Graham Budd

1. Ong states that the ties of a culture to its oral past can be seen in how much memorization is required / stressed in the education process. What does this say about our culture and what are you impressions on the amount and usefulness of memorization in education in our society?

2. Ong says near the end of the paper that "it is impossible for script to be more than marks on a surface unless it is used by a conscious human being as a cue to sounded words, real or imagined, directly or indirectly." How then is it possible for someone born deaf to make any sense of written languages? How would Ong account for this?

3. Clearly War Music fits into what Ong describes as stories never being told the same way twice. In an oral society retellings necessarily are not a verbatim replication of the original but are in fact evolving changing entities. With this in mind do you see adaptations such as Logue's as beneficial, detrimental, or neutral to the story they tell?

Lauren Barnett

If oral cultures are assumed to be those that have no touch of literacy within them, what of art? Is painting and drawing an expression of literacy, or is it simply self-expression? If an artist of an oral culture drew a picture of a tree, would this be thought of as a depiction of a tree, or a literate symbol for a tree?

If a deaf child is born to an oral culture, how does it interact with the rest of the people? Would sign language be able to develop without the aid of writing? How would the symbols be transmitted through the community without some form of literacy? And, assuming that this were possible, is sign language truly a language or is it a form of literacy?

As a literate culture, do we truly need all of the words that we have procured through the ages? If communities are able to thrive simply through oral tradition, why must we keep volumes of words through decades? Should we too slough off words from our dictionary that are no longer pertinent to today¹s society? And if not, why not?

Nilima Abrams

Christopher Logue obviously isn't trying to duplicate Homer, do you think,
though that he goes too far in his interpretation. I was annoyed by various
random and anachronistic sentences such as "400 tons of frozen chicken-their
heads half a world away" (p 83) and a reference to "tsunamis" on 99. What
purpose, if any do these, and other similar examples, (there are many) serve?
Do they make this epic easy to relate to?

Beauty is often referred to in the Iliad as a curse. The war is fought over the
most beautiful woman, who often cries and bemones her fate. Paris is referred
to as "handsome" right before he is sent into a combat for starting the war
(Logue 94). Discuss other instances (such as Achilles) and analyze the role
that beauty plays in the tale. Is it a factor of jealousy? Does it relate to
being favored by the gods? Is it more than "skin deep"?

Logue does not refer to "Zeus," but rather to "God," yet he refers to the other
gods by their names. Compare passages from "War Music" and the Iliad which
involve Zeus/God. Obviously there are many differences, but my question is
what, if any, are the significance that this different name implies. Ong talks
about a theory in which certain words are used in oration, whereas others are
preferred by literate cultures. Can his ideas be applied to the choice of words
by Logue
and Lombardo?

Ashley Orenberg:
1.) Ong explains that in the oral culture, ³you might Œcall¹ them [words] back-Œrecall¹ them. But there is nowhere to Œlook¹ for them.² Therefore, I believe it is fair to conclude that in oral cultures, each speaker uses words as he/she has come to understand them overtime. Can this furthermore imply that in oral cultures, the meaning of individual words and phrases is evolutionary and therefore up to individual interpretation? Can miscommunication occur in a culture when the meaning of words is based on personal understanding as opposed to a dictated source such as a dictionary?

2.) One of the definitions of the word ³language² in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language reads as follows: ³The aspect of human behavior that involves the use of vocal sounds in meaningful patterns and, when they exist, corresponding written symbols to form, express, and communicate thoughts and feelings.² According to this definition, can orality be considered a language if it does not have ³corresponding written symbols?² Or is orality just a form of expressing thoughts that doesn¹t necessarily need to be considered a language because it does not have corresponding written symbols? Basically, would you consider orality to be a type of language? Why or why not? You don¹t have to use this definition of ³language² to answer this question, but I felt it was interesting to include it here. Another interesting concept to think about in this question is sign-language which does not incorporate written symbols but is considered a language. I just wanted to throw that out there as well!

3.) Does all oral culture at some point turn into written language? In terms of the Greeks, their oral culture is now being read in books thousands of years later. What oral cultures exist in this world today, and do you feel they will one day be turned into written form? Can you give an example of an oral culture that once existed and has not been turned into written language?

Nathan Mahany:
1) Is it possible to have strong rationality in a
completely oral culture? Consider the Homerís ìIliadî
and Hesiodís ìTheogonyî. Can this type of reasoning
be considered rational?
2) In Parmenidesí ìOn Natureî, could his argument be
considered deterministic? Why is it appropriate,
though ironical that Parmenides refers to the gods?
What was the significance of this particular work when
it was written?
3) Parmenides states that ì it is the composition of
body parts which does the thinking, and Thought is the
same in each and every human.î What would Griffithís
opinion be (Consider the social role theory and affect
programs)?

Liz Guenard

1) Ong's discussion of orality presents many of the benefits of having a written culture, presenting a strong case for the necessity of written language especially with its contributions to the way we think about the world. But what about its limitations? How does having a written language limit our aptitude for expression and in what ways might having a strictly oral culture or a symbolic/ideographic language overcome these limitations, increasing our ability to express ideas?

2) Luria's studies of illiterate subjects describes some common trends in the way these subjects talk about themselves. How do her findings compare with the ideas of self-identity and the interpretation of community by Greeks in the Iliad?

3) We discussed in class how speaking different languages increases our capacity for expression in the expanded way we are able to think about ideas. How does language shape the world we live in? Are complete translations possible?