out of our heads (and onto the page)

In week three we discussed the influence that a language (or Language itself) might have on the way we see the world. This week, we are looking at the possibility that the act of putting language down in writing also influences our thought processes and perceptions. Our two readings look at writing from very different points in the history of writing. In fourth century B.C. Athens, writing was still a fairly recent phenomenon; the Greek alphabet have been developed a mere 400 or so years earlier. Plato portrays his audience at the beginning of a process that will have a profound impact on the way people learn and understand. Writing some 2,200 years later, Ong sees his audience as the end-product of that process.

In Phaedrus, Plato warns a colleague about the potential consequences of reading. His most obvious concern is with memory. However, what he is really worried about is our ability to understand. For Plato, understanding is about more than simply being able to recite what someone else has written. For example, I can read the entire Phaedrus, and even be able to refer to and quote passages from it. This does not necessarily mean that I understand what Plato was trying to get at with this dialogue. Plato envisioned a time when a person’s level of knowledge would be judged simply by how many books they had read, rather than by their ability to separate the real world of truth from the shadowy world of our perceptions.

In Orality and Literacy, of which “Writing Restructures Consciousness” is the fourth chapter, Ong examines the differences between literate and oral culture. His overarching theme is that these differences go beyond the simple affordances of writing. He argues that individuals within literate cultures view the world differently from their non-literate counterparts. In western culture, the perspective engendered by literacy has In this week’s reading, he argues that the describes some of the ways in which writing become so pervasive that even illiterate people within the culture view the world with a literate perspective.

While reading both of these works, keep in mind the ways these ideas do and do not apply to digital media and digital writing. Is the digital perspective (if there is such a thing) likely to be simply an intensification of the literate perspective, will we see a return to the more orality based perspective, or are we heading for something entirely new?

Week 5 Readings

Portion of Phaedrus / Plato (Green section is required for discussion, the rest is optional)

“Writing Restructures Consciousness” / Walter Ong SJ