class readings #2 - Kim Robinson

After read Walter Ong’s Orality and Literacy I began to think about how dependent on words we truly are. Not that I’ll actually ever do it, but it would be interesting to see how many words (both spoken and written) I use in a day. By the end of the day we all probably use thousands of words a day. However, being a college student I am very dependent on the written word. For this class alone we’ve read at least part of three different books, not to mention any hand out or book that Kip read to the class. Without books, we wouldn’t be able to sit in a classroom, learn information, and then return home and be able to re-read the information, or for some they may not remember much at all of the class. Without seeing and being able to read words I wonder if our society and culture would be as large and powerful as it is today. I myself couldn’t imagine learning all the words I know today without being able to see them and write them, not to mention remember rituals or certain scripted actions. But there are cultures that are able to survive and flourish without the use of written language. In America we have a culture like that, one that was able to help the U.S during times of war. The Navajo Indians have their own language however it was not a written one. Before the war and the settling of the west, the Navajo Indians had great power across the land and controlled most of the area around what we know as the 4 corners of southwest U.S. It wasn’t until the war that they even thought of writing it down in any way. Since the language was never written, Japanese forces were unable to break our codes and commands. The government employed “wind-talkers” (made famous by the movie) to relay codes to forces across the sea. It’s event like these in history that make me wonder how much a written language is needed at times.