible to carry out these mental exercises in one’s head and also then to be able to tell someone everything that you’ve thought about. Another assertion that Ong makes is that this is simply a form of apprenticeship style learning and that to truly “study” one needs writing to accomplish it mentally. I think this is fundamentally false and that perhaps in learning something by reading it, one is simply apprenticed to the book. After all, Ong repeatedly states that even in reading, a person is hearing the sounds of the words in their heads or even sounding the words out as they read. It would seem, then, that a person is listening to the master they are apprenticed to in reading a book by that master or any other author offering information or knowledge. This book, however, did open some very interesting paths of mental exploration into the world of language which I have thought about before, but never in this context. I personally have never been a “good reader.” I read very slowly, but understand what I read, however, I often have to read a passage twice to grasp its full implications. Because of this, I often joke that I am “half-way literate.” I wonder whether or not this difficulty in reading has led to me using language in different ways than people who read a lot or read faster than I do and whether or not “good readers’” understanding of language and communication is different than mine. Major difficulty in communication has been avoided, however, because I am encultrated into Western society as are the majority of people I meet on a day-to-day basis and this (encultration) I think is the main factor in communication. However, that communication is done on an oral-aural basis and so I wonder whether or not what I write, in essays such as this, for example, will be understood when read by others.