Walter J. Ong Orality and Literacy

“More than any other single invention, writing has transformed human consciousness.”

Plato’s Objections to Writing Socrates: “[writing] will introduce forgetfulness into the soul of those who learn it: they will not practice using their memory because they will put their trust in writing, which is external and depends on signs that belong to others, instead of trying to remember from the inside, completely on their own.”— Phaedrus 275a

Writing is a Technology “Writing...initiated what print and computer only continue, the reduction of dynamic sound to quiescent space, the separation of the word from the living present, where alone spoken words can exist.” “Technologies are not mere exterior aids but also interior transformations of consciousness, and never more than when they affect the word.”

“Writing...was and is the most momentous of all human technological inventions. It is not a mere appendage to speech. Because it moves speech from the oral-aural to a new sensory world, that of vision, it transforms speech and thought as well.”

So how might we connect Ong’s ideas with what we know about the process of remediation? Do they connect or disconnect?

Sondra Perl “Understanding Composition”

“What basic patterns seem to occur during composing?”

Recursiveness “In recent years, many researchers including myself have questioned the traditional notion that writing is a linear process with a strict plan- write-revise sequence.” “...recursiveness in writing implies that there is a forward-moving action that exists by virtue of a backward-moving motion.” “reading little bits of discourse” The use of a topic or keyword “felt sense”

“Felt Sense” “The move is not to any words on the page nor to the topic but to feelings or non- verbalized perceptions that surround the words, or to what the words already present evoke in the writer...the move occurs inside the writer, to what is physically felt.”

“Two Parts of the Same Process” Retrospective Structuring “the process of attending, of calling up a felt sense, and of writing out of that place” “begins with what is already there” “What is "right" or "wrong" corresponds to our sense of our intention. We intend to write something, words come, and now we assess if those words adequately capture our intended meaning.” Projective Structuring “the ability to craft what one intends to say so that it is intelligible to others” “asks writers to attempt to become readers and to imagine what someone other than themselves will need before the writer's particular piece of writing can become intelligible and compelling.”