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Orality and Literacy:
The Technologizing of the Word
By Walter J. Ong
New York. Methuen. 1982. 2 10 pp. $8.95.

The author asks a provocative question: "What difference has the advent of written language made in how people think, how they see the world and act in it, and how they communicate their experiences to others?" This volume presents Ong's response, supports it with evidence drawn from recent studies in such diverse fields as literary, Criticism, anthropology, and psychology, and suggests how the findings might apply to interpretation in literature, biblical scholarship, and further studies of human communication.

Ong, who is University Professor of Humanities and Psychiatry at St. Louis University, has authored or edited seven volumes, such as In the

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Human Grain (1967), The Presence of the Word (1967), and Why Talk? (1973). His work ranges widely over literature, literary criticism, the history or ideas, and the "history and phenomenology of communication and noetic processes." Orality and Literacy is rooted in this same eclectically chosen (but intimately understood) set or disciplines.

The central thesis is simple, yet powerful. Written language, Ong maintains, has become so widespread. so accepted as the standard against which other modes or communication should be measured, that we have generally lost touch with our earlier, common, oral culture. Although we may speak today of "oral literacy" as a kind or primitive variant from the norm or literate culture, in fact it was the oral tradition that came first. And when we see ourselves in the context of all human history, we have been oral for far longer than we have been literate. Ong sets for himself the task of trying to recapture the linguistic state of mind and ways of dealing with the world felt by those living in pre-literate cultures.

After an introduction that brings these notions to the fore, Ong discusses the "modern discovery of primary oral cultures." The focus here is on how, popular appreciation of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey changed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and on the growing realization (particularly as prompted by Milman Perry in the 1920s and 1930s) that Homer's work differed in certain fundamental ways from some other ancient texts. Essentially, these critics came to see that Homeric verse contained significant elements that could only be explained if the original composition had been done orally rather than in writing.

In the three chapters that Follow, Ong lays out and elaborates his central premise more fully. Perhaps most memorable here is the section on the -psychodynamics of orality," in which the author specifies those characteristics that are essential to the oral (pre-literate) way of using language. Primary among these is the heavy use of mnemonics and formulas in oral cultures as ways of organizing information and aiding recall. In a social environment where there are no texts, one can only "'think memorable thoughts." and express them in ways that make them easy for others also to remember.

Some other features of orality include an additive rather than subordinative style- a comparison of versions of the creation narrative from Genesis 1:1-5. provides an illustration here. The Douay translation renders the Hebrew "we/wa" always as "and," which places it closer to the original oral source of the text. The New American Bible sometimes substitutes for "and"' the words "when," "then," "thus," or "while." thereby breaking up the flow and rendering a sequence that is more in tune to modern literary sensibilities, but also further from the style and -additive" feeling of the original.

Oral materials also tend to be aggregative rather than analytic. Putting clusters of images together so as to aid memory is a difficult task, and so oral cultures resist dismantling these linguistic "clumps."

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Residues of this practice are seen in the continued use of formulaic slogans by some third-world and Soviet-bloc countries. The practice of referring to the Russian Revolution always as the "Great October Socialist Revolution" is not so far removed from Homer's practice of referring to his hero always as "clever Odysseus."

Oral culture is also redundant or "copious"-since orally transmitted material exists only in the minds of the speaker and listener, phrases must be repeated often and other rhetorical devices must be used to aid the memory and "keep both speaker and hearer surely on the track." Another trait is the agonistic tone of much pre-literate oral discourse if literate cultures foster abstract discussion and separation of the person of the speaker from that speaker's thoughts, then oral cultures tend to amplify and emphasize that connection. Verbal sparring and contests are common, elements of orality still heard in "the dozens" (ritualized insults and repartee) as practiced in the culture of black teenagers in the United States.

Two final characteristics of oral culture bear mentioning here. Oral societies may be seen as homeostatic-they change their oral tradition as needed so that it matches present-day cultural needs and realities. Oral genealogies recorded in Nigeria in the early years of this century, for example, have been compared to more recent recordings of these same works, the versions are not identical, with material that might today be "embarrassing" or simply irrelevant having been discarded over the years.

Lastly, Ong discusses the situational rather than abstract nature of oral discourse-people from oral cultures, when presented with figures or diagrams that a literate person might identify in terms of a category (a circle, a triangle), will generally see those figures as specific objects with which they are familiar ("the moon," "a shovel"). This has large implications for the abilities of those raised in oral societies to form and use abstract concepts, and especially to do the kind of syllogistic reasoning ("Precious metals do not rust. Gold is a precious metal. Does gold rust or not?") that literates take for granted. Experience is primary; definitions and reliance on formally, stated principles very much secondary.

