14 thoughts on “Week 6 – Writing, Books, Literature (T2)”
Diyana Mohd
Walter Ong talks about the writerly consciousness in which was brought upon by the technologizing of the word. He says this new technology of writing “brought the critique into existence”. He argues by using Plato as an example, asserting that “Plato’s philosophically analytic thought… was possible only because of the effects that writing was beginning to have on mental processes.” Somehow I feel I could relate with this right now, as I type out this blog post, I am beginning to string words + ideas + concepts into proper coherent sentences. Writing it down into words, hence articulating ideas clearly helps in the disentanglement of mental processes.
Ong too says “Technology, properly interiorized, does not degrade human life but on the contrary enhances it.” We shan’t disregard writing as just a mechanical contrivance, but we must realize the importance of it. Without it, we do not have the opportunity to practice/interiorize writing as a form and avenue of creative self-expression. Treating writing as second nature, and improving it as a viable skill, “is hardly dehumanizing” according to Ong. He then argues that it enhances and restructures the human lifeworld.
Richard Hoggart’s read was fun. He says that great literature reveals the inner character of society. He adds that it embodies certain ideas and predecisions, which are a reflection of the temporalities’ cultural conditions. A well-used example would be Baudelaire’s poetry and its reflection of the temporal society’s tectonic shift to capitalism/mass production.
However, great literature can be condemned to being unequal. Published bodies of literary work are seen as discursive cultural artifacts. As Foucault would argue, dominant discourse wields power. The person that can wield such power is one that is privileged, in terms of class, gender, race. It is important to note that some famous writers got their first literary breakthrough under nom de plumes, bluffing that they were authors hailing from a more-privileged gender, race. Perhaps the question of class identity can be situated and understood in their lacking capital (Bourdieu’s economic i.e., can’t afford to self-publish, or buy tools to write; social i.e., not knowing anyone who could help the author hopeful get published; and cultural & symbolic i.e., writing works that are judged as distasteful and lacking literary merit).
Dionne See
Ong talks about how writing is a technology and that it also needs other tools and equipment and he compares it to music like how we need to internalize the technology, hence making the tool/machine a 2nd nature to us. Therefore, he says that writing is completely artificial but this artificiality is natural to us humans. Honestly before reading this, I would never see writing as a technology and how artificial it is because, we live in a literate society whereby writing is so normal and even part of our daily activities. But then again, we did not know how to write from the moment we are born, hence this writing is learned, we learn how to make use of the tools aka pens/pencils to write.
Ong also mentions that writing is an autonomous discourse because while we read, we are completely detached from the author, if we come across a particular segment of the book which we don’t understand, we can’t look for the author to clarify our doubts, we can’t discuss with the author what the book should actually be. And this is why Ong also classifies writing dead because there is a lack of social interaction between writers and the readers and how they destroy memory, etc. However, even though reading now can be seen as a independent act (e.g. silent reading), because of the internet, we can actually discuss with others who have read the books as well. There are reviews online, magazines, newspapers and all these are possible interactions between readers. Even though what we interpret might be different, the sharing of our ideas and thoughts would actually make the print alive again.
I like how Chartier talks about how we need to understand both readable space and actualization. Other than understanding the history of the book, we also need to understand how the book is being materialized because this is how each book differs for everyone. If everyone simply focus on the history of the book, then it is a fact but if we also focus more on how books are being interpreted and how the books transform our interactions, then the book is different. Then again, writing is not dead.
And to add on, regarding detachment of the writing, other than the fact that now writing is very physical whereby how we write differs and how writing in different environments is also different, I would actually see writing as a technology to transmit messages. When you write, you are conveying a message and it’s dependent on who the recipient is. Therefore, it shouldn’t be a detachment from the writing because you have a purpose when you write and you have targeted audience too (even if you are writing to yourself, you are targeting yourself to re-read it next time).
Sakino Tan
Although Ong, mentions that writing is an autonomous discourse whereby the author is displaced, I feel that writing is necessary since without it we may never be able read the works of dead people. It is through writing that knowledge may be passed from generation to generation. Since knowledge may be built upon previous knowledge or scholars may critique against certain ways of thought, it is through writing that others may be able to do so. It is true that the essence of intonation and the value of persuasion may be lost through writing, as such this brings about the study of literature. I feel that writing is the source that merges the past with the present. Since the past is was not as technology savvy as the current generation, writing is one way in which history can be understood.
Since we need to convey messages to people I feel that it is important that people structure their thoughts when writing. According to Mcluhan, the message is in the medium, therefore, even if a person may want to bring across the same point, it may differ across different mediums. In a speech, body language and actions may play a part and influence the message put across as well as the intonation and the way the speech is said. However, in writing, readers may have different interpretations because of the style of writing. Therefore, it may be true that Plato mentioned that writing is the least pure form. However, there are presenters who do go through writing in order to give their speech. A speech may be written before it is given out. In this scenario, wouldn’t this mean that not all speech may be in a pure form. The fact that writing and orality can be considered a social construct since it is created by humans, both definitely allows for critical analysis.
A speech may be messy when the speaker does not organize his thoughts. In this sense, the speech may not be an effective way in trying to convey the message put across.
Hoggart mentions that readers reflect their likes and dislikes, their taste and aversion, what they can comprehend and what is beyond them. In the case of mass culture, fiction books like Harry Potter have generated so much publicity that J.K.Rowling does consider the reaction of her fans when she was writing the series. Satisfying her fans, would mean greater sale of her books. Therefore, the authors do ‘consult’ their audience when necessary.
According to Chartier, writing allows for the readers to understand the point in time when they are writing since writing may reflect the writer’s experience of the world. These external factors do play a part in the author’s construction of thought. Therefore, it must be considered when being critical of the work of the writer. In comparison today, the fact that almost anything can be retrieved online or can be gotten as an e-book, does this make the text / script that the reader is reading less formal than in the book form?
Audrey
Speech v.s the written:
Ong discusses how writing frames or restructures the human consciousness. While he quotes a large portion of Plato’s anti-writing (ironically) writing, Ong also discusses Plato’s critique of writing in a functional way.
Plato says that writing “(pretends) to establish outside the mind what in reality can only be in the mind.” Following this same thought, Plato argues that writing is artificial and detaches the writer from the writing. The word becomes in a sense, irresponsible, and does not allow for feedback, because the author does not have to be present when someone is reading his writing – it is precisely this essence of writing that makes people choose writing over speaking in some occasions – a point I will illustrate later.
Interestingly, when we study writings or literature now, we often look out for the writer’s “voice”, almost as if we are bringing back the speech to the writing, trying to discover a more organic stream of thought that the author consciously or unconsciously has shown, beyond his/her writing style. Besides studying the diction, syntax, grammar and storylines (in fiction) or subject matter (in non-fiction), an author’s voice seems to connote a distinct personality of the author.
This somehow brings us closer to authors in a more indirect and complex way.
Murakami, for example has an incredibly distinct voice. Whenever I read his work, I imagine this peculiar, subdued, Japanese man – which he may or may not be. In this sort of anonymity (of course I don’t actually mean anonymity because there are authors’ names, their bios, etc. But anonymity in a sense where readers don’t fully know the author), readers get to connect with the writers from the way they interpret their writings.
Yet it is also this detachment that makes writing “irresponsible”. Some people leave a note at the door before they move out of the house and leave a loved one. I make cards or write letters to friends during special occasions when I want to say mushy things to them I will never say in person. Then I insist they read it when I’m not around. Writing is that romantic.
But sometimes writing has less power than speaking. Back at the newsroom, the golden rule to get hold of a newsmaker is to speak to him/her over the phone if we can’t speak to them face to face. Emails and text messages are always part of Plan B. Convincing people over the phone works like a spell.
Ong writes that writing also makes things real or permanent. When I was an emo teenager, I relied on journaling as a form of release, penning my angst-ridden thoughts and emotions that I would be very embarrassed to read now (which also illustrates how the permanence of writing makes it discoverable, unless destroyed).
Then, I felt like I expressed myself the best in writing. If I did not write, I probably would have ended up talking to myself – this writing, or compartmentalizing of my thoughts actually kept me sane.
Maybe we shouldn’t contend which of the two mediums is better. Both have very distinct purposes and they are probably good friends that work together in different settings – when we need to structure our streams of consciousness, or express ourselves in the most unfiltered way.
Stanley Wong
This week’s readings talk about writing, not just in substance, but also its form. Indeed, there is a macro-to-micro trajectory in the way the readings are assigned, with the actual act of reading and the space it occupies, to the content of the book, and how the reader interprets them.
Ong’s article discusses about Plato and his critique on writing technology. Plato laments that the writing and reading dulls the human brain, where we potentially lose our ability to remember. Plato’s argument is akin to that of a calculator in the modern era, where our reliance on it has reduced our ability to compute; hence he argues that writing brings about “death”.
