I have been thinking a lot about the Ong quotes I have found so far, and the one that seems to stick in my mind the best is:
"Spoken words are always modifications of a total situation which is more than verbal."
This quote gets my mind racing. I start thinking about foreign languages and how there are some aspects of culture that can't transcend language. I start thinking about mentally picturing directions as people give them to me. But, I also think about the comparison of spoken language and written language visualization.
Last Friday we were discussing how kids acquire langauge skills (well... a little bit, I was thinking about and visualizing my childhood more than anything). When I was 3 I had everyone in my family convinced I could read for about a day or so. It was because of one book by a Dr. Seuss called Hop on Pop. I had had people read it to me so often that I had memorized every word page by page, and since the drawings were depicting the words I had easy cues for recollection. It took a while but I eventually messed up and was found out. I find it funny in retrospect that everyone seemed so disappointed that I hadn't actually learned how to read when they could have been equally as impressed that I could memorize all that material.
I still remember a Shel Silverstein poem I had to memorize in 3rd grade too:
"My mother said if just once more
she'd hear me slam that old screen-door,
She'd tear out her hair she'd dive in the stove,
I shut the door and in she dove."
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