Chrissy Jaeger

Rome: 12.5.07

A few years ago I spent a week in Italy, mainly in Rome. What a beautiful city! I mean this place is truly beautiful. I wanted to talk a little bit about Rome today because in Rome so much of the rhetorical studies began. This is where we see a slight tend towards orality rather than literacy. Aristotle especially loved the concept of orality. He felt that a speech held so much more than a written word.

What I loved about visiting this place was seeing all the signs of such an oral age. The theatre’s and coliseums were gigantic, and were certainly associated with mass gatherings. Speeches were really influential in such a time, and it is partially because of the experience one has with the senses through oral word. Literacy is only experienced through vision, but orality can be experienced through hearing, vision, and feeling. The fact that more of the senses are used shows how it can be more influencial and a more dominant style of communication.

What is interesting is that we are now vering away from such a communication style. With the onset of face book, and text messaging, orality has become nothing more than a hassel and inconvienience. Does this mean that it has lost its weight as a dominant sense communication device? Probably. Now that the written language has been transformed to include multi-tasking. This is through the images that often attend written words. Advertisements for example are more imagery than words, but the words are the language. Thus, we are not using more senses, but our brain is taking in more than one type of communication and thus the feeling of multiple senses being used is assimilated.