From Studyplace

Contents 1 Discussion 2 Reaction papers 2.1 George Barvinchak 2.2 Lauren Click 2.3 Michele Giorlando 2.4 Zhaodan Huang 2.5 Jonathan Lewis 2.6 Joseph Lim 2.7 Brian McNamara 2.8 Harshita Pant 2.9 Sarah Usmani 2.10 Julie Warner

Discussion

Reaction papers

Assignment

Each reaction paper should be between 500 and 1000 words long. Each should minimally focus on one of the issues raised in one of the required readings in term of one of the other required or recommended readings. Maximally, and particularly as the course progresses, the reaction papers should cross reference more of the required or recommended readings, including those for earlier sections.

Guidelines

1. Write up your paper on a word processor like Microsoft Word
2. Find your name on the list and click on "Edit". It should open up a box that shows a space for you to enter text
3. Copy and paste your paper from the word processor onto the StudyPlace window
4. Click on "Show Preview" if you want to see what it looks like
5. Click on "Save Page" to finalize your changes
6. Email a copy of your paper to Professor Varenne and Aaron Hung. If you are stuck at any point, feel free to email Aaron.
7. Feel free to comment on other students' assignments. You can put your comments at the bottom of the other student's paper. Be sure to sign your name by typing ~~~~. This will automatically sign and date your comment.

You can also watch a video tutorial of this on Youtube.

The assignment should be on StudyPlace by the time class starts on the day that it is due.

George Barvinchak

--GeorgeB 02:05, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

The class readings for this section of ITSF - 4026 included Walter Ong's Orality and Literacy, Grey Gundaker's Hidden Education Among African Americans During Slavery, Conklin's article on Mindoro, and Kuipers / McDermott's summary of Southeast Asian Scripts. The selections offered an eclectic mix of source material from which to draw a theme for a reaction paper. Brian Street (Street, 1995) provided a framework in which to comment.

Brian Street (Street, 1995) offered two contexts in which to interpret the development of reading/writing (i.e. literacy). The first context he called 'autonomous' and the second, which he favored, was designated 'ideological.' He described autonomous literacy as reading and writing technologies that are delineated and studied at the societal level. Literacy is seen from the perspective of a whole civilization progressing 'forward' into a literate world leaving behind its old oral traditions. The autonomous model, as per Street, focuses on the technology and determinative features of literacy. In contrast, in characterizing the ideological model, he viewed reading and writing as integrated into social contexts and into processes relating to the enablement of individuals to function in a society. The ideological model provides the flexibility of recognizing that the use of literacy is not an 'all or nothing' phenomenon and can be a very personal undertaking (Street. 1995, p. 103) with different meanings for different individuals and societies. On the darker side, Street also noted that literacy could also be used by a dominate agent to subjugate another. Using Street's descriptions, I think that Ong's book provides, overall, an autonomous view of literacy; whereas the writings of Gundaker, Conklin, and Kuipers / McDermott illustrate aspects of the ideological interpretation.

Ong (Ong, 2002) outlined the differences in oral and literate societies, describing the before and after. The primary focus was, I think, an autonomous view concentrating on literacy's technological aspects. Most of Ong's attention was directed to comparing the epic oral tradition to the world of writing, printing, and literature; accentuating, in Street's (and other author's) terminology, a 'great divide' perspective. Ong discussed the characteristics of writing and the alphabet. He described the technical aspects of literacy and some of the characteristics of text and languages. Ong enumerated nine aspects of the oral tradition (when compared to literature cultures) and some general characteristics of an oral culture: the features, skills, and techniques used in oral memorization; the life style that relies on face to face interaction (verbmotor); and stories that rely on the monumental one dimensional hero.

In his chapter on 'Writing Restructures Consciousness' Ong vividly contrasted, in a 'great divide' context, the oral and the literal mind. He addressed many of the technical aspects of writing, but only tangentially its personal meaning, its potential use for organizational control, and the consequences of the new technology on individuals and their interrelationships within a society. Interestingly, Ong used some of the same literature references as Street. Ong referenced work by Clanchy when discussing the development of literacy in Norman England. Street interpreted the same reference to be illustrative of the idea of 'ideological literacy' in the sense that the use/imposition of literacy fulfilled a political agenda. In such situations, the political implications of literacy provided a utilitarian need to learn the use of reading and writing by the indigenous population (Street 1995, p. 121). Ong did acknowledge that literacy and writing are experienced in very personal ways ("The orality-literacy interaction enters into ultimate human concerns and aspirations."), but these issues, highlighted near the close of the work, are not the focus of his book.

