Writing Is a Technology that Restructures Thought

Thinking of writing as a technology is very weird for me. But if you really think about it, it's true. Being able to communicate with written word makes mot people's life much easier. Imagine having to use verbal communication for everything. What if there was never a written record of our history and everything was handed down verbally? Imagine how distorted some facts would become, not that they can't become distorted with written word either. But imagine if no one ever wrote down the Bible on paper. Would Christianity have spread as much as it has if there wasn't literature to be passed down to keep the stories intact? Walter J. Ong's essay "Writing Is a Technology that Restructures Thought" made me think and challenged me more than any other essay we read so far. Ong wrote, "A word is an event, a happening, not a thing, as letters make it appear to be. So is thought: "This is paper" is an occurrence, an event in time. We grasp truth articulately only in events. Articulated truth has no permanence. Full truth is deeper than articulation" (Ong 20). It is easier to believe what is written down more than it is to believe word of mouth. If there was no such thing as a letter or a word and everything was here-say, who would have the defining knowledge? I wonder how our world would be different.

Literacy and Individual Consciousness

Akinnaso's essay should yet another side of literacy. Literacy in foreign countries. Akinnaso wrote about how his father had his different uses for literacy whether it was in his religion or work and Akinnaso gives examples from his own life. He became quick to learn and love the English books that were given to him and that gave him some what of a pedestal in his village. Even though many of his fellow villagers respected him for his understanding of the English language, they kept it out of their religion. So it brings up another side of literacy in the fact that in some cultures and capacities, literacy is an unwanted or unneeded resource. Maybe some people feel that certain qualities that may come with literacy may change values, beliefs and traditions that have been set for years. Akinnaso's essay also coincides with essays such as "How to Tame a Wild Tongue" by Gloria Anzaldua and "The Achievement of Desire" by Richard Rodriguez. These are all foreign born people that learned the English language, willingly or not, and dealt with the issue of losing their identity in the process of becoming "Americanized". Akinnaso's story was a bit different in the fact that the English language was brought to him in for form of colonization, but he still dealt with having to split himself into two different cultures. His homeland and blood, Nigerian, or the language he grew to love, English. Akinnaso saw literacy in such a different light. He wrote in his essay that "literacy had come to mean, for me, a way of life, a way of knowing, a way of talking, and a way of doing" (154). Literacy changed his entire outlook on life.