This heavily dense book is a creation and collage of
lots of different topics and ideas that mainly focus and represent the Literacy
and orality in our times. There is a compact mixture of a wide range of work
cited from different authors that compare and contrast their understanding of
Literature and Orality. The Technologizing of the Word discuss how there is a
difference between oral and Literacy, as mentioned in the first chapter father Ferdinand
de Saussure of modern linguistics had called and payed close attention to the
primacy of oral speech. This reinforces all verbal communication but Ferdinand thought
of writing not as the transformer of verbalization but instead a complement to
oral speech (Ong 5). Saussure linguistics had developed a very highly
sophisticated study of phonemics, this is to show how language is incorporated in
sound. Humans existed before writing was passed on through verbalized records.
The
earliest script only dates from 6,000 years ago but human have been in existence
for a much greater time than that. Homo sapiens have been in existence for
nearly 30,000 – 50,000 years. There are thousands and thousands of different
types of writings and languages but there are only a few that are still around
today and being used. Throughout the years of human existence and the tens of thousands
of languages that have been spoken in the course of history there has been only
106 languages that have even been committed to writing to a degree appropriate enough
to have been able to produce literature. Out of all the 3000 languages only 78 of
the languages do have literature but there is no way to calculate how many
languages have disappeared or been transmuted into different languages before
writing came along (Ong, 7). With so many different languages some seem to also
be forgotten, the only way to not have forgotten the different types of
languages is by having them writing down. Soon evolution of orality and
literacy came along making it possible to understand better both oral culture
and subsequent writing culture. Print is the buildup of pristine culture and
subsequent writing culture keeping in mind that literacy began with writing for
example, this book is a good example of some type of print but also writing.
As
we introduced print and begin to start discussing more about, it is also important
to keep in mind that the print culture brings writing into a new peak. This new
type of orality called ‘secondary orality’ questioned our understanding of the
differences between orality and literacy as the electronic age starts to rise. However how
will the era of technology continue on shifting the way we interact,
communicate with one another. If scholars continue on studying the differences
of these three different types of field’s oral culture, subsequent writing
culture and print chances are that print will continue shifting from orality to
literacy on to electronic processing into different structures.
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