The articles by Gundaker, Conklin, Kuipers / McDermott, I think, could be used as good illustrations of Street's ideological context of literacy. Street warns of focusing too much attention on the technological aspects of literacy (Street p. 65): He said that the development of a technology is not a neutral undertaking that when developed needs to be addressed by society; but technology is a product of the processes and institutions of a society and needs to interpreted in that context. Some of characteristics of ideological literacy noted by Street relevant to our class articles are; i.) literacy as a technology doesn't appear on its own, it developed in a social context (p. 96), ii.) literacy is multifaceted, it's a social process in which other technologies and social functions are embedded and fulfilled (97), iii.) the acquisition of literacy does not result in fixed outcomes (i.e. it is not deterministic) (p. 102), iv.) ideas concerning the nature of literacy can become bound up in misconceived notions serving various ideologies to the point where discussion of literacy itself becomes 'context dependent' impacting individuals and educational systems (p. 107, 109). In item four, I think that Street could be interpreted to have said that the danger of 'great divide' views of cultures, are that once 'arriving on the other side', those who don't fit the cultural stereotype are considered to be culturally 'disabled' as per McDermott and Varenne in 'Culture as Disability'.

Grundaker shows two sides of the ideological characterization of literacy. One side using its power to suppress, the other side seeing the potential value of literacy and seeking and gaining the skills often surreptitiously. Stubbs (1980, p. 99) when discussing the use of reading and writing in intellectually impoverished areas stated that students are often unsure of the necessity for learning the skills because they have never experienced the need for the skills or the utility of what they can offer. Grundaker shows the opposite reaction among African American slaves. Many of the slaves witnessed firsthand the abilities that literacy skills imparted and had very real reasons for acquiring the skills. The desire to acquire the capabilities imparted by literacy was so strong that it often trumped threats of physical violence. For African American slaves literacy was not only a struggle to overcome the control and power of an oppressing agent, but it offered the potential promise for a new personal identity, a transformation, and potential freedom (Street in Maybin), hallmarks of Street's ideological interpretation of literacy.

Kuipurs / McDermott showed how trade and religious activities influenced writing and script in Southeast Asia. They also highlighted different social uses for literacy ranging from: almanacs, love magic, magical formulas, to "spells, incantations, maxims, and some closely guarded epics" (Kuipers & McDermott, 1996, p. 477). One documented example of the Old Javanese (kawi) and its script shows literacy as being totally absorbed to a social ritual (puppet drama). The absorption is so complete that the literal meaning of the language itself has been lost. This, I think, is an extreme example of Street's assertions that literacy should be considered to be linked to and embedded in social contexts.

Conklin's study shows the Hanunoo use of literacy for the purposes of social and reproductive advantage: letter writing and love poems respectively. The study offered another example of literacy being embedded and understood as a part of a social function. In contrast to Grundaker, Conklin's documentation describes a more pleasurable undertaking. For this society Kuipurs / McDermott (p. 481) hypothesize that it is "... more fun to read, write, and court than just to court."

The 'great divide' and the autonomous vs. ideological theories attempt to characterize and describe the rise of literacy. In the western tradition, the Iliad's Catalog of Ships may reflect an oral mnemonic device, a crowd pleasing tour de force, or an echo of an early social use of reading and writing for inventories and record keeping. Herodotus relates that the Hellenes learned the Phoenician letters from the Phoenicians and that "... after making a few changes to the form of the letters, they put them to good use" (Strassler, 2007).

--GeorgeB 02:05, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

References:

Conklin, Harold C. (1949). Bamboo Literacy on Mindoro.

Gundaker, Grey. Hidden Education Among African Americans During Slavery.

Kuipers, Joel C., & McDermott, Ray. (1996). Insular Southeast Asian Scripts. In Peter T. Daniels & William Bright (Eds.), The World's Writing Systems (pp 474-484). New York: Oxford University Press.

Ong, Walter J. (2002). Orality and Literacy. New York: Routledge.

Street, Brian V. (1995). Literacy in Theory and Practice. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Street, Brian V. Cross Cultural Perspectives on Literacy. In Janet Maybin (Ed.), Language and Literacy in Social Practice. Open University.

Strassler, Robert B. (Ed) (2007). The Landmark Herodotus - The Histories. New York: Pantheon Books.

Stubbs, Michael, & Kegan Paul. (1980). Language and Literacy: The Sociolinguistics of Reading and Writing. London: Routledge.

Lauren Click

Previously we have followed a generally utilitarian/functionalist arguments, though they vary in emphasis on their determination of social systems and the order and strength of determination. In examining how plows, irrigation systems, modes of production impact and influence systems we are emphasizing the usefulness, efficiency and function of technologies. In the works by Ong, Conklin and Gundaker we examine a wider view of technologies, from their impact psychologically and socially to their role and place in education.

“Basic orality of language is permanent” (7)

In this cartoon I am reminded of the orality of language. The father reads out loud to his son, implying dedication to his child and a loving show of affection through the oral reproducing of the text. Ong might argue that in this moment the two are returning to their oral background to connect with one another in a means which we would have evolutionarily grown accustomed to and which is psychodynamically “natural” to us. The child, in asking to record and podcast the father, is a play on the antiquatedness of the ‘father reading before bedtime’ scene in our present culture - though it is a cultural scene not so far past, uninteresting or out of our cultural knowledge so that the joke does not make sense. In asking to record the reading, though, we are again reminded of the orality of the text and the tendency to emphasize the oral.

