Orality and Literacy (New Accents) (Paperback)

~ (Author) "In the past few decades the scholarly world has newly awakened to the oral character of language and to some of the deeper implications of..." (more)
Key Phrases: climactic linear plot, oral verbalization, primary oral culture, Learned Latin, New Criticism, Adam Parry (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

Professor Ong has managed to synthesize an incredible amount of thought and at the same time has carried some of his earlier ideas still further. Orality and Literacy should become a classic. It is eminently assignable for undergraduate courses - Professor John Ahern

No comparable work on this important subject exists. Thanks to the lucidity of its style and presentation of complex thought, this is a work that will be accessible and useful...it will be the standard introduction to this topic for some years to come - Choice

Professor Walter Ongs new book explores some of the profound changes in our thought processes, personality and social structures which are the result, at various stages of our history, of the development of speech, writing and print. And he projects his analysis further into the age of mass electronic communications media...the cumulative impact of the book is dazzling. Read this book. Literature will never be the same again. And neither will you - Robert Giddings, Tribune

This admirably lucid book...has obvious implications for philosophy, literature, linguistics, sociology, psychology, education, and Biblical studies...I believe this is the best book Ong has published - Thomas J. Farrell, Cross Currents

This is a book which throws off thought-provoking ideas on every page. - www.mantex.co.uk

Product Description

This classic work explores the vast differences between oral and literate cultures and offers a brilliantly lucid account of the intellectual, literary and social effects of writing, print and electronic technology.

Product Details

• Paperback: 232 pages
• Publisher: Routledge; 2 edition (July 19, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0415281296
• ISBN-13: 978-0415281294
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #197,519 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Little-heeded Thinker, October 27, 2005

By	Jason M. Silverman (Dublin, Ireland) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book represents a very concise, easy to read summary of much of Ong's work in the area of human communications and technology. The depth of scholarship evident can easily be followed upon by using the wide-ranging bibliography. Ong masterfully takes the idea of the power of the alphabet, and points to the impact this has on human understanding, an impact which has not fully been accepted in philosophy, history, anthropology, sociology, etc. The student and scholar would do well to creatively interact with Ong's work.

10 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Stop reading and listen to this!, December 24, 2006

By	Peter FYFE (Erskineville, Sydney, Australia) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I wish I hadn't read this book... but heard it, for this is a book that deserves the delight that comes from the immediate business of listening to sounds in the air rather than the abstracted business of reading marks on a page (or dulled spots on a screen).

In it, Walter Ong makes a valiant attempt to take us back to a time before text, to a place where we might imagine language as something heard and existing only in its moment, language as something without thee concept of words and letters to chop it up, language as something we hear without imagined structures learned from print, language as something replete with revealing repetitions to aid memory and understanding, something that values the familiar over the novel. He then slowly winds us forward, textual innovation by [con]textual innovation, to the edge of the cyber age, the next unwritten chapter along this vast track.

If you're a reader of books, I'm sure you'll be transported by this adventure beyond your cultural assumptions of what language is and can be. You may find yourself yearning for some of the human experience our world of convenient published accessible text may be denying us, or even hoping some of that experience is still available in specialist forms such as live performance, as I do.

Either way, you'll never hear a book like it.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars stunning, April 7, 2009

By	Louis Berger ([e-mail] Forsyth, GA, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I have been concerned with alternative, proto- or non-theory of language for decades, but stumbled across this gem only recently. My own perspective is ontogenetically informed (see my The Unboundaried Self: Putting the Person Back Into the View from Nowhere), and Ong's meditation on the ineffable, unimaginable world of primary orality is a priceless extension of that perspective.

As usual, what one can gain from this book is a significant function of what one brings to it. I urge those who think they might be able to hear Ong to start reading and listening ASAP.