CRDM 701

Christin - Blog Post #2

One of the themes of this week?s readings, as John has pointed out, is the development of writing from an oral tradition.  Ong discusses that sound is fleeting, not static, (he uses the example of the word ?permanence? on page 32), leading to the need for repetition to remember information.  On page 67 in ?The Muse Learns to Write? reading, Havelock states ?Until we are five to seven years old we ourselves are oralists, pure and simple, albeit children dealing orally with a world controlled by literate adults.?  Burke also states that the games and pastimes of preliterate cultures ??were simple and repetitive, like nursery rhymes.? (91)  I can?t help but throw in a little anecdote here to prove his point.  I don?t know how widespread clapping games were where you are from, but I know growing up in New York I was taught the ?Miss Mary Mack?, ?Miss Lucy?, etc ones by friends.  I found it interesting when I moved to North Carolina that many of my new peers also knew the same games, with only a couple words having changed.  Everyone I have ever known to know these little games came to know them through oral tradition ? never having read them.  I think it is indeed, as the readings suggest, hard taking ourselves out of a literate world and looking at an illiterate one without prejudice, but if we can think back to childhood it becomes slightly easier.

The other thing I found interesting this week was the notion of the evolution of communication.  Ong alludes to this idea that literacy and writing were created in support of oral tradition, and my question is whether we can use this idea and claim that the Internet is then in support of literature and writing?  In some ways we can, I think, but in some ways we cannot.  In the Muse reading, Havelock states that written language, unlike oral, ??is not spontaneous or mobile but rendered fixed, permanent, immobile, by the mere fact of its existence in script?? (64)  What about instant messaging online?  I would argue that such writing is spontaneous but also fixed and permanent by the nature that we can store our conversations, referring back to them later.  This would claim then that the Internet is in support of literature and writing and then also in support of orality.  In many ways, the Internet does not support literature and writing in the same way that the two support orality in that it does not somehow alter the way we think or the way we store information, it simply offers a new medium in which to read and write.

Posted at 10:02PM Sep 04, 2007 by caphelps in Christin  |  Comments[18]