science

Secondary orality

Secondary orality is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Secondary orality rather than just read about it. In short: Secondary orality is orality that is dependent on literate culture and the existence of writing, such as a television anchor reading the news or radio. While it exists in sound, it does not have the features of "primary orality" because it presumes and rests upon literate thought and expression, and may even be people reading written material.

Key takeaways

Secondary orality belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Secondary orality to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Secondary orality from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Secondary orality is orality that is dependent on literate culture and the existence of writing, such as a television anchor reading the news or radio. While it exists in sound, it does not have the features of "primary orality" because it presumes and rests upon literate thought and expression, and may even be people reading written material. Thus, secondary orality is usually not as repetitive, redundant, agonistic, etc. the way primary orality is, and cultures that have a lot of secondary orality are not necessarily similar to primarily oral cultures. Secondary orality should not be confused with "oral residue" in which a culture has not fully transitioned to literate / written culture and retains many of the characteristics of primary oral cultures. Secondary orality is a phenomenon of post-literacy, whereas oral residue is a stage in the transition from pre-literate to literate.

Terminology Walter J. Ong first described the concept of secondary orality in his publication Rhetoric, Romance, and Technology (1971):

Secondary orality is founded on—though it departs from—the individualized introversion of the age of writing, print, and rationalism which intervened between it and primary orality and which remains as part of us. History is deposited permanently, but not inalterably, in personality structure. Ong's most popular exposition of primary orality and secondary orality came with his book Orality and Literacy (1982; 2nd ed. 2002), which discussed the differences between oral and literate cultures. Ong used the phrase "secondary orality," describing it as "essentially a more deliberate and self-conscious orality, based permanently on the use of writing and print." According to his way of thinking, secondary orality is not primary orality, the orality of pre-literate cultures. Oral societies operated on polychronic time, with many things happening at once—socialization played a great role in the operation of these cultures, memory and memorization were of greater importance, increasing the amount of copiousness and redundancy. Oral cultures were additive rather than subordinate, closer to the human life world, and more situational and participatory than the more abstract qualities of literate cultures.

The Gutenberg Parenthesis Ong notes that human communication has been dominated by oral culture, and the first signs of literacy date only 6 000 years ago. Tom Pettitt agrees with Ong, by considering literate learning more the anomaly than the rule. He considers this to be a post-Gutenberg era where knowledge is formed through digital media, delivered over the internet. Calling the previous 500 years a "Gutenberg Parenthesis," a term coined by Lars Ole Sauerberg, Pettitt explains that before Gutenberg, knowledge was formed orally and, now, in this post-Gutenberg era, knowledge is formed—increasingly—through "secondary orality" on the Internet.

McLuhan's Global Village Marshall McLuhan discusses in The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962) his notion of the "global village", a concept that can be related to Ong's account of secondary orality. Liliana Bounegru notes the emergence of social media (e.g. Facebook) and microblogging (i.e.Twitter) are re-tribalizing our cultures. Conversations in these social spaces are written, but are more conversational in tone than written communications; they are "rapid communication with large groups of people in a speed that would resemble oral storytelling, without having to share the same physical space with your audience."

References

Notes

Bibliography

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Secondary orality

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Secondary orality claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Secondary orality before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Secondary orality ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Secondary orality

In research: Secondary orality appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Secondary orality in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Secondary orality is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Communication theory, Linguistics, Oral tradition, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Secondary orality outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Secondary orality in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Secondary orality means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Secondary orality out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Secondary orality in simple terms?

Why does Secondary orality matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Secondary orality?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Secondary orality.