Walter Ong’s orality is that of societies entirely without literacy. He describes the characteristics of oral culture and its impacts on thought processes and means of expression. He argues that with orality there are particular means to recall information embedded with dynamic tricks to aid the mind and a necessary sensitivity to audience and context (both for listening purposes and interactional). Texts and written work are a technology which frees the mind to continue thinking; it allows the energy and time spent in memory to afterwards be spent in new thought (think of the plow allowing more time for other forms of work, energy to be spent elsewhere). Following from this argument is, then, that oral cultures would remain homeostatic intellectually without the introduction of literacy. Similarly, with the tests run by Luria, Cole, and Scribner (53) the act of reading and writing teaches the mind to suspend reality, allowing and/or evoking the possibility of Jacobson’s metanarrative discussions. Thus, between the oral society and the literate society there are psychodynamic differences.

The criticism of Ong’s work lies in the roots of the argument. Derrida and Varenne point out that the oral-literacy argument is impacted by the time in which the argument arose historically, the materials on which it is based, and the history of anthropology. The oral/literate divide began with classifications in the beginning of the anthropology (when interacting with/describing/analyzing the “others”) and when emphasis was put on the level of ‘advancement’ or ‘development’ of a society. Language, whether spoken or written, is not a true expression of experience (if so, as Professor Varenne mentioned in class, there would only be one language). Neither speaking nor writing are inherently human activities, though we have the capacity to do both.

While it is impossible to deny its history, I would still argue that Ong’s argument is legitimate. Though both language and text are arbitrary in their means of expression, they are (somewhat) distinct techologies which - like the plow or irrigation system - differentially impact their users. Perhaps to ease the seeming oral/literate duality (and all the baggage it carries with it) we could add a third or fourth language technology to the discussion. What of societies with multiple languages taught from childhood? What of computer literacy? What of immigrants/migrants learning new oral and textual practices? How does the direct reading of the book in the comic above differ from if we were to listen to the reading in a podcast?

In the comic, as in Conklin’s work, there is still purpose and outcome. Here the teacher tries to invoke deep play in the student; underlying the joke is the seeming purposelessness of the student performing the math equation. As with Conklin’s work, if we are to give the student a purpose - however playful - they may learn. With the Hanunoo the bamboo writing was not for record keeping, law writing, religious memory; it was for love letters. It emerges as an odd case in that the writing seemingly grew without utilitarian purpose, though it could be considered extremely functional if no one would date you without receiving a bamboo letter. Indeed, as Varenne and McDermott would sugges, what grew seemly out of play could be a significant means of failure (once you have writing you might have better or worse penmanship, better or worse content); no longer is the historical production of writing the point of interest (to some researchers) but the consequences and present uses of a technology. Similarly, the technology might come to serve another purpose in the present. As the cup now holds my pens or the reality show in the cartoon above serves as a motivator, the technology might be utilized differently in context than was intended - thus it is important to look to the present context to examine its use.

Following the argument above, then, deterministic arguments get muddled. How can we determine the outcome of a technology when we are totally unsure of what will be the consequences of its introduction? As in the comic above, the economic stimulus would (hypothetically) allow the children to become more educated, allowing them to read congress’ bill and be angry at its implications. The irony of the joke is that, of course, spending the money will impact their future economic situations, but they know this because the money has been spent on teaching them to read the same bill which condemns them.

Gundaker examines literacy in slaves as a means to discuss educational practices, as well as conceptions of and thoughts about educational practices. The purpose of literacy in the time is heavily impacted by the historical and social context of practice; for example, perhaps reading for religion or bookkeeping was appropriate in some homes, overriding the legal constraints on African American literacy. The activities used to learn to read were multifarious and reflexive of constraints at the time. As reflected in the comic with the teacher above, Gundaker implies that need for literacy may override the outside forces in control; if the student can be given a reason to learn then they will. As with looking at disability, we can look to the means of hidden education to reflect on the wider culture in which it occurs. In examining the wide range of educational means (hidden from sight with others who know to how to read, in play, in religious or business practice) we become aware of the multidimensional aspects of education - which Gundaker argues are undervalued in current schooling. Again, though, the purposes and utilitarian aspects arise in retrospect. As reflected in the ironic comic above, literacy may be used for activities not intended by the educators (nor the learners for that matter); though examination can we get close to discussing the consequences of present practices (and technologies).

Michele Giorlando

Writing has enabled us to do more; like any technology, it has advanced us. But, like any technology it is not the final mode, there is still more to be discovered. Through writing we’ve made paramount progressions from a strictly oral society to a highly literate one, full of alphabets and grammar. Why then do we sometimes still find ourselves at a loss of words? Why does the cat sometimes have our tongue? Writing, although it has transformed the way we communicate, the way we express, the way we memorize, still leaves mysteries of the mind.

