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Matt Larson
Essay 2
Farman DTC 375
2-17-09
Oral/Visual Communication, The Only Communication
In the ancient times the communication people used was oral. They had a small sense of group or community because everything thing was done by speech or story telling to pass thoughts and ideas along to one another. The small communities did not know much about the world around them other than just outside of their little village. Then writing came along and people began to turn more inward. The communication became mainly textual. They were able to now record thoughts, ideas and history that had happened better than ever before. It wasn’t done by memory anymore, but by factual writings. The emphasis became more individualistic instead of the group. Now in today’s world, we, meaning all of us in today’s modern age, are a mixture of the two oral and textual. However, we are more oral than textual.
Have you ever gone to another country and seen a sign on the side of the road with rocks falling off a hill toward a stick figure man? How about a stick figure man swimming inside a circle with a line slashing through it? Did you know what they meant? Even though you might not have spoken the native language of the particular country you probably knew what they meant. This is because you understood the nature of the pictograph. You know that a circle with a line slashing through it means “no”, or that rocks falling on someone’s head usually inst a good thing. These signs or pictographs are a visual language, a universal one that everyone can understand. It does not need to be explained by text. It is something we can just see and understand and in turn proves that we are an oral/visual culture.
With writing being invented the sense of group or community went away. It became more focused on the individual. However, in the present day we are starting to have more of a sense of group again, only, according to Walter Ong, it is not a small group or community, it is much, much larger. (Ong) The world has become so much “smaller” because of all the technology we have. The Internet, and the phone are just two examples that have closed the gap between all of us. So we are becoming more of an oral culture again because we are gaining that sense of group that the prehistoric man once had.
So we already know that pictographs can be a visual language to everyone no matter what culture or language someone speaks. What about words, can words be a visual cue as well? The answer to this question is yes. In European countries there is a clothing company named FCUK, which stands for French Connection United Kingdom. Now what word did you see when you first saw those letters. In most cases it was a word that should not be repeated. This is because even though text is textual thing, it is still a visual language. Another example that might make a little more sense is when you write a word and cannot seem to be able to remember the spelling or it. Like you spelled friend “friend”. You notice that it does not seem to look correct in your eyes. This is because the word itself is seen a visual representation. The word needs to be spelled the correct way for it to have the correct meaning. Words and letters are visual representations of what we speak and what we see in our everyday lives. If you see the word tree, you think of a tree from real life, maybe even one you have seen. Text itself is a type or orality, so even when you try and make the argument of our culture being a textual one, it does fit because text is orality.
So in making our way from first being a primarily oral culture, then to a textual culture, we are now in a combination of both. However we are more oral in nature than textual. This because of several things our global culture is doing. First off there are pictographs that can be interpreted just by understanding what the picture is of. You do not need to know the language to understand a pictograph. Second our culture is reverting back to it’s oral roots because we are moving back towards a sense of group, only it is a global group not just a small community.(Ong) Lastly text itself is a visual communication. Although we read it, we still have to see it visually and we interpret what it says and what it looks like using visual cues, such as seeing a tree in text, makes us envision a tree. As you can see we are predominantly an oral culture. We use oral/visual communication much more than a textual.
Works Cited
Ong, Walter. “Orality and Modern Media” Communication In History Technology, Culture, Society. Ed. David Crowley and Paul Heyer. Boston:Pearson Education, 2007
Essay 2
Farman DTC 375
2-17-09
Oral/Visual Communication, The Only Communication
In the ancient times the communication people used was oral. They had a small sense of group or community because everything thing was done by speech or story telling to pass thoughts and ideas along to one another. The small communities did not know much about the world around them other than just outside of their little village. Then writing came along and people began to turn more inward. The communication became mainly textual. They were able to now record thoughts, ideas and history that had happened better than ever before. It wasn’t done by memory anymore, but by factual writings. The emphasis became more individualistic instead of the group. Now in today’s world, we, meaning all of us in today’s modern age, are a mixture of the two oral and textual. However, we are more oral than textual.
Have you ever gone to another country and seen a sign on the side of the road with rocks falling off a hill toward a stick figure man? How about a stick figure man swimming inside a circle with a line slashing through it? Did you know what they meant? Even though you might not have spoken the native language of the particular country you probably knew what they meant. This is because you understood the nature of the pictograph. You know that a circle with a line slashing through it means “no”, or that rocks falling on someone’s head usually inst a good thing. These signs or pictographs are a visual language, a universal one that everyone can understand. It does not need to be explained by text. It is something we can just see and understand and in turn proves that we are an oral/visual culture.
With writing being invented the sense of group or community went away. It became more focused on the individual. However, in the present day we are starting to have more of a sense of group again, only, according to Walter Ong, it is not a small group or community, it is much, much larger. (Ong) The world has become so much “smaller” because of all the technology we have. The Internet, and the phone are just two examples that have closed the gap between all of us. So we are becoming more of an oral culture again because we are gaining that sense of group that the prehistoric man once had.
So we already know that pictographs can be a visual language to everyone no matter what culture or language someone speaks. What about words, can words be a visual cue as well? The answer to this question is yes. In European countries there is a clothing company named FCUK, which stands for French Connection United Kingdom. Now what word did you see when you first saw those letters. In most cases it was a word that should not be repeated. This is because even though text is textual thing, it is still a visual language. Another example that might make a little more sense is when you write a word and cannot seem to be able to remember the spelling or it. Like you spelled friend “friend”. You notice that it does not seem to look correct in your eyes. This is because the word itself is seen a visual representation. The word needs to be spelled the correct way for it to have the correct meaning. Words and letters are visual representations of what we speak and what we see in our everyday lives. If you see the word tree, you think of a tree from real life, maybe even one you have seen. Text itself is a type or orality, so even when you try and make the argument of our culture being a textual one, it does fit because text is orality.
So in making our way from first being a primarily oral culture, then to a textual culture, we are now in a combination of both. However we are more oral in nature than textual. This because of several things our global culture is doing. First off there are pictographs that can be interpreted just by understanding what the picture is of. You do not need to know the language to understand a pictograph. Second our culture is reverting back to it’s oral roots because we are moving back towards a sense of group, only it is a global group not just a small community.(Ong) Lastly text itself is a visual communication. Although we read it, we still have to see it visually and we interpret what it says and what it looks like using visual cues, such as seeing a tree in text, makes us envision a tree. As you can see we are predominantly an oral culture. We use oral/visual communication much more than a textual.
Works Cited
Ong, Walter. “Orality and Modern Media” Communication In History Technology, Culture, Society. Ed. David Crowley and Paul Heyer. Boston:Pearson Education, 2007
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