Friday, March 30, 2012

line for line

Ong:

"When, however, (singers') purported verbatim renditions are recorded and compared, they turn out to be never the same, though the songs are recognizable versions of the same story. 'Word for word and line for line', as Lord interprets, is simply an emphatic way of saying 'like'. 'Line' is obviously a text-based concept, and even the concept of a 'word' as a discrete entity apart from a flow of speech seems somewhat text-based" (60).

As someone who sings often, I find it incredible how much I can remember but equally important to realize how each performance changes.  The lines are never exactly the same, and the best I can do is to try to interpret for an audience the emotion or message of a song.  This message, however, seems to change from performance to performance too depending on what I am feeling.  It becomes a sort of reminiscient interpretation of conrete lines mixed with how I feel that day and therefore how those lines make me feel at the moment I sing them.  For instance, if I am upset because I just lost my job I might deliver some lines more agressively or hang some notes longer than usual.  I have always considered music as therapy.  It allows me the unique oppurtunity to let an audience know how I feel without saying any actual words that I would usually use.  Like, instead of saying I feel upset about a particular relationship issue I am having, I would say I am having said problem, but I might play some passionate songs about women who screwed over the protagonist of the song.

Derrida

Ong quote:

"Jacques Derrida has made the point that 'there is no linguistic sign before writing'. But neither is there linguistic 'sign' after writing if the oral reference of the written text is adverted to. Though it releases unheard-of potentials of the word, a textual, visual representation of a word is not a real word, but a 'secondary modeling system'. Thought is nested in speech, not in texts, all of which have their meanings through reference of the visible symbol to the world of sound. What the reader is seeing on this page are not real words but coded symbols whereby a properly informed human being can evoke in his or her consciousness real words, in actual or imagined sound. It is impossible for script to be more than marks on a surface unless it is used by a conscious human being as a cue to sounded words, real or imagined, directly or indirectly" (74-5).

context-free language

Ong quote:

"Writing establishes what has been called 'context-free' langauge or 'autonomous' discourse, discourse which cannot be directly questioned or contested as oral speech can be because written discourse has been detatched from its author" (77).

I find it interguing that the written word, as is Ong's contention, is absent of contestability.  A question to discusses may be why is the written uncontestable? 

I would argue that written text is completely contestable in that discourse can be directed to specific audience.  However, i do believe that written communication often falls short because it doesn't carry inflection.  It is easier to make judgements reliability and accuracy of information if it is communicated vocally or visually through action, but I think Ong descibes perfectly why directions for assembling new products are often found to be frustrating or insufficient.

Context of the word and of the world

The difference between literature and speech is perhaps best described in literature by the inability to add tone to the written word.  Sarcasm, for instance, is not detectable in the written word.  Anyone who has ever gotten in trouble with a girlfriend because of something they texted as a joke knows what I am talking about.  For all the words that have been recorded, I find it interesting that it is only when they are written that there is necessity to define them.  If I am talking with someone and I don't know a word I can rely on the context to gain meaning. Ong states:

"Spoken words are always modifications of a total situation which is more than verbal. They never occur alone, in a context simply of words" (100).

"In a text even the words that are there lack their full phonetic qualities. In oral speech, a word must have one or another intonation or tone of voice - lively, excited, quiet, incensed, resigned, or whatever. It is impossible to speak a word orally without any intonation... Literate tradition, adopted and adapted by critcs, can also supply some extratextual clues for intonations, but not complete ones" (100).

Instead of passing on language directly from one person to another, we now rely on written records of words to tell us the meanings of those words.  The language is becoming fixed and governed.  This system limits the capacities of words.  It seems to me that defining a word takes some of the life out of it and that contextual definitions allow for a word's possible scope of usage to expand.  The word "cool", for instance, has changed significantly within the last few decades to reflect core values of our society. Slang, for sure, but significant. (I might get ripped on for a fragmented sentence like that in my writting but not when I say it.  Probably because of all the implied nouns and verbs.) Ong states:


What I like about this course is that we are learning how to detatch the meaning of words through visual imagery.  I was just standing outside trying to conceptualize what it would be like to live in the world if I lacked the capacity to rationalize everything through language.  How does a dog classify and remember things in the world around them? They don't have words for "tree" or "mailbox", but they can recognize and differentiate between the two.  If I walk somewhere I am not constanly thinking about what I see, yet almost everything my eyes see can rationalized whether I choose to consciously recognize it or not.

There have been plenty of times where someone will ask where something is like a buisiness or an item in a store and I can recall where it is without ever having tried to remember its location.  So, I guess I might ask about what this all means in terms of the relationship between cognitive function, memory, experience, interpretation, spacial conceptualization, and reality.

Monday, March 26, 2012

Memorable Memories

       In class today, I started considering how these musey-rooms are actually supposed to operate.  Before class I was reading Ong and tried to think of what really qualified the differentiation between literature and orality.  I say qualified at not quantified because as the quantification is the record itself.  The record becomes not just a series of scratches or symbols, but it is an interpretable message not requisite of a human being to induce relatability.  However, literature seems to fall short as a genuine form of communication for it lack in portraying the human condition.  There is no sarcasm in text messaging.  And, equally a frustrating, similar texts cannot possible encapsilate the subtle nuance of inflection.  What literate culture does provide is a record, for however accurate, of events, theories, names, dates and other impersonal data.  Since the written word is never present situation but rather relative past, the oral tradition lies at the core of the human experience.  Therefore, good literature today might be generally classified as material that evokes an emotional response in the reader.