Everything about Secondary Orality totally explained
Walter J. Ong presented the dichotomy between oral and literate cultures in his book
Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word, published in 1982. In this book, he coined the phrase ‘secondary orality’, describing it as “essentially a more deliberate and self-conscious orality, based permanently on the use of writing and print” (Ong, 1982, p.136). Oral societies operated on polychronic time, with many things happening at once—socialization played a great role in the operation of these cultures, memory and memorization were of greater importance, increasing the amount of copiousness and redundancy. Oral cultures were additive rather than subordinate, closer to the human life world, and more situational and participatory than the more abstract qualities of literate cultures.
In this way, secondary orality is a type of interpersonal communication that's neither classically oral nor literate, and has been made possible entirely through modern communication technologies. This communication is now instantaneous, so despite its use of the written word, it allows for transactions to be nearly as cyclical as orality; thoughts and ideas are repeated and revisited several times, instead of simply being stated once, as in literacy.
The principle new technologies that have made secondary orality possible include instant messaging, texting over mobile phones, and the development of what could be considered a new dialect of language: chat room slang. Whether or not the prevalence of these communication technologies impacts the literate tendencies of our culture has yet to be seen.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Secondary Orality'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://secondary_orality.totallyexplained.com">Secondary orality Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |