HUMA 1780 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Walter J. Ong, Oral Tradition
25 Jun 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
Lecture 4: Oral Culture
Oral culture are cultures that rely on oral communication—nothing is written down.
Mainly because writing itself did not exist or was not used. It todays literate age, it’s
hard to imagine what such a culture would be like. We’re so used to literacy that it is
the primary means of communication and the complete of absence of any graphic
markings is almost completely foreign. The concept of “looking up” did not exist. The
only that you can do is recall.
In trying to remember the world of oral cultures, Walter Ong asks us to reflect on the
nature of sound itself as sound. He writes, “All sensation takes place in time, but
sound has a special relationship to time unlike that of other fields that register in
human sensation.” Sound exists only when it is going out of existence. In other words,
once you experience the sound of a word as it fades away, as he writes, “when I
pronounce the word ‘permanence’, by the time we get to the ‘nence’, the ‘perma’ is
gone, and has to be gone.
Unlike written or visual form, sound cannot be stopped. You can stop a video clip and
look at the firm; you can stop in the middle of reading a novel and look at a particular
word or paragraph. But if you stop a sound, all you get is silence. If it is recorded, you
can rewind, fast forward, and stop it. However if you hit pause, there is just nothing.
Document Summary
Oral culture are cultures that rely on oral communication nothing is written down. Mainly because writing itself did not exist or was not used. It todays literate age, it"s hard to imagine what such a culture would be like. We"re so used to literacy that it is the primary means of communication and the complete of absence of any graphic markings is almost completely foreign. The concept of looking up did not exist. The only that you can do is recall. In trying to remember the world of oral cultures, walter ong asks us to re ect on the nature of sound itself as sound. He writes, all sensation takes place in time, but sound has a special relationship to time unlike that of other elds that register in human sensation. sound exists only when it is going out of existence. Unlike written or visual form, sound cannot be stopped.
