Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word

The technology of printing has been in use for many centuries. However, it was the 15th-century German invention of the printing press with moveable alphabetic type that saw “print culture” truly develop as the next stage in literacy. This Printing Revolution saw the mass production of identical copies of consumer-orientated texts, reinforcing the effects of literacy on cognition, society, and culture. Print had a significant influence on the shift from orality to literacy, as it led to the predominance of the visual sphere as a medium for communication in lieu of the auditory. Printed works were more heavily edited, better organized, and overall more easily legible than manuscripts. This, as well as the increased availability of reading material, led to the widespread adoption of rapid silent reading as the primary means to interact with a text, rather than the performance of reading aloud.

According to Ong, print reinforced the reconstitution of oral words into visual space and led to the following innovations:

1)  Indexes

Printed texts were far more visually organized than handwritten texts, including new formats geared toward the visual retrieval of information such as lists, indexes, labels, as well as novel organizational markers like title pages.