Walter J. Ong presented the dichotomy between oral and literate cultures in his book Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. 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 calls the electronic age an age of secondary orality.
In many ways secondary orality is multisensory. Perceptual presentation (e.g. video or animation) often displaces or replaces verbal text. This renewed attention by electronic media to imagery and visual communication other than through the printed word brings us back to values that predate the print era.
The solitary experience of either writing or reading the printed page encourages individualism, distance and impartiality. On the other hand, electronic text and oral text are both dynamic and flexible: The participants in primarily oral cultures take part in emotional, expressive, and involving communication. With hypermedia, “the reader participates in calling forth and defining the text of each particular reading”[1].
Authorship is yet another legacy of writing, particularly print. On the Internet today we are witnessing large collaborative projects in which the work performed is so thoroughly dispersed among the various collaborators that it is impossible to say who should get credit for the results. Secondary orality returns to us to the experience of authorless texts familiar to primary orality.
Quoting Brenda Danet, specialist in communication on the Internet: “Although we are just beginning to research the issues involved, it already appears that a new ‘orality’ is emerging in digital writing, which may result in a culture which places far less value on originality, and more on an ambiance of ‘togetherness’ based on community of interest among fragmented subgroups dispersed in place and time.”
References:
1. ^ Bolter in Writing Space: The Computer, Hypertext and the History of Writing (1991).
- Orality, Literacy, Digitality. (1996, August 15). In Constructivism at work, by Nick Lilly. Retrieved November 13, 2008.
- Secondary orality. (2008, September 8). In Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved November 13, 2008.
- Orality and Hypertext: An interview with Ted Nelson. (1996). In Cyberspace Report by Jim Whitehead. Retrieved November 12, 2008.
- Oral/Literate/Hypertext. (1994). In Bob Fowler’s Home Page by Robert M. Fowler. Retrieved November 13, 2008.
- The Prehistory of Cyberelectronic Language(s). (2003). In Hypermedia Joyce Studies by Donald F. Theall. Retrieved November 12, 2008.