At the same time, he talks about alphabetization, where it has two purposes: It restructures our thinking, whereby it is used to form words that is imbued with meaning, and as a form of categorization, where it organizes our thoughts. It also has elitist connotations. He gave the example of the Korean characters supplementing the Chinese characters. For the Korean elites, knowing the Chinese characters was a form of capital; using it equates being learned and cultured.
Chartier talks about reading as a practice and the interpretative process associated with it. He highlighted two key concepts: Readable Space, and the actualization of reading. The readable space implies the context under which books are read; not all books are read to the self. It may occur within a communal context, like reading sessions for children in the library, or bedtime stories that’s read to children. Seen this way, how we approach a book is influenced by the context in which it is read. It is also not about the context in which the act of reading takes place; the form in which the words are presented in also influences how we approach the text and read it. On another note, how people interpret the text is also very much based on their location in the social structure; different occupants can read the same text differently. This coupled with the context in which the text was read and the form the text takes, makes reading a very subjective experience and give rise to diversified experiences associated with the practice of reading.
Lastly, the content of the text also reflects the social conditions where it was written in. Hoggart talks about the text themselves, whereby he contextualizes the text to wider social phenomenon. Literary texts are not just about stories; they also reflect implicit power relations or forms of oppression. At the same time, the style and structure of the text also reveals the various attitudes and culture of the particular society in time.
These three readings, taken together, tells us that text should not be analysed in terms of its content; other aspects of the text, like the form in which it is presented, it’s style and structure influences the way we read and interpret the content.
Iman
Ong
Ong brought up how Plato opines that writing not only detaches itself from the author but also from human touch. He believes that the speech is the closest thing to our soul and by writing, we are detaching and alientaing ourselves from our souls. He adopts an anti-writing stance. I find this perspective rather extreme and even incomprehensible. Like Prof mentioned in the lecture, Plato fails to acknowledge that music can speak to our emotions, which is similar to writing. How can Plato disregard the great literary works that ignite such passionate feelings in their readers. For example, Sylvia Plath’s poetry was emotion-packed and impacted a lot of her readers. It was not oral, it was written down, documented.
However, I do agree writing takes away the purest form of thinking (speech is unconscious, writing is conscious) as we are able to edit our thoughts via the rules attached to writing (e.g. grammar).
Chartier
The point about how packaging matters in terms of how we approach it as a text is particularly interesting to me as it gives a lot to ponder about. For example, as discussed in tutorial, the Quran as a traditional text is treated differently to the Quran as an app on one’s iPhone. The rituals attached to reading the Quran physically seem to not apply to when reading it on a phone. To even touch the Quran physcially, one has to cleanse oneself first through wudu’ but some argue that you do not have to take wudu’ when using the Quran app. Hence, packaging changes the way we treat the text.
Maxly Inthaxai
Writing is a method of representing language in visual or tactile form. Writing systems use sets of symbols to represent the sounds of speech, and may also have symbols for such things as punctuation and numerals.
A system of more or less permanent marks used to represent an utterance in such a way that it can be recovered more or less exactly without the intervention of the utterer.
From The World’s Writing Systems
A set of visible or tactile signs used to represent units of language in a systematic way, with the purpose of recording messages which can be retrieved by everyone who knows the language in question and the rules by virtue of which its units are encoded in the writing system.
Ong’s mention writing is a kind of multi-message that have been sending in the history along the symbolic and alphabet that is very interesting point because in the past the best way to ensure that people in the new generation be able to receive the information and contents from past to the present are sending from memory to writing records, therefore writing has begun to use and continue to use for the key of the mass as well.
In a history of Writing, no one definition of writing can cover all the writing systems that exist and have ever existed. Instead he states that a ‘complete writing’ system should fullfill all the following criteria:
it must have as its purpose communication;
it must consist of artificial graphic marks on a durable or electronic surface;
it must use marks that relate conventionally to articulate speech (the systematic arrangement of significant vocal sounds) or electronic programing in such a way that communication is achieved.
Writing systems are both functional, providing a visual way to represent language, and also symbolic, in that they represent cultures and peoples. In The writing systems of the world there are many systems of how people identify them and contribute to be the mass of message to be sending to the audience by the public text particularly in the media of technology so far.
In the way of writing including the books and so on might be specific from the effective from the writing. The books also have many type of reading and the best introduction of using massage to the audience is about the way how can we attract the audience by using the normally alphabet to motivate people to read our content, hence literature is the best way of attractive the audience to be concern their attraction and technology is also improve the way how to transfer the message to the audience especially TV, radio and internet as well.
Otherwise, the most visible items of a language, scripts and orthographies are ’emotionally loaded’, indicating as they do group loyalties and identities. Rather than being mere instruments of a practical nature, they are symbolic systems of great social significance which may, moreover, have profound effect on the social structure of a speech community.
Clarinda Ong
Ong writes about the shift of consciousness that had occurred due to the advent of literacy and when word has been technologized by print. Tying with McLuhan’s theory, he wrote about the progression of developments of technology through the history of communication – showing the progress of invention of speech (primary orality), to pictograms, to alphabets, to typography and ended up with recent electronic communication. This progression actually reflects human consciousness and there are implications of changes of human’s thinking.
In relation to McLuhan’s theory, there are differences in primary oral cultures (societies which do not have written language) and literate cultures. Ong believes that there are primary structural distinctions between orality and literacy. The use of written words is so deeply embedded in our lives; we are so reliant on them and hence, it is hard to distinguish the differences. In the past, the use of orality is much more rampant than the use of literacy.
Another term that I’ve found interesting is ‘Residual Orality’ – the thought and the verbal expressions within cultures which been exposed to writing and print, according to McLuhan’s term, this has not fully ‘interiorized’ the use of technologies in people’s lives.
Ong thinks that people in oral cultures tend to be more situational than abstract; they think about the present situation, and not theoretically. Time and place will affect the power/ limitation of oral language. A word is gone immediately after it has been said. Oral language is linked to face-to-face interactions and more ‘erasable’ in some sense, but written language has a permanence side to it, it can be preserved and distributed easily with the current technologies.
In actual fact, humans and technology are both transformative and related to each other. People change the surroundings to invent technology – coming out with written paper & inks to write, hence, turning raw materials into new products. This further change the ways how people think and debate.
Moving on to Richard Hoggart – the man who critiques a working-class culture.
Quoted from his book, “Popular and mass art is more varied than they recognize (and what professes to be ‘high art’ sometimes no more than a profession), and the continuity and change within working-class attitudes are more complex than they allow.”
He brings out the point of ‘Popular art’ versus ‘Mass art’, and the negotiation of power. Ideas of agency – he showed that we are not dominated mechanically by mass culture/ threatened by the imposition of literary values by elites. The distinctions/ differentiations of ‘High art’ and ‘Mass art’ are no longer apt – the lines are significantly blurred.
Ernie Effendi
Literature is a form of communication, where an author conveys a message to an audience of readers. Therefore, studying literature, and linking back to theories fro mthe previous weeks, one has to look at all aspects of literature. Walter Ong discusses the initial introduction of written text and compares it to the rhetoric. Hoggart argues that literature can be analysed from the masses, as a popular culture, instead of just an elitist idea where literature is high art. Chartier, similar to Carey’s ritual view of communication, considers the role of readers and not just authors.
While Ong raises an interesting point that with written text, intonation and value of persuasion is loss as compared to the ‘rhetoric’, the irony is that more thought would have to be put into a written text. Similarly, written text allows for errors to be corrected and this then demands a higher value of written text. More thought should be put into a writing to be able to convey the tone, a structure, the social context and surroundings. In my opinion, authors have a harder task as compared to speakers. Comparing email recounts to speech recounts, one would feel the need to structure, plan and edit his thoughts in an email, but in a speech recount, he would speak freely, giving more space for errors and random inputs. Rhetoric would then give more freedom of free-thinking while written text would limit someone to the structure.
Hoggart and Chartier both argue for the value of literature. While Hoggart acknowledges that works of literature are ‘inventions, fabrications, imaginings’, he argues that written text ’embodies the sense of human life developing in a historical and moral context’ and ‘contains within itself the world of individual and social meaning’. We shouldn’t confuse novels as giving theoretical knowledge but we shouldn’t dismiss them as objects that hold no analytical value. The social world and moral conditions of a particular age can be analysed through novels produced in that time. In Anthony Burgess’s ‘A Clockwork Orange’ and George Orwell’s ‘1984’, we see what is considered a ‘dystopian society’ in that age. It reflects the sentiments of the time that the authors came from and allows for analysis of the history and society of that age.