In Orality and Literacy Walter Ong (1982) dedicates much of his research to how writing restructures consciousness. He discusses Socrates, who was afraid that writing would weaken the mind. Socrates arguments for this are solid: writing is inhuman, writing destroys memories, and writing is unresponsive and can not defend itself. I can’t help but agree to some extent, that writing does in a sense, weaken the mind. In a primary oral culture it seems Socrates argument would be valid, but even in our present society his statements ring true. Through the technology of writing memorization is no longer completely necessary and rhetoric is a lost tradition. Still I think few people would argue against the benefits and all that is gained through such technology. Telephone numbers can be used as a basic example. Just a few decades ago, without cell phones and hand held devices, important phone numbers were committed to memory, to be used at a moments notice. While many numbers are still imbedded in our minds, I think it’s fair to say that many young people no longer memorize important phone numbers and rely primarily on the convenience of their cell phone’s stored memories. In a sense we are weakening our own memories, but through the use of cell phones can access more phone numbers than our memories were originally capable of storing. Perhaps writing, as Socrates says, is unreal and unnatural, but it allows humans to expand on what is already natural, transforming it, not losing it.

Ong admits that “by contrast with natural, oral speech, writing is completely artifical. There is no way to write ‘naturally.’” (pg 82) Perhaps there is no way to write naturally, but it seems a natural process. Take the Hanunoo people, whom Harold C. Conklin (1949) explored in Bamboo Literacy on Mindoro as an example. Their culture was unique in that it was not influenced by any surrounding and outside people and while they received no formal education they found it appropriate to begin writing. The primary purpose of their writing was to remember their love songs so that they could serenade each other. While we think of technology as a general means to advance society, I pause to think that using technology as a means to enrich lives and spread love, seem the most appropriate and useful reason yet. Ong too might agree with this. “Technologies,” he says, “are not mere exterior aids but also interior transformations of consciousness, and never more than when they affect the world.” (pg 82)

What strikes me as the most interesting part of Ong’s discussion is the idea that writing “transforms speech and thought as well.” (pg 85) This is in opposition to Ong’s opinions on a primary oral culture, where language is permanent. However, I think what orality and literacy have in common is that neither are static, nor permanent. They are open for interpretation by the conscious mind and humans can agree or disagree and form their own opinions regardless of whether they read something or hear it. Ong further argues that “print encloses thought in thousands of copies of a work of exactly the same visual and physical consistency.” (pg 132) Here he is careful to include the words visual and physical as the only ways it is exactly the same. It seems as though Ong contradicts himself when he discusses print as a way of closure, with a fixed point of view, and then later explores they many different forms of critique.

Towards the end of his discussion Ong seems to give to relevance and credit to the reader, saying that “for, although texts are autonomous by contrast with oral expression, ultimately no text can stand by itself independent of the extratextual world. Every text builds on pretext.” (pg 162) Finally it seems that Ong realizes that the conscious mind can interpret the same visual and physical texts in many ways. This is quite different from where less than ten short pages earlier Ong says that writing “does not merely store what we know.” (pg 155) It seems that is exactly what writing does. Although it allows us to remember and access things in ways that are impossible in a strictly oral culture, it does not limit the way we view and judge writings. In the end there is still the reader, the viewer, the conscious thinker, who makes writing and print its own.

Ong admits that “once the world is technologized, there is no effect way to criticize what technology has done without the aid of the highest technology available.” (pg 80) If I couldn’t write this paper, if I had to state my arguments solely in a oral manner, would its meaning be lost? Unremembered? Would the receiver of the information immediately defend their own opinion? Would I be able to effectively remember my own arguments or would that ever pestering cat get my tongue?

Zhaodan Huang

This week we talked about many aspects of print and literacy. While reading Bamboo Literacy on Mindoro (Conklin, 1949) and Insular Southeast Asian Script (Kuipers & McDermott, 1996), two things that strike me the most are the fact that 1) one of the driving incentives for people to learn how to read and write is being able to express a universal feeling, love; 2) the “paper” people used to record love letters, songs, poems are similar world wide. In this paper, I would like to comment on these facts and take reference from China’s oldest literature preserved from thousands years ago.

In Conklin’s paper, he mentioned that five to six thousand mountain folks called the Hanunoo resided in the rugged mountains of southwestern Mindoro have distinguished themselves as literate tribesmen even without formal schooling of any sort. Being so remote and hidden in the mountains, the Hanunoo avoided being assimilated by Spanish conquerors and its roman script. Even though before the time of Spanish discovery and occupation of the archipelago in the 16th century, most of the advanced Filipinos were well acquainted with Indic script, during the 17th century, the Roman alphabet completely replaced the original script wherever Christianity became established. On Mindoro there are no roads and even the trails are not wide enough for more than single-file travel on foot. The Hanuloo people were left out of the stream of Western cultural influence because the efforts of missionaries, soldiers, and teachers could not reach. Since the mountains were covered largely by jungle and bamboos, it became natural for the Hanuloos to use bamboo and palm spathes as main ‘paper’ to carve Indic characters. In ancient China, before paper was invented, bamboo was used widely as ‘books’. A roll of bamboo book can easily weigh over a hundred pounds. In many poems, poets frequently use the weight of ‘books’ to refer to one’s rich knowledge in a metaphorically way.

