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.