Stephanie Whitehead - Readers Response Theory

One of the points made in the section I had to read out of Ong was the reader response theory that I'm not sure everyone heard because they were packing up. The biggest thing that the reader response theory pointed out as a difference between literate and oral cultures was the idea of absence. In text of any kind the reader is not present while the writer writes and the writer is not present when the reader reads. While the book didn't explore the concept in depth on it's own it is something I have thought about. Even in everyday concepts of text, be it through instant messaging or text messaging or letters, we have to be very careful of how we write things because the person receiving the "text" may interpret it wrong. It is something that happened to me in the past where I meant one thing but the person who received what I wrote interpreted it the wrong way, reading emotions and intentions into the text that were not there nor intended when I wrote it. The writer has to be very specific and articulate in the intention and purpose of what they are writing in order to make it clear because they lack the person to person contact that oral cultures have. With out the face to face speech the reader has to guess at the emotions and intentions that the writer was attempting to get across. It is always better to express the important messages face to face I believe in order to avoid any misunderstandings that could result from this. When face to face and directly expressing your message to someone orally then they can see your feelings and hear them as well as see your body language and all of the other indicators of what you mean and feel and intend in your message.