[IFETS-Discuss] Conserve Language: Movement from Orality to Literacy

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Subject: [IFETS-Discuss] Conserve Language: Movement from Orality to Literacy
c.nelson@mail.utexas.edu
Date: Sun 21 May 2000 - 14:30:17 MEST 

From: c.nelson@mail.utexas.edu
Subject: [IFETS-Discuss] Conserve Language: Movement from Orality to Literacy 
Date: Sun, 21 May 2000 05:30:17 -0700

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Arun Tripathi wrote:

>Yes, the book of 'Walter J. Ong', "Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing
>of the Word" is an interesting one..--in the book..Walter Ong argues that
>the major shift in human thinking lies between orality and literacy (a
>much more significant shift than those between scribal, print, and electronic
>forms of literacy). He argues that, as senses, hearing and speaking are
>performative, belonging to the moment in which they occur. Seeing, on the
>other hand, is much less time bound. Thus, while the speaking of a word
>can never be repeated, but only imitated, the writing of a word becomes a
>relatively permanent thing, readable over and over again, with no charge
>to the written word itself. In this difference between sound and sight,
>Ong finds the key to the wide-ranging differences between orality and
>literacy.
>
>thoughts??

I don't know the exact sources but Cole & Scribner's work (with the Vai in
Liberia, I believe) refuted Ong's claim fairly well that there was any
major shift in human thinking due to literacy.

Charles Nelson

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