Yet, it is necessary to understand Chartier’s argument where readers are voyagers. Readers play a role, as important as authors. While authors can construct social worlds and moral conditions through their works, how a reader reads and understand affects the process too. Coinciding with James Carey ritual view of communication, Chartier sees literature as two-way, not just the transmission of ideas but also the understanding of these ideas by the readers. This will then form many different interpretations of a written text and not limit to one that the author had in mind. This relates back to my initial point that authors would need to put more thought-process an analytical thinking when writing. They would have to consider the different groups of readers and the multiple understanding one text can produce. To ensure an effective understanding, he would have to structure and plan the text accordingly.
Literature then, isn’t exclusive to the elites or only able to be analysed in the ‘high culture’. Even within mass culture, Hoggart discusses how their choice of literature and their understanding of it will “reflect their likes and dislikes, their taste and aversion, what they can comprehend and what is beyond them”.
Therefore, in my personal opinion, literature holds a very important value in media. It reflects the social world one is in and should not be dismissed as mere forms of entertainment. Critical analysis can be done with books and literature.
Cheryl Chern
Writing, to Ong, has transformed human consciousness more than any other invention. He cites Plato’s views on writing in his work, namely how writing is inhuman because it is manufactured. Writing destroys memory and is unresponsive. Writing cannot defend itself, unlike its spoken counterpart. Indeed, writing is a technology and requires other tools to take place, as such it is not natural. It is a representation of what someone says or would like to say. Distancing is key in writing, where it gives time for thought and analysis before words are penned down, but for oral speech, there is no time for reflective selectivity.
In Chartier’s writing, we see that a text has meaning only through its readers. This means that the meaning of the text depends largely on the forms in which they are received and appropriated by their readers. Reading is therefore a practice embodied in gestures, spaces and habits where we note that texts are not read in the same manner by different readers and depending one’s culture, a same text can be varyingly captured, handled and understood. Texts can also be understood differently because of the historically and socially differentiated modes of access to texts. Because there is no comprehension of a text that does not depend on the forms in which it comes to the reader, the structure of books and its content are targeted on specific groups of readers depending on the publishers and authorities (depending on who they see as their target audience).
Sasha Kaur Dhillon
Hoggart:
Richard Hoggart puts forward a compelling case about the relevance of literature to the social sciences. He talks about the intrinsic power of an object and how it cannot be explained but can only be taken for what it is. Sometimes, there are moments to describe in certain phenomena that if placed at the right time “ brings together and contains within itself a world of individual and social meanings, becomes a comprehensive unstated statement about those people and that sense of values”. Thus, what Hoggart is trying to put forward is that even though literature has no theoretical knowledge it has the knowledge of displaying unique moments that through their interactions and interpretations can teach us different things and insights. Such interpretation revolves around the idea of “keeping your eyes on the particulars” .
Also, Hoggart asserts that poetry can provide evidence. But this is only when we do not read the poetry to ascertain evidence. He states aptly “ Their language expresses the temper of their minds, and their tempers exemplify crucial elements in their ages”. This essentially means that by studying language and words we can derive important observations of the social world that would not have been possible if we had taken literature for granted.
Hoggart also introduces other important elements of literature namely that it provides a whole experience throughout. It does not abstract the elements of experience but starts and finishes off with them. This is crucial to our understanding because we contextualize the details throughout the narration that is presented to us and in its context rather than analyzing them in insolation – which could produce varied and even incorrect interpretations. Also, an interesting point of view that he gives is that popular and mass art can be analyzed as well as opposed to traditional assumption that only high art could be analyzed.
Hoggart also believes that even though we feel moved by works of literature we do not feel the need to re-create our personal and social worlds. This is because men engage in literature for their own amusement and for their attempts to cope with their social worlds. It is an escape mechanism rather than an exploratory mechanism. It is not intended to create a revolution in the social sphere. Also, we wish to be in touch with others – that is a greater audience and this communication forms a basic yet integral part of our lives.
Walter J. Ong:
Ong discusses about the autonomy of discourse that writing grants to us as compared to oral speech. He also emphasizes the transformation that it has on our human consciousness. What I find interesting is the array of paradoxes that the juxtapositions of both mediums bring to light.
For instance, writing to Ong is associated with death because as Pluto argued it destroys one’s capacity to memorize things. However, the paradox lies in the fact that the deadness of the text ensures that it endures ( and thus actually lives forever and never dies) and retains its potential for “ being resurrected into limitless living contexts by a potentially infinite number of living readers”.
Another irony that Ong displays revolves around the alphabetization and the elitism associated with those who were taught to write. He showcases that forgers are not actually deviants but are “ experts entrenched at the centre of literary and intellectual culture”. This implies, to me at least that the elites who were given access to writing used it for manipulative purposes and were actually admired for this ( “experts”) because they had mastered the delivery of writing so well that they could now fool others with it.
Ong also shows us some aspects of writing that are more technical in detail. For instance, the narrative aspect of writing is not an objective but an operational display of a formula to depict a story. That is to say that one does not narrate a story based on his own methods of what he has observed but on a formula that has been regurgitated and standardized. Other aspects of writing include the lack of intonation that is otherwise presented in oral speech and this disadvantages writing because one has to fictionalize the settings and expressions and this can be agonizing. To this agony, Ong also incorporates “ backward scanning”.
However, writing is advantageous too in some instances, for it grants precision by breaking down the dense continuum of experience that the chaotic context of oral speech does not allow. Furthermore, writing also achieves objectivity because it separates the distance between the knower and the known.
In conclusion, Ong sheds light on the fact that academia is becoming more commercialized and that writing is losing its early monopoly ( elitism) though its importance is still sustained and every being increased in today’s world.
Roger Chartier:
Chartier’s entire essay revolves around how readers are voyagers throughout the entire reading process. He talks mainly about the readable space (a literality) and the procedures required for the actualization of the work ( a reading). This is namely because reading is not inscribed into the text and thus has to be deciphered. Another key thing to note is that form is crucial to the meaning one associates with a reading and if it changes, then that meaning would undergo change too. Chartier also postulates that to observe socioprofessional classifications we should observe and start observing the objects rather than social groups because they provide us with meanings and cultural divisions in the manner in which they are contextualized.
My particularly favorite notion of the reading is the one that books are manufactured and not written. The rationale for this is that machines process and publish books and publishers organize books for a particular manner which may not relate to the way in which the author would have written the book, if given the autonomy to do so.
Sherilyn Tan
Ong looks at how the evolution of mediums (writing and print) beyond oral speech, shape the communication process. He argued that Man’s thought processes and consciousness are not naturally granted, but rather, they were “structured directly or indirectly by the technology of writing”. As compared to oral speech, writing is context-free as the author cannot be present to directly defend or be questioned on what has been written. Thus the author’s ownership is intrinsic and it assumes that writing is an “autonomous discourse” that can convey the author’s message without his/her presence. Plato stated that writing is manufactured, weakens the mind and destroys memory since with the reliance on an external source; people no longer need to rely on their mind’s capabilities. Written text is also unresponsive and passive. However, critics rebutted that it is ironic that Plato’s arguments would never have been made known without the technology of writing and print themselves. The external technologies have been internalized and are constantly part of the reflexivity of the mind. Ong stated that unlike natural oral speech, writing is artificial and is ruled by articulable rules, such as grammar rules. Nonetheless, it doesn’t mean that writing is any “less-real” than oral speech. Even oral speech consists of communication barriers and the speakers may not always manage to fully convey their message or intent since the listeners’ interpretation also comes into play. He also claimed that writing is also necessary for the realization of human potentials and transforms the consciousness. Technology thus improves, instead of degrading human life since it requires practice and this enhances aspects of the human psyche and interior life.
Writing is a representation of sounds and words that people might say and is a code that determine the words and what the readers might understand of it. Similarly, White argued that alphabetization was an important invention that helped to classify and store information. Letters in themselves hold no meaning but when put together and arranged to form alphabets, they become imbued with meanings. This allows for recording and distribution of knowledge.
Ong also argued that pictogram systems which had a large repertoire of symbols, was time-consuming and elitist, whereas alphabetization enabled a levelling effect since it was easy for all to learn. However, in the beginning days of writing, people did not privilege the written word over the spoken one as the “conditions of words in a text is quite different from their condition in spoken discourse.” While speech is context specific, words are alone in a text. The writer has to fictionalize the readers and not assume that all his readers think alike. The issue of presence and absence in various medium thus affects the communication process and messages.
Chartier also suggested that is is important to analyze the themes, structure of texts; the history of the mediums that enable the circulation of writing and how the various mediums and forms produce usages and differentiated meanings. The print medium had transformed social relations, enabled new ways of thinking just like how Ong argued, as well as how it modified power relations. Similar to Ong, he also argued that the structure of texts govern the readers’ interpretations and receptions. It can be argued that one’s place and position in society (e.g. gender, class, race) have bearings on how the same text may be understood. This also affects the accessibility of texts by different groups in society.