According to Conklin (1949), early literature centered around documenting people’s entreaties to the spirit world, to state the goals and rules of governing social behaviors, and to enjoy songs and other aesthetic pleasures. Social life for remote mountain folks is get-togethers. To attract attention and gain popularity, both men and women compete to sing love songs. What a great incentive, because the continuous existence of human being ultimately depends on the ability of reproducing. Its human nature and no formal schooling is required. Thus being able to read or even write love songs became a natural driving force for literate. Take China as an example, the most important and earliest existing collection of Chinese poetic work produced was the Shi Jing (Book of Poetry), an anthology of ancient poems written in four-word verses and composed mostly between the 10th and the 7th centuries BC. Instead of glorifying spirits and heroes, as was the custom of other cultures, many of these poems sing of the daily life of the peasants, their sorrows and joys, their occupations and festivities. These poems are characterized by simplicity of language and emotion. Pursuit of love, description of beautiful women, and enjoyment of get-together are common themes in those early poems. Dynastic songs and court poems make up about one-half of the book.

Besides using Indic script to write love songs, another important use is for correspondence. Love letters were passed between young people as a way of expressing emotion. One thing worth mentioning though, in China, love literature is not as pure-intended as the Hanuloos, many patriotic poets use love songs or letters as disguise to express their critics or anger toward the ruling government.

Zh2113 11:41, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Jonathan Lewis

Of the implications of a shift from orality to literacy discussed by Walter Ong, the one that strikes me as carrying the deepest implications for the structure of a culture is the separation in distance between the writer and the reader. This change begins to create cracks in the unity of consciousness of oral cultures. As Ong discusses, the passing on of an oral tradition necessitates repetition and memorization. This process necessitates direct social contact and interaction to be accomplished. The will and ideas of the learners can be incorporated into the tradition, but they are also subordinate to that which is passed on. Writers, however, do not have to expend the mental energy of memorization. They do not have to worry that the defining stories and ideas of their culture will be lost, and are thus free to assert their psychic independence.

In addition, as Ong points out, literate people develop a sense of existing in time. The stories of an oral tradition carry a sense of relative immediacy. One year or one thousand years before the first memories of a society’s oldest members are all but the same in an oral culture. But written documents prioritize information temporally. Members of such a literate culture are thus more likely to realize the distance between the stories and ideas of previous generations and those of their own. This, again, allows them the freedom to explore without fear of loosing the past. Further they can look back along the trail of history and recognize that their culture is not static.

In the face of Ong’s views on literacy, the Hanunoo people observed by Conklin present a seemingly unique case. Although literacy has surely had a profound effect on their culture, the way it is used is more akin to Ong’s descriptions of orality than of literacy. It is a vehicle of song memorization and short-lived communication. The Hanunoo writing is not intended to survive for any great length of time. This is what separates it from a traditional literacy. What makes literacy so powerful and what leads literate cultures into new ways of thinking is the relative permanence of writing. Ong describes oral cultures relying heavily on devices that aid in memorization, like repetition or archetypal story elements. But literate cultures need not restrict their writing thus. The Hanunoo seem to use writing in very narrow ways and have not moved toward the deep shifts in consciousness outlined by Ong.

In our previous readings concerning the influence of plowing and irrigation on culture, there was an undercurrent of determinism. Irrigation leads to division of labor, leads to political and defensive structures, etc. And although the progression is certainly not as clear-cut as that, the unpredictable implications of the effects of literacy are more obvious. Ong does lay out definite differences in information processing and consciousness between oral and literate cultures. However, these changes lead to a place that fosters a diversity of ideas and facilitates debates over those ideas across physical and temporal borders. Literacy seems to make the changes in a society less predictable.

Jonathanwlewis 17:21, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Joseph Lim

“I agree that a film should have a beginning, a middle and an end but not necessarily in that order”

                                                                                                                                 -	Jean Luc Goddard

Franco-Swiss filmmaker Goddard’s observation of most mainstream cinema also represents much of our dominant inclinations for linearity – where everything progresses from a beginning, culminating in a denouement. That is how we were taught to write, to think and express ourselves. This essay examines Ong’s meta-linguistic exploration of the tension between orality and literacy as well as Conklin’s anthropological study of the Mindoro people’s unique form of literacy. In analyzing these two works, I hope to look more closely at how linearity in thought and expression has become normalized through language (the oral and written). In so doing, considerations can also be made about how we might need to rethink and re-perceive our modes of linguistic expression and the values we invest in them.

