Secondary Orality
People take for granted modern communication. It is hard to believe that some cultures have used strictly oral communication. Personally, I don’t know how I could remember anything. In today’s society, in the U.S., one can easily communicate. One can communicate through twitter, facebook, email, texting, cell phones, writing, etc. I think that the modern communication we have today is what Ong meant by secondary orality. Secondary orality is used daily and keeps the U.S. economy running smoothly. Ong states, “it is essentially a more deliberate and self-conscious orality, based permanently on the use of writing and print, which are essentially for the manufacture and operation of the equipment and for its use as well” (p54). It would be very hard for companies to have huge operations with only using primary orality.
There are obvious advancements with secondary orality, but there are qualities that preliterate societies have that literate societies do not. For example, preliterate societies have to remember huge chunks of information only by remembering. One must have patience and creativity to find formulas and rhymes to help remember information. In literate societies, having patience and creativity is rare to come upon. People are not appreciative of how easy they have it in literate societies, making the illiterate societies more humble and connected. Instead of connecting and having personal conversations, we now just update an impersonal and unimportant facebook status to the world. Also, going back to Lincoln-Douglas debates, “primary orality made itself felt in the additive, redundant, carefully balanced, highly agonistic style, and the intense interplay between speaker and audience” (p55). Ong goes on to state that our “presidential debates on television today are completely out of this older oral world” (p55). In simpler terms, I think Ong is saying how things such as presidential debates have completely different ways of functioning in secondary orality then back in the older oral world. In today’s world, candidates have more advantages with technology to communicate and have a tighter control on the public. The work ethic and hard commitment it took to run to compete in presidential debates back then is qualities that current politicians should have to prove themselves in our modern world, but somehow got lost along the way. One cannot deny that there are many qualities that illiterate societies possess that might be beneficial to our society today. However, ultimately we are better off and have made enormous advancements in every aspect in today’s literate world. Our face-to-face communication skills may need some work in today’s world, but secondary orality is the reason we have literate societies. With literate societies, we communicate all around the world, and can even find books on how to communicate all around the world. Having a literate society allows us more time to accomplish things on a day-to-day basis, instead of having to constantly practice information so it is not lost. While technology may save time in our daily lives, it has also given the opportunity for people to be lazy. Having a literate society gave people the ability to express their individuality around the world through poetry and art. Information can easily be learned and accessed through the ever-great “Google”. Simple things people forget about such as the ability to write make a huge difference. For instance, walking down your street, you may see a sign and caution tape that warns you from walking in a dangerous spot. This is all due to the fact that construction workers have the ability to use written communication to communicate proper safety. There are so many simple and complex aspects that benefit our world due to secondary orality.
Ong,Walter. Orality, Literacy, and Modern Media. In D. Crowley, P. Heyer, (Eds.), Communication in history: technology, culture, society (pp. 14-20). Boston: Allyn & Bacon.
