In his essay, Ong states that most quality writing relies on the writer's ability to successfully fictionalize his or her audience, with skills the writer acquires “not from daily life but from earlier writers who were fictionalizing in their imagination audiences they had learned to know in still earlier writers” (11). This history extends further, to the origins of verbalization—orality. Ong discusses the differentiations between the two forms of verbalization, one of the most pressing being the dissimilar relationships writers and speakers form with their audiences.
The variance in immediacy is an essential disparity to note: “For the speaker, the audience is in front of him. For the writer, the audience is simply further away, in time or space or both” (10). Ong continues, stating that a surface containing information can counteract time in the conservation of information, and can doubly transcend the space between writer and audience; however, despite the luxury written communication provides, Ong suggests a “mechanistic mock-up” quality to this form, asserting that “words are never fully determined in their abstract signification [and that this is where] problems with the writer's audience begin to show themselves,” and that, with few exceptions, is impossible to traverse. This “abstract signification” is of little significance to the speaker, who is operating within a context where his or her audience's interaction is immediate, “is related existentially in terms of the circumambient actuality” not provided to the writer; the writer does not have the advantage of the immediacy of the speaker, nor the benefit of vocal inflections and body language.
The exceptions or special cases Ong offers are astute, and I feel that recent technology has brought further innovations in escaping the boundaries the writer faces. Emoticons in written communication operate as simulacrums in the absence of inflection, providing the text with a signifier to some emotion. Their prevalence both online and in text messaging suggests an attempt to circumnavigate around the barriers of communication whose success conventionally rests solely upon words.
2 comments:
I had to read this article for another one of Professor Graban's classes, and this reminded me of our discussion on how this article is a bit outdated. It was written in 1975, before the internet, instant messaging, email, texting, etc. It is now possible to almost instantly communicate through text, and I chuckled when reading the words, "direction communication by text is impossible" (20). Then I pause when I go on to read that, "this makes writing not less but more interesting... for man lives largely by indirection, and only beneath the indirections that sustain him is his true nature to be found" (20).
I've found that a lot of people who are interested in literature (as we all clearly are) look down to a certain degree the shortcuts used in texting, from emoticons to shortening "for" to "4", "laugh out loud" to "lol" and other abominable sights that have become common in texting and instant messaging. I once thought it was simply for the eyesore of seeing the English language so butchered, but perhaps there's something deeper to it. Maybe it is not simply an annoyance, but that these shortcuts take away from the art of writing itself. A person should be able to detect sarcasm from the wording and character of the writer, rather than from the position of a smiley face or "lol" at the end of the text. Or maybe the vagueness of its intention without these signifiers is what makes it more interesting, more valuable in a sense.
Perhaps emoticons and acronyms are necessary in instant textual exchanges simply for the immediacy we strive for when sending them. It certainly does allow for more clarity, and if we wish to have a more immediate reply, then this aids in this goal. I don't know about anyone else, but it always has somewhat bothered me. Maybe it is for the reason Ong cites, that text has traditionally been indirect and hence more complicated and interesting as a result. That, or I'm just simply pretentious about how the English language is used.
Though I'm not overly-fond of emoticons, I'm a bit more lenient with the mutations of "to" becoming "2" and "you" becoming "U," potentially because of the character-limitations forms like Twitter instigate--but also, more likely mostly, because I am a Prince-enthusiast (and, I mean, how could I ever hate on "I Would Die 4 U"!?)
Maybe I should include a winky-face to indicate my merely partial seriousness.
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