Eric’s grasp of Ong was impressive, but his ability to tie his scholar to an entire discourse community that stretched over hundreds of years was even more so. Accolades aside, Eric’s primary focus was setting Ong up as a link between the history of the theory of composition and the history of actual composition. I find that our discussions are often weighted down by intangible and abstract theories; it was nice to hear about some ideas about composition based in real history.
Eric established at the beginning of his presentation that a clarification on the importance orality was Ong’s major contribution. The reading by Ong was effective as far as immediately intimating us with his view. The culture before the written word had no cultural memory in the terms that we think of it. As Ong stated in his talk, there was literally no where to look things up; if an idea or event was forgotten, as they eventually are, it was gone forever. This truth influenced Ong’s dissertation subject, Peter Remus, into pondering the effect of the printed word. Remus, and Ong to a degree later, looked at how the printed would could be broken down into twos. This process could possibly be repeated over and over in order to simplify a written idea to its basic truths. The problem, as we learned in the question and answer stage of the evening, is the possibility of syllogisms.
Another interesting idea that came out of the presentation was Ong’s idea of interface. This concept dealt with the linear progression of language from its beginning in orality to its current end in electronic print. Ong believes that this progression to the electronically printed word will be important, but Eric, to his credit, carefully pointed out that Ong is vague in his guess as to how this importance will be manifested. I am always grateful when a teacher in any capacity says that an answer is unsure if their research did not uncover an definitive answer; my experience is that many teachers will go ahead and guess. Instead of careening into this pitfall, Eric turned to one of Ong’s friends McLuhan. McLuhan said that electronic language is so important that it may herald a complete shift in the progression of language back to the oral; in other words, our spoken language might become our written language. Idk if Im rede 4 it. R U?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
It's interesting to think of what might have happened had Ong lived longer. As it was, he was 91 years old, and perhaps didn't even have very many academic ideas ahead of him, had he lived, but his predictions of the future, though vague, did link quite a bit into what is going on now. Text messaging was not as popular in 2003 as it is now, though instant messaging has been popular since the onset of a global network on the internet.
ReplyDeleteAs for whether or not our spoken language will become our written language, I think that there are too many snobs in the academic world to let that happen. Although, something that I have realized in my short life is that when we make fun of something (like the Jesuits), the words become a part of our vernacular, like Idk (from that Verizon commercial, I think it was). My sister and I joke about that all of the time. How long until we begin speaking like that?
Tony,when I think of "the progression of language back to the oral," I think not only of text messaging and emails. Another important component of the progression of language is the combining of visual and oral. Just think of how YouTube is changing the way people communicate, interact, and behave. The turn to the internet for information and news, along with other developments in media are changing not only the way we speak/communicate, but also the way we think. there is a growing demand for information in quick bursts; fewer people are taking the time to truly research and understand a topic before giving their two cents. We both witness first hand how short the attention spans are of the upcoming generation; it will be interesting to see where this goes.
ReplyDeleteEmily states that "there are too many snobs in the academic world to let that happen [spoking language becoming written language]." I'm not sure that it matters what these intellectuals think. Sure, this small group carries some authority, but I don't think it matches up with the behaviors of the masses. Language is an ever-evolving organism and the driving force behind these changes continues to be the masses of ordinary practitioners and the inlfuence of culture. People aren't just going to stop using text-speak because their teachers frown upon it.