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Walter J. Ong
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Orality and Literacy (New Accents) 2nd Edition

by Walter J. Ong (Author)
4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 47 ratings
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Orality and Literacy (New Accents)
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This classic work explores the vast differences between oral and literate cultures offering a very clear account of the intellectual, literary and social effects of writing, print and electronic technology.

In the course of his study, Walter J. Ong offers fascinating insights into oral genres across the globe and through time, and examines the rise of abstract philosophical and scientific thinking. He considers the impact of orality-literacy studies not only on literary criticism and theory but on our very understanding of what it is to be a human being, conscious of self and other.

This is a book no reader, writer or speaker should be without.

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  1. ISBN-10
    0415281296
  2. ISBN-13
    978-0415281294
  3. Edition
    2nd
  4. Publisher
    Routledge
  5. Publication date
    July 21, 2002
  6. Language
    English
  7. Dimensions
    5.25 x 0.75 x 7.75 inches
  8. Print length
    216 pages
  9. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Walter J. Ong is University Professor Emeritus at Saint Louis University, USA, where he was previously Professor of English and Professor of Humanities in Psychiatry. His many publications have been highly influential for studies in the evolution of the consciousness.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Routledge; 2nd edition (July 21, 2002)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 216 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0415281296
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0415281294
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 8.8 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.25 x 0.75 x 7.75 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 47 ratings

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Walter J. Ong

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Customer reviews

4.7 out of 5 stars
4.7 out of 5
47 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Jeff
5.0 out of 5 stars An Entry Point for Further Research
Reviewed in the United States on October 7, 2012
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For those reviewers who found this book less than commendable: you need to broaden your horizons.

For me, Ong's book was an introduction into the way societies accumulate and pass on knowledge. Ong concentrates on the idea that the invention of the alphabet radically re-structured human consciousness and was responsible for the current dominance of the materialistic Western world view. Ong was a member of the Toronto School (which included Goody and McLuhan) and that school favored a strongly deterministic view. Others, including Ruth Finnegan, are more balanced. If you want to be challenged in your views of how human societies work, I highly recommend reading this book. However, I would also encourage you to explore further - oral societies are much more complex than a superficial reading of Ong would lead you to believe. Ong has a tendency to think that Western thought is the pinnacle of human achievement, but don't let that stop you from reading his work. If you hold in your mind, while reading the book, that there are other ways of passing on knowledge than alphabetic writing systems, you will be rewarded by Ong's insights. This book was written in 1982, so in some respects, it is a bit dated - there has been quite a lot of scholarly effort devoted to the field since then. If you are interested in exploring further, I would suggest that you start with Ong's excellent bibliography and look up each author on the Internet and follow those leads. You will soon find yourself in a thicket of semiotics, performance, intersubjectivity, oral tradition, and indigenous memory systems, among other topics. Ong was a brilliant scholar and I cannot recommend this book highly enough. It is a rather brief overview, but if you are willing to do some work, it is an excellent starting point for further research.
13 people found this helpful
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Peter FYFE
5.0 out of 5 stars Stop reading and listen to this!
Reviewed in the United States on December 25, 2006
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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.
28 people found this helpful
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Louis Berger
5.0 out of 5 stars stunning
Reviewed in the United States on April 7, 2009
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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.
4 people found this helpful
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Melisa
5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating!
Reviewed in the United States on February 7, 2019
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I never paid much attention to the history of orality/literacy, nor did it sound like something I’d be interested in. Man was I wrong. This book was fascinating.
2 people found this helpful
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Alex Acton
5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing read!
Reviewed in the United States on April 19, 2013
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I started getting a bit deeper into rhetoric at grad school, and became a pretty serious devotee of a new orality growing out of computers and the Internet. Ong's analysis of orality, even though dated, is a wonderful foundation for anyone interested in the emerging new orality, oral narrative theory, or rhetoric related to the Internet.
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Top reviews from other countries

SEOUROCK
5.0 out of 5 stars Marvellous and enjoyable
Reviewed in Canada on March 13, 2012
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If you judge only by the book's title, the book could seem uninteresting or dried. But the story is totally different. It is astonishingly thought-provoking and eye-opening. It makes me perplexed that there are not any single review of this great and classic book. In human history, writing or literacy is a very recent phenomenon, only about 6000 years old, though most of us think that it has been with us from the beginning, together with oral speech. In fact, this misconception could lead easily to insufficient and distorted understanding of human communications and finally mankind itself. OK, let's assume that someone has a sketch knowledge that sometime long ago in ancient times, in Mesopotamia or Egypt, the first letters or pictographs came to be invented and used, from which and then through Phoenicians, English alphabet came into being. But, only with it, he or she cannot comprehend many significant and various aspects in human culture and mind. The influence and impact of orality and literacy on us is by far wider and deeper than we normally think or guess. Still many peoples live without written letters and only very recently we have come to see and use alphabets in daily lives. Considering orality's much longer history, literacy is a unfamiliar and in some sense, strange one. Without the full grasp of how our ancestors had thought without any visual letters, we cannot access or imagine their minds. This book gives you the right way to understand how our ancestors see their world differently from us and how our thinking are being changed by shift from orality to letters. Marvellous and readable book. If your interests are mind, language, anthropology and communication, you will definatley enjoy reading this.
One person found this helpful
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Michael Macneil
5.0 out of 5 stars Exceptional and insightful
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 17, 2012
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This is a truly well written and seminal book. If you have never heard of "orality" before it is a superb introduction and it then moves to an advanced level. Truly a remarkable amount of work in a small number of pages, hugely influential and in double-figures on reprints.
One person found this helpful
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Bohmulico
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 3, 2015
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Bacana
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glen cochrane
5.0 out of 5 stars Orality and Literacy
Reviewed in Canada on January 7, 2013
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One of the most impactful books on my way of thinking that I've come across, Ong's descriptions of written word, space, speaking, and consciousness are incredibly interesting. The book is full of ideas and concepts that have become so valuable in this connected age of information overdose. His research on spoken word vs writing have implications for how we now carry around our external 'memory' in the forms of kindles, laptops, smartphones and other digital devices. Are we coming back to a pre-literate world in which orality dominates? no. Are we approaching a time when the two will have to make room for each other in a multi-literate world? perhaps...

Understanding the impacts of each is essential for choosing the right communication for the right task. Digging deeper in to the histories of orality and writing that will continue to grow in importance, and there's no where better to start than with Ong and his insights.
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AA Hyde
3.0 out of 5 stars Acceptably Average
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 29, 2016
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When it quantified the quality as good, I didn't think there'd be huge sections in yellow highlighter pen, and scribbled notes throughout the book. It doesn't impede my ability to read it, but was slightly disappointed.
One person found this helpful
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