by Christopher Dean, Will Hochman, Carra Hood, and Robert McEachern

The Many Colored Coat of the Emperor: Multi-layered, Literate, and Physical: Node VI
By Chris Dean

The Second Frontier of Space
or, In the Beginning Ong Discussed "The Spoken Word"

Section One

Walter Ong makes an important distinction in Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word between primary and secondary orality. (To read a succinct definition of these two terms, go to http://www.nas.org/affiliates/michigan/bertonneau_glossary.htm.) It's beyond the scope of this webtext to talk about the various distinctions he makes; however, there is one point about Ong's use of these two terms that I need to proffer. For Ong, primary orality is the "natural" linguistic state of humanity, while secondary orality is the "unnatural state" of all literate humans. Secondary orality in all its forms, including chat, is not natural at all. (According to Ong, "naturalness" is not necessarily the preferred state by the way. He argues that consciousness is formed and shaped in important ways by written literacy.) Secondary orality, which Ong identifies as the oral language of all individuals living in a literate society, includes computer-mediated communication.

Although computer-mediated secondary orality shares some of the hallmarks of contemporary oral discourse, which Ong would debatably also classify as secondary orality, it is still textually based. Both contemporary oral discourse (by this I mean oral discourse as practiced by folks living in a literate age) and computer-mediated secondary orality share three things: (a) the importance of a particular context, (b) the spontaneity of expression, and (c) the importance of tone. However, electronically mediated secondary orality, be it a TV show or a computer chat, relies on text to produce and reproduce itself. The idea is that electronic discourse, particularly chat, only makes use of a textually-based secondary orality, and this is problematic for me.

If students have access only to text, then they are losing out on the exercise of half of Gardner's linguistic intelligence. Also, I think that there is a more substantial loss that happens: a loss of the physical body and physical voice can mean that students have no access to their bodily-kinesthetic intelligences and learning strategies associated with them. This loss is a key loss, and I'll explain why in the next section of this text.

Node Seven of "The Many Colored Coat of the Emperor"