Chartier also talked about the triangulated relations between text, book and reader. An unchanged text presented and reproduced in the printed form, will result in different receptions. As texts are passed from one published form to another, it also transforms the text and creates a new and perhaps different target clientele. Lastly, he stated that visible references were always required. Perhaps we can look at how there are different versions of the same text/book in the market these days. Different fonts, different book covers, different publishing house with the same content, however they all cater to different groups sometimes. For instance, when a movie based on the book is released, some might prefer the “movie-version” book cover, while some might prefer the classic “Penguin” version as it may be more “authentic” to them. Also, readers will have different takes on the same text and the meaning the writer intended to convey may not always be the message that is decoded.
Kerri Heng Yi Ping
This week is special because we’re writing (blogging) about our interpretation of texts on “writing, books and literature. We’re deriving our own meanings from the texts we’re read and putting them out in written text form. Kinda like writing about ‘reading and writing’ itself.
Growing up in Singapore’s education system, I’ve never really thought that reading and writing were monumental/powerful or belonging to a special upper class of society – we just had to read and write for our tests and exams. Writing is truly commonplace today, and it’s enlightening to know that it is quite a recent invention. I think reading comes after writing (without writing, there’d be no words to read) and it’s nice to realise that people interprete varying things when they read the same piece of writing.
ROGER CHARTIER
Chartier talks about text in its material form (printed words + characters) and the actualisation of the text – the interpretive procedures one goes through when reading. A text is only actualised when we realise their meaning, and receive and appropriate the text based on the meanings we derive from it. Texts are read differently by different people. For instance, a hopeless romantic might read a love story and fully believe in it, going so far as to emulate the romance in the story. However, a more jaded person might read the same love story and scoff at it, calling it a load of falsehood and rubbish.
Chartier also states that reading the same thing in different forms creates new meaning. This brought to mind: “The Medium is the Message”. The meaning of a text changes when its physical form changes (even though the text remains the same). For instance, a call to action inscribed on a rock – for instance: “my cat is missing, please help me find it!” on a secluded island may have no impact whatsoever, while the same call to action published in a newspaper might lead to many readers helping to search for the cat.
Cultural separations and the way readings/writings are classified are link to social divides. For instance, we’ve books classified according to age (Pre-school, Children, Teens, Adults) , and according to different industrial/academic fields (Sociology, Mathematics, Physical Sciences, Business). The type of texts one has can have access to, can read and can comprehend says something about his/her social standing and level of education. For instance, university students and professors and social science researchers have access to academic journal databases, which may be out of reach for most other people. For instance, once I’m no longer affiliated to a university, I may lose my access to the academic journal database, unless I pay for subscription on my own (which would cost a lot, over a long time).
Changes in writing/reading that are seemingly insignificant can have a major effect on the status of works and how they are interpreted. (The Bible’s chapters and verses are used as an example in Chartier’s work.) Likewise, if I did not break this blog post into paragraphs and left it as one long, continuous piece of text, it’d frustrate the reader and make not want to read this anymore.
The possession of books used to be so rare and so special, books were owned by the rare elite and signalled high social standing. Today, perhaps the rare few who can still read and understand the Latin language could be among the elite/prestigious ranks of the Catholic religion. Latin is the official language of the Vatican City, and privileged few people utilise it in Catholic religious texts.
At the end of the day, reading the same things can result in different meanings taken away.
RICHARD HOGGART
I really like how Hoggart explains that Literature and Sociology (the study of society) can come together and complement each other. Literature is not, he asserts, pure fluff and fabrication. Well-written literature can provide the ‘texture’ and ‘feeling’ to the world of social science – which is a more subjective world that cannot be simply defined in straightforward, ‘hard science’ terms. It gives meaning and in-depth emotion to hard social science theories.
I thought of my Secondary 4 Literature text: “To Kill A Mockingbird”, which describes small-town American society in the 1930s, against a backdrop of intense racism. A black man (Tom) stands trial for the alleged rape of a white woman, and he becomes the subject of scrutiny, discrimination, violence and racism. He is accused of raping the white woman and a yet, white man (Atticus Finch) stands as his defence lawyer. Through the eyes of the book’s protagonists, we see how racism + discrimination can manifest themselves in the conservative, ‘anti-black’ climate of 1930s America.
On top of race and religion (Ku Klux Clan, Lynching, Christianity), many other areas like class, status and gender roles (for instance, the jury in the book consisted of men only) were also explored in the novel, in a seamless story-telling narrative.
Indeed, we’ve learnt about various sociological concepts that can be applied to the book, but it is the book that tells the story and paints a picture of what it could have looked like. To Kill A Mockingbird is like a narrative of social criticism and allows us to see, rather then learn/conceptualise, what society was like at a certain point in time.
WALTER J. ONG
Walter talks about how writing is a monumental invention and technology as it allows us, for the first time, to express our thoughts in visual form. In the past, during Plato’s time (he was a strong advocate of oral culture), writing was a new phenomenon and it was regarded as dangerous and harmful. Writing was thought to weaken the intellect, just like the way calculators might weaken our mathematical sense for counting today.
Walter argues that writing transcends death, and that writing can be resurrected and brought alive. Writing is recorded and kept, and can be reproduced. It can lead to the production on new written works. Writing transforms and heightens consciousness.
He then talks about the magic of the written script, and how it can be fully correlate, word-for-word, to the oral form of speech. I don’t really like how he says that the Chinese script is “basically time consuming and elitist” and how Chinese “characters will be replaced by the roman alphabet as soon as all the people in the People’s Republic of China master the same Chinese language”. To me, that statement was ignorant and lacked true understanding of the Chinese script. The traditional Chinese script, no doubt tedious and tiresome to write, is still going very strong in Taiwan and Hong Kong – where they are the official written text. People still utilise the traditional Chinese script with full appreciation and understanding and it doesn’t look to be going away anytime soon. If traditional Chinese is tedious, the PRC (and countries like M’sia and S’pore) make use of Mao’s Simplified Chinese in everyday writing, business and administration. It may not be wise to presume that the Chinese script will be replaced by the Roman alphabet in time to come, seeing as it is so heavily used today (in business, education, administration and economy), especially in China, a world superpower.
Walter talks about the forms of languages, their design, their vowels and consonants.
It is interesting to realise that “documents did not immediately inspire trust” and that people had to be persuaded that writing improved old oral methods sufficiently to warrant all the expense and troublesome techniques it involves.
Today, oral testimony and oral words may seem to lack the strength and evidence that the written word possesses. Words said or spoken can be forgotten, misunderstood, unrecorded and misconstrued (unless recorded with a voice recorder).
I find it amusing that people could trust the spoken word (oral culture) so fully in the past, seeing as their verbal accounts were simply about “publicly remembering what others before them had remembered”. There were certainly no voice recorders during that time to record their spoken words. How did they know for sure that what they said was truly what they remembered, and how did they know that others before them remembered in full and accurate detail what they were speaking about? The spoken culture may be the predecessor to the written culture today, but it truly is a weak and unsubstantiated culture [especially since it was not recorded (there was no technology to record voices at that time)]. Verbal culture could have been changed and modified over and over as it was passed down through word-of-mouth, and who’s to know what’s the ‘truth’?
Maybe one way in which writing could be seen as artificial would be because one did not hear someone else’s real voice, but read it in text instead. Perhaps that’s why people today say that maybe a phone call is more sincere and real than a text message. A phone call could allow us to hear the other party’s voice in real time, thus rendering it more authentic than a ‘stoic’, ‘dead’ text message.
Evon Thung
This week’s readings talk about writing, books and literature, the common message I got from Chartier and Hoggart is that both emphasised the presence of audience/readers in order for the text to have meaning. In Chartier’s reading, he emphasizes on the importance of the form a text takes in the way it is read. To him, “reading is always a practice embodied in gestures, spaces and habits.” Hence, the same text can be reinterpreted in many ways by those who can read them. When a text is transferred from the author to the printing then to the reader, the original intended meaning of the author could be changed and modified to suit the printing organization’s needs and goals. He argued that there is the importance of writing that brought about the printed culture primarily because the authorities wish to regulate and shape minds through reading.
Ong’s reading talks largely about the distinctions between writing and orality. Because of the presence of the different mediums, it brought about changes to the communication process. He argued that writing restructures consciousness as writing allows the ability for analysis. Writing has the distancing effect which allows for thinking and analysing before writing down things materially unlike speaking which occurs simultaneously with thinking. Therefore, with writing which allows analysis, it allows for controlling to take place with concrete plans and observations. Since writing is artificial and difficult, it would take time and energy for changes to take place in the society along with writing. There must be a use for writing before writing can acquire the importance in society hence writing is usually associated with schooling and literacy.
