Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word

Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the World by Walter J. Ong (1912-2003) is a seminal work that explores the differences between oral and literate cultures. Published in 1982, this scholarly book examines how the shift from oral to written forms of communication has shaped human consciousness, societal structures, and educational systems. Ong, a respected scholar in cultural and religious history and a major figure in the field of rhetoric, argues that literacy has fundamentally altered human thought processes, memory, and perception. This book provides a comprehensive analysis of the cognitive and social implications of writing, contrasting them with the characteristics of oral traditions.

Orality and Literacy is part of the New Accents series under the general editor Terrence Hawkes (1932-2014). This guide uses the 1999 Routledge first edition of the book.

Content Warning: This book mentions outdated and offensive language used to refer to non-European people, societies, and cultures.

Summary

Orality and Literacy has seven chapters of varying length, each further subdivided into subtopics. These chapters deal with themes including The Cognitive and Social Effects of Literacy, The Characteristics of Oral and Literate Cultures, and The Impact of Communication Technologies on Human Interaction and Cultural Development. The book also includes a Preface by the general editor of the New Accents series, an Introduction to the volume by Ong, and a bibliography of cited and related works.

In the Preface, Hawkes outlines the goal of the New Accents series, which aims to function as a constructive conversation on literary and linguistic topics influenced by recent social changes. Ong’s Introduction provides an overview of the book’s subject and themes, and its focus on presenting and analyzing preexisting research on the topic of oral cultures and the effects of literacy on human consciousness and society.

The short first chapter, The Orality of Language, provides an introduction to the topic of orality, including background information and an overview of relevant terminology for those unfamiliar with the fields of linguistics and literary analysis. This chapter also outlines a more detailed overview of the book’s structure and goals, as well as acknowledging the necessarily limited scope of the text.

Chapter 2, “The Modern Discovery of Primary Oral Cultures,” covers the most significant recent scholarship on the subject of orality, focusing particularly on the work of Milman Parry (1902-1935). Ong describes language as an essentially oral phenomenon, and writing as an influential but supplementary communication technology. He identifies the field of Homeric Studies—the study of the ancient Greek epics Odyssey and Iliad—as the foundation of Parry’s work and as an important window into the historiographical map of changing attitudes toward orality in Western academia.

The third chapter, “Some Psychodynamics of Orality,” gives an in-depth description of some of the characteristics of orality. Ong introduces the literate reader to the unfamiliar characteristics of a primary oral society, its culture, and the thought processes of oral peoples. Major features of orality include reliance on mnemonic formulas, conservatism, agonism, and externalization, among others.

The following chapter, “Writing Restructures Consciousness,” presents the changes that literacy—the internalization and widespread adoption of the technology of writing—has on the cognitive processes, social structure, and cultural characteristics of a society. These effects are gradual and depend very much on the status of writing within a given society as well as the extent to which literacy is internalized by the populace. Generally, literacy frees the mind from a reliance on formula and convention, taking on the mnemonic burden of remembrance to allow for greater analytical thought and innovation.

Ong then explores the impact and effects of late-stage literacy under the influence of the communication technology of print in Chapter 5, “Print, Space and Closure.” Printing, using the moveable alphabetic type printing press pioneered in the 15th century, engendered a greater internalization of literacy than ever before. This lessened the influence of residual orality in Western culture, leading to new innovations in literature and culture as well as the revolutionary Romantic Movement of the 19th century.

In the penultimate chapter “Oral Memory, the Story Line and Characterization,” Ong explores the cultural impact of the orality-literacy shift through the lens of changes to the verbal artform of the narrative. In oral cultures, narrative is a means of durably storing information, with heavy type characters and episodic rather than climactic story structures aiding knowledge retention and ease of recollection. With literacy came a greater focus on introspection, complex characters, and climactic resolution in written narratives.

Each section of the final chapter, “Some Theorems,” presents and discusses a different theorem related to the study of orality. Many of these theorems are in fields that, at the time of publication, had not yet integrated scholarship on orality into their literature and analyses. Ong illustrates how further research and application of the principles and discoveries expounded upon in this book may benefit future scholarship.