From a literary standpoint, Ong’s work provides an excellent backdrop to understanding literate culture’s entrenchment in the linear narrative. When societies moved from an oral culture towards a written culture, in which literacy technologies such as writing and printing became commonplace, the modes of storing, deciphering and expressing knowledge changed. Of all the changes (spawned from a shift from the oral to the literate), two key characteristics proved most striking to me: First is the emergence of time and linearity. Second is the distancing of the writer / author, thereby creating a discourse in which it “cannot be directly questioned or contested as oral speech can be because written discourse is detached from the writer” (Ong, 78). This shift largely explains our current emphasis on the written text and its author as paramount (over the oral) and how our thought paradigms as well as discourses are almost always situated within a time (or linear) paradigm.

The non-linear works of Virginia Woolf, the absurdist plays of Ionesco and Beckett as well as the attempts to empower the reader (not the author) by Roland Barthes continue to be deemed as counter-intuitive and a reaction to the dominant culture. It is through these traditions of literacy (and the associated emphasis on linearity in discourse) that we have come to define what is rational and utilitarian. Practical and sensible policy proposals adopt a concept of progression, clarity by having a start, middle and end. Our daily discourses and attempts at making sense of social policies hinge on this idea of linearity and authority of the writer or speaker. Only then can they be seen as practical, useful and eventually effective (e.g. presidential speeches, congressional acts, policy papers and social commentaries).

On the other hand, Conklin’s study of the Mindoro people and their use of language represents an interesting foil to the ideas of the dominant literate cultures as described by Ong. The Mindoro people clearly use the written or printed language in a non-linear way and the author is definitely not distanced in the discourse since the language primarily serves to woo for requited love. Therefore, Conklin’s study provides a contrast to Ong’s premise that language is primarily used to store and re-distribute knowledge. For the Mindoro, language seems more as a means of romantic play. It is a clear disjuncture from the utilitarian conception of language and even more so, a break from the linearity paradigm. In many ways, it can be likened to Geertz’s description of deep play as depicted by cock fighting in Bali, Indonesia. For Geertz, this cock fighting, illegal today in Indonesia, demonstrates how an act can be lifted “from the realm of everyday practical affairs, and surrounds it(self) with an aura of enlarged importance” (Geertz, 1973). Similar to the Mindoro person who was engaged in bamboo literacy for a “highly stylized method of courting and serenading” (Conklin, 1949), the Balinese person and his cock fighting rituals shows that “he learns” about how “his culture’s ethos and his private sensibility (or, anyway, certain aspects of them) look like when spelled out externally in a collective text”. (Geertz, 1973). Here, there is no linearity, no elucidation through the progression of one idea building on another through the authoritative voice of the textual progenitor.

Ostensibly, what we have is a dichotomous tension between the dominant literate culture that emphasizes conceptions of the linear and the utilitarian in language, and the anomalies, where some cultures do not seem to value this practical characteristic of language. In this anomalous case, cultural symbols via the rites of bamboo writing or the rituals of cock fighting provide the signs and signifiers for human action and thought. These symbols seem divorced from any attempt to invoke linear progression. But given the current impact of technology on our linguistic behaviors, for example real time authorship (Twitter, Facebook and texting), it would make sense to rethink our dominant modes of orality and literacy. Perhaps our understanding of our linguistic modes can engender a better picture of ourselves and our humanity if we incorporate components of the anomalous literacies.

Brian McNamara

“The Bible Belt is oral territory and therefore despised by the literati” – Marshall McLuhan, The Book of Probes

“The reader is the content of any poem or of the language he employs, and in order to use any of these forms he must put them on.” – Marshall McLuhan, The Book of Probes

In reading Walter Ong, I was struck by both his sense of determinism and by an odd sense of nostalgia. Ong starts his book with a short exploration of literacy and its counter form, orality. However, Ong makes the argument that while oral cultures have produced amazing art, they are limited in their expression by their orality – writing extends that sense. As he phrases it “…orality needs to produce and is destined to produce writing.” (Ong, 14). This idea of literacy needing to evolve out of orality is at the heart of Ong’s writing and seems to hint at something that Marshall McLuhan had theorized in the late 60s. Called the laws of media, McLuhan came up with the four ways in which a medium can exert itself in our world: it enhances another medium already in existence, retrieves an obsolesced medium from the past, obsolesces a current medium and at its peak reverses into its opposite. Ong definitely sees literacy as the enhancement of orality and the retrieval of some purely oral forms, like Homeric epics, with the added benefit of literacy to maintain the works for a longer period of time. Above, I briefly talked about Ong’s sense of nostalgia, by that I mean not a longing for the past, but rather an appreciation of forms that came before. Indeed, much of the book seems focused on indicating how literacy can only help orality become more complex and more beautiful. I found it to be quite an interesting take on the subject matter.