Walter Ong talks about the writerly consciousness in which was brought upon by the technologizing of the word. He says this new technology of writing “brought the critique into existence”. He argues by using Plato as an example, asserting that “Plato’s philosophically analytic thought… was possible only because of the effects that writing was beginning to have on mental processes.” Somehow I feel I could relate with this right now, as I type out this blog post, I am beginning to string words + ideas + concepts into proper coherent sentences. Writing it down into words, hence articulating ideas clearly helps in the disentanglement of mental processes.
Ong too says “Technology, properly interiorized, does not degrade human life but on the contrary enhances it.” We shan’t disregard writing as just a mechanical contrivance, but we must realize the importance of it. Without it, we do not have the opportunity to practice/interiorize writing as a form and avenue of creative self-expression. Treating writing as second nature, and improving it as a viable skill, “is hardly dehumanizing” according to Ong. He then argues that it enhances and restructures the human lifeworld.
Richard Hoggart’s read was fun. He says that great literature reveals the inner character of society. He adds that it embodies certain ideas and predecisions, which are a reflection of the temporalities’ cultural conditions. A well-used example would be Baudelaire’s poetry and its reflection of the temporal society’s tectonic shift to capitalism/mass production.
However, great literature can be condemned to being unequal. Published bodies of literary work are seen as discursive cultural artifacts. As Foucault would argue, dominant discourse wields power. The person that can wield such power is one that is privileged, in terms of class, gender, race. It is important to note that some famous writers got their first literary breakthrough under nom de plumes, bluffing that they were authors hailing from a more-privileged gender, race. Perhaps the question of class identity can be situated and understood in their lacking capital (Bourdieu’s economic i.e., can’t afford to self-publish, or buy tools to write; social i.e., not knowing anyone who could help the author hopeful get published; and cultural & symbolic i.e., writing works that are judged as distasteful and lacking literary merit).
Ong talks about how writing is a technology and that it also needs other tools and equipment and he compares it to music like how we need to internalize the technology, hence making the tool/machine a 2nd nature to us. Therefore, he says that writing is completely artificial but this artificiality is natural to us humans. Honestly before reading this, I would never see writing as a technology and how artificial it is because, we live in a literate society whereby writing is so normal and even part of our daily activities. But then again, we did not know how to write from the moment we are born, hence this writing is learned, we learn how to make use of the tools aka pens/pencils to write.
Ong also mentions that writing is an autonomous discourse because while we read, we are completely detached from the author, if we come across a particular segment of the book which we don’t understand, we can’t look for the author to clarify our doubts, we can’t discuss with the author what the book should actually be. And this is why Ong also classifies writing dead because there is a lack of social interaction between writers and the readers and how they destroy memory, etc. However, even though reading now can be seen as a independent act (e.g. silent reading), because of the internet, we can actually discuss with others who have read the books as well. There are reviews online, magazines, newspapers and all these are possible interactions between readers. Even though what we interpret might be different, the sharing of our ideas and thoughts would actually make the print alive again.
I like how Chartier talks about how we need to understand both readable space and actualization. Other than understanding the history of the book, we also need to understand how the book is being materialized because this is how each book differs for everyone. If everyone simply focus on the history of the book, then it is a fact but if we also focus more on how books are being interpreted and how the books transform our interactions, then the book is different. Then again, writing is not dead.
And to add on, regarding detachment of the writing, other than the fact that now writing is very physical whereby how we write differs and how writing in different environments is also different, I would actually see writing as a technology to transmit messages. When you write, you are conveying a message and it’s dependent on who the recipient is. Therefore, it shouldn’t be a detachment from the writing because you have a purpose when you write and you have targeted audience too (even if you are writing to yourself, you are targeting yourself to re-read it next time).
Although Ong, mentions that writing is an autonomous discourse whereby the author is displaced, I feel that writing is necessary since without it we may never be able read the works of dead people. It is through writing that knowledge may be passed from generation to generation. Since knowledge may be built upon previous knowledge or scholars may critique against certain ways of thought, it is through writing that others may be able to do so. It is true that the essence of intonation and the value of persuasion may be lost through writing, as such this brings about the study of literature. I feel that writing is the source that merges the past with the present. Since the past is was not as technology savvy as the current generation, writing is one way in which history can be understood.
Since we need to convey messages to people I feel that it is important that people structure their thoughts when writing. According to Mcluhan, the message is in the medium, therefore, even if a person may want to bring across the same point, it may differ across different mediums. In a speech, body language and actions may play a part and influence the message put across as well as the intonation and the way the speech is said. However, in writing, readers may have different interpretations because of the style of writing. Therefore, it may be true that Plato mentioned that writing is the least pure form. However, there are presenters who do go through writing in order to give their speech. A speech may be written before it is given out. In this scenario, wouldn’t this mean that not all speech may be in a pure form. The fact that writing and orality can be considered a social construct since it is created by humans, both definitely allows for critical analysis.
A speech may be messy when the speaker does not organize his thoughts. In this sense, the speech may not be an effective way in trying to convey the message put across.
Hoggart mentions that readers reflect their likes and dislikes, their taste and aversion, what they can comprehend and what is beyond them. In the case of mass culture, fiction books like Harry Potter have generated so much publicity that J.K.Rowling does consider the reaction of her fans when she was writing the series. Satisfying her fans, would mean greater sale of her books. Therefore, the authors do ‘consult’ their audience when necessary.
According to Chartier, writing allows for the readers to understand the point in time when they are writing since writing may reflect the writer’s experience of the world. These external factors do play a part in the author’s construction of thought. Therefore, it must be considered when being critical of the work of the writer. In comparison today, the fact that almost anything can be retrieved online or can be gotten as an e-book, does this make the text / script that the reader is reading less formal than in the book form?
Speech v.s the written:
Ong discusses how writing frames or restructures the human consciousness. While he quotes a large portion of Plato’s anti-writing (ironically) writing, Ong also discusses Plato’s critique of writing in a functional way.
Plato says that writing “(pretends) to establish outside the mind what in reality can only be in the mind.” Following this same thought, Plato argues that writing is artificial and detaches the writer from the writing. The word becomes in a sense, irresponsible, and does not allow for feedback, because the author does not have to be present when someone is reading his writing – it is precisely this essence of writing that makes people choose writing over speaking in some occasions – a point I will illustrate later.
Interestingly, when we study writings or literature now, we often look out for the writer’s “voice”, almost as if we are bringing back the speech to the writing, trying to discover a more organic stream of thought that the author consciously or unconsciously has shown, beyond his/her writing style. Besides studying the diction, syntax, grammar and storylines (in fiction) or subject matter (in non-fiction), an author’s voice seems to connote a distinct personality of the author.
This somehow brings us closer to authors in a more indirect and complex way.
Murakami, for example has an incredibly distinct voice. Whenever I read his work, I imagine this peculiar, subdued, Japanese man – which he may or may not be. In this sort of anonymity (of course I don’t actually mean anonymity because there are authors’ names, their bios, etc. But anonymity in a sense where readers don’t fully know the author), readers get to connect with the writers from the way they interpret their writings.
Yet it is also this detachment that makes writing “irresponsible”. Some people leave a note at the door before they move out of the house and leave a loved one. I make cards or write letters to friends during special occasions when I want to say mushy things to them I will never say in person. Then I insist they read it when I’m not around. Writing is that romantic.
But sometimes writing has less power than speaking. Back at the newsroom, the golden rule to get hold of a newsmaker is to speak to him/her over the phone if we can’t speak to them face to face. Emails and text messages are always part of Plan B. Convincing people over the phone works like a spell.
Ong writes that writing also makes things real or permanent. When I was an emo teenager, I relied on journaling as a form of release, penning my angst-ridden thoughts and emotions that I would be very embarrassed to read now (which also illustrates how the permanence of writing makes it discoverable, unless destroyed).
Then, I felt like I expressed myself the best in writing. If I did not write, I probably would have ended up talking to myself – this writing, or compartmentalizing of my thoughts actually kept me sane.
Maybe we shouldn’t contend which of the two mediums is better. Both have very distinct purposes and they are probably good friends that work together in different settings – when we need to structure our streams of consciousness, or express ourselves in the most unfiltered way.
This week’s readings talk about writing, not just in substance, but also its form. Indeed, there is a macro-to-micro trajectory in the way the readings are assigned, with the actual act of reading and the space it occupies, to the content of the book, and how the reader interprets them.
