By Jence Carlo Servano and Ardeth Sinamban

Linguistics has been sounding a faint alarm. The human tongue and hand have been in quite a combat as millenials and traditionalists flag out their linguistic methods to be more effective than the other. Other intellects have even argued that writing has “changed” or “taken over” orality, and that it should be already, with what of the modern human intellect. However, Ferdinand de Saussure commented that: writing has “usefulness, shortcomings and dangers”, but he saw writing as a complement to verbal speech, not a transformer of it.

To really think about it though, it already seems pretty obvious that orality and literacy are different. According to Ong’s Orality and Literacy, there are roughly 3000 languages spoken today to which only 78 have a literature. Writing also extends word resources: English has more than 1.5million words, and most oral dialects have only several thousand words. In short, writing implies some orality in a culture, orality does not imply writing.

Orality was and is mainly used by the tradional oral cultures, and they depend mostly in their memories. They must invest greatly in repeating and memorizing which they arduously learned in years. Indeed to remember things one should established a high set of conservative mind. At the time writing was invented, it gave humans access to limitless memory. It’s not aiming to annihilate oral cultures but because it’s a human need. To know more and learn more. What’s written down, that idea can now last without being forgotten. No need of vivid repeating and memorizing, but making people learn new things faster and share more information without forgetting. With this, intellects and experts of the modern world have commended writing to be used by schools, millenials, and society of the modern world since it is proven to be significantly more convenient, appropriate, and advantageous compared to the acquirements or erudition of orality. However, there still are oral cultures who stood firm in their cultural linguistic ways of learning despite the “evolution” of the modern society.

To sum things up, even with how quite evident it is to see that writing is easier when it comes to studying, and that millenials and majority of the people in the world today do use literacy or writing over orality, that does not imply that it has totally taken over or metamorphosized orality. There are oral cultures still existing that keep faith to their traidtion linguistic method.

Resources:

Ong, W. J., & Hartley, J. (2013). Orality and literacy: The technologizing of the word. London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group

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By: Glannerry Kate Salarza and Reyban Sabordo

“No man is an island”

Perhaps, this is one of the most factual aphorisms I have encountered in my entire existence here on Earth. Indeed, no one and nothing could survive without the assistance of the other.

Now, how is this related to orality and literacy?

Throughout the years, these two cultures, oral and literate, have paved their way to get a spot in the realms of language and communication.

Orality, by definition, is a medium of language originated long before chirography was unraveled, whereas people communicate personally. Long ago, since there are no concrete basis or representations, the language our ancestors used was just merely vague sounds. In fact, it doesn’t matter even though they vary with the sounds as long as they understand each other. As a result of the face-to-face connection, conversations tend to be more additive, aggregative, redundant, conservative, close to the human world, agnostically-toned, empathetic and participatory, homeostatic, and situational, than usual.

Literacy, on the flip side, is one aid of connecting with other people in a chirographic demeanor. As years go by, humanity has learned and embraced the essence of communication through written letters, whereas they have come up with an idea to write all the things they want to say to the other person in a sheet of paper. However, in the fast-pacing world of today’s generation, technology has become powerful and influential to the people, especially the millennials. Today, technology has been a wide medium of communication. From letters, people can now communicate through text messaging, chat, e-mail, and the like. Through literate culture, conversations tend to be more analytic, copious, traditionalist, objectively distant, and abstract, compared to oral.

Though they vary in a lot of aspects, primary oral and literate culture have become “best buds” in the given field. Having being said that no one and nothing could succeed alone, we believe that orality and literacy are the support systems of each other. Thus, we do not consider orality as superior or inferior than literacy and vice versa. In lieu, we treat them just the same as a “win-win situation”. These two are interconnected cultures, meaning that they both are dependent with each other. Obviously, you cannot enjoy the zenith level of effectivity of each one by utilizing it individually. Orality and literacy may differ in model and medium of communication, but allowing them to work as one will be a perfect combo.

Hence, orality and literacy should be inseparable, and we should always bear in mind that every person or everything has its own unique trait. We are all different from each other, but that doesn’t mean that one is superior or inferior than the other. Never.

References:

Ong, W. J. (1982). Orality and literacy: The technologizing of the word. London: Methuen. Retrieved from: http://dss-edit.com/prof-anon/sound/library/Ong_orality_and_literacy.pdf

Photo References:

Croman, J. (2017). http://jakecroman.co/why-commitment-to-providing-equal-treatment-is-a-smart-business-move/

By: Joshua Steven C. Rose and Socorro Bay H. Sarabia

Professor Walter J. Ong’s book entitled “Orality and Literacy” delved into different factors that may have somehow changed our thought processes, personality, and social structures that resulted to the development of speech and writing. Moreover, the book explained the vast differences and similarities between oral cultures and literate cultures, and even the relationship of their orality and literacy.

Reflecting on what we have learned from Professor Ong, my partner and I thought that we can relate his concept to the emergence of vlogs and their association to blogs. To start with, we all know that a blog also known as “weblog” is a discussion and informational website wherein authors share their knowledge about any topic they desire. It can also be a form of journal or diary. Moreover, the author of a blog is known as a “blogger”. Similarly, a vlog stands for “video blog” which is an enhanced type of blog and is a major trend in the present time that gives the “vlogger” the opportunity to post videos in his/her website about almost anything under the sun to give entertainment, share information, create tutorials and etc.

Both blogs and vlogs have the same objective and that is to communicate to their audience. Same is true with orality and literacy. The only difference is that one form requires a physical presence to be able to be created. Furthermore, although most of the time the receiver of information in these types of media is indefinite and not present, it can still be considered that both approaches are intersubjective. It is because vloggers and bloggers could only come up with their posts’ content if they share a similar consciousness about a certain topic with their target audience. They imagine a series of anticipated feedback in order for them to present information in their vlogs/blogs and for the content to be more interactive and closer to the human world. The emergence of these modern forms of communication gives us a unique view of the communication model that we know because while it uses a medium and reflects a one-way approach of communicating, it is still intersubjective.

References:

Ong, Walter J. 1982. Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. London: Methuen, pp. 171-173

 By: Anjie Gancita and April Magbanua  

        As a culture moves from orality to writing to printing to televising, its ideas of truth move with it. – Neil Postman

Years and years have passed and great changes happened over the course of time. One of these is the evolution of our cultures which have affected our orality and literacy. It can be said that when it comes to teaching children, both orality and literacy can be effecient but orality is more predominant. Teaching children orally is more effective and learning becomes easier for them.

In teaching young children for the first time, it is more advisable to teach them orally since it will be hard for them to understand written texts. They won’t be able to retain and absorb knowledge from these literary mediums as compared to a person imparting information to them. For example, a child learning how to draw will find it easier if someone teaches and demonstrates it to him or her rather than when he or she reads a book about learning how to draw. Children have vast imaginations and when it comes to learning, they would want to go outside of the box and actualize what they are taught. They do not just settle on a fixed reading material.

Learning has to be an intersubjective type of communication, the teacher and the student both have to be in a sender and receiver position at the same time. They both have to exchange experiences and knowledge to learn from one another. Furthermore, they must be able to connect or have a sense of the other person’s thoughts.

Learning should not only be in a chirographic conditioning form since, unlike the oral culture, it regards speech as informational rather than performance oriented. Furthermore, written texts are one-way since there is no real audience when the texts are being written. One can not be able to have communication with its readers and get inside their minds. As a result, the students would struggle in understanding and learning information from written texts.

References:

Ong, W. J. (1982). Orality and literacy: The technologizing of the word. London: Methuen.