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Ong says in his book that the characteristics of thought and expression are:
- Expression is additive rather than subordinative.
- It is aggregative rather than analytic.
- It tends to be redundant or “copious.”
- There is a tendency for it to be conservative.
- Out of necessity, thought is conceptualized and then expressed with relatively close reference to the human lifeworld.
- Expression is agonistically toned.
- It is empathetic and participatory rather than objectively distanced.
- It is Homeostatic.
- It is situational rather than abstract.
He thinks the distance between the originator of the thought and the reciever restructures our consciousness, changing from the primary orality to the development of script.
Ong briefly discusses the emergence, through electronic media such as telephone, radio and television, of what he calls the second orality. Much like primary orality, second orality fosters a strong sense of membership in a group. Unlike primary orality, however, secondary orality is “essentially a more deliberate and self-conscious orality, based permanently on the use of writing and print“, and the groups produced by second orality are much larger than any produced by primary orality.
The differences between the structure of narratives produced by these two types of culture are:
- Orality to literacy narrative the structure of oral narratives is such that it facilitates easy storage and retrieval of information, serving as oral storehouses of history .
- Focusing on interaction with the audience helps to foreground the elements of an oral narrative and make them easier to remember.
However, some criticize Ong for feeling that literacy is superior to orality. In 1982, Ong could not have foreseen the popularity of audiobooks, or the widescale use of such technology as editable voice-mail telephone service and the synchronous text-based communication made possible by the internet. No doubt, the time is right for a sequel to Orality and Literacy, one devoted entirely to the second orality.