Ong’s article discusses about Plato and his critique on writing technology. Plato laments that the writing and reading dulls the human brain, where we potentially lose our ability to remember. Plato’s argument is akin to that of a calculator in the modern era, where our reliance on it has reduced our ability to compute; hence he argues that writing brings about “death”.
At the same time, he talks about alphabetization, where it has two purposes: It restructures our thinking, whereby it is used to form words that is imbued with meaning, and as a form of categorization, where it organizes our thoughts. It also has elitist connotations. He gave the example of the Korean characters supplementing the Chinese characters. For the Korean elites, knowing the Chinese characters was a form of capital; using it equates being learned and cultured.
Chartier talks about reading as a practice and the interpretative process associated with it. He highlighted two key concepts: Readable Space, and the actualization of reading. The readable space implies the context under which books are read; not all books are read to the self. It may occur within a communal context, like reading sessions for children in the library, or bedtime stories that’s read to children. Seen this way, how we approach a book is influenced by the context in which it is read. It is also not about the context in which the act of reading takes place; the form in which the words are presented in also influences how we approach the text and read it. On another note, how people interpret the text is also very much based on their location in the social structure; different occupants can read the same text differently. This coupled with the context in which the text was read and the form the text takes, makes reading a very subjective experience and give rise to diversified experiences associated with the practice of reading.
Lastly, the content of the text also reflects the social conditions where it was written in. Hoggart talks about the text themselves, whereby he contextualizes the text to wider social phenomenon. Literary texts are not just about stories; they also reflect implicit power relations or forms of oppression. At the same time, the style and structure of the text also reveals the various attitudes and culture of the particular society in time.
These three readings, taken together, tells us that text should not be analysed in terms of its content; other aspects of the text, like the form in which it is presented, it’s style and structure influences the way we read and interpret the content.
Ong
Ong brought up how Plato opines that writing not only detaches itself from the author but also from human touch. He believes that the speech is the closest thing to our soul and by writing, we are detaching and alientaing ourselves from our souls. He adopts an anti-writing stance. I find this perspective rather extreme and even incomprehensible. Like Prof mentioned in the lecture, Plato fails to acknowledge that music can speak to our emotions, which is similar to writing. How can Plato disregard the great literary works that ignite such passionate feelings in their readers. For example, Sylvia Plath’s poetry was emotion-packed and impacted a lot of her readers. It was not oral, it was written down, documented.
However, I do agree writing takes away the purest form of thinking (speech is unconscious, writing is conscious) as we are able to edit our thoughts via the rules attached to writing (e.g. grammar).
Chartier
The point about how packaging matters in terms of how we approach it as a text is particularly interesting to me as it gives a lot to ponder about. For example, as discussed in tutorial, the Quran as a traditional text is treated differently to the Quran as an app on one’s iPhone. The rituals attached to reading the Quran physically seem to not apply to when reading it on a phone. To even touch the Quran physcially, one has to cleanse oneself first through wudu’ but some argue that you do not have to take wudu’ when using the Quran app. Hence, packaging changes the way we treat the text.
Writing is a method of representing language in visual or tactile form. Writing systems use sets of symbols to represent the sounds of speech, and may also have symbols for such things as punctuation and numerals.
A system of more or less permanent marks used to represent an utterance in such a way that it can be recovered more or less exactly without the intervention of the utterer.
From The World’s Writing Systems
A set of visible or tactile signs used to represent units of language in a systematic way, with the purpose of recording messages which can be retrieved by everyone who knows the language in question and the rules by virtue of which its units are encoded in the writing system.
Ong’s mention writing is a kind of multi-message that have been sending in the history along the symbolic and alphabet that is very interesting point because in the past the best way to ensure that people in the new generation be able to receive the information and contents from past to the present are sending from memory to writing records, therefore writing has begun to use and continue to use for the key of the mass as well.
In a history of Writing, no one definition of writing can cover all the writing systems that exist and have ever existed. Instead he states that a ‘complete writing’ system should fullfill all the following criteria:
it must have as its purpose communication;
it must consist of artificial graphic marks on a durable or electronic surface;
it must use marks that relate conventionally to articulate speech (the systematic arrangement of significant vocal sounds) or electronic programing in such a way that communication is achieved.
Writing systems are both functional, providing a visual way to represent language, and also symbolic, in that they represent cultures and peoples. In The writing systems of the world there are many systems of how people identify them and contribute to be the mass of message to be sending to the audience by the public text particularly in the media of technology so far.
In the way of writing including the books and so on might be specific from the effective from the writing. The books also have many type of reading and the best introduction of using massage to the audience is about the way how can we attract the audience by using the normally alphabet to motivate people to read our content, hence literature is the best way of attractive the audience to be concern their attraction and technology is also improve the way how to transfer the message to the audience especially TV, radio and internet as well.
Otherwise, the most visible items of a language, scripts and orthographies are ’emotionally loaded’, indicating as they do group loyalties and identities. Rather than being mere instruments of a practical nature, they are symbolic systems of great social significance which may, moreover, have profound effect on the social structure of a speech community.
Ong writes about the shift of consciousness that had occurred due to the advent of literacy and when word has been technologized by print. Tying with McLuhan’s theory, he wrote about the progression of developments of technology through the history of communication – showing the progress of invention of speech (primary orality), to pictograms, to alphabets, to typography and ended up with recent electronic communication. This progression actually reflects human consciousness and there are implications of changes of human’s thinking.
In relation to McLuhan’s theory, there are differences in primary oral cultures (societies which do not have written language) and literate cultures. Ong believes that there are primary structural distinctions between orality and literacy. The use of written words is so deeply embedded in our lives; we are so reliant on them and hence, it is hard to distinguish the differences. In the past, the use of orality is much more rampant than the use of literacy.
Another term that I’ve found interesting is ‘Residual Orality’ – the thought and the verbal expressions within cultures which been exposed to writing and print, according to McLuhan’s term, this has not fully ‘interiorized’ the use of technologies in people’s lives.
Ong thinks that people in oral cultures tend to be more situational than abstract; they think about the present situation, and not theoretically. Time and place will affect the power/ limitation of oral language. A word is gone immediately after it has been said. Oral language is linked to face-to-face interactions and more ‘erasable’ in some sense, but written language has a permanence side to it, it can be preserved and distributed easily with the current technologies.
In actual fact, humans and technology are both transformative and related to each other. People change the surroundings to invent technology – coming out with written paper & inks to write, hence, turning raw materials into new products. This further change the ways how people think and debate.
Moving on to Richard Hoggart – the man who critiques a working-class culture.
Quoted from his book, “Popular and mass art is more varied than they recognize (and what professes to be ‘high art’ sometimes no more than a profession), and the continuity and change within working-class attitudes are more complex than they allow.”
He brings out the point of ‘Popular art’ versus ‘Mass art’, and the negotiation of power. Ideas of agency – he showed that we are not dominated mechanically by mass culture/ threatened by the imposition of literary values by elites. The distinctions/ differentiations of ‘High art’ and ‘Mass art’ are no longer apt – the lines are significantly blurred.
Literature is a form of communication, where an author conveys a message to an audience of readers. Therefore, studying literature, and linking back to theories fro mthe previous weeks, one has to look at all aspects of literature. Walter Ong discusses the initial introduction of written text and compares it to the rhetoric. Hoggart argues that literature can be analysed from the masses, as a popular culture, instead of just an elitist idea where literature is high art. Chartier, similar to Carey’s ritual view of communication, considers the role of readers and not just authors.
While Ong raises an interesting point that with written text, intonation and value of persuasion is loss as compared to the ‘rhetoric’, the irony is that more thought would have to be put into a written text. Similarly, written text allows for errors to be corrected and this then demands a higher value of written text. More thought should be put into a writing to be able to convey the tone, a structure, the social context and surroundings. In my opinion, authors have a harder task as compared to speakers. Comparing email recounts to speech recounts, one would feel the need to structure, plan and edit his thoughts in an email, but in a speech recount, he would speak freely, giving more space for errors and random inputs. Rhetoric would then give more freedom of free-thinking while written text would limit someone to the structure.
Hoggart and Chartier both argue for the value of literature. While Hoggart acknowledges that works of literature are ‘inventions, fabrications, imaginings’, he argues that written text ’embodies the sense of human life developing in a historical and moral context’ and ‘contains within itself the world of individual and social meaning’. We shouldn’t confuse novels as giving theoretical knowledge but we shouldn’t dismiss them as objects that hold no analytical value. The social world and moral conditions of a particular age can be analysed through novels produced in that time. In Anthony Burgess’s ‘A Clockwork Orange’ and George Orwell’s ‘1984’, we see what is considered a ‘dystopian society’ in that age. It reflects the sentiments of the time that the authors came from and allows for analysis of the history and society of that age.
