Category Archives: digital orality
Redundant or Copius – Backlooping
“Thought requires some sort of continuity. Writing establishes in the text a ‘line’ of continuity outside the mind. If distraction confuses or obliterates from the mind the context out of which emerges the material I am now reading, the context can be retrieved by glancing back over the text selectively. …. In oral discourse, the…
The Syntactic Style of Digital Orality
Another aspect of digital orality style takes into consideration how meaning is established and to what extent grammar and syntax play into that. “Chirographic structures look more to syntactics (organization of the discourse itself)…. Written discourse develops more elaborate and fixed grammar than oral discourse does because to provide meaning it is more dependant upon…
The Style of Digital Orality
This is sort of a continuation of yesterday’s discussion on residual styles following the transition from oral to literary and then on to (not back to) a new orality. When considering the ways in which we organize our speeches, podcasts, etc., are there identifiable styles and inspirations? There are various types of podcasts, so there…
Residually Cyclical Styles
Writing was initially affected by orality. That is, it was formulaic and worked to convey the story or message through such formulas as rhythm, repetition, structured organization, etc. This is a sort of residual orality that manifested in the literary style. Eventually, writing became more flowing prose and literature as we realized the freedom of…
Indefinite Sound
“Without writing, words have no visual presence, even when the objects they represent are visual. They are sounds. …. [S]ound has a special relationship to time, unlike that of other fields registered by human sensation. Sound exists only when it is going out of existence.” (Orality and Literacy, 31-2). Unlike a moving picture, which can…
Memory and Digital Orality
“Fortunately, literacy, though it consumes its own oral antecedents and, unless it is carefully monitored, even destroys their memory, is also infinitely adaptable. It can restore their memory, too. Literacy can be used to reconstruct for ourselves, the pristine human consciousness which was not literate at all.” (Orality and Literacy. 15). This is the continuation…
Memory – Writing is an Unnatural Act
Among other classical rhetors, Plato greatly downplays the worth of the written text, believing it is an approximation of orality and that orality is an approximation of thinking. He considers writing an unnatural method of recording knowledge. Additionally, he argues that it brings forgetfulness, killing memory, and that it is good for reminder but not…
Tertiary Orality
In some ways New Media (NM) and Digital Orality (see previous post What is Digital Orality?) are more examples in Ong’s concept of secondary oralities that are present in the electronic age, considering many new technologies, such as Voip and Tivo, are extensions of some tools to which Ong referred. In “Orality and Literacy,” (1982)…
What is Digital Orality?
[Edited 11.15.2007] Digital Orality is a term I have applied to refer to the way we communicate now with technology using audio and video tools and methods. In many of my past blog posts and notes, I’ve used the acronym AVNM (Audio Visual New Media) to refer to new media, such as podcasting, vodcasting, blogcasting,…
Must New Media Depend on Writing?
“Written texts all have to be related somehow, … to the world of sound, … to yield their meanings.” “Reading a text means converting it to sound, aloud or in the imagination… Writing can never dispense with orality.” (Ong, 8). “Oral expression can exist and mostly has existed without any writing at all, writing never…