In Harold Conklin’s article I was quite interested to find a lot of support for Ong’s theories but with little direct correlation between the two of them. Conklin’s ethnography gives us an understanding that this primarily oral society is also almost entirely literate, but it is a different time of literacy – it is specific. The Hanunoo’s use of the written word for proliferation of love songs seems to tread a line between primary orality and secondary literacy. The literacy obviously serves a powerful social function and is therefore important, but it seems to have not crossed the line of being ubiquitous. Indeed, the medium on which the words are transcribed is not exactly one known of permanence, thus the words must be remembered and passed on, several times a year. This seems to undercut one of the functions of literacy, that is, serving as physical form of memory – something that Ong tells us Plato and Socrates were not happy about. The Hanunoo’s literacy serves as an interesting exemplar of Ong’s theories.

By chance, I happened to visit the American Museum of Natural History over the weekend and more specifically to see the Margaret Mead Pacific People’s exhibit. I was surprised to find a small section on the Hanunoo. It was quite interesting to see the bamboo pipes with their inscriptions up close. As well, a few of the Hanunoo’s musical instruments were on display. Obviously the courtship process is the most important social function according to reading and this display. An interesting counterpoint is raised in some items called “The Muslim Influence” found in the next display case over, still labeled Hanunoo. In it are a few items like armor and weaponry, but also a page of the Quran. In examining the page, purported to be a copy made by the tribe based off of a missionary copy, there is a sense that the same amount of care was not put into the page as it was into the bamboo pipes with the songs. On the page, there seems to be a lack of attention to detail, whereas the pipes are inscribed with sometimes tiny, intricate designs that require more craftsmanship and patience than the calligraphy on the page. It becomes a curious example of two forms of literacy and how one tribe has chosen one over the other in terms of which is considered the more demanding literacy.

Harshita Pant

The focus of this week’s reading was on print and literacy observed in the writings of Walter Ong’s, Orality and Literacy and Harold Conklin’s Bamboo Literacy in Mindoro. In synthesizing the readings, I will address two key aspects of literacy that resonated with me. First a look at the constant evolution of language and spread on a global level and second, the utility of literacy that draws distinction between the ‘tribal’ and the ‘advanced’.

Sanskrit is known as one of the oldest Indian literature in the world. Some of the oldest Vedic (Indian sacred text) was written earlier that 1500BC. Believed as the language of the Gods, its origin can be traced back to the epic literatures in the Bhagwat Gita and Ramayana. By 1786 Sir William Jones, an English Philologist discovered similarities between Sanskrit and European languages such as Latin, Greek and English. This eventually gave birth to the Indo- European theory that defined this relationship between humans and languages. For example, father in English is ‘Vetar’ in German, ‘Pater’ in Latin and ‘Pitr’ in Sanskrit. In the same way, no matter where the origin of writing, reading and speaking any particular language- there is a constant linkage between the roots of language. Similarly, a transfer of knowledge and comprehension of language is seen within the Hanunoo tribe that live in complete isolation in the mountains of Mindoro. Even though the Indic script existing in Mindoro is not preserved, Hanunoo’s still figure out a way to learn from the ‘literate’ and continue its life as far as the communication led them (until it was time to discard the bamboo). Stepping back from print and literature lets make another comparison of physical distinction between humans. Just like people start to look similar as they migrate from one part of the world to another, in the same way, language and literature (whether print or oral) evolves as well. this also reminds me of the game called ‘Chinese Whisper’ where person A whispers something into person B’s ear and continues until the last person in line. As a result, it is seen that the original word whispered takes on a completely different meaning when it reaches the last person. This exercise demonstrates several results but one that is pertinent to this discussion is that often people hear what they want to hear or people program themselves to hear a certain way therefore what they end up passing on is another transformation of the original word. Therefore, literature can evolve even within the most remote societies without deliberation.

Another thread of commonality can be seen as we transition to the next aspect of literacy, uses of literacy. As illustrated by Conklin the Hununoo are self sufficient and docile people that believe in honoring the dead by chanting to deities to get rid of ‘daniw’ evil spirits. It is striking to see similarities of the Hununoo tribe with Indian culture, in the food habits (chewing certain beetle leafs, in Hindi its called ‘Pan’), auspicious habits of praying to get rid of ‘daniw’ (evil spitis) is called ‘danav’ in Hindi and writing love letters to win over the opposite sex. Many Indian epic stories such as Ramayana are set around the love between man and woman (text), architecture on temples also illustrate love stories (visual representation) and religious hymns (verbal poem) depict love stories. Therefore the use of literature is evolving in itself no matter if it serves as permanent information gathering (technology) or temporary delivering feelings of love (spiritual communication).

Sarah Usmani

Julie Warner

By way of cultural and cross-cultural examinations, Ong and Conklin provide more nuanced looks at literacy. Ong compares the way oral and chirographic cultures deal with cognitive processes and how they relate them; in this way he demonstrates how “writing restructures consciousness”. For example, he calls writing a “consciousness-raising activity” (p. 151) attributable to the thought that must go into writing as opposed to speaking—he maintains that learning to write is a laborious undertaking. It requires translating human thought from sound to sight as opposed to oral expression wherein thought must only be translated to sound. Consciousness is further raised through the process of writing in that what is spoken is less permanent. That which is written down becomes tangible and concrete as it is archived outside of our own minds. That which is written down acts as a reminder thus causing one to think about what is produced in a different way.