Yet, it is necessary to understand Chartier’s argument where readers are voyagers. Readers play a role, as important as authors. While authors can construct social worlds and moral conditions through their works, how a reader reads and understand affects the process too. Coinciding with James Carey ritual view of communication, Chartier sees literature as two-way, not just the transmission of ideas but also the understanding of these ideas by the readers. This will then form many different interpretations of a written text and not limit to one that the author had in mind. This relates back to my initial point that authors would need to put more thought-process an analytical thinking when writing. They would have to consider the different groups of readers and the multiple understanding one text can produce. To ensure an effective understanding, he would have to structure and plan the text accordingly.
Literature then, isn’t exclusive to the elites or only able to be analysed in the ‘high culture’. Even within mass culture, Hoggart discusses how their choice of literature and their understanding of it will “reflect their likes and dislikes, their taste and aversion, what they can comprehend and what is beyond them”.
Therefore, in my personal opinion, literature holds a very important value in media. It reflects the social world one is in and should not be dismissed as mere forms of entertainment. Critical analysis can be done with books and literature.
Writing, to Ong, has transformed human consciousness more than any other invention. He cites Plato’s views on writing in his work, namely how writing is inhuman because it is manufactured. Writing destroys memory and is unresponsive. Writing cannot defend itself, unlike its spoken counterpart. Indeed, writing is a technology and requires other tools to take place, as such it is not natural. It is a representation of what someone says or would like to say. Distancing is key in writing, where it gives time for thought and analysis before words are penned down, but for oral speech, there is no time for reflective selectivity.
In Chartier’s writing, we see that a text has meaning only through its readers. This means that the meaning of the text depends largely on the forms in which they are received and appropriated by their readers. Reading is therefore a practice embodied in gestures, spaces and habits where we note that texts are not read in the same manner by different readers and depending one’s culture, a same text can be varyingly captured, handled and understood. Texts can also be understood differently because of the historically and socially differentiated modes of access to texts. Because there is no comprehension of a text that does not depend on the forms in which it comes to the reader, the structure of books and its content are targeted on specific groups of readers depending on the publishers and authorities (depending on who they see as their target audience).
Hoggart:
Richard Hoggart puts forward a compelling case about the relevance of literature to the social sciences. He talks about the intrinsic power of an object and how it cannot be explained but can only be taken for what it is. Sometimes, there are moments to describe in certain phenomena that if placed at the right time “ brings together and contains within itself a world of individual and social meanings, becomes a comprehensive unstated statement about those people and that sense of values”. Thus, what Hoggart is trying to put forward is that even though literature has no theoretical knowledge it has the knowledge of displaying unique moments that through their interactions and interpretations can teach us different things and insights. Such interpretation revolves around the idea of “keeping your eyes on the particulars” .
Also, Hoggart asserts that poetry can provide evidence. But this is only when we do not read the poetry to ascertain evidence. He states aptly “ Their language expresses the temper of their minds, and their tempers exemplify crucial elements in their ages”. This essentially means that by studying language and words we can derive important observations of the social world that would not have been possible if we had taken literature for granted.
Hoggart also introduces other important elements of literature namely that it provides a whole experience throughout. It does not abstract the elements of experience but starts and finishes off with them. This is crucial to our understanding because we contextualize the details throughout the narration that is presented to us and in its context rather than analyzing them in insolation – which could produce varied and even incorrect interpretations. Also, an interesting point of view that he gives is that popular and mass art can be analyzed as well as opposed to traditional assumption that only high art could be analyzed.
Hoggart also believes that even though we feel moved by works of literature we do not feel the need to re-create our personal and social worlds. This is because men engage in literature for their own amusement and for their attempts to cope with their social worlds. It is an escape mechanism rather than an exploratory mechanism. It is not intended to create a revolution in the social sphere. Also, we wish to be in touch with others – that is a greater audience and this communication forms a basic yet integral part of our lives.
Walter J. Ong:
Ong discusses about the autonomy of discourse that writing grants to us as compared to oral speech. He also emphasizes the transformation that it has on our human consciousness. What I find interesting is the array of paradoxes that the juxtapositions of both mediums bring to light.
For instance, writing to Ong is associated with death because as Pluto argued it destroys one’s capacity to memorize things. However, the paradox lies in the fact that the deadness of the text ensures that it endures ( and thus actually lives forever and never dies) and retains its potential for “ being resurrected into limitless living contexts by a potentially infinite number of living readers”.
Another irony that Ong displays revolves around the alphabetization and the elitism associated with those who were taught to write. He showcases that forgers are not actually deviants but are “ experts entrenched at the centre of literary and intellectual culture”. This implies, to me at least that the elites who were given access to writing used it for manipulative purposes and were actually admired for this ( “experts”) because they had mastered the delivery of writing so well that they could now fool others with it.
Ong also shows us some aspects of writing that are more technical in detail. For instance, the narrative aspect of writing is not an objective but an operational display of a formula to depict a story. That is to say that one does not narrate a story based on his own methods of what he has observed but on a formula that has been regurgitated and standardized. Other aspects of writing include the lack of intonation that is otherwise presented in oral speech and this disadvantages writing because one has to fictionalize the settings and expressions and this can be agonizing. To this agony, Ong also incorporates “ backward scanning”.
However, writing is advantageous too in some instances, for it grants precision by breaking down the dense continuum of experience that the chaotic context of oral speech does not allow. Furthermore, writing also achieves objectivity because it separates the distance between the knower and the known.
In conclusion, Ong sheds light on the fact that academia is becoming more commercialized and that writing is losing its early monopoly ( elitism) though its importance is still sustained and every being increased in today’s world.
Roger Chartier:
Chartier’s entire essay revolves around how readers are voyagers throughout the entire reading process. He talks mainly about the readable space (a literality) and the procedures required for the actualization of the work ( a reading). This is namely because reading is not inscribed into the text and thus has to be deciphered. Another key thing to note is that form is crucial to the meaning one associates with a reading and if it changes, then that meaning would undergo change too. Chartier also postulates that to observe socioprofessional classifications we should observe and start observing the objects rather than social groups because they provide us with meanings and cultural divisions in the manner in which they are contextualized.
My particularly favorite notion of the reading is the one that books are manufactured and not written. The rationale for this is that machines process and publish books and publishers organize books for a particular manner which may not relate to the way in which the author would have written the book, if given the autonomy to do so.
Ong looks at how the evolution of mediums (writing and print) beyond oral speech, shape the communication process. He argued that Man’s thought processes and consciousness are not naturally granted, but rather, they were “structured directly or indirectly by the technology of writing”. As compared to oral speech, writing is context-free as the author cannot be present to directly defend or be questioned on what has been written. Thus the author’s ownership is intrinsic and it assumes that writing is an “autonomous discourse” that can convey the author’s message without his/her presence. Plato stated that writing is manufactured, weakens the mind and destroys memory since with the reliance on an external source; people no longer need to rely on their mind’s capabilities. Written text is also unresponsive and passive. However, critics rebutted that it is ironic that Plato’s arguments would never have been made known without the technology of writing and print themselves. The external technologies have been internalized and are constantly part of the reflexivity of the mind. Ong stated that unlike natural oral speech, writing is artificial and is ruled by articulable rules, such as grammar rules. Nonetheless, it doesn’t mean that writing is any “less-real” than oral speech. Even oral speech consists of communication barriers and the speakers may not always manage to fully convey their message or intent since the listeners’ interpretation also comes into play. He also claimed that writing is also necessary for the realization of human potentials and transforms the consciousness. Technology thus improves, instead of degrading human life since it requires practice and this enhances aspects of the human psyche and interior life.
Writing is a representation of sounds and words that people might say and is a code that determine the words and what the readers might understand of it. Similarly, White argued that alphabetization was an important invention that helped to classify and store information. Letters in themselves hold no meaning but when put together and arranged to form alphabets, they become imbued with meanings. This allows for recording and distribution of knowledge.
Ong also argued that pictogram systems which had a large repertoire of symbols, was time-consuming and elitist, whereas alphabetization enabled a levelling effect since it was easy for all to learn. However, in the beginning days of writing, people did not privilege the written word over the spoken one as the “conditions of words in a text is quite different from their condition in spoken discourse.” While speech is context specific, words are alone in a text. The writer has to fictionalize the readers and not assume that all his readers think alike. The issue of presence and absence in various medium thus affects the communication process and messages.
Chartier also suggested that is is important to analyze the themes, structure of texts; the history of the mediums that enable the circulation of writing and how the various mediums and forms produce usages and differentiated meanings. The print medium had transformed social relations, enabled new ways of thinking just like how Ong argued, as well as how it modified power relations. Similar to Ong, he also argued that the structure of texts govern the readers’ interpretations and receptions. It can be argued that one’s place and position in society (e.g. gender, class, race) have bearings on how the same text may be understood. This also affects the accessibility of texts by different groups in society.