Ong provides an extended example of these propositions in a discussion of oral memorization, drawing on recent studies by anthropologists and ethnographers. Countering the common supposition among literates that oral bards memorize and repeat lengthy poems word-for-word, Ong notes that in fact the work of such poets usually changes from recital to recital, with the length, sequence, and exact word choices varying from one performance to the next, depending on the audience and the inclinations of the moment. Rather than simply retrieve a fixed template, the oral bard calls to mind a set of formulas. events, phrases, and themes that are woven together based on the needs and choices of the moment.

Ong's chapter on "writing restructures consciousness" details some of

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the conceptual and technological changes that accompanied the spread of literacy. At first, oral testimony was still valued, and it was written materials that were seen as suspect, perhaps untrustworthy. Calendars and dates, those ever-present tools of literate culture, were first viewed with considerable ambivalence-they required the writer to select one of several competing systems of dating (based, for example, on the birth of Christ, the creation of the world, or the start of the reign of the current temporal ruler), and that choice in turn could easily be viewed as a political or religious statement.

With the advent of writing came other changes. Pages were arranged with headings, footnotes, chapter and section titles, charts and lists of all kinds. As these devices spread and became part of the mental apparatus of literate people, thought processes also became more organized, abstract, and linear. The older world of orally-based culture faded from consciousness. In its highest form, this new literate way of thinking expressed itself in the rhetorical and grammatical texts of medieval academics. (Interestingly, samples of writing by women from the Middle Ages to the eighteenth century show a different style. Since women were not as a rule trained in the academic traditions, they wrote in a different way. Ong attributes the rise of the novel to this different "women's perspective" in writing.)

Printing, or course, codified Net more absolutely these effects of literacy and writing. Texts became ever more organized, more abstract, less disputatious, and more distanced from the oral roots of language. Ong sees still another change in the offing with the recent appearance of electronic methods of organizing and distributing verbal materials. Although television and radio may seem to be primarily "oral," they are really based on the tradition of print, and thus represent a kind of "secondary orality."

Ong concludes with a discussion of how the principles outlined here might be applied in such areas as literary interpretation (in examining, for example, how such genres as the romance, the novel, and the detective story reflect traces of the old orality). Specific trends in literary criticism (formalism, strcuturalism, textualism, and deconstructionism might also benefit from closer attention to the research on orality. Deeper appreciation of primary orality might aid biblical scholars in their work on texts and the development of doctrine. Ong sees this task as particularly important for Christian scholars, given the emphasis on Jesus as both the Son and the Word of God. ("God the Father utters or speaks His Word, His Son. He does not inscribe Him.") And yet. there is also the long tradition of seeing the Bible, the written word of God, as authoritative. This, Ong suggests. sets up a tension little recognized and less understood among those concerned with the development and dissemination of contemporary Christian religious thought. Pertinent here is Werner H. Kelber's The Oral and the Written Gospel 1983), with a Foreword by Ong.

Ong's treatment of these issues is stimulating and certainly far

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removed from superficial discussions of mind and media that have appeared over the past decade. Those who approach the work with either a serious interest in or an open curiosity about such diverse topics as communication, cultural change, the sources of biblical tradition, or the ways in which culture shapes consciousness will ill not be disappointed.

Nevertheless, the reader will likely find one question coming to mind recurrently. If culture, society, and the structures of mental life changed so dramatically when orality, through the technologies of writing and printing, changed to literacy then what changes should we look forward to as the impact of the newer computer- and video-based technologies spreads? Ong does indeed indicate that these may be important issues, but he does not suggest the possible extent of the consequences digital technologies may have for the structure of communication and verbal discourse in general.

These new technologies, for example, make it increasingly easy for individuals to create, modify, and disseminate their own versions of a given text, and for other individuals to comment on, after, and respond to that text. This suggests that, in time, our current notion of the canonical, definitive version of a given piece of writing may once again disappear. Recent studies indicate that the older, oral styles of homeostatic, agonistic, aggregative discourse are reappearing with the proliferation of "electronic mail" and local "electronic bulletin boards" for the rapid, informal exchange of written messages.

The question, then, is what role will remain for literate, verbal culture in a world increasingly dominated by the "secondary orality" of television and other existing media, and by the new technological means for digitally recording and disseminating written material. While scholars may ponder the residues of an earlier orality and its lingering effects on today's literate culture, a new culture of information that is personally, designed, encoded, and distributed is growing up around us. Reading Ong provides a striking overture to the new and unfamiliar medle of communication patterns that may be waiting as literacy itself evolves into something new.

Stephen T. Kerr
Teachers College-Columbia University
New York, New York