Elizabeth Dean, Orality and Literacy- SItuational Thinking

Ong discusses the idea of "situational thinking," in Orality and Literacy as a type of thought process that oral people use to problem solve, and a characteristic of the way they think, in contrast to the way we do. Situational thinking refers to the mind seeing a situation, or any question and analyzing it in terms of real life situations. When oral people were given certain questions in the interview-like setting with Dr. Luria, instead of answering simple questions simply, like we would do, they answered them in strict terms of real life situations. They were given 3 objects and said to categorize them, and while we put them all in a "tools," category they described the use of the tools, and how they could be used in relation to each other in a real life setting. I like this way of thinking because its what brings oral people so close to the human lifeworld, and our responses to the questions are what distances us from the lifeworld. We were taught how to answer these questions through our education