Chartier also talked about the triangulated relations between text, book and reader. An unchanged text presented and reproduced in the printed form, will result in different receptions. As texts are passed from one published form to another, it also transforms the text and creates a new and perhaps different target clientele. Lastly, he stated that visible references were always required. Perhaps we can look at how there are different versions of the same text/book in the market these days. Different fonts, different book covers, different publishing house with the same content, however they all cater to different groups sometimes. For instance, when a movie based on the book is released, some might prefer the “movie-version” book cover, while some might prefer the classic “Penguin” version as it may be more “authentic” to them. Also, readers will have different takes on the same text and the meaning the writer intended to convey may not always be the message that is decoded.
This week is special because we’re writing (blogging) about our interpretation of texts on “writing, books and literature. We’re deriving our own meanings from the texts we’re read and putting them out in written text form. Kinda like writing about ‘reading and writing’ itself.
Growing up in Singapore’s education system, I’ve never really thought that reading and writing were monumental/powerful or belonging to a special upper class of society – we just had to read and write for our tests and exams. Writing is truly commonplace today, and it’s enlightening to know that it is quite a recent invention. I think reading comes after writing (without writing, there’d be no words to read) and it’s nice to realise that people interprete varying things when they read the same piece of writing.
ROGER CHARTIER
Chartier talks about text in its material form (printed words + characters) and the actualisation of the text – the interpretive procedures one goes through when reading. A text is only actualised when we realise their meaning, and receive and appropriate the text based on the meanings we derive from it. Texts are read differently by different people. For instance, a hopeless romantic might read a love story and fully believe in it, going so far as to emulate the romance in the story. However, a more jaded person might read the same love story and scoff at it, calling it a load of falsehood and rubbish.
Chartier also states that reading the same thing in different forms creates new meaning. This brought to mind: “The Medium is the Message”. The meaning of a text changes when its physical form changes (even though the text remains the same). For instance, a call to action inscribed on a rock – for instance: “my cat is missing, please help me find it!” on a secluded island may have no impact whatsoever, while the same call to action published in a newspaper might lead to many readers helping to search for the cat.
Cultural separations and the way readings/writings are classified are link to social divides. For instance, we’ve books classified according to age (Pre-school, Children, Teens, Adults) , and according to different industrial/academic fields (Sociology, Mathematics, Physical Sciences, Business). The type of texts one has can have access to, can read and can comprehend says something about his/her social standing and level of education. For instance, university students and professors and social science researchers have access to academic journal databases, which may be out of reach for most other people. For instance, once I’m no longer affiliated to a university, I may lose my access to the academic journal database, unless I pay for subscription on my own (which would cost a lot, over a long time).
Changes in writing/reading that are seemingly insignificant can have a major effect on the status of works and how they are interpreted. (The Bible’s chapters and verses are used as an example in Chartier’s work.) Likewise, if I did not break this blog post into paragraphs and left it as one long, continuous piece of text, it’d frustrate the reader and make not want to read this anymore.
The possession of books used to be so rare and so special, books were owned by the rare elite and signalled high social standing. Today, perhaps the rare few who can still read and understand the Latin language could be among the elite/prestigious ranks of the Catholic religion. Latin is the official language of the Vatican City, and privileged few people utilise it in Catholic religious texts.
At the end of the day, reading the same things can result in different meanings taken away.
RICHARD HOGGART
I really like how Hoggart explains that Literature and Sociology (the study of society) can come together and complement each other. Literature is not, he asserts, pure fluff and fabrication. Well-written literature can provide the ‘texture’ and ‘feeling’ to the world of social science – which is a more subjective world that cannot be simply defined in straightforward, ‘hard science’ terms. It gives meaning and in-depth emotion to hard social science theories.
I thought of my Secondary 4 Literature text: “To Kill A Mockingbird”, which describes small-town American society in the 1930s, against a backdrop of intense racism. A black man (Tom) stands trial for the alleged rape of a white woman, and he becomes the subject of scrutiny, discrimination, violence and racism. He is accused of raping the white woman and a yet, white man (Atticus Finch) stands as his defence lawyer. Through the eyes of the book’s protagonists, we see how racism + discrimination can manifest themselves in the conservative, ‘anti-black’ climate of 1930s America.
On top of race and religion (Ku Klux Clan, Lynching, Christianity), many other areas like class, status and gender roles (for instance, the jury in the book consisted of men only) were also explored in the novel, in a seamless story-telling narrative.
Indeed, we’ve learnt about various sociological concepts that can be applied to the book, but it is the book that tells the story and paints a picture of what it could have looked like. To Kill A Mockingbird is like a narrative of social criticism and allows us to see, rather then learn/conceptualise, what society was like at a certain point in time.
WALTER J. ONG
Walter talks about how writing is a monumental invention and technology as it allows us, for the first time, to express our thoughts in visual form. In the past, during Plato’s time (he was a strong advocate of oral culture), writing was a new phenomenon and it was regarded as dangerous and harmful. Writing was thought to weaken the intellect, just like the way calculators might weaken our mathematical sense for counting today.
Walter argues that writing transcends death, and that writing can be resurrected and brought alive. Writing is recorded and kept, and can be reproduced. It can lead to the production on new written works. Writing transforms and heightens consciousness.
He then talks about the magic of the written script, and how it can be fully correlate, word-for-word, to the oral form of speech. I don’t really like how he says that the Chinese script is “basically time consuming and elitist” and how Chinese “characters will be replaced by the roman alphabet as soon as all the people in the People’s Republic of China master the same Chinese language”. To me, that statement was ignorant and lacked true understanding of the Chinese script. The traditional Chinese script, no doubt tedious and tiresome to write, is still going very strong in Taiwan and Hong Kong – where they are the official written text. People still utilise the traditional Chinese script with full appreciation and understanding and it doesn’t look to be going away anytime soon. If traditional Chinese is tedious, the PRC (and countries like M’sia and S’pore) make use of Mao’s Simplified Chinese in everyday writing, business and administration. It may not be wise to presume that the Chinese script will be replaced by the Roman alphabet in time to come, seeing as it is so heavily used today (in business, education, administration and economy), especially in China, a world superpower.
Walter talks about the forms of languages, their design, their vowels and consonants.
It is interesting to realise that “documents did not immediately inspire trust” and that people had to be persuaded that writing improved old oral methods sufficiently to warrant all the expense and troublesome techniques it involves.
Today, oral testimony and oral words may seem to lack the strength and evidence that the written word possesses. Words said or spoken can be forgotten, misunderstood, unrecorded and misconstrued (unless recorded with a voice recorder).
I find it amusing that people could trust the spoken word (oral culture) so fully in the past, seeing as their verbal accounts were simply about “publicly remembering what others before them had remembered”. There were certainly no voice recorders during that time to record their spoken words. How did they know for sure that what they said was truly what they remembered, and how did they know that others before them remembered in full and accurate detail what they were speaking about? The spoken culture may be the predecessor to the written culture today, but it truly is a weak and unsubstantiated culture [especially since it was not recorded (there was no technology to record voices at that time)]. Verbal culture could have been changed and modified over and over as it was passed down through word-of-mouth, and who’s to know what’s the ‘truth’?
Maybe one way in which writing could be seen as artificial would be because one did not hear someone else’s real voice, but read it in text instead. Perhaps that’s why people today say that maybe a phone call is more sincere and real than a text message. A phone call could allow us to hear the other party’s voice in real time, thus rendering it more authentic than a ‘stoic’, ‘dead’ text message.
This week’s readings talk about writing, books and literature, the common message I got from Chartier and Hoggart is that both emphasised the presence of audience/readers in order for the text to have meaning. In Chartier’s reading, he emphasizes on the importance of the form a text takes in the way it is read. To him, “reading is always a practice embodied in gestures, spaces and habits.” Hence, the same text can be reinterpreted in many ways by those who can read them. When a text is transferred from the author to the printing then to the reader, the original intended meaning of the author could be changed and modified to suit the printing organization’s needs and goals. He argued that there is the importance of writing that brought about the printed culture primarily because the authorities wish to regulate and shape minds through reading.
Ong’s reading talks largely about the distinctions between writing and orality. Because of the presence of the different mediums, it brought about changes to the communication process. He argued that writing restructures consciousness as writing allows the ability for analysis. Writing has the distancing effect which allows for thinking and analysing before writing down things materially unlike speaking which occurs simultaneously with thinking. Therefore, with writing which allows analysis, it allows for controlling to take place with concrete plans and observations. Since writing is artificial and difficult, it would take time and energy for changes to take place in the society along with writing. There must be a use for writing before writing can acquire the importance in society hence writing is usually associated with schooling and literacy.