The modernist tendency is to want to draw a clear-cut distinction between oral and written literacy but Ong provides a closer look that reveals the overlap and gradation among the two. Writing is not solely pictoral and speaking is not entirely oral. There is overlap and elements of both in each.

Ong and Conklin suggest that writing is a technology since it demands tools that mediate. I think of Marx and his distinction between nature and culture. If orality is nature as some suggest it would follow that print is a part of culture as it represents a technology. But speaking itself is not totally innate to human beings. We could communicate via sign language for example if as Varenne and McDermott suggest circumstances were different.

Conklin suggests that learning to write is not always motivated by the desire to communicate. As we see with Mindoro who collect love songs and learn to write for purposes of courting, literacy might be motivated by the biological inclination to reproduce. This would then represent another example of a technology being used to further our existence.

Ong’s work especially in terms of the “second orality” of telecommunications makes me think of the way that our own culture has been changing perhaps going toward a “third orality” that involves speed of transmission on larger scales than ever before, hypertextual reading processes, rapid revision and remix and a new conception of audience. Modern assumptions around society, culture, identity, and language have been challenged, largely as a result of the ever-building array of affordances of technologies and new media. Contemporary methods of communication are marked by innovation and are varied in form and function. They depend not just on linguistic modes of meaning-making, but an assortment of representational means including image, sound, video and more. Audience awareness as a concept is confounded. Our most basic beliefs about who we are and our place in the world are framed by technology; we are, as a culture, a technoculture (Penley and Ross, 1991; Green 2001).

When technology grows to be prolepsis (Bakhtin, 1981), becoming so ubiquitous that we no longer see it as technology but a part of our lives (Bakardjieva, 2005), this affects the social subject, which “develops in relation to this invisible technology as one who expects access, expects to be connected to friends at the stroke of a key, and expects to read and write in particular ways that lead to fulfilling connections with those friends” (Lewis & Fabos, 2005, p. 470). This kind of permeating shared experience, then, deeply influences individuals as they consider and engage in discourse, social exchange, and communicative practices. We are now in the perceived era of Web 2.0, a new generation of the web which is more interconnected and interactive than its forerunner. Thus, with Web 2.0 is fostered a new notion of author, text, and especially audience; not only a wider audience, as before, but also one that has the increased potential for interactivity.

Web 2.0 has also changed the way individuals think about producers and consumers of content. Audiences are no longer passive but instead active, remixing and creating content themselves (Ito, 2008). Post-consumption has become more important than the items themselves; following de Certeau’s (1984) assertion of the intimate relationship between consumption and production, people take items consumed and make them their own. Popular now are hip-hop remixes, edited movies uploaded to YouTube, spliced to create new shorts, and fanfiction (boyd, 2005). Rebecca Black (2008) proposes that “agentive literacy users…take up dominant forms of literacy and refashion them to suit the particular needs and perspectives of local contexts” (pg. 24).

This follows the dialogic view of the relationship between reader/writer/text. Bakhtin (1981) asserts that even those utterances which are monologic are dialogic because they are addressed to an audience. A writer, then, always has some sort of conception as to who their audience will be, who will consume their work. To go further, I’d propose that the writer is influenced too by what he or she anticipates to be the reaction to the writing, as Bakhtin’s (1986) idea of addressivity holds. He wrote, “From the very beginning, the utterance is constructed while taking into account possible responsive reactions, for whose sake, in essence, it is actually created” (94). So what happens when you have an agentic audience in a participatory culture as we do now in the era of Web 2.0? The affordances of new technologies allow for particular kinds of mediated action, perception, and interpretation. This is what I would like to explore further in my final paper.

References Bakardjieva, M. (2005). Internet Society: The Internet in Everyday Life. London: Sage Bakhtin, M. (1986). Speech genres and other late essays. Vern W. McGee (Trans.), C. Emerson & M. Holquist (Eds.). Austin: University of Texas Press. Bakhtin, M. (1981), The Dialogic Imagination. University of Texas Press. boyd, d. (2005). remix is active consumption not production (when media becomes culture, part 2), Apophenia, October, 8, 2005. Retrieved May 1, 2009 (http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2005/10/08/remix_is_active.html). Conklin, H. C. (1949). Bamboo Literacy on Mindoro. de Certeau, M. (1984). The practice of everyday life. Berkeley: University of California Press. Green, L.(2001). Technoculture: From alphabet to cybersex. Crows Nest: Allen & Unwin. Ito, M. (2008). Introduction. In K. Varnelis (Ed.), Networked Publics (pp. 1-14). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Lewis, C., & Fabos, B. (2005).Instant messaging, literacies, and social identities. Reading Research Quarterly. 40, 470-501. Ong, W.J. (2002). Orality and Literacy. New York: Routledge.

Penley,C. & Ross, A. (eds) (1991). Technoculture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.