Ong: Shifting from orality to development of script

As Ong continues on discussing and focusing mainly with primary orality in the first couple of chapters he quickly shifts over from discussing of primary orality to the development of scripts. Ong is taking into account some of the things that are not usually thought about or brought into consideration when studying or working with literacy in any sort of filed. For example, one of the most important effects that Ong discusses in chapter four is being able to understand a deeper meaning of pristine or primary orality he suggests that “pristine or primary orality enables us better to understand the new world of writing, what it truly is, and what functionally literate human beings really are” (Ong, 77). This might be the only way to help human beings better understand that writing does distance the originator of his or her thoughts from the receiver. This might be because writing does this by enabling the existence of dialog. When there is no dialog enabled there is also the absence of direct questioning or contested to the originator about his writing. This is really important in literature because the originator might be trying to convey an important message across to a certain type of audience and if the message is not clear to that audience there was no message really going across. As if there was actually primary orality there could be some questions about what the originator was trying to get across. There is a bigger chance of dialog, bouncing ideas of each other, and sharing further information.

Writing still has a much deeper understanding and meaning to our everyday lives that human beings go on with their day not fully being aware that without writing the mind would not be functioning the way it does, this is not only when engaged in writing but when its normally composing its thoughts in oral form (Ong, 77). Ong also explains how writing is evolving from more than just literacy, it is also becoming a way of expression. Humans are moving from an oral-aural-based sensory world to one where vision controls supreme. The transition of writing is giving us a sense of earlier culture effects and what humans think about it. With orality there is more spread of knowledge than with literacy because there is more of a dialog and chances to have an open discussion with the originator. This holds a structured way of thinking rather than having ideas floating around in your head with no actual meaning or structure.