53 pages • 1 hour read
Walter J. OngOrality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1982A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Critical Context: The Enduring Influence of Orality and Literacy
Ong wrote Orality and Literacy in 1982, and since then the study of oral traditions and orality has become an established field of scholarly research. This awareness of orality and the impact of literacy on human cognition and society is due in no small part to the enduring influence of this text, as well as Ong’s other related works.
Ong’s academic career spanned seven decades and included countless lectures and publications, many on the topic of orality and related fields such as literary studies and rhetoric. Although Orality and Literacy does not pioneer any novel research or present the results of any first hand fieldwork, it nonetheless played a key role in consolidating and condensing decades of prior research on the topic of orality into a relevant and coherent account. For this reason, as well as the interdisciplinary focus and accessibility of Ong’s presentation of orality-literacy studies, the book has remained a seminal text in its field throughout the decades since its first publication.
Orality and Literacy was an immediate critical success, and it has since been cited in dozens of academic papers and publications. Ong’s contributions to academia are still respected, and his work has stood the test of time by retaining its relevance despite unanticipated and revolutionary advances in communication technologies in the decades since its publication. Orality and Literacy has been translated into 11 languages and published in numerous editions worldwide, including an updated 30th anniversary edition that is testament to the enduring influence of Ong’s work.
Historical Context: Diachronic Studies and the 20th Century Perspective
Awareness of historical context is of the utmost importance when engaging with Orality and Literacy. This is true both in terms of Ong’s diachronic accounts of social and cultural development across various historical periods (as opposed to a synchronic account, which studies a specific moment in time rather than a development over time) and also in regards to the historical and social context of the text’s publication.
The cultural shift from orality to literacy took place over a range of historical timeframes across the vast majority of the world’s societies. Through the course of the book, Ong mentions and discusses many historical periods, with his primary focus being on the Western societies of Europe and America. Ong discusses developments in society and cognition that were conditioned by literacy within the historical context of these changes. The purview of Orality and Literacy is generally confined to the period between the 8th century BCE and the modern era. Ong highlights certain particular periods and milestones as significant in mapping the orality-literacy shift, such as the archaic period of Classical Antiquity during which Homer likely composed his Iliad and Odyssey. Also notable are the later golden age of Ancient Greek philosophy around the 4th century BCE, the Printing Revolution of the 15th to 18th centuries CE, and the subsequent Romantic Movement of the 19th century.
Ong wrote Orality and Literacy in the US during the late 20th century. The perspectives he expresses throughout the course of the book are informed and limited by that historical context. For instance, he acknowledges the potential of electronic communication technologies such as the radio and telephone to usher in an age of secondary orality. These technologies were dominant during the early 1980s, but soon became eclipsed by new innovations of the digital revolution, a revolution unforeseen by Ong and his contemporaries. As a consequence, although Orality and Literacy retains an enduring relevance into the present day, certain of its assertions and predictions have since been proved false or were undermined by subsequent events. Additionally, Ong’s work has a strong Anglo-American focus that is typical of his historical context as a citizen of the US during the height of Cold War nationalism. Certain of his assertions and biases which would have seemed innocuous during his own time—for instance his belief in the objective superiority of the Western alphabetic writing system—may now seem spurious and narrow minded.
