Category Archives: Ong

Electric Rhetoric – Technologies of Electric Rhetoric

The Sophistic performance of electronic rhetoric has arrived. …It is on computers. … and it is on television. (137) Welch, Kathleen E. Electric Rhetoric: Classical Rhetoric, Oralism, and a New Literacy. The MIT Press, 1999. In this fifth Chapter of Electric Rhetoric, Technologies of Electric Rhetoric, Welch elaborates on her idea of an electric rhetoric–stemming…

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Electric Rhetoric – An Isocratic Literacy Theory

I contend that we do not now know Isocrates’ rhetorical theories well enough, because we have not understood classical Greek rhetoric and writing practices for our electrified time. (33) Welch, Kathleen E. Electric Rhetoric: Classical Rhetoric, Oralism, and a New Literacy. The MIT Press, 1999. In this Chapter 2 of Electric Rhetoric, Welch argues that…

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Presence of the Word – Word as Sound

[C]ultures which do not reduce words to space but know them only as oral-aural phenomena, in actuality or in the imagination, naturally regard words as more powerful than do literate cultures” (112). Ong, Walter J. The Presence of the Word: Some Prolegomena for Cultural and Religious History. The Terry Lectures. New Haven: Yale University Press,…

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Presence of the Word – Plato’s Take

Spoken words are events, engaged in time and indeed in the present. Plato’s ideas were the polar opposite: not events at all, but motionless “objective” existence, impersonal, and out of time. (34). Ong, Walter J. The Presence of the Word: Some Prolegomena for Cultural and Religious History. The Terry Lectures. New Haven: Yale University Press,…

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Presence of the Word – Back to Oral (Not)

Ong, Walter J. The Presence of the Word: Some Prolegomena for Cultural and Religious History. The Terry Lectures. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967. As I’ve noted many times through this blog, I am not suggesting through my focus on this unique form of aural/visual communication that we are on some track to return to…

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Presence of the Word – Electronic Era

Ong, Walter J. The Presence of the Word: Some Prolegomena for Cultural and Religious History. The Terry Lectures. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967. Ong discusses the third stage of verbalization and notes that the process is sequential: The past century has seen the world enter into a new stage beyond orality and script and…

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Cyberliteracy (1)

“To be cyberliterate means that we need to understand the relationship between our communication technologies and ourselves, our communities, and our cultures (16).” Gurak, L. J. (2001). Cyberliteracy: Navigating the internet with awareness. New Haven Conn.; London: Yale University Press. Gurak defines cyberliteracy as “a critical technology literacy, one that includes performance